InvestigationAfter the outbreak of war in 2015 by Riyadh, the Houthi rebels were driven out of the major southern city, which became the country’s “temporary capital”. But it remains the scene of armed struggles between a multitude of rival militias.
At Cairo airport, the sun is setting on the tarmac and the plane of Yemenia, the Yemeni national company, does not take off. In the cabin, elderly women, on their way to Aden, replace cushions behind their aching backs. Many are sick. Their families have sold a car or their jewelry to pay for this ticket and treatments – dialysis, chemotherapy – difficult to access in their country, at war since 2015. In the aisles of the device, men challenge their neighbors and are indignant: “The skies of Yemen no longer belong to the Yemenis!” »
An unscheduled repair caused the Saudi military to miss the take-off window and ground the plane for seven hours. For seven years that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been waging war against Houthi rebels in Yemen, Riyadh has controlled the country’s airspace. Any entry or exit depends on this tutelary power, an inexhaustible source of humiliation for the Yemenis.
Upon landing in Aden, around midnight, a message vibrates on the portable devices: “The Saudi Telecom Company wishes you a pleasant stay in Saudi Arabia…” In 2015, the Yemeni port city paid a heavy price in the fighting that allowed the Riyadh-led coalition to drive out the Houthis. Everywhere, the bombed buildings are still in ruins. Yet Aden believed he could regain his past greatness. The former capital of the South, which was still in the 1950s the second largest port on the planet in terms of traffic, dreamed of putting an end to its slow decline. Among its “liberators”, a politico-military movement – the Southern Transitional Council (CTS) financed by Riyadh and its ally, the United Arab Emirates – promised to resurrect the independent state of South Yemen, a former satellite of the USSR, born in 1967 after the departure of the English colonists and melted, in 1990, into a unified Yemen.
He made a point of shaking off the yoke of the North, where the Houthis impose their unchallenged reign, occupying the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. These Shiite rebels, allies of Iran, are the big winners of the 2011 revolution, the Yemeni “spring” which carried off former president Ali Abdallah Saleh, in power from 1990 to 2012. In their stronghold, they build a totalitarian regime dedicated to perpetual war, crushing all opposition, maintaining the cult of martyrs in the population.
“We live in Saudi Arabia”
Opposite, Aden was to be, with the help of the Saudis, the showcase of free Yemen. But the city is rotting into a gray area. Aden has a “temporary capital” of the country only in name. The Yemeni central government, which has taken up residence there, is an intriguing object: neither dead nor alive. The authorities are unable to provide basic public services and control their warlords. As for the passion of the Adenians for independence, it evaporates. “This war started by opposing two camps: the Houthis and the government. Today there are at least five. Come back next year, there will be more”predicts Fathi Ben Lazraq, the editorial director of the daily Aden Al Ghad. In the heart of Aden, the centrifugal forces of the civil war are exerted in each district, each clan.
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