In the past five years, he has refused several interviews and TV appearances. Almosawa, a freelance journalist based in Sanaa, maintaining a low profile has kept him safe and allowed him to preserve his credibility. “They try to spread the idea that we are spies of the US,” she says, “and isolate us from our community because they know that the worst thing that could happen to us is to be labeled biased.”įor Shuaib M. Local journalists are routinely targeted with smear campaigns, run by both the Saudi coalition and the Houthis, on social media, says Radhya Almutawakel, a human rights advocate and the chairperson of Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni human-rights group. According to international agencies, the number of dead-from air strikes and famine-like conditions in the country-could be as many as 80,000.
A fight for power between tribal and government factions within Yemen escalated in March of that year, when Saudi Arabia and other Arab states intervened with air strikes to fight the growing influence of Iran on the Houthis. In 2014, they aligned with Saleh and took control of the capital city of Sanaa. The Houthi rebels, a resistance movement that follows the Shia sect of Islam-the one most prevalent in Iran-wanted greater political representation. Under Hadi, who ran uncontested in 2012, reforms were slow and corruption and food insecurity continued. He was forced to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. They toppled the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled the country for 33 years. In 2011, when the Arab Spring shook the Arabian Peninsula and parts of North Africa, Yemenis protested for democracy. Civil wars have plagued the nation for years. It is, admittedly, a complex story-one that requires a nuanced understanding of the cultures and the political currents of a whole region. Amnesty International has described it as the “forgotten war.” Coverage of the conflict, which has raged for five years and has precipitated one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, has been sporadic and simplistic. The subsequent internecine proxy conflict in Syria has been detailed in story after story.īut a fourth war, in Yemen, equal in destruction and in its potential for fallout that directly affects Americans, has been covered very differently.
Later, in 2003, the press helped convince the American public that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that US intervention was necessary to liberate the Iraqi people. In the wake of 9/11, when the US invaded Afghanistan, journalists flew into the country with American troops and filed stories on America’s war against terrorism.
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