The Moneer family home in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, sits at the foot of a hill in the southern part of the city. At first glance, that hill, called Nahdain Hill, looks like a useless pile of dirt, taking up too much space in an already dense city. But it has become a location of strategic value for the Houthi rebels who have controlled Sanaa since 2014, and are now using the unassuming hill as a cache for weapons and ammunition.
That makes the Nahdain Hill a valuable target surrounded by vulnerable civilian buildings. When fighter jets sweep through the area, the Moneers can hear it. When missiles strike nearby, the Moneers’ windows sometimes shatter from the noise.
For three years now, Yemen has been at war. Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition supporting the ousted Yemeni President Hadi are fighting over control of the territory. The United States is indirectly involved, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia that have been used in the airstrike campaign.
While this involvement flies under the radar of public debate in America, it has become an agonizing ordeal for Yemenis living in the United States. They are forced to follow as events unfold from afar; President Trump’s travel ban prohibits them from re-entering the U.S. if they visit Yemen. The war that’s tearing their home country apart might be 9,000 miles away, but it’s always on their minds, according to three Yemenis interviewed by Annenberg Media.
Yousef Moneer, whose family lives dangerously close to the Nahdain Hill, was last in his home country in 2013 before leaving for Fresno to pursue his undergraduate degree. He drives for Uber in San Francisco on the weekends to support himself and struggles with the daily ordeals of mounting school work, anxiously awaiting news from home. His oldest brother left Yemen for Malaysia, but his mother and youngest brother, who is still in high school, remain in Sanaa.
“I tried to pull them out several times, but my mom doesn’t want to leave,” Moneer said.
“When you live on the edge, waiting for that call or that news to come, you know, saying that a friend has been killed or kidnapped—or a family member,” Moneer said. “It’s just something horrible.”
Last year, Moneer received such a call. His friend from high school, Mustafa, who was about to leave with a scholarship to study in the United States, was killed by a Houthi sniper, Moneer said.
More than 5,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen’s war since 2014, according to a report by the United Nations. Weapons built by American and European companies alike have been found at the site of civilian homes bombed by the Saudi coalition. Yet amid rising criticism of the alleged imprecision of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, the Trump administration signed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in May.
At this point, the deal is more of a statement of intended sales than a binding contract. Even so, it has angered Yemenis in the U.S.
“It’s disappointing to see the country you call home being complicit in this war that is killing your people,” said Jehan Hakim, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Yemen in the 1970s. She is a community advocate in San Francisco with the Yemeni Alliance Committee.
Hakim said many Yemenis in her community share similar concerns. “You don’t know if your family isn’t pick up the phone because your house has been bombed. It’s very frustrating.”
It’s a feeling all too familiar to Alaa Amer and Yousef Assabahi. Both grew up in Yemen, and both now live in Los Angeles.
Assabahi is currently finishing up his film degree at UCLA. He said many of his friends in Yemen have become numb to the daily missile strikes, “which some consider good—I consider terrifying,” he said. “Because when a 13-year-old kid is able to sleep when there’s a bombing, that’s alarming.”
Amer works as a photographer. Her sister still lives in Sanaa with her husband; they married after the war started.
Amer said life for her sister has become especially dire. “She feels like she is kept in prison,” Amer said. “She can’t move freely as she did before. She doesn’t have any power or any control over her life or the plans that she had before.”
Women’s rights have been on the decline in Yemen since reunification in the 1990s, especially in the formerly secular-leaning southern regions of the country. After the Arab Spring movement fostered a national dialogue in Yemen, some female activists were hoping for betterment. Now, “She doesn’t have any power or any control over her life,” Amer said, speaking of her sister. “She feels like everything is frozen now.”
While all three Yemenis that Annenberg Media spoke with are from families of relative wealth, insulated from the food and healthcare shortages in the country, they said they are saddened by the dramatic turn their home country has taken.
During the Arab Spring, Assabahi and Moneer were among the hopeful protesters, calling for a better quality of life in Yemen.
Now, seven years later, the World Health Organization calls the situation in Yemen “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Last year, Saudi Arabia blocked humanitarian aid corridors into northern Yemen for months. By December, one million Yemenis had contracted cholera.
“Our hope for the future has have been shattered,” Moneer said. Still, he is determined to return to Yemen after he graduates in two years.
“I really want to go back and help when, actually, my country needs me. This is the time for it.”
A destroyed house in the south of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in June 2015. (Photo: Ibrahem Qasim/Wikimedia Commons)
