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I was watching the BBC news broadcast when a bout of despondency descended upon me.
The newsreader was talking about war-torn Yemen. But it was the visuals shown that slammed into my stomach: death, destruction and malnourished children.
The camera zoomed onto a two-storey building whose walls had been blown apart by bombs in the city of Taiz. It was the local school, or what remained of it. On two of the badly damaged floors, amid debris, classes packed with pupils, were in session.
The building looked as if it might collapse anytime. Because of the civil war, there was no government agency to check if it was safe to even stand near it, let alone sit inside.
The children, however, didn’t seem concerned. But then why would they be concerned when they have seen worse?
The civil war started in 2014 when an Iran-backed rebel movement – officially called Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) but better known as Houthis, named after its leader who is from the Houthi tribe – seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa, and much of the country’s north.
But it became a larger conflict when Saudi Arabia led a US-backed coalition to dislodge the rebels and restore the internationally recognised government in 2015.
More than 130,000 people have been killed in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. About 4 million Yemenis have been made homeless and 500,000 people are living in famine-like conditions, according to a AP report.
But you hardly hear about this conflict in the Malaysian media. Somehow, the Malaysian media prefer to focus on the Palestinian conflict. How many Malaysians really know the extent of the suffering in Yemen? Several people I spoke to could only say they knew that “some fighting was going on there” but were surprised when I told them how bad it was.
You don’t hear our politicians speaking up for the suffering Yemenis as they do for the Palestinians. Suffering is suffering – whether it is in Yemen or Palestine or Singapore or Malaysia or Iceland.
From an internal uprising, the conflict has turned into somewhat of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the US. Added to the mixture is the fact that Iran practices Shia Islam while Saudi Arabia and its Muslim allies are largely followers of Sunni Islam.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs more than 16 million people in Yemen – half the population – will go hungry this year. Apart from the ravages of war, Yemenis are also facing the onslaught of Covid-19 at a time when half the country’s health facilities have been destroyed or closed.
What is even more saddening is that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, donor countries have cut back on aid to Yemen as they need extra money to cope at home.
The UN appealed for US$3.8 billion from developed nations and others for this year but managed to raise only US$1.7 billion, the international body said on March 1.
Now aid workers fear the worst if the conflict does not end.
According to Unicef, one in five schools in the country are not operating. The BBC report said the school in Taiz closed in 2016 when it was occupied by Houthi rebels but reopened when government forces drove them out.
Every time I see pictures of devastation, of man killing man, whether in Yemen or Syria or elsewhere, I feel dispirited. Questions that can’t easily be answered will tumble over each other: Why? How can someone be so cruel? Don’t perpetrators of violence – especially those who fight in the name of religion – understand the pain they cause? Why are some humans so happy to hurt or kill other humans?
Just as the cloud of sadness threatened to overwhelm me, the newscaster said that teachers at the Taiz school were continuing to teach despite not getting any salary due to the war. What dedication, I thought.
I felt like standing up and clapping.
There was something else too to lift my spirit and remind me about the human spirit. A nine-year-old boy was taking a class and the newscaster said Ahmed, who was born blind, would stand in when any of the teachers was unable to attend classes for the younger ones. He would teach what he himself had learned.
I felt like hugging that boy.
It was, yet again, another demonstration of the indomitable human spirit.
I know I can’t stop the war; I know nobody will listen if I were to suggest that the warring parties lay down arms and sit down for negotiations. I can only pray that common sense will prevail and that parties in the conflict that is causing so much misery will come to their senses.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT
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