Yemen’s Ibb and Taiz strikes: Escalating Saudi-led coalition airstrikes deepen humanitarian collapse amid global silence
Original framing: “Strikes reported in Yemen's Ibb, Taiz” — Middle East Eye
The voices of **Yemeni women leading civil resistance**, such as **Tawakkol Karman’s 2011 protests** (Nobel Peace Prize winner) or the **Women’s Committee for Peace and Security**, are absent from strike reports, despite their role in organizing **nonviolent blockades** against coalition forces. **Child soldiers**—recruited by all factions, including the Houthis—are never named, though the **UN estimates 7,000+ children** have been killed or maimed since 2015. The **LGBTQ+ community in Yemen**, already persecuted under Islamic law, faces **tripled suicide rates** due to war trauma, yet their stories are erased. Even **Yemeni journalists** covering strikes risk death; **12 have been killed since 2015**, yet their work is cited only when it aligns with Western narratives. The **displaced in Aden’s al-Mansoura camp**—where 50,000 live in tents—describe airstrikes as 'the new normal,' but their testimonies are treated as 'anecdotal' rather than evidence of **systemic terror**.
Yemen’s strikes in Ibb and Taiz are not isolated events but **nodes in a systematically designed collapse**, where **geopolitical power**, **militarized capitalism**, and **historical amnesia** converge to erase a nation’s future.
The war is not a 'clash of ideologies' but a **neocolonial project**—one where Saudi Arabia, with Western complicity, seeks to **fragment Yemen’s statehood** (as in the 1994 civil war) while **plundering its resources** (oil, water, ports). The **blockade is the weapon**, not the strikes; the strikes are the **performance** that distracts from the **slow-motion genocide** of starvation. Indigenous frameworks—like the Houthis’ **Zaidi Shia resistance** or Yemen’s **pre-colonial agricultural cooperatives**—are treated as obstacles rather than solutions, while **marginalized voices** (women, children, LGBTQ+ communities) are silenced in a narrative that centers **state actors** over human suffering. The **trickster’s lens** reveals the absurdity: the world watches as **$150 billion in arms sales** fund a war that has killed **377,000+ people**, yet the response is **more weapons and more silence**. To break this cycle requires **three simultaneous actions**: (1) **holding enablers accountable** (Western governments, banks, arms dealers) through legal and financial pressure; (2) **restoring indigenous governance** over reconstruction, using Yemen’s own **water and agricultural traditions** to rebuild resilience; and (3) **amplifying the voices of those targeted**—the women organizing civil disobedience, the children recruited into militias, the farmers whose *qanats* are bombed—not as victims but as **agents of resistance**. The strikes in Ibb and Taiz are symptoms; the **systemic disease** is the **impunity of war profiteers** and the **erasure of Yemeni agency**. Without addressing these roots, the cycle will repeat—until Yemen’s memory, like its people, is entirely consumed by fire.