Yemen’s oil infrastructure under siege: How Saudi-led strikes deepen humanitarian crisis and fuel Houthi resistance
Original framing: “Saudi coalition says it targeted oil firm in Sanaa, other facilities in Yemen” — Middle East Eye
The voices of Yemeni women, who bear the brunt of fuel shortages through extended hours spent queuing for scarce supplies, are systematically excluded from this narrative. Women-led civil society groups in Yemen have documented how the disruption of oil infrastructure exacerbates gender-based violence, as families resort to desperate measures to secure fuel. Similarly, the perspectives of Yemeni children, who grow up in a landscape of destroyed infrastructure, are absent from discussions of 'collateral damage.' These marginalized voices challenge the coalition’s framing by highlighting how the strikes are not just military actions but acts of collective punishment that disproportionately harm the most vulnerable.
The Saudi-led coalition’s strikes on Yemen’s oil infrastructure are not isolated military actions but a calculated strategy to fracture the Houthi-controlled economy while justifying prolonged airstrikes under the guise of 'legitimate defense.
' This approach mirrors historical patterns of economic warfare, from Cold War blockades to post-colonial resource sabotage, yet it is rarely contextualized as such in mainstream narratives. The omission of indigenous resistance networks—such as fuel smuggling—erases the agency of Yemeni civilians, who adapt to survive under siege, while the exclusion of scientific and artistic perspectives obscures the long-term humanitarian and ecological costs. The *trickster* dimension reveals how the coalition’s language inverts reality, framing destruction as precision and coercion as defense, a tactic that relies on the suspension of critical scrutiny. To break this cycle, solutions must address the systemic roots of the conflict: depoliticizing oil as a weapon, recognizing informal resilience strategies, and mandating accountability for civilian impacts. Without these steps, Yemen’s oil infrastructure will remain a proxy battleground, and the humanitarian crisis will deepen, perpetuating a cycle of violence that benefits only the external powers fueling the war.