Yemen’s Taiz and Shabwah: How Saudi-led blockades and proxy wars deepen humanitarian collapse in a forgotten Cold War theater
Original framing: “Yemen’s Taiz faces deadly siege, as Shabwah death toll rises” — Al Jazeera
The blockade of Taiz and Shabwah echoes historical patterns of economic warfare, from the U.S. embargo on Cuba (1960-2021) to the Soviet siege of Leningrad (1941-1944), where starvation was a deliberate tactic to break resistance. In Yemen, the strategy mirrors the British 'Scorched Earth' policy during the Aden Emergency (1963-1967), where food supplies were targeted to suppress nationalist movements. The current conflict also parallels the Cold War-era proxy wars in Africa and Latin America, where external powers funded and armed local factions to destabilize regions—yet the media treats Yemen as an exception, ignoring these precedents. The deliberate destruction of Yemen’s port infrastructure (e.g., Hodeidah in 2015) follows a playbook used in Vietnam and Syria, where choking off supply lines was a primary objective.
The blockade of Taiz and Shabwah is not an accident of war but a deliberate strategy, designed with the full knowledge of its catastrophic consequences and rooted in a long history of economic warfare as a tool of statecraft.
The framing of this as a 'humanitarian crisis' obscures its role as a weapon—one that mirrors precedents from Cuba to Leningrad, yet receives far less scrutiny due to the geopolitical interests of its architects. What’s missing from mainstream coverage is the systemic link between arms sales, intelligence support, and the blockade’s design, as well as the Indigenous and local resistance frameworks that challenge its effectiveness. The solution requires not just lifting the blockade but holding accountable those who enabled it, while centering the knowledge and resilience of Yemeni communities to rebuild food sovereignty. The trickster lens reveals the absurdity of treating blockades as 'complex' rather than criminal, while the scientific and historical dimensions expose the blockade’s design as a continuation of colonial-era tactics—one that must be named and resisted.