Yemen’s lifeline Hodeida port stifled under ‘de facto’ blockade

YemenExtra

BY: ALISON TAHMIZIAN

Yemen’s port of Hodeida, a lifeline for a war-battered country dependent on food imports, remains “a wasteland” three months after a Saudi-led coalition said it lifted a blockade.

The assessment by humanitarian and port officials comes as Saudi Arabia and its regional allies push into the fourth year of their military intervention on Yemen.

The operation, launched in March 2015.

The UN Security Council warned Thursday that conditions in Yemen are deteriorating and having a “devastating” impact on civilians, with 22.2 million now in need of humanitarian assistance.

The status of Hodeida, the country’s largest seaport and gateway to the majority of its aid-dependent population, offers a window into the nation’s dire plight.

In February, food imports were half of the monthly national requirement, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian affairs.

The world body said those food shipments, critical to a nation on the verge of famine, were “the lowest” since the UN began inspecting cargo in May 2016.

The once-bustling port of Hodeida now receives a trickle of deliveries, with some ships entering only to remove empty containers and haul them away.

“Hodeida should be supporting more than 20 million Yemenis. It should be the source of at least 70 percent of all imports to Yemen,” Suze van Meegen, a protection and advocacy adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP.

“Instead it’s like a wasteland.”

“The most striking thing at the port is the destruction of the five gantry cranes,” van Meegen said, referring to infrastructure bombed by coalition warplanes in the first six months of their intervention.