Yemenis flood streets to mark eight anniversary of Saudi-led war
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of the capital Sanaa on 26 March to commemorate the National Day of Resilience and the eighth anniversary of the Saudi-led war.
حشود الشعب اليمني التي خرجت عصر اليوم لإحياء الذكرى الثامنة للصمود في وجه العدوان، وتدشن العام التاسع للصمود حتى إنهاء العدوان والحصار.#اليوم_الوطني_للصمود pic.twitter.com/H32NfeSqKe
— أمين أحمد حيان Ameen Hayyan (@ameanhayan) March 26, 2023
During the march, the crowd chanted, “We are coming in the ninth year with drones, deadly missiles, and an organized and strong army, and by relying on God, we will defeat all invaders.”
The head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, delivered a speech at the gathering hailing Yemen’s resilience against those “who thought that their battle in Yemen would be a picnic.”
“The coalition of aggression has committed massacres and crimes that cannot be denied … this brutality only increases our determination to confront them,” Al-Houthi added before highlighting that “the US is leading this aggression.”
The Yemeni leader also stressed that Yemen is committed to “real peace, not a media peace,” in reference to ongoing talks with the Saudi-led coalition to bring an end to the war, and said that the government in Sanaa “did not set impossible conditions or conditions that contradict international law.”
“We will continue to adhere to the legitimate rights of our people and our homeland, and we will not allow the continuation of the siege and occupation, and we will fight the aggressors until they are removed from our country on land, sea, and air,” Al-Houthi said.
The war on Yemen was launched on 26 March 2015, in an announcement by Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir from Washington DC, in which he stated that a coalition of ten countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would take military action to reinstate the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Hadi was ousted in widespread protests in 2014 after losing the capital city, Sanaa, to the joint forces of the Ansarallah resistance movement and their allies in the country’s armed forces. Last year, Hadi was forced by the Saudis to hand over his presidential powers to an unelected Presidential Leadership Council (PLC).
According to the UN, the war has left close to 400,000 dead, including tens of thousands of civilians. Saudi airstrikes have destroyed the infrastructure of the Arab world’s poorest country, while a criminal air and sea blockade has pushed millions to the brink of famine.
The eighth anniversary of the war comes at a time of renewed confrontations between the Yemeni army and Saudi-backed militants in the northern border region and the provinces of Marib and Shabwah.
Initially expected to last only a few weeks or months – and according to MbS himself, just “a few days” – the Yemeni war has now taken on a markedly different shape than the coalition initially contended.
