Taiz, where Yemen’s war has found a new choke point

The road to Taiz now begins with checkpoints and ends with the sound of shelling. About 30 of those roadblocks stand between Aden and the city, each one a reminder that Yemen’s government side is less an army than a patchwork. By the time ambulances start passing and the first dull strikes roll in from the mountains, the point has been made: this is no longer a distant war. It is at the gate.

What has sharpened the fighting is the Houthi seizure of Mokha on 10 September, after a ceasefire that had largely held for four years collapsed. The port lies 85 kilometres west of Taiz and gives the group control of territory overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a shipping corridor that links Europe and Asia. That has already fed fears of wider disruption and helped push up oil prices. Wars rarely stay politely in their own lane.

Taiz itself is a grim prize. Yemen’s third-largest city and its cultural capital sits between Houthi-held areas in the north and government-held areas in the south. Government forces hold the centre, Houthi positions ring the north and east, and the fiercest recent fighting has been on the western approaches, where both sides are trying to control the high ground above the route south. If the Houthis secure those positions, any attempt by government forces to retake Mokha becomes far harder.

On the mountain roads south-west of the city, the war has settled into its usual ugly rhythm. Soldiers said a drone overhead is often the prelude to an attack, and within minutes strikes followed. At the closest checkpoint to the front line, fighters had just returned from positions a few hundred metres from advancing Houthi forces. One said the bodies of 18 government soldiers lay in an area his unit could fire across but not reach. That is the kind of stalemate that produces headlines and funerals in equal measure.

Civilians are paying for it in the usual way. Ali, sitting outside his home with goats about 1 kilometre from the front line, said two mortars had landed on his property. He had sent his children to a displacement camp, but stayed with his wife and sisters to care for the animals. He was frightened, he said, yet leaving would mean hunger. In Yemen, even survival is often a calculation between shells and starvation.

The hospital in Taiz tells the rest of the story. At al-Thawra hospital, the intensive care unit was full, with fighters and civilians occupying every bed seen. Twelve-year-old Ghana Nabeel was brought in after shrapnel struck her head while she was herding goats; her family said an incoming Houthi mortar had landed nearby. A doctor said the injury had damaged her brain and that she would never be the same again.

The displacement figures are already staggering, and they keep climbing. At al-Monig camp, about 20 kilometres south of Taiz, families arriving from Mokha and nearby villages found rows of tents and little else. The UN refugee agency said on 22 September that more than 130,000 people had been displaced across Yemen so far this month, on top of the 5.2 million already uprooted by the civil war. It warned that another 100,000 could be forced from their homes over the next three months.

Maryam Saleh fled Mokha with her husband and five children, walking barefoot and carrying nothing but the children themselves. She said her nephew was killed by shrapnel as they escaped. Fatma Mohammed Saleh, who cannot walk, said she crawled for two days through gunfire and shelling before a motorcyclist took her to the camp. She has not seen her family since. Taiz may still have lit shops and busy restaurants after dark, but that is a thin layer of normality. Underneath, the city is being squeezed again, by a war that seems determined to turn every road into a front line and every family into a casualty of geography.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com