A Civilizational Regression

Yemenat

Ahmed Saif Hashed

From north to south, from one end to the other, Yemen now stands besieged. Its unity, sovereignty, independence, history, and culture are all under attack; every detail of its being is targeted and defiled. Yemen today is witnessing a civilizational regression by every measure, on all fronts and at every level. The modern observer can only say, “Speak of it, and you will never run out of lament.”

Who could have imagined a day when we would see Aden without a port, or almost without one? When its ship maintenance dock would be sold off by the kilo, as if it were nothing more than scrap metal? When looting, chaos, and lawlessness would spread to the very landmarks that define its history, beauty, and cultural soul?

Who could have foreseen that the salt flats of Aden, Al“Memlah,” would fall prey to plunder? That gangs and land mafias would seize both public and private properties, even tourist resorts and public streets, with no restraint or shame?

Who would have believed that the Military Museum in Aden, once the proud guardian of Yemen’s glorious martial history and home to over five thousand priceless relics and artifacts, would now stand empty and stripped bare, pillaged of its legacy and dignity alike?

And more shocking still, who could have imagined that the National Museum in Aden would be looted, that the Queen’s Crown itself would be sold at an auction in Aden, while relics that once graced its halls are now traded in the auctions of London, Paris, and Washington?

In the South, who would have thought that illiteracy, once completely eradicated in the 1980s, would return in our own time with such ferocity and darkness, haunting a generation born on the very threshold of the third millennium?

As for the North, its plight today is deeper still, and its wound far more grievous.

Who could have ever imagined that the southern woman, who decades ago had won her full rights and achieved a level of equality with men rarely seen from the Gulf to the Atlantic, would one day be swallowed by a dark era, thick with injustice and shadow, stripped of her gains in a way that wounds the soul and summons a deep, unending sorrow?

In the South, who would have thought that the woman who once rose fifty years ahead of her time, stepping boldly into the future she sought, would be dragged backward by this bearded and regressive tide, this so-called “civilizational” relapse that hurls her, running and stumbling, more than a thousand years into the past?

Today, the South groans under exploitation and, worse still, under hatred, racism, regionalism, tribalism, and every form of rancid fanaticism. It has grown crowded with all that is ugly, crude, and destructive—forces that gnaw away at what remains of awareness, social bonds, culture, education, economy, and institutions. All that should have been possible now lies deliberately paralyzed, while all that destroys works with unmatched success and precision. Everything that bears the mark of the state, or what little still survives of it, is being dismantled and erased piece by piece.

The North fares no better. The “Code,” that infamous document, has taken precedence over the constitution and the law, both of which are being systematically undermined and hollowed out. The state itself is being reshaped and even privatized in service of a faction that seeks to turn an entire people into its obedient servants.

Who would have believed that Yemen would endure such vast devastation—destruction consuming both the public and the private, after a fierce and grinding war that lasted seven long years, followed by internal wars once postponed, now flaring up here and there with no clear end in sight? These wars are largely stoked and sponsored by outside hands, at the expense of the nation’s unity, its sovereignty, its highest interests, and its future.

In Yemen, savagery has trampled coexistence, beauty, and the kindness of its people. The brutes have turned the country into plunder and spoils, tearing at its flesh like hyenas from another age. Daily killings, spreading ruin, and a people crushed under the weight of every side’s sins—all warring factions are complicit in exhausting, violating, and destroying a homeland now too weary even to cry out.

Once, Yemen was a land of tolerance and shared life. Now it stands deformed, paralyzed, occupied, bleeding, and burdened with wars and grief. Its cities and regions lie torn apart, stripped of security, integrity, law, order, and stability. Yemen today is broken in every direction, utterly drained and devastated, too faint even to moan.

To use the word “liberation” as a bargaining chip to seize the future is an act of blackmail that cannot be accepted. We seek a Yemen that is free, independent, and sovereign in full—a future that cannot be traded away under the false pretext of liberation. We reject the privatization of the state in the hands of any group or party, and we will not accept the cheapening of our future to drag us back into the backwardness and tyranny of the past.

All this destroys the homeland and denies the very future we strive for.

We want the homeland and the future together, undiminished.

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