In this Doha News special, we speak to people in Qatar who are from countries that took part in the Arab Spring 11 years ago.
Following Tunisia and Egypt, the Arab Spring sprouted in Yemen in a matter of weeks, where Yemenis broke their silence to call for an end to then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule.
With souls ignited with hope and generations eager for change, the chant “Erhal” (leave) echoed in the streets of Sana’a, along with many other slogans that the hearts of fearless civilians roared with for weeks.
“I think we did follow in their [Egypt’s] footsteps, especially the youth. When you’re young, you’re looking for that fire, for a cause to hold onto and during that time it was the revolution, for what we hoped it would be,” Mariam Al-Dhubhani, a 31-year-old Yemeni filmmaker residing in Qatar, told Doha News, as she looked back at the start of the revolution.
Before eventually moving to Doha in 2014 with her husband, Mohammed, Mariam was 19 and living safely in her home-country when the revolution erupted.
She watched as her friends went out to the streets to join in the protests, and whilst she witnessed the wars as they unfolded before her and was in favour of change in the country, Mariam found herself in a dilemma.
“It was such a dilemma, it still is. We can’t change what happened… I never said ‘don’t go’ and I never said ‘go’. I supported whoever believed in that [change],” said explained.
The conundrum Mariam found herself in was not necessarily shared by all Yemeni youth. In contrast, Shatha, a 23-year-old senior at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, told Doha News about the sheer excitement she felt as the protests first started.
As a student who went to school with the children of politicians, she saw the stark differences in privileges and the injustices the Yemeni nation suffered from—and so believed that the revolution was, in fact, long overdue.
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“I’ve always been into politics and the summer prior to that I had just read [Karl] Marx, where the only thing that stuck in my head was ‘revolution’. So I was very excited and energetic [about] that. I remember I attended two Fridays, which was when the big demonstrations were,” said Shatha, who was 13 when the revolution started.
Similarly, thousands of other demonstrators at Freedom Square shared her same enthusiasm.
But the spark they felt lasted for a short period of time before it was violently extinguished by Saleh, whose keenness to hold onto his throne was louder than the demands of his own people.
Government forces were quick to open fire at protesters at the time, killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians.
“People want something, but you don’t have the power. Those in power decide how things go. And you can sacrifice yourself, sacrifice your time, sacrifice your future. It doesn’t matter, because unfortunately you don’t hold the power to decide,” said Mariam.
It was not until 2012 when Saleh’s presidency ended after he was replaced by his deputy, AbdRabbuh Mansur Hadi, following the signing of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) power transition initiative.
Whilst the demand for toppling Saleh was the protesters’ top priority, their suffering did not end as Hadi’s government was followed by years of armed conflict with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, bringing forth greater instability.
“We’re falling into this attempt to change that never really blossomed, because they call it ‘spring’. It really never sprung, it’s such a weird terminology. I just call it uprising, I prefer it that way’,” Mariam reflected.
Fighting between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government had been ongoing for many years prior to the Arab Spring, despite several mediation attempts.
Qatar had previously stepped in in May 2007 when the father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who was the Gulf state’s leader at the time, visited Yemen following an invitation from Saleh.
Eventually, a ceasefire agreement was reached on 16 June the same year, but it was quick to collapse months later.
Fast forward to late 2014, the Houthis had taken control over most of the Yemeni capital before capturing the Red Sea port city of Al-Hudaydah, forcing Hadi to escape to Aden where he declared the militants’ takeover as a “coup”.
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A Saudi-led coalition began launching air strikes against the Iran-backed militia group in 2015, initiating Operation Decisive Storm to fight the rebels.
Despite Saudi Arabia saying it ended the offensive that same year, air strikes on Yemen continue, as the US pumps more funds into arms sales to the coalition.
Many failed ceasefires later, the war ravaged Yemen and paved the way for one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in the 21st century.
“One of the hardest things for me, I feel, was just seeing that hope and light in people die. Especially with how things are now. No one is really hopeful for anything [to get] better… I think what’s happening now is more reason to keep fighting to have a better life for everyone,” said Shatha.
Seven years on since the war started, at least 18,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed or wounded by airstrikes, according to a UN report cited by the Associated Press (AP) in September last year.
The exact death toll of the conflict remains disputed, mainly due to the limited access to various parts of the country.
As events unfold in Yemen, Mariam and Shatha find themselves paralysed by survivor’s guilt whilst being far from home.
“That fire, that hype reached a point and started shrinking and that’s how it felt being there up until 2015. Your soul shrinks slowly and you reach a point where [you] cannot do anything being stuck there. I cannot help myself or my family or create an actual change. I’m just falling apart,” Mariam told Doha News.
The Yemeni filmmaker came to Doha with her husband, Mohammed, where they both continued to pursue their education at the branch campuses of some of the most prestigious universities in the world, in Education City.
Mariam started her studies at Northwestern University in 2016, where she majored in journalism as her husband went to Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
“I don’t know how to describe it, but I decided that I want to advocate for peace, whatever peace that is, and I actually started filmmaking that year. That was my way of trying to participate but in a different way. So storytelling was my method,” said the director of “In The Middle”.
Through her art, Mariam presents what life back in her home looks like—to a global audience; breaking geographical barriers to present a clearer image of the situation in Yemen.
“I’m still trying to bring out stories from Yemen, a bit differently from what is seen in the news, a bit differently than numbers and statistics. Of course that’s important, but then you miss the people, you miss the souls, you miss the details that are really important that make us who we are,” she explained, adding that it is “so easy to dismiss humanity when we’re mere figures.”
As a current student, Shatha finds herself attempting to disconnect from the news in her hometown to focus on her studies, which proves to be challenging.
“It’s just hard to see hope or to be hopeful that things [will] get better, but there are some people who are actually still fighting and I think that [is what] keeps me going. It’s so hard sometimes to disconnect from all that’s happening,” the young student said.
Now, 11 years later, Shatha has found a way to hold onto hope, despite the difficulty of keeping it constantly within sight.
“My grandfather from my dad’s side and his uncle went out of Yemen for education during the first revolution in the 60’s and they came back to help… I always look up to that whenever I feel hopeless, because they did something. They came back. So this is making me feel good,” she reflected.
Although their stories are different, Mariam has also found solace in hope.
“The sad and beautiful thing about us as humans is that we adapt. We manage to find ways to continue, to go about our day, to live. If there’s no hope I don’t think anyone would wake up the next day,” the filmmaker contemplated.
“If there is no hope—we can’t wake up the next day, right?”
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