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Fear grows and security disappears in a darkness full of rifles, and explosions of rockets, landmines and explosive devices. Yemen, the great country, rich with its past, lives nowadays a bitter reality planned by blood-thirsty criminal militias.
The dream of establishing a civilian state started big, then it shrank slowly until it disappeared and vanished because of the Houthis who seized historical circumstances and current conditions to attack the country, in an attempt to rule it with the help of their Iranian ally who spared no efforts to provide the militias with various deadly tools, only to submit the region to their ugly sectarian rule which is based on a horrendous ideology that no normal human being can accept.
Until 2014, Yemen was getting closer to end the landmine clearance operations in the low impact regions, which are remote and far from the populations. Yemen was almost declared officially free of landmines.
But what happened after that was a “humanitarian catastrophe”, when the Houthis invaded Sana’a, and took control afterwards of most of the northern provinces of Yemen, then they advanced towards the southern provinces, leaving in every step behind them a landmine that lurks to kill their fellow Yemenis. The Houthis planted the boxes of death extensively in all the regions they reached, until they made many of them high impact areas, after they propagated their landmines in residential areas, schools, roads and farms.
The Houthi militias changed also the technical characteristics of landmines as they turned the anti-tank landmines into anti-personnel landmines. This was described by the Supervisor of Masam’s teams in Taiz province, Aref Alqahtani as “A mass genocide against civilians”.
Furthermore, The Houthis threw at random thousands of mines in the sea, in a clear and bold threat to the international navigation and Yemeni fishermen whom some were forced to unemployment, while the others were either killed or handicapped.
And despite the destruction and losses inflicted on humans and lands in Yemen, the Houthi militias continue their sabotage in a steady way, as they plant huge numbers of landmines to impose a horrible reality on millions of Yemenis.
This reality was unacceptable to project Masam’s staff who believe strongly in the right of Yemenis to live in security, which made them cling to this noble humanitarian mission despite that many of them were killed or wounded because of these landmines. In fact, these horrible incidents strengthened the belief of Masam’s staff in this right which is written in divine laws, and was taken away by the coup militias who want to impose their will with the power of weapons.
Landmines’ clearance is like playing a game with death, which smiles in the faces of Masam’s staff with every step they take to clear Yemen of its poison.
Masam’s teams, and during the period that started from the 29th of August and ended on the 11th of September, were able to clear 2835 landmines and unexploded ordnance, which brought the total number of what was cleared since the launch of the project until the 11th of September to 185081 landmines, unexploded ordnance and explosive devices.
Yemen is laying over the biggest minefield in the world. And the extent of this catastrophe will be unveiled only after getting rid of its causes, and then, its impact will be seen by the world along with the ugliness of the Houthi militias who prioritized their own interests over the interests of Yemen and its people.