Jamal al-Labani, a resident of Oakland, CA, who had gone to visit his wife and young child in Yemen, was killed on Thursday, April 2, 2015, as he walked home from the masjid.
Fatimah Aulaqi, a newlywed Yemeni-American in Texas, is not receiving congratulatory messages on the phone from her relatives these days.
The conversations with her uncles are laced with worry and anxiety. Her family is from Shabwah but resides in the southern port city of Aden, Yemen and she receives snatchs of information about her aunts being moved to the relative safety of their ancestral villages in Yafa. Aulaqi's father, an electrical engineer migrated to the US in 1969. "Everyone is terrified," she says. The men of the family with head back to Aden to help guard the walls of the city from the Zaidi Houthis. Yemen is overcome by violence, with a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States, launching airstrikes in the capital, Sanaa, aimed at pushing back Houthi rebels who took control of Yemen's government in February.
Aulaqi's grandmother, who lives in Connecticut, dreads the news. What if the young men who are shot in the streets of Aden are one of her own – they are all her own people. Friends of friend's homes were bombed near the airport in Sana'a. Hundreds of thousand have been displaced.
"There are dead bodies on the streets in Aden. This is why we called for 24-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting so that people can also go and collect the dead," the International Committee for the Red Cross's (ICRC) Mari-Claire Feghali said in a statement.
"We love the city, it is so much fun," reminisces Aulaqi, who visits every year, "I hope Yemen doesn't turn into another Syria, Palestine or Libya or Iraq or.....Afghanistan," Aulaqi's voice trails as the list of Muslim countries grows.
A friend Of Aulaqi's from New York, Summer Nasser, is stuck in Aden. Her friend, who is a board member of the Yemeni American Association of New York, went to Yemen to get married but with the political violence, the wedding was called off and Nasser can't get back to the United States. She told Aulaqi that she says the shahadah everytime she steps out of her house. There are several Yemeni Americans, around 300, stuck in Yemen, which has led Arab American advocacy groups to build a website – StuckinYemen.com – to gather names of citizens who are not able to leave.
Jamal al-Labani, a resident of Oakland, CA, who had gone to visit his wife and young child in Yemen was killed on Thursday, April 2, 2015, as he walked home from the masjid. By mortar shelling by Houthi fighters in Aden.
"Unfortunately, the United States government and embassies abandoned Yemeni Americans in February 2015," the site says.
Aulaqi says sardonically, "[Yemen] doesn't have natural resources."
The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs held a phone conference on April 2, 2015 morning to address the concerns of Yemeni-Americans. Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice attended the call. ìThere appeared to be no resolution for Yemeni-Americans who are just being told to stay there," Bargzie said. Many of those who participated were disappointed with the outcome.
"It doesn't make sense to us, as citizens and taxpayers, to hear that it's unsafe or impossible to evacuate nationals when much smaller countries who are not involved with the coalition violence have been able to get their citizens out." said Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Pakistan, India, Canada, Russia, India and Somalia have all evacuated their citizens out of the area.
The ex-president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose forces are allied with the Houthi uprising, has fled the country, as has the current President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
"I have a cousin who we have been trying to persuade to come [to the US]. Take the ship out to Turkey or to Somalia, just leave, but she won't." says Aulaqi. Her cousin runs a non profit, Change Your Life Community Development Organization, and can not bear to leave the people she helps lead better lives daily behind. These days she is volunteering at the local hospital, but they are running out of basic supplies, medication, bandages and disinfectants, says Aulaqi.
Many people are too afraid to leave their homes to go to work, scared they will not make it back alive. Money transfers are becoming impossible as is humanitarian aid.
"Very few humanitarian actors have stayed in the country, while the needs are actually getting greater and so more supplies and human resources are required on the ground," Dounia Dekhili, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) programme manager for Yemen, said in a statement.
The Prophet loved Yemen, reminds Aulaqi, asking for prayers.
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