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Yemen’s Sanaa Int’l Airport: A Houthi Gateway for Extorting Travelers

The first flight out of Sanaa prepares to depart to Amman after travel is resumed at Sanaa International Airport. (AP)
The first flight out of Sanaa prepares to depart to Amman after travel is resumed at Sanaa International Airport. (AP)
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Yemen’s Sanaa Int’l Airport: A Houthi Gateway for Extorting Travelers

The first flight out of Sanaa prepares to depart to Amman after travel is resumed at Sanaa International Airport. (AP)
The first flight out of Sanaa prepares to depart to Amman after travel is resumed at Sanaa International Airport. (AP)

Travelers passing through Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport, which is controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi militias, end up spending more than half a day there to complete procedures due to the militias’ practices.

The airport has been turned into a Houthi hub for tracking and humiliating politicians and activists of both genders, according to six passengers who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat.

People who have left Yemen in the past two months through the airport have mentioned that the travel ordeal begins with obtaining a seat from Yemenia Airlines’ offices in militia-controlled areas.

Houthis have restricted the booking procedures through a special room managed by a cell of its internal intelligence apparatus, known as the Preventive Security, established by the Hezbollah militias.

According to sources, this cell has control over the number of seats and the identities of individuals who obtain reservations from Sanaa to the Jordanian capital, as well as on return flights from there for those coming from other countries via Jordan.

Travelers said the ticket prices are significantly higher in militia-controlled areas compared to government-controlled areas. They are being sold for $500 in government regions and $800 in areas held by the Houthis.

The militias have exploited people’s need to travel and their inability to afford traveling by land to government-controlled areas, which would take approximately 12 hours by car. Meanwhile, passenger buses take at least 18 hours to cover the same distance.

According to many Sanaa residents, when a person goes to the airline office to purchase a ticket, the employees inform them that all seats are reserved.

However, upon leaving the office and reaching the gate, ticket brokers approach them and offer any number of seats in exchange for a bribe of one hundred dollars per seat.

Sources confirmed that the Houthis have exploited the circumstances of travelers heading abroad, whether for medical treatment, education, or returning to their jobs.

Houthis are abusing the travelers’ inability to endure the overland journey to Aden, which takes around 12 hours, in addition to the cost of renting transportation vehicles, which can reach $600 roundtrip.

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Gazans Struggle to Imagine Post-war Recovery

Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
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Gazans Struggle to Imagine Post-war Recovery

Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)

The sheer scale of destruction from the deadliest war in Gaza's history has made the road to recovery difficult to imagine, especially for people who had already lost their homes during previous conflicts.

After an Israeli strike levelled his family home in Gaza City in 2014, 37-year-old Mohammed Abu Sharia made good on his pledge to return to the same plot within less than a year.

The process was not perfect: the grant they received paid for only two floors instead of the original four.

But they happily called it home until it came under aerial assault again last October, following Hamas's attack on southern Israel.

This time, the family could not flee in time and five people were killed, four of them children.

The rest remain displaced nearly a year later, scattered across Gaza and in neighboring Egypt.

"A person puts all his life's hard work into building a house, and suddenly it becomes a mirage," Abu Sharia told AFP.

"If the war stops, we will build again in the same place because we have nothing else."

With bombs still raining down on Gaza, many of the Palestinian territory's 2.4 million people will face the same challenge as Abu Sharia: how to summon the resources and energy necessary for another round of rebuilding.

"The pessimism is coming from bad experiences with reconstruction in the past, and the different scale of this current destruction," said Ghassan Khatib, a former planning minister.

That has not stopped people from trying to plan ahead.

Some focus on the immediate challenges of removing rubble and getting their children back in school after nearly a year of suspended classes.

Others dream of loftier projects: building a port, a Palestinian film industry, or even recruiting a globally competitive football team.

But with no ceasefire in sight, analysts say most long-term planning is premature.

"It's sort of like putting icing on a cake that's not yet fully baked," said Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

It could take 80 years to rebuild some 79,000 destroyed homes, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing said in May.

A UN report in July said workers could need 15 years just to clear the rubble.

The slow responses to past Gaza wars in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021 give little reason for confidence that rebounding from this one will be any smoother, said Omar Shaban, founder of the Gaza-based think tank PalThink for Strategic Studies.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza, imposed after Hamas took control of the territory in 2007, remains firmly in place, sharply restricting access to building materials.

"People are fed up," Shaban said.

"They lost their faith even before the war."

Despite the hopelessness, Shaban is among those putting forward more imaginative strategies for Gaza's postwar future.

Earlier this year he published an article suggesting initial reconstruction work could focus on 10 neighborhoods -– one inside and one outside refugee camps in each of Gaza's five governorates.

The idea would be to ensure the benefits of reconstruction are seen across the besieged territory, he told AFP.

"I want to create hope. People need to realize that their suffering is going to end" even if not right away, he said.

"Otherwise they will become radical."

Hope is also a major theme of Palestine Emerging, an initiative that has suggested building a port on an artificial island made of war debris, a technical university for reconstruction, and a Gaza-West Bank transportation corridor.

Other proposals have included launching a tourism campaign, building a Palestinian film industry, and recruiting a football squad.

"Maybe when you look on some of these, you would think they are, you know, dreams or something," Palestine Emerging executive director Shireen Shelleh said from her office in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"However, I believe if you don't dream then you cannot achieve anything. So even if some people might find it ambitious or whatever, in my opinion that's a good thing."

Khatib, the former planning minister, said it was not the time for such proposals.

"I think people should be more realistic," he said.

"The urgent aspects are medicine, food, shelter, schools."