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Militias Change Names of Yemeni Schools to Glorify Houthi Ideology

A girl walks by a school damaged by fighting in the southwestern city of Taiz, Yemen, December 18, 2018. (Reuters)
A girl walks by a school damaged by fighting in the southwestern city of Taiz, Yemen, December 18, 2018. (Reuters)
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Militias Change Names of Yemeni Schools to Glorify Houthi Ideology

A girl walks by a school damaged by fighting in the southwestern city of Taiz, Yemen, December 18, 2018. (Reuters)
A girl walks by a school damaged by fighting in the southwestern city of Taiz, Yemen, December 18, 2018. (Reuters)

Ever since their coup against the legitimate Yemeni government, the Iran-backed Houthi militias have never ceased their efforts to alter the country’s national and cultural identity to shape it around their own ideology and sectarian beliefs.

The latest of these efforts was the Houthis’ issuing a new decree to change the names of several schools to reflect their sectarian beliefs. The “Khaled bin al-Walid School” is now known as the “Imam al-Hadi School”, social media posts revealed. The founder of the Houthi movement claims that Imam al-Hadi was the first Houthi to rule Yemen in the eighth and seventh centuries.

“Al-Farouk School” has been changed to “Imam Zeid bin Ali”, the Houthis’ alleged ancestral founder. The Babel School is now known as “September 21 School”, the date when the Houthis captured Sanaa in 2014. The “Othman bin Affan School” has been changed to “Malek al-Ashtar” and the “Omar al-Mokhtar School” is now known as “Ali bin Hussein School”, names that reflect the Houthis’ sectarian and ideological beliefs.

Academic sources in Sanaa accused the Houthi-appointed education minister Yehya al-Houthi of introducing the name change at the behest of his brother and Houthi leader Abulmalek al-Houthi.

The parents of students at these schools expressed to Asharq Al-Awsat their strong rejection and condemnation of the Houthi practices. They said the militias have gone too far in their constant targeting of schools and their children by brainwashing and inciting them to join their ranks.

They added that the Houthis have sought since the early days of their coup to target schools and education in order to introduce their sectarian and racist ideology into the system.

The Houthis have transformed schools in Saada into centers of extremism and child recruitment where they have imposed sectarian activities and “taught” the students the lectures of their leader.

Local accounts have revealed that the militants have made the students sit through daily Houthi lectures, projected on large screens in the classrooms, after which they are tested by the teachers about what they “learned”.

United Nations reports have revealed that in 2019 alone the Houthis have looted and shut dozens of schools and academic institutions in Sanaa. They have also altered the official curriculum to suit their sectarian ideology.

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Climate Change Imperils Drought-Stricken Morocco’s Cereal Farmers and Its Food Supply

A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
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Climate Change Imperils Drought-Stricken Morocco’s Cereal Farmers and Its Food Supply

A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)

Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country's entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.

The North African nation projects this year's harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.

"In the past, we used to have a bounty — a lot of wheat. But during the last seven or eight years, the harvest has been very low because of the drought," said Al Housni Belhoussni, a small-scale farmer who has long tilled fields outside of the city of Kenitra.

Belhoussni's plight is familiar to grain farmers throughout the world confronting a hotter and drier future. Climate change is imperiling the food supply and shrinking the annual yields of cereals that dominate diets around the world — wheat, rice, maize and barley.

In North Africa, among the regions thought of as most vulnerable to climate change, delays to annual rains and inconsistent weather patterns have pushed the growing season later in the year and made planning difficult for farmers.

In Morocco, where cereals account for most of the farmed land and agriculture employs the majority of workers in rural regions, the drought is wreaking havoc and touching off major changes that will transform the makeup of the economy. It has forced some to leave their fields fallow. It has also made the areas they do elect to cultivate less productive, producing far fewer sacks of wheat to sell than they once did.

In response, the government has announced restrictions on water use in urban areas — including on public baths and car washes — and in rural ones, where water going to farms has been rationed.

"The late rains during the autumn season affected the agriculture campaign. This year, only the spring rains, especially during the month of March, managed to rescue the crops," said Abdelkrim Naaman, the chairman of Nalsya. The organization has advised farmers on seeding, irrigation and drought mitigation as less rain falls and less water flows through Morocco's rivers.

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that this year's wheat harvest will yield roughly 3.4 million tons (3.1 billion kilograms), far less than last year's 6.1 million tons (5.5 billion kilograms) — a yield that was still considered low. The amount of land seeded has dramatically shrunk as well, from 14,170 square miles (36,700 square kilometers) to 9,540 square miles (24,700 square kilometers).

Such a drop constitutes a crisis, said Driss Aissaoui, an analyst and former member of the Moroccan Ministry for Agriculture.

"When we say crisis, this means that you have to import more," he said. "We are in a country where drought has become a structural issue."

Leaning more on imports means the government will have to continue subsidizing prices to ensure households and livestock farmers can afford dietary staples for their families and flocks, said Rachid Benali, the chairman of the farming lobby COMADER.

The country imported nearly 2.5 million tons of common wheat between January and June. However, such a solution may have an expiration date, particularly because Morocco's primary source of wheat, France, is facing shrinking harvests as well.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Morocco as the world's sixth-largest wheat importer this year, between Türkiye and Bangladesh, which both have much bigger populations.

"Morocco has known droughts like this and in some cases known droughts that las longer than 10 years. But the problem, this time especially, is climate change," Benali said.