Pickups carrying the bodies of slain Houthi fighters still pass through Sanaa, gunmen riding alongside the coffins on the final journey to the cemetery, as the song 'Our martyrs are our greats' blares from the vehicles. At the burial grounds, mourners pay their respects. Such funerals have been a recurring sight in recent weeks.
The toll has mounted on both sides. Earlier this month, the Yemeni government said its forces killed or wounded 1,540 Houthis in 24 hours; last week it said 16,100 Houthi operatives and commanders had been killed or wounded since October 5. The Houthis have killed hundreds of pro-government troops too, more than 70 of them in an October 19 missile attack on a security camp in Shabwa.
For families left behind, the tributes fade quickly. 'The martyrdom of my brother, Abdulaziz, on October 10 broke us and robbed us of peace of mind,' Akram, a 23-year-old resident of Sanaa, told Al Jazeera. Abdulaziz, 21, was killed in Dhubab, in southwestern Yemen, fighting alongside the Houthi group, two months after being recruited.
Before that, the brothers worked in Sanaa as daily-wage labourers in construction or agriculture, pooling earnings to cover their six-member family's water, electricity and food. 'I lost my pillar of strength, Abdulaziz.. Without him, I am like a bird with one wing, burdened by so many responsibilities,' Akram said.
The strain is growing. Petrol and diesel prices have risen 10 percent in recent days in Houthi-controlled northwestern Yemen, raising the cost of basic goods. 'When it comes to paying the fees for water, electricity, or buying groceries, it does not matter if your relative is a martyr or not. You have to pay or starve to death,' Akram said.
Fighting between Saudi-backed government forces and the Iran-aligned Houthi group, which seized Sanaa in September 2014 and holds much of northern and western Yemen, has escalated in recent months. The escalation 'threatens to be absolutely devastating' for food security, said Matthew Hollingworth of the World Food Programme. 'We are looking at a hunger crisis that is going to grow as it persists,' he added. The WFP says 18.3 million Yemenis face severe food insecurity and 2.2 million children under five suffer acute malnutrition.
Houthi authorities give bereaved families food baskets of flour, cooking oil, rice and sugar, but the help is irregular. Ali Yahia, 55, whose son was killed four years ago fighting on the Saudi-Yemen border, said he receives them two to four times a year. 'Fair compensation', he said, would be a monthly salary of at least $200. His two other sons, a delivery rider and a restaurant worker, support him, but when a family depends on a fighter's income, his death 'sparks a living and psychological ordeal for the whole family,' he said.
As deaths mount, the authorities' ability to help is stretched. 'Martyrs today are too many and their families deserve due support,' Ali Mohammed, a Houthi representative in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera, conceding that the rising toll affects what each family receives. Complete Houthi victory, he argued, would bring stability and better care, but 'this will take time.' On October 25, the Houthi Ministry of Youth and Sports marked Martyrs' Day, where Ali Hadban, undersecretary for the sports sector, called for care and support for the families of 'these noble martyrs.'
Adel Dashela, a researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, called the public celebration of fallen fighters 'an alien practice' born of the war, one that normalises violence and encourages children to die under sectarian and political slogans. Such displays do not ease families' suffering, he said; women and children often must support the household. 'Thus, women and children bear the real cost of these losses,' he added. By the end of 2021, the UN estimated the war had killed 377,000 people directly or indirectly, and recent fighting has claimed more lives.
