Yemen: Women suffer from new dress code – Politics

A few days ago, when Nadine Hashim saw the push notification from the Houthi government on her cell phone, she was wide awake. The news came at 6:46 am and was worrying: “The Yemeni woman is like Fatima the Radiant, she embodies faith, patience and commandment.” Radiant Fatima is the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed – and the comparison alarms the young Yemeni woman: “Look at the shit we have to deal with here,” she says in a telephone conversation with the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The young woman lives in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, which, like the north-east of the country, has been under the rule of the Shiite Houthi rebels, who call themselves “Ansar Allah” (partisans of God), since 2014. Hashim prefers not to have her real name in the newspaper. The Houthis regard foreign media as the enemy, so talking to Western journalists doesn’t go down well.

“Girl, you can see your hair.”

For more than eight years, the regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran have been fighting a proxy war in Hashim’s homeland: An alliance of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia is fighting with Yemeni government troops against the Houthis, who are supported by Iran. In April 2022, there was hope in the war for the first time, a ceasefire came into force and was extended twice. It expired last October; the UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, is currently trying to find a way out with Omani help.

The civilian population is still suffering massively from the war, the consequences of which the UN classifies as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. At the end of 2022, 17.8 million people in Yemen did not have access to clean drinking water. Millions of Yemenis are affected by famine. “And what are the Houthis doing? They’re rethinking women’s dress code these days,” says Nadine Hashim on the phone and sends a picture afterwards. It shows graffiti from Sana’a: “My dear father, I am entrusted to you. So don’t let me go to school without a headscarf.” Someone crossed out the word hijab for headscarf – and wrote the word ta’am next to it. The Arabic word for: food.

When Hashim talks about her new everyday life, she mostly sounds angry. There are the taxi drivers who slam on the brakes just to tell her they have a strand of hair on her. There are men on motorcycles who yell at her: “Dress smartly.” But the worst are the women, says Hashim. Her best friend recently died of carbon monoxide poisoning and at her funeral she cried “her eyes out.” Suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman grabbed her headscarf and said: “Girl, you can see your hair.” Actually, she is not an aggressive person, but at that moment she would have liked to push the woman into the nearest grave.

“I make myself pretty, that’s my private business”

Or earlier, shortly before this phone call, she was looked over from top to bottom by two fully veiled women in front of an elevator. “What are you looking at?” She called and got the answer from the younger one: “Ask God for forgiveness, sister.” It’s driving me to despair, says Hashim. The 35-year-old likes to wear make-up, her abaya, the traditional Islamic women’s robe, is usually colorful, her scarf is thrown rather loosely over her hair – then you can see a few strands, so what?

“I dress up for myself, that’s my private matter and has absolutely nothing to do with my faith,” says Nadine Hashim, who works in the creative industry. The Yemenis have always been a religious people, Hashim says women have been wearing abayas and headscarves for years, it’s part of the culture. “But it was a pleasant religiosity. Women have been treated with respect most of the time.” But now she perceives an “extremism” in which many uneducated people took part because the Houthis, as a strong force in Sana’a, created the space for it.

The Iran-backed militia wants to transform Yemeni society. It starts in school. In Houthi areas, even small children have to memorize the “al-Sarkha,” the cry: “Allahu Akbar. Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory on Islam.” Now the re-education is also visible in the dress code of women: abayas are no longer allowed to be colorful or decorated, let alone beautified with a waist belt or side slits. Supporters of the Revolutionary Committee, the influential, militant bloc of the Houthi group, ensure this more unofficially than officially.

In January, according to media reports, high-ranking Houthi representatives met with clothing store owners in Sanaa. One came out new dress code in ten points that is making the rounds on social media. It states, for example, that women in government offices must wear the khimar, a headscarf that goes to the hips. In addition, they are not allowed to wear anything that could attract attention or provoke, no decorations, no patterns. So simply: nothing nice. This prompted Fatima Abbas, a friend of Hashim, to take action: Under the Arabic hashtag “Yemeni identity,” the 23-year-old shared outfits from her ancestors: colorfully decorated dresses with headdresses, heavy silver jewelry, and kohl-rimmed eyes. A time long forgotten.

Travel? Only in male company

Already last April they had Houthis announce that women are only allowed to travel when accompanied by men. That “destroyed the desires of so many Yemeni women,” says Abbas, who also speaks under a different name. Now even female students with scholarships abroad are dependent on the favor of their fathers. When she recently traveled to Aden, Abbas says she had to show her father’s permission at the checkpoints. “It’s degrading” and it’ll get worse, she’s sure. “All the conservative men are crawling out of their holes and feeling empowered by the Houthis.”

Why is the militia acting so self-confident? About 70 to 80 percent of the roughly 33 million Yemenis live under Houthis control. The Iranian regime supplies them with drones and cruise missiles and, given the protests at home and the drone attack on an armaments factory in Isfahan, has no interest in weakening its allies. On the contrary: Tehran wants to show its opponents that it can strike back from different fronts. Houthi drones have reached targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the past.

Former CIA official Bruce Riedel recently expressed concernthat the Houthis could develop into another Hezbollah. The rebels themselves broke the armistice with “last-minute demands” as US special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking said in October. They demanded that opponents of the war pay the salaries of state employees and above all their military and security forces. “The Saudi war has allowed them to play the role of patriotic defenders of a small country fighting a wealthy neighbor with the support of Washington and much of the western world,” says Riedel, who writes on terrorism and the Middle East for the US think tank Brookings.

“Yemen never manages to gain international attention. We’re begging for a glimmer of empathy from the outside world,” says Fatima Abbas, breaking down in tears on the phone. She and Nadine Hashim believe that it is only a matter of time before moral guardians roam the streets of Yemen.