Before Kerala floods, a week with UAE troops in Yemen

I learned on my trip to Yemen that a journalist in a conflict zone is no hero. It is just a job that needs to be done and someone needs the pluck and professionalism to be on the frontlines

The war in Yemen is dubbed the ‘forgotten war.’ An under-reported tragedy in the Middle East that was overshadowed by another protracted conflict in Syria.

A trip to Yemen was a reporting assignment I had been looking forward to in 2018. It did not land that easily. The volatile security situation meant months of waiting and several lastminute call offs. Finally, I got the green signal in August to fly to the country currently marked as the most dangerous destination in the world.

It was a week-long military embed with the UAE army, which is fighting the Iran-backed Al Houthi rebels in the North and the Al Qaeda in the South. A military briefing with a top commander and a UAE minister followed by a security briefing preluded the trip. The instructions were simple – lie low, switch off location service on mobile phones, and no social media postings that could compromise our safety.

As soon as I boarded the military aircraft and joined around 60 Emirati soldiers on board, one thing was clear: I was stepping into a singularly masculine terrain. From open toilets to all-male accommodations, it was a man’s world, which I had to breach along with the one other female journalist from the UK. The other two journalists in our four-member team were men.

The military embed meant we were living and moving with the coalition forces under tight security throughout the trip. My stay in the coalition army base, though comfortable with all basic amenities and surprisingly delectable food, had an eerie feel to it.

The isolation inside the camp was not what is ideally desirable to a nosy journalist, but unavoidable in a war zone. I figured we were in the section of the camp meant for officers and pilots. They did not look like the typical battle-hardened men in uniform; their relaxed demeanor never betrayed the dangerous and important job they do.

It was the walls that fortified the compound and the monster military vehicles parked inside that were intimidating.

We travelled in bullet proof vehicles with a heavily-armed military convoy that escorted us at all times. Jeeps carrying Kalashnikov-totting Yemeni soldiers with bullet belts wrapped around their chests crawled along or would whizz past our vehicle as we were driven around. When we flew to Edan on a Black Hawk, apache helicopters escorted us. The UAE army did not want to take any chances with security.

It was an eye-opening experience to travel through the erstwhile Al Qaeda territory in Mukalla and the port city of Aden, once a coveted British colony and a bustling modern Arab capital city, which came under Houthi attack.

The horrors of the war and its aftermath loomed closer as we visited hospitals and land mine sites. Ruins from the bombings were visible everywhere. Buildings marked with bullet holes and burnt skeletons of cars lined the streets.

I met people who were piecing together their lives after living under the repressive yoke of AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula). I spoke to mothers who have no choice but helplessly watch their babies starve and shrink.

I met children as young as five years of age who had become amputees. They were too young and carefree even to understand what had happened to them. It was distressing to encounter such suffering.

One thing I learned from my trip to Yemen is that a journalist in a conflict zone is no hero. It is just a job that needs to be done and someone needs the pluck and professionalism to be on the frontlines. It is indeed risky, as you need to be constantly on guard. It takes a second for the situation to turn hostile.

Heroism is actually working in a war or a disaster zone discarding one’s own safety to help the suffering millions, living constantly in fear of losing your life.

My trip in Yemen had the most unexpected end when a natural calamity struck Kerala, my home state. Sitting in the coalition army base, I watched with disbelief as deadly floods raged across the South Indian state. It was almost unreal to me, that while in a war zone, I was caught up in another tragedy happening thousands of miles away. As soon as I landed back in Abu Dhabi, I was off to Kerala to report on the floods, its aftermath and for another tryst with tragedy.