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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Lights atop the 300-foot minarets at four-year-old al Saleh Mosque glow during a storm in Sanaa. The $60 million house of worship is Yemen’s largest and most extravagant, named for Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in February after 33 years as president. It opened with claims of promoting moderate Islam. But militant groups have only gained strength.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
A shattered family mourns 15-year-old Nadaa Showqi Abduallah Hussein, her body swathed in cloth. She was killed by a sniper in the southern port city of Aden during a March clash between gunmen and government forces. “What happened to her makes all people cry,” says her father, Showqi Abduallah Hussein (at right, in head scarf). “She had no enemies.”
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
A lieutenant patrols the pink barracks of Yemen’s female counterterrorism unit at a Sanaa base. “The color on the walls was our idea,” says one officer. “We fought for the color.” Some 1,500 women serve in police and counterterror units. They’re crucial in an ultraconservative culture where men cannot check female suspects—or those disguised as women.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Eleven-year-old Turki Ahmed flies a kite amid the rubble of Sadah, a northern antigovernment stronghold near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia. His ten-year-old cousin Afnan Hussein Ali Jarallah al Tamani scampers behind him. Since 2004 an insurgency in the north has destroyed much of the city, left hundreds dead, and driven more than 100,000 from their homes.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Wearing his ceremonial dagger, Yemen’s top tribal leader, Sheikh Sadiq al Ahmar, and his tribesmen stand by his Sanaa residence, with its portrait of al Ahmar’s politician father. The sheikh’s followers fired on government troops in May 2011; they retaliated, attacking his home.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
People still assemble and pray near Sanaa University’s southern gate, dubbed Change Square in early 2011, when it became a gathering place for thousands of Arab Spring protesters opposing the Saleh regime. Saleh stepped down, but Yemen’s woes remain.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
At Hababa, a medieval fortress village outside Sanaa, women gather water at the cistern around which the town was built.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
AK-47 in hand, a man passes by as Muhammad Ali Jobebi (left) and his son prepare bundles of qat, a popular stimulant leaf, at a Sanaa bazaar. Once best known for its coffee, Yemen now devotes 40 percent of its scarce water to irrigating qat. Worth $1.2 billion a year, the qat trade can earn sellers a thousand dollars a day. Meanwhile most of the country’s food is imported.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Preparing to leave for school, 13-year-old Alhanouf al Tamani peeks out from her niqab. For the past three years she has lived with her parents and six siblings in a single room in Sadah—all that was left of the family home after fighting between government forces and insurgents virtually destroyed it. They’re the lucky ones. Others, displaced by violence, make do in tents.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
REFUGEES
Hodhon Badaa Abdullah, 25, a refugee from fighting in Somalia, waits at a Yemeni Red Crescent transit center at Bab al Mandab village. The divorced mother of five paid $400 to smugglers who ferried her here. She hopes to find a job cleaning homes. -
Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
REFUGEES
Girls gather at a school in Aden that serves as a camp for Yemen’s internally displaced people. More than a hundred families stay at the school; they fled the province of Abyan, torn by fighting between al Qaeda-linked militants and government forces. -
Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
REFUGEES
New arrivals from Ethiopia stroll near a refugee transit center at Bab al Mandab, about a hundred miles west of Aden. More than 500,000 refugees live in Yemen. Most have fled unrest and poverty in Somalia and Ethiopia. -
Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Cradled by his mother, Saleem al Harazi lost both eyes to a sniper. The 12-year-old was shot when he joined antigovernment protesters in Sanaa in March 2011. “I loved them and wanted to stand with them,” he recalls. “I wanted them to end poverty.” They were the last people he ever saw, and he has no regrets: “I am still happy I was able to witness the protests firsthand.”
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Generators keep the lights blazing at a wedding in Sanaa’s Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where power cuts are frequent.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Relatives and neighbors fete bridegroom Ameen Ararah (in floral head scarf, at center rear), 21, at his wedding in Sanaa’s Old City. In a country where nearly half the population lives on $1.45 a day, wedding expenses—which can exceed $5,000—are prohibitive. Many couples now pool resources and marry in groups.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
Muhammad Mustafa al Ogape break-dances with friends in Sanaa. Half of Yemen’s population is under age 18. Young people face limited opportunities for employment—in part a consequence of high population growth coupled with low levels of education.
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Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
As dusk falls over Sanaa’s Fun City amusement park, a mother watches her children spin on a ride featuring an unveiled version of Fulla, a Barbie doll alternative popular among Middle Eastern girls. Moments like this offer relief from troubles, but the “emergence of a new dawn” heralded by Yemen’s 2011 peace Nobelist, Tawakkol Karman, eludes much of the country.
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