Brain drain from Yemen and its impact on the future.. The flight of the brains.

Arab Sea Newspaper - Follow-ups

Arabian Sea - Yemen - The Magazine - Anwar Al-Ansi: Hundreds, even thousands, of doctors, engineers, academics, and other professionals in all specialties and fields flee Yemen every year in the worst unprecedented brain drain the country has suffered abroad, due to the war and the hardship of living, despite its reputation as one of the largest countries exporting migration, since the collapse of the ancient Marib Dam in 575 AD. Yemen has historically been known for the large number of its people migrating, internally or externally, voluntarily or forcibly, and for the multiplicity of its reasons, the diversity of its destinations, and the difference in its directions, where the field is long to explain it after it has been saturated with research and study. However, what we are witnessing today of the diaspora of Yemenis, at various age, educational, and cultural levels, especially those with good education and training, in all parts of the world, and in a way that exceeds all expectations, is frightening and worrying, and portends the country's emptiness of its educated competencies and cultured elites, and even its workforce, which makes it walk on a path of the unknown, which makes it difficult to predict its consequences and dangers on the future of Yemen, land, people, and life. What is happening today is almost the worst of most forms of internal tyranny that Yemen has suffered during centuries of Imamate rule, but it has surpassed in its evil, brutality, and violence the practices of many foreign invaders and occupiers, which has become a reason for the conviction of most Yemeni (elites) that leaving this scene is necessary (temporarily) until the rules of engagement with the Houthi "militias" recruited, in their opinion, to serve an Iranian agenda, which has nothing to do with national affairs or the general good, are readjusted. I am not saying that the country is completely devoid of its well-educated cadres, with good specialized education, but it almost seems so, if we take into account the size of the number of displaced people abroad and the policy of selection and discrimination at home followed by the Houthi group, especially, in the areas under its control. Reasons for displacement and its manifestations To a major degree, (poverty) resulting from long decades of drought, drought, and shrinking agricultural land, and the temptations of working in the oil-rich Gulf states were the first and direct reason for the modern migrations of Yemenis to neighboring countries and to distant expatriate communities such as the United States and Britain. This was mostly happening voluntarily in search of job opportunities and a better life and to enable them to support and assist their families at home in a way that helps them cope with the increasing costs of living year after year. As for the years of war that the country has witnessed since 2014, the waves of displacement were a forced option after the Houthi group loyal to Iran invaded the capital, Sana'a, and a number of other cities in the country, and the resulting political and military conflict pushed tens of thousands of residents of the areas that the Houthis subjected to their control to displacement in every direction possible for them, inside and outside the country. In the midst of the fighting, between the army forces and the popular resistance on the one hand and the Houthi group on the other, the collapse of many basic service sectors, such as health and education in particular, continued, and many doctors, some of whom have rare specialties, as well as hundreds of academics, were forced to leave their jobs and leave the country, especially after their monthly salaries were cut off for years, and the impossibility of obtaining alternative job opportunities. In a different paradox, an academic colleague told me how, after the Houthis seized power, he returned to Yemen from Europe, enthusiastic to teach at a university, but he was shocked, as he said, by the conditions of his students who come to his lectures without most of them having eaten breakfast, and lacking focus and comprehension, and some of them carry their light weapons, a Kalashnikov or a pistol, and how he was asked to give undeserved passing grades to some students under the pretext that they are "mujahideen" returning from the battlefronts against "aggression," which made him have no choice but to leave the country. The matter does not stop at this point only, but some newspapers and news sites, from time to time, show us pictures of young men, from the Houthi militants or those recruited in the ranks of the military arms loyal to the legitimate government, who have ascended to high military and security ranks, while we meet and see former senior officers in the army and security forces displaced today inside the country or wandering in the streets of the world in search of shelter or recognition as refugees. Politicization and sectarianization of public office For the same reason, thousands of teachers were forced to either flee or stay in their homes, especially after the curricula they specialized in teaching were distorted, and replaced with the "notebooks" of the group's founder and the lectures of his brother and predecessor, as the group's "supervisors" were replaced with qualified and competent teachers, and subjects such as English, physics, and chemistry were excluded in most schools due to the lack of specialized teachers to teach them. The Houthis' control over state institutions was not the only problem, but the group's adoption of the principle of politicizing the civil and military service, and making the criterion of belonging to their "Hashemite" lineage the basis for employment, appointment, promotion, and obtaining privileges of all kinds, material and moral. In one example of these practices, a video clip has been circulating in the past few days in which an official from the "Reimah" governorate complains about the dismissal of a successful doctor and hospital director on the pretext that he "folds" in his prayer like the Sunnis and does not "trail" like the Zaidi Shiites. In the last two years, I spent weeks and months, sometimes, in Arab, Islamic, and foreign countries, during which I met numbers of Yemenis, not only large, but also "qualitative," as they constituted the basic human structure of the Yemeni state in all fields and specialties, civilian politicians from all national parties and organizations who have held public office at all leadership, middle, and grassroots levels, and military personnel who served for decades in the army and security institutions, and I saw businessmen and women who swept with them out of Yemen what they could withdraw with them, hundreds of billions of dollars, the random exit of which from banks and companies caused the collapse of these banks and the bankruptcy of many companies, and the disruption of dozens of institutions and factories, and the loss of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of citizens, of their sources of income and livelihoods, at the same time as the collapse of the state and the cessation of payment of salaries to the vast majority of its members for at least seven years. That is what raises confusion and questions about who is left then of the Yemenis inside their country except for the armed groups fighting each other based on armies of poor tribesmen, and except for millions of hungry civilians who have not found a way to leave the country, as others have done. The situation of those who have left the country is not much better. Most of these people took their savings and sold their homes and properties to use the proceeds to pay for travel, accommodation, and living expenses in the areas of displacement and asylum. Some of these people imagined that this "exile" would not last long, and that they would soon return to their cities, villages, and businesses, but the war has lasted long, and with its prolongation, the majority of them have spent "what is above and below," which today pushes some of them to borrow, if possible, or to accept low-income jobs, or to be forced to ask for help and even beg. Maps of the diaspora For decades, Saudi Arabia has been the largest and most important incubator for Yemenis, whose number is approaching two million people, especially expatriate workers, whose remittances they send to help their families at home, these families would have suffered greatly due to their lack of resources and the dwindling and lack of job opportunities, especially in rural areas that have been suffering from drought and drought for decades. Egypt also represented the second largest incubator for Yemenis displaced to it, in large numbers that are not accurately estimated, but it sometimes decreases and sometimes approaches one million displaced people, many of whom come for treatment or transit through it and visitors to meet their relatives who gather in it, whether to hold some mourning events or wedding parties, but despite the official and popular Egyptian understanding of their circumstances, they suffer many troubles due to the huge challenges facing Egypt as a result of the displacement of hundreds of thousands and even millions to it fleeing from the inferno of wars and cycles of violence that are sweeping their countries such as Sudan, Libya, Syria, and others. Turkey also hosts about thirty thousand Yemenis from displaced and refugee Yemenis and students studying in its universities, in addition to some businessmen and investors, and the same applies to Malaysia, China, and Indonesia, which host varying numbers of displaced people, reaching between twenty and fifty thousand people, as well as in some neighboring countries on the African side such as Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, which in the past Yemen represented for its displaced people the shelter and the transit station to the Arab Gulf countries and from there to Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Several other countries are sheltering Yemenis today, including dozens of former and current civilian and military officials, members of parliament, and leaders of political parties and organizations, but they do not engage in any overt or covert political activity "out of respect for the wishes of their hosts," but this does not prevent them from communicating through some social and national events that sometimes take place in the presence of some of their brothers in the host countries,