While Yemenis bind their own wounds

SALALAH. The proxy war that has been going on in Yemen for 8 years has somewhat subsided these days. One side of this subsiding is that the fighting forces have, from the beginning, lost a significant part of their grounds for fighting. The process that began with the Arab Spring was one in which the Yemeni people demanded and took up their will. But with the interventions made, the Yemeni people's right to self-determination was soon virtually defiled. The declared aim of the international coalition formed against the Houthis' entering Sana'a and staging a coup in 2014, along the path opened by the ousted leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, was to neutralize this coup. But in the time that has passed, not only has no progress been made on this path by so much as a barleycorn's length, but the Houthis are today even more entrenched.

We said before, solving the problem in Yemen was not difficult at all. That the operation launched by the coalition that stepped in 8 years ago has dragged on this long and failed to yield results stems neither from the Houthis being very strong nor from the coalition forces being very weak. On the contrary, the only reason is that no vision and decision regarding Yemen has formed among the parties and that the aims targeted when the operation began have been strayed from greatly. In this respect the process has proceeded in a way very similar, to a great extent, to the one in Syria.

In Syria too, the process dragging on this long was due neither to the Esad regime being very strong nor to the opposition falling short. Esad was weak enough, and the people were determined and capable enough to stand up for their own will, but the decision and the solution were not left to the Syrian people.

A significant part of the forces that at the outset appeared to support the opposition took care to keep their support at a limit that would not suffice for the opposition to achieve a decisive result. That is, they took great care that even the support they gave stayed at a level that would not topple Esad; in fact, had they not cast a shadow, that is, had they not helped both sides, the problem would have ended long ago.

The same scenario is unfortunately being staged in Yemen too. The Yemeni people have a very strong feeling and culture directed toward independence and national will, and an incredible power of resistance, desire, ability and courage. But their resolving their problems among themselves is also plainly being prevented. After a certain point, Yemen's pro-legitimacy resistance forces have no demands for any support left. If they were left on their own they would get results far more easily, but they are not left.

The result of this uncertainty is that in Yemen, which could easily join the ranks of the world's few rich countries with its own natural resources, people are struggling in the claws of hunger and their country has been broken into cantons.

They have problems growing like mountains but there is no administration that can answer them. The most recently formed 8-member presidential council represents the forces competing on Yemeni soil rather than the Yemeni people, and their fights among themselves are leagues away from Yemen's agenda. That their fierce incompatibility among themselves is for Yemen or on behalf of Yemen is not even in question.

Yet at present Yemen has problems that loom like mountains. One of the most important is the binding of the wounds of the war, which has not officially ended. In the 8-year war 377 thousand people died. There are thousands of amputees. Their treatment is currently among the most important problems, but it is not this presidential council that develops a solution to this problem; it is again the Yemeni people.

Representing them, Sheikh Hamud al-Mikhlafi, one of Yemen's respected tribal leaders, established the largest prosthetics center in the Middle East in the city of Salalah in Oman. I know that a few years ago he said there was a great need for such a center in Turkey and held talks with people who could help him. Mikhlafi has already established this center three years ago, procuring technical staff from Turkey and state-of-the-art technological devices and materials from Germany. In the third year, for having treated the thousandth patient, he organized a presentation meeting. On this occasion we are in Salalah both to attend this meeting and to visit the center.

Years ago, when I voiced such a need for Yemen, I remembered how far from us was the pain I had spoken of, despite all our emotional and historical ties to Yemen. Yet now, with the two great earthquakes we experienced within a minute of each other, we have found ourselves living this pain and problem in our own country.

The human being is a potential disabled person, a potential refugee. That is why we somehow learn that we must be very careful when speaking about both situations.

Since Mikhlafi established this center, he has virtually returned to life 1000 people who lost their feet or arms in the war in Yemen, with prosthetic feet produced with the latest technology. Seeing the joy of returning to life in people we could speak with, who had given up on life together with the loss of a limb, is truly wonderful. Each of them has separate stories that could be the subject of novels.

Of the Arab Prosthetics Center's 22 employees, 5 are Turkish, and the prosthetic technicians, headed by İbrahim Özoğul from Ankara, have undertaken the coordination of the work.

Prosthetic fitting is a long, delicate and laborious job. The center's capacity allows it to admit groups of 50 people at a time. Developing and fitting a prosthesis suited to each person's condition and body measurements takes about 35 days. But apart from those already treated in Yemen, there are exactly 2000 people registered in the queue, and it is estimated that there are 4 thousand more who have still not been able to register at the center. The wounded are taken from their homes in Yemen by the center, all their needs for lodging and board during treatment are met, and when treatment is finished they are sent back to Yemen, to their homes, by the center, and not a penny is charged to the patients. It is a tear-jerking work of humanitarian aid.

Unfortunately, nearly 90 percent of these amputation cases result from stepping on mines. That is, none of them are fighters. All are civilians. The Houthis laid mines wherever they entered, and no mine map is at hand. According to estimates there are still 4 million mines, so such cases can continue to occur at any moment.

Such humanitarian matters are not on the agenda of those who intervene in Yemenis from outside, those who contend over Yemeni lands, and the eight members of the Presidential council.

That is why the Yemenis are binding their own wounds.