Waiting at the closed gates of Al Rayyan Airport
Monday, March 29, 2021
On the morning of April 24, 2016, the last of Al-Qaeda operatives left the yard of Al-Rayyan (International) Airport, after the battles between the Hadhrami Elite Forces and the Saudi/UAE-led Coalition on one side and Al-Qaeda operatives on the other side. The next day, news spread that Al-Qaeda had booby-trapped the airport yard and that the coalition would comb it in preparation for reactivate the airport within days after dismantling the network of booby-traps.
The months rolled, and instead of combing the airport yard from the booby-traps, they wrapped its northern and western walls with wire fences, in preparation for transferring it from Al-Rayyan airport to a large detention center. Dozens of people stand at its gate almost daily, searching for a son, asking for a father, or demanding the release of a detained relative. However, its gates remained closed to the people of coastal Hadhramaut and nearby areas for months.
Saeed tells the details of his standing with members of his tribe at the gates of Al-Rayyan Airport in one evening of February 2017. They were not traveling through the airport, but they were protesting to demand the release of a member of their tribe, whom his relatives deemed innocent, while the forces stationed behind the airport walls saw him as a suspect, and the security imperative had required his arrest until the security stabilizes.
In 2018, a group of Hadhrami women launched an advocacy campaign to reopen Al-Rayyan Airport. After months of the campaign, they, accompanied by the governor, were allowed to enter the airport. Upon entering its yard, they found construction works for building a hall other than the main one that was built by an Indian company during the establishment and construction period of the well-known airport, with half government funding and the other half a Kuwaiti loan, and was inaugurated in the 1980s.
Yusri Abdo Ali (41 years), an employee of the General Electricity Corporation, had an electric shock while working at a very high place, and fell to the ground. In September 2020, he died while traveling 300 kilometers (for around 5-6 hours) by road to Seiyun Airport in order for flying to Egypt for treatment. While, the closed airport of Al-Rayyan was only 25 kilometers away from his home.
Yusri, who gave the best years of his life to serving this country, died. Perhaps one day he was there on the gates of Al Rayyan Airport practicing his work in the service of his country, while the airport gates opened for the Emirati singer, Eidha Al Menhali, who visited the forces of his country late in September 2016.
Al-Rayyan airport was closed to Shady Nader Saeed (a pseudonym), 46 years old, from the city of Mukalla, to take the trouble of the road to Seiyun, to bid farewell to his sick brother to travel to Egypt for treatment, but the tragedy was when his brother died at the gate of Seiyun airport. Shadi’s mouthpiece says while crying his brother: What if Al-Rayyan airport had been open?
On May 24, 2019, MBC broadcasted an episode of “Etma’an Qalbi” show presented by the incognito TV broadcaster Ghaith, and supported by the UAE, in which Ghaith offered a Yemeni citizen an unspecified job at Al-Rayyan International Airport, 30 kilometers east of Mukalla city. While, the airport was originally closed, and staffing in it is a sovereign right of the Yemeni government.
This episode raised the ire of people in Hadhramaut – a closed airport and a foreign broadcaster offering a job at an airport that is supposed to be under state administration. Although the awarding body was not announced, the UAE’s association with managing this airport’s affairs made it very easy for anyone to figure out the link between it [UAE] and the TV show’s support. This recklessness ignited the Hadhrami street for days following the broadcast of the controversial episode.
On the morning of November 26, 2019, the Governor of Hadhramaut held an inauguration ceremony marking the inauguration of Al-Rayyan Airport. A brass band came with him in the yard to celebrate the reception ceremony of the first flight. However, it remained the first flight to date. After that, the gates of Al-Rayyan airport were closed except for an Emirati plane, in mid-April, that carried Yemenis were stuck abroad due to the closure of the world’s land, air and sea ports to confront the (Covid-19) pandemic.
The airport gates were closed and people continued to bother traveling through Seiyun Airport, although the excuses that the airport was not ready ended early as long as it received two flights. The photos circulating on the social media also showed the readiness of the airport terminals and control towers.
In mid-November 2020, Al-Rayyan Airport received a Saudi plane carrying a volunteer medical team specializing in cardiac surgery to implement interventions funded by the King Salman Center to perform surgeries for children with heart diseases to save their lives.
Ironically, you help to save lives, while you cause death .. Yusri as well as Shadi’s brother have died, and dozens like them are dying on their sickbeds because their health condition does not allow them to be transported by land over long distances for traveling through Seiyun airport.
Ten days after the arrival of the Saudi medical team through the airport, the governor of Hadhramaut returned from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, by air, but this time he landed at Seiyun airport. Al-Rayyan airport has become closed to everyone, without exception, indicating how things are being managed after all these years of war and destruction.
So, let people die, as there is no way for those who reside in Hadhramaut plains, coasts and plateau, but to ride the 1989 Peugeot 505, to cover a distance of approximately 300 kilometers that may not be tolerated by an exhausted body or a sick heart.
At the gates of Al-Rayyan airport, people no longer stand to demand only the release of a relative, son, or father, but also at those gates the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis metaphorically gather, especially the people of Hadhramout and nearby areas, hoping that these gates will open as was the case before April 02 2015. Yet, there is no hope until now. There are tough guards standing there, who do not want these gates to be opened. The chapters of the story are still going on, until someone who writes history comes to open these gates to see what is going on behind them, and is worth all this stubbornness.
