Total isolation: Houthis cut internet from Yemenis, paralyze country

For the third day in a row, the Yemeni people are living in isolation from the world after the Houthi militia cut off internet services to Yemen as another weapon used against the legitimate government, according to the Yemen News Agency (SABA).

The Houthis also prevented the intervention of technicians and engineers working for the Public Telecommunications Corporation under its control to repair a partial defect in some vectors and routers for local stations, which need limited hours to repair, and the militia deliberately stopped and disabled many communication towers in Hodeidah Governorate as part of its plan to target and restrict civilians.

Yemen has roughly 3.2 million social media users, nearly 10% of the population, and more than two-thirds of these are on Facebook, while 24% use YouTube regularly and a smaller percentage on Twitter, according to a Foreign Policy report.

Whether there is a war or not, the internet services in Yemen are very bad because of the Houthi control over them. Most days of the month, the militia cuts off internet services for citizens as a kind of restriction and pressure.

The Houthi militia monopolizes the internet to the extent that internet packages are being sold to citizens at exorbitant prices, producing a kind of extreme hardship and high cost for university and school students, whose families are forced to borrow so that they can cover the expenses of the necessary packages for distance education following the outbreak of the corona pandemic in the country.

The prices of internet services provided by the YemenNet company, which is under the control of the Houthis, increased 130% compared to the period before the Houthi coup against the Yemeni state in the fall of 2014.

Internet services entered Yemen in 1996, and YemenNet was established in 2001 as a company affiliated with the Yemeni government and a major provider of internet services in the country.

Economic crisis and banking paralysis

The interruption of internet services led to banking and economic crises, as there was an obstruction in the transactions of the banking sector, which depends primarily on the internet to receive and send internal and external remittances, exacerbating the suffering of citizens. A number of banks and internet cafes closed their doors in the capital Sanaa as a result of the lack of internet service, according to SABA.

The matter caused a wave of anger in Marib and Hodeidah due to the suspension of banking transactions that depend on the internet, especially since a large number of residents in those areas rely on bank transfers sent by their relatives abroad to enable them to live.

Internet control

In the fall of 2014, the Houthis took control of YemenNet, including the internet control complex in the TV neighborhood of Sanaa, and the militia managed to control the company's management and block sites opposed to it.

After the killing of late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Houthis took control of the internet sector completely through the appointment of a new management for the company. Since then, services have been in decline and the internet has become only for those who are financially able. Even the so-called “golden packages” that were intended for café owners have been canceled, forcing Yemeni citizens to resort to the company only.

According to the Yemeni website Al-Asimah Online, YemenNet has been unable to deliver internet service to many areas in the country in recent years, especially villages and areas adjacent to cities, in addition to the poor service in mobile internet services, and the company has also raised the price of mobile and fixed packages up about 400%.

Yemeni journalist Mohamed Naji Salem said that all communications services, whether the internet or others, are very bad since the Houthis seized the capital, as Yemen does not have a communications infrastructure.

Salem confirmed in a special statement to the Reference that internet service in Yemen is very weak, to the extent that if a message is sent from one person to another through Facebook’s Messenger application, it may arrive the next day, and this applies to all areas, especially the areas not controlled by the militia, as these take the lion’s share of the poor service, despite the high prices of packages.