Al-Hawban Governorate..a security center against the south and west coast

English - Tuesday 18 October 2022 الساعة 09:12 am
Taiz, NewsYemen, special:

Al-Hawban Governorate.. This is how the northeastern part controlled by Iran’s arm in Yemen has become, 8 years after the arrival of the first Houthi hordes to the palace tour, which turned to the point of separating Taiz from Taiz.

Al-Houthi established the separation in Taiz, splitting the governorate into two governorates, and taking over the part that connects east Taiz to the borders of Lahj and its west in Al-Barah, and north to the borders of Al-Qaeda city, thus positioning his forces as a crescent on the neck of Al-Halima.

In Al-Hawban, the factories of Hayel Saeed Anam, in which thousands of workers from the sons of Taiz worked, who used to bring company buses in the morning, noon and evening to transport and return workers to and from Al-Hawban, in a beautiful scene.

Before the Houthi invasion, Al-Hawban was the most urbanized area than the rest of the districts and regions of Taiz, and it is still growing rapidly to this day to increase the demand for real estate in it for housing and investment.

So, Al-Hawban is important and symbolic in the awareness of the people of Taiz, while Al-Houthi is entrenched in it, as it constitutes a source of collection and money-making, as well as for its military importance and because it is the gateway to Taiz in the north, and because it has the airport and central children’s parks at the governorate level.  Thus, the importance of Al-Hawban in the awareness of the people of Taiz includes even the children who were deprived of the space of Friday and holidays in Al-Hawban Gardens.

On the other hand, the Brotherhood's army, which rules Taiz, headed south to invade the liberated Al-Hajaria, deploy its forces, camps, and militias there, and put walls and cables to block the lines of contact with Al-Houthi from each other.

The Houthi militia controls about a third of the area of Taiz, with an area of 4,000 km2 out of a total of 12,605 km2, and takes Al-Hawban as a center for managing the districts under its control.

Al-Hawban is not only a separate area used by the Houthis to target and besiege Taiz militarily, but has turned into a security and intelligence center against Taiz, the joint forces, the southern forces and the south in general.

And speaking of detainees released from the prisons of the city of Saleh.  The Houthi militias arrest and interrogate dozens of individuals on a daily basis to obtain information and names of army personnel in Taiz and members of the joint forces. There is also a special sector in the south in which many people from the south coming from Sana’a through Taiz or leaving from Aden and Lahj towards Sana’a are arrested and interrogated.

The militias refuse to release the detainees until they acknowledge the names of those belonging to the southern forces and the giant brigades from their areas, the names of their relatives, and information about the military leaders and activists as well.

Years after the Houthi militia separated Al-Hawban from the heart of Taiz, the dreams of liberation and restoring the remaining areas under the control of the militias were dwarfed, and only the UN envoy was waiting for the people of Taiz to succeed in convincing the Houthis to open roads to and from Al-Hawban.

Forgetting Al-Hawban and its absence from the discourse and dealings of the political and societal forces of Taiz, a dangerous surrender to a reality imposed by the Houthi militias, with their control, and the Brotherhood’s forces, with their inability to liberate the most important area after the areas of the West Coast.