The facts
Yemeni government officials appealed for international help to protect civilians and reopen roads into Taiz as Iran-backed Houthi rebels tightened their siege of the city, according to the Associated Press. Taiz province has become a major battlefront in recent weeks, and the city is described as a gateway to Yemen’s south. The province has taken in around half of Yemen’s population displaced by fighting, straining already limited resources. Taiz governor Nabil Shamsan said residents had lost access to about 3 million liters of water previously available from wells in Wadi al-Dhubab, which he said is now under Houthi control. The AP said it could not independently verify that claim. Eshraq al-Maqtari, a legal affairs minister in Yemen’s internationally recognized government, said more than 2,000 projectiles and explosives fired by the Houthis had struck districts in Taiz city in recent days. She called for measures to cut off the rebels’ weapons supplies and funding. Shamsan said fighting had intensified across the province as Houthi reinforcements deployed to multiple fronts, and that the city was encircled on all sides.
Our take
The Houthi dickheads have finally perfected the art of the siege: surround a city, steal its water, and shell the living shit out of it while the ‘government’ responds by filing a fucking report. Governor Nabil Shamsan is out here providing the AP with the most pathetic inventory list in human history - 3 million liters of water, gone, from wells in Wadi al-Dhubab. Congratulations, you pedantic asshole, you’ve quantified the exact volume of your own irrelevance. While families are dying of thirst, this clown’s contribution to the war effort is to announce he can no longer account for the liquid in some holes in the ground. It’s like watching a hotel manager complain about a missing minibar while the building burns down around him. His entire strategy is forensic accounting of the catastrophe he’s failing to stop. What’s next, Nabil? A spreadsheet on the tonnage of rubble? A pie chart of despair? Fuck off with your metrics and pick up a goddamn phone that doesn’t connect to a journalist. Then there’s Eshraq al-Maqtari, the legal affairs minister, who has apparently been appointed Official Shell Tally Clerk. Her big reveal? Over 2,000 projectiles have hit the city recently. Wow, Eshraq, stunning work. Instead of a legal strategy, she’s offering a body count receipt. ‘Your honor, the defense rests after logging 2,000 war crimes. Please send a strongly worded letter.’ She ‘called for measures’ to cut off weapons supplies. She called for them. To the fucking air. It’s the bureaucratic version of shouting ‘stop!’ at a freight train while standing on the tracks taking notes. These useless pricks are running a government that exists only in press-release form, a phantom administration whose sole output is describing, in excruciating detail, how completely fucked they are. The province has half the country’s displaced people, resources are gone, and the city is encircled. The Houthis are the murderous cunts tightening the noose, but these officials are the sniveling bastards hired to narrate the hanging, providing color commentary on the rope’s fiber quality and the precise angle of the drop. They are not leaders; they are the world’s most depressing podcast hosts, broadcasting their own demise to an empty room. The only thing drier than Taiz’s wells is their fucking imagination.
