The Tehama — the coastal plain stretching from Midi in the north to the Bab al-Mandab in the south — occupies a paradoxical position in Yemen: at the heart of the civil war but on the margins of political agency. It has paid the conflict’s exorbitant human costs, but without securing basic rights for its citizens or meaningful attention from the warring parties.
Tehama’s coastline extends over 400 kilometers (approximately 250 miles), and the region extends 25 to 50 kilometers (15-30 miles) inland, wedged between the Red Sea and the western Yemeni highlands. But this expanse is far more than a stretch of coast; it serves as Yemen’s economic lifeline. The region is blessed with fertile agricultural land, making it Yemen’s primary breadbasket and a center for livestock farming, and has abundant marine wealth and a vantage point over one of the world’s most vital maritime corridors. By 2024, the port of Hudaydah alone handled approximately 70 percent of the country’s commercial imports and 80 percent of its humanitarian aid. Despite the noticeable decline in import volumes in recent months due to Israeli airstrikes and the redesignation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization by the US administration, the port continues to hold strategic importance at the economic, humanitarian, political, and security levels. Its location on the Red Sea and direct access to one of the world’s most vital maritime routes grant whoever controls it significant geopolitical leverage in the Red Sea and over global trade flows.
Moreover, the port’s proximity to the country’s most densely populated areas means that any disruption to its commercial or humanitarian operations has an immediate impact on the livelihoods of millions of people and exacerbates Yemen’s already severe food insecurity and economic fragility. Reliance on alternative ports is significantly more costly and logistically complicated due to long distances, rough terrain, and restrictions imposed by the Houthis on the entry of goods through those routes. Additionally, the multiple customs duties levied on traders contribute to higher prices of essential goods in local markets, placing an even greater burden on ordinary citizens.
Historically, the Tehama’s strategic location has been coveted by foreign powers, from the Ottomans and British to modern regional and international interests. Yet neither its strategic nor its natural wealth has sufficed to secure the region appropriate representation in the corridors of power, and the Tehama remains an afterthought in state development plans and the agendas of political forces.
The region has suffered disproportionately from the war. Hudaydah residents account for 26 percent of internally displaced persons living in displacement camps across Yemen, the most of any governorate. Vast swathes of the region face “extremely critical” levels of acute malnutrition, and widespread destruction of infrastructure means that famine is never far away. But the Tehama has not received attention proportionate to the scale of its tragedy. Its marginalization, rooted in nearly a century of neglect, underscores profound structural flaws in a governance model that perpetuates an inequitable distribution of power and wealth.
A Century of Exclusion
Tehama’s marginalization can be traced back to the early twentieth century, when it resisted submission to the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen following the fall of the Idrisi state. This emirate is often viewed as a model of self-rule in Tehama during the modern era. It emerged in the context of declining Ottoman influence in the early 20th century, when Mohammed al-Idrisi led a rebellion against the Ottomans and established a political entity centered in Sabya (in what is now known as the Jazan region of southern Saudi Arabia), with his authority extending southward as far as the city of Hudaydah. However, this entity was short-lived: Hudaydah fell to the forces of Imam Yahya in 1925. Resistance in Tehama continued under the leadership of the Zaraniq tribe until 1927, before being brutally suppressed by Imam Yahya’s loyalist forces. The Idrisi state effectively came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Taif in 1934 between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, through which the former Idrisi territories were divided between the two parties. Since then, successive regimes have inherited and institutionalized exclusionary policies, sidelining the Tehama in development programs, national plans, and governance structures. As a result, the Tehama has endured chronic poverty, high unemployment, rampant illiteracy, and a quasi-feudal system that perpetuates dependency and marginalization.
Politically and administratively, Tehama’s residents have been denied genuine representation in state institutions, even within their own governorate. From the Republic Revolution of 1962 until the youth uprising of 2011, thirteen governors served Hudaydah. All but one, Ahmad Salem al-Jabli (appointed in 2008 and dismissed three years later), were outsiders. This pattern of exclusion also extends to other key administrative and security positions, including the police, prosecutors, security forces, and major revenue-generating bodies, reflecting a systematic policy of marginalization.
While a handful of Tehama figures have held token positions within various governments, their presence has been largely symbolic and superficial. Effective representation remains virtually absent among important posts such as deputy ministers, ministry undersecretaries, agency heads, or senior military commands. Even under the current power-sharing arrangement, ostensibly grounded in regional and political balance, Tehama remains excluded from both the Presidential Leadership Council and the cabinet.
More troubling is that marginalization has transcended political and developmental neglect to become an entrenched stereotype in both official and popular consciousness. Tehama has been depicted as a geographic and human periphery, resulting in its omission from national media, its erasure from educational curricula, and its absence from institutions of influence. Even the national collective memory largely fails to document the struggles and sacrifices of its people, as though the region has been deliberately excised from Yemen’s national narrative.
Sustainable Peace
No blueprint for a stable Yemeni state can succeed without fundamentally redressing the imbalances in power and resource distribution, which have become concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite and led to ongoing conflicts, with the recent war being just one such episode. Tehama is at the core of this challenge. The region does not merely exemplify marginalization; it encapsulates the distorted relationship between the center and the periphery, where developmental neglect intertwines with political exclusion, and the cumulative injustices of the past pose a tangible threat to national unity and stability. For decades, Tehama has languished on the fringes of public policy, not due to a lack of resources or weak institutional capacity, but as a direct outcome of a governance system that centralizes power and reproduces dependency by weakening the periphery across political, economic, and social spheres.
With the state’s fragmentation and the erosion of its central authority in recent years, and the rise of regional identities at the expense of a unifying national identity, the problem is no longer about merely rectifying historical imbalances, but about a national imperative to ensure stability. The conflict has led to the fragmentation of Yemen on a regional level, beyond traditional North-South divisions. A negotiated settlement that overlooks the deep-rooted causes of marginalization will yield nothing more than a fragile truce, liable to collapse at the first political or security crisis. Treating Tehama as a peripheral issue or deferring redress of its grievances will undermine the credibility of any inclusive national project.
This challenge is compounded by the fact that large segments of the population — including Tehama’s youth — have joined armed groups amid state collapse during the years of war. Ignoring their grievances will fuel further violence and exacerbate divisions. Worse still, the state has too often rewarded those who assert their demands through force of arms rather than through appeals to rights and justice, incentivizing the militarization of demands and fueling turmoil and conflict.
Accordingly, what is required is a comprehensive vision that restructures the relationship between the center and the periphery within a renewed social contract. Such a contract must address historical injustices, guarantee genuine participation in power and wealth, and establish a balanced development model that transforms all Yemenis into active stakeholders in the national project and in shaping the country’s future.
This commentary was produced as part of the Yemen Peace Forum, a Sana’a Center initiative that seeks to empower the next generation of Yemeni youth and civil society activists to engage in critical national issues.