Al Hudaydah Governorate

Al Hudaydah exists because the Tihama coastal plain - that arid, sweltering strip between the Red Sea and Yemen's highlands - needed a port where goods could enter the country. The port handles 70 to 80 percent of Yemen's humanitarian aid and commercial imports. This concentration wasn't planned; it emerged from geography and infrastructure investment over decades. The port became the keystone species of Yemen's import ecosystem: remove it, and the entire system feeding northern Yemen collapses. By 2025, Al Hudaydah demonstrates what happens when critical infrastructure becomes a target rather than neutral ground.

The governorate stretches across the Tihama plain for 300 kilometers along the Red Sea coast, home to 6 to 7 million people with tribal roots reaching back two millennia. Hodeidah city, Yemen's fourth-largest, grew around the port and fishing industries that harvest the Red Sea's rich waters. Coffee, cotton, dates, and hides flowed out; fuel, food, and medicine flowed in. The port infrastructure - cranes, warehouses, container yards - accumulated slowly, each piece critical to processing the volume. Like a beaver dam or oyster reef, the port is engineered infrastructure that enables an ecosystem. Everything downstream depends on it functioning.

The Houthis took control of Hodeidah in 2021, securing access to import revenues and humanitarian supplies. This made the port a strategic prize and a military target. In June 2018, a UAE-led offensive attempted to retake it but failed. By 2024, the port had become central to the Houthis' Red Sea blockade campaign against Israeli-linked shipping. In July 2024, Israel retaliated for a Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv by bombing Hodeidah's oil facilities and power plant, killing six and wounding 87. The strikes destroyed both heavy dockside cranes - the only two the port had. Without those cranes, container ships can't unload efficiently. Humanitarian shipments slowed considerably. Between January 2024 and May 2025, the US and UK conducted over 1,000 airstrikes against Houthi positions across Yemen, many targeting areas around Hodeidah.

The trophic cascade unfolded as predicted. With cranes damaged and port capacity degraded, imports to Houthi-controlled ports declined for six consecutive months through 2025. The port that processed 70-80 percent of northern Yemen's supplies now processed less, slower. Fuel shortages rippled through transportation networks, food scarcity accelerated malnutrition rates, and medicine stockpiles depleted faster than they could be replenished. The 6 to 7 million people living in the Tihama plain and dependent on Hodeidah's port felt the downstream effects of upstream infrastructure damage. In April 2025, Yemen's internationally recognized government planned an offensive with 80,000 soldiers to retake the port, recognizing that control of Hodeidah meant control of northern Yemen's metabolism.

A US-Houthi ceasefire brokered by Oman in May 2025 paused the bombardment but didn't repair the cranes or restore capacity. By 2026, Al Hudaydah demonstrates the fragility of systems built on single points of failure. The port isn't just infrastructure - it's the metabolic gateway for millions of people. Damage to it cascades through supply chains, food systems, and public health in ways that wars fought over territory never anticipate. The Tihama plain has supported communities for two thousand years, but those communities always depended on trade with the highlands and across the sea. When the port that enables that trade becomes contested rather than common ground, the entire coastal ecosystem enters starvation response. The cranes can be rebuilt, but rebuilding takes time measured in years. Starvation operates on timescales measured in weeks.