Impact of Conflict on Internet Connectivity in Yemen

Yemen’s ongoing conflict since 2015 has severely impacted internet connectivity. The war has turned telecommunication infrastructure into both a target and a tool, leading to frequent outages, damage to infrastructure, and deliberate shutdowns. All parties to the conflict have at times “weaponized” the internet – either by physically attacking network facilities or by cutting off access for strategic gain washingtoninstitute.org article19.org.

One major impact has been physical damage to critical infrastructure. In January 2022, a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit the telecom center in Hodeidah – the landing point for the undersea cable – causing a nationwide internet blackout that lasted about four days reuters.com. This outage disrupted everything from banking and remittances to news and education, highlighting the country’s dependence on a single hub reuters.com. The strike was ostensibly targeting Houthi military capabilities, but it knocked out Yemen’s primary internet gateway reuters.com. Earlier in the war, in July 2018, Houthi forces themselves severed a fiber-optic cable in Hodeidah while digging fortifications, cutting off around 80% of Yemen’s internet access in the process foreignpolicy.com. That incident, too, caused a major outage and was part of the struggle for control over Hodeidah. The Houthis also sabotaged land cables that ran to Saudi Arabia early in the conflict, eliminating important redundancy washingtoninstitute.org. And as noted, in January 2020 a non-military event – a ship’s anchor – damaged the FALCON subsea cable (already strained by lack of backups), leaving most of Yemen offline for weeks ukraine.wilsoncenter.org. These examples show how fragile Yemen’s connectivity is in a war zone: a single attack or accident can plunge the entire nation into an information blackout.

Beyond physical destruction, deliberate internet shutdowns have become a tactic in the conflict. The Houthi-controlled authorities have repeatedly shut down internet access in their territory during sensitive moments. For instance, in November 2023, the internet in Houthi-held Yemen was turned off for several hours, officially blamed on “maintenance” but widely believed to be an attempt to control information amid regional tensions (the Houthis had launched strikes related to the Israel-Gaza war) bostonpoliticalreview.org bostonpoliticalreview.org. Yemen actually recorded the highest number of internet shutdown incidents in the Middle East in 2019, as authorities used outages to quell unrest or silence news article19.org. In just the first quarter of 2023, there were 12 reported internet shutdowns across various Yemeni regions (Shabwah, Taiz, Aden, Hadramout, Marib, Abyan), lasting from hours up to more than a week article19.org. Some were due to technical issues or weather, but many were suspected to be sabotage or politically motivateddisruptions article19.org. These recurring outages – whether caused by airstrikes, fiber cuts, or intentional kill-switches – have had a devastating effect on daily life. Each shutdown means Yemenis are cut off from communication with family, humanitarian information, business transactions, and news from the outside world article19.org. During blackouts, basic services like money transfers (crucial in a country reliant on remittances) and online education come to a halt reuters.com. In a war where access to information can be life-saving, such outages further isolate populations already in crisis.

The conflict has also introduced cyber threats. Houthi authorities, by controlling Yemen’s central internet gateways, have the capability to intercept and snoop on internet traffic foreignpolicy.com. Reports suggest they may be using surveillance technologies (potentially supplied by aligned states) to monitor dissidents online, though details are opaque. Meanwhile, international actors have not stayed out of the fray – cybersecurity analysts found evidence of malware and espionage tools from foreign governments (like the U.S. and Russia) operating in Yemen’s networks, indicating a quiet cyber-intelligence dimension to the war foreignpolicy.com. There have even been unusual cases like cryptocurrency mining software detected on YemenNet routers, possibly run by Houthi-affiliated actors looking to generate revenue under sanctions foreignpolicy.com. In short, the civil war in Yemen has a parallel front in cyberspace: combatants target the internet infrastructure for tactical advantage and deploy digital attacks or surveillance, making the already fragile connectivity even more insecure.