Yasser Yassin was driving along a road on Yemen's rugged Red Sea coast when a blast sent his Toyota Hilux flying into the air.
When he regained consciousness, the 30-year-old merchant realised he could not move his right leg or see with his right eye.
Mr Yassin's car had hit an anti-tank mine, one of thousands laid by Houthi fighters three months earlier before they were driven out of Khoukha area of Hodeidah province by pro-government forces backed by the Saudi-led military coalition.
His recovery has been far from straightforward, despite help from the military coalition whose leading members are Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
"They [the coalition] took me to Aden where they fixed my leg, but there was an issue with the metal prosthesis and my leg got infected," Mr Yassin said, leaning on his crutches during a visit to Al Mokha hospital for a follow-up after the blast in February.
Yemen has been devastated by three years of conflict in which President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi’s government, backed by the coalition, is fighting to drive the Iran-backed Houthi rebels out of cities they seized in 2014 and 2015.
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The results of the Houthis' use of banned anti-personnel mines can be seen in the hallways of the hospital in Al Mokha town, located not far north of the strategic Bab Al Mandeb strait, which were crowded with victims and visitors.
Doctors and medical staff made their way between armed men to provide first aid to patients wounded by landmines, as well as by shrapnel and mortars.
"I was walking with my brother, I stepped on a mine and it went off," said Rashida, a 13-year-old girl fitted with a rudimentary prosthetic leg.
Her father said she had never attended school because the closest one to their village in Taez province was 30 kilometres away and had closed down after the Houthis invaded Taez.
Residents and medics from Mokha and nearby villages said landmines had caused more casualties than the fighting in the area, which has seen the Houthis pushed out of some Red Sea coastal areas since 2016.
The explosives were buried randomly across the region, they said, including in residential areas, playgrounds and under trees where many Yemenis traditionally sit to chew leaves of qat, a mild narcotic.
It is not clear how many people have been killed by the landmines, but two doctors and a government official said dozens had died just in the coastal areas of Mokha, Khoukha and Haiys since Houthi forces started withdrawing in early 2017.
The UAE armed forces and Yemeni troops said they harvest between 250 and 300 mines every week in the western region. More than 40,000 devices have been neutralised since coalition-allied forces took control of the Red Sea coast in a series of battles starting in 2016.
About 90 per cent of the landmines were locally made and most of the victims are civilians, they said.
"They also have Russian-made landmines which they took from government warehouses when they invaded the capital Sanaa," said an expert in explosives in the UAE armed forces.
The UAE has been arming, training and paying thousands of fighters from southern provinces, called the Southern Resistance, to capture western coastal areas and push the Houthi armed movement back to their homeland in the north.
The war is entering its fourth year this month and, despite Houthi losses in parts of western Yemen, they still control Yemen’s most populated areas, including the capital Sanaa.
Last year, Human Right Watch called on the Houthis to cease using landmines and observe the 1997 Ottawa Convention ban on anti-personnel mines, which took effect in 1999. Yemen signed the treaty in 1998.
"Most of the victims who survived lost one or two of their legs, and many are crippled and cannot do any physical work,” said Ghassan Massoudi, director of Al Mokha hospital. He said the military wing of the hospital was treating also civilian landmine victims.
That side of the facility gets most of the attention from the internationally recognised government and the Saudi-led coalition, as it treats fighters from the front lines in Al Garahi district 90km away where the Southern Resistance and allies from fellow coalition member Sudan face mortar bombs and heaving shelling from the Houthi side.
Mr Yassin said the coalition would not pay for his trip to India – where many Yemenis seek medical treatment – when he needed new surgery on his leg and eye, as he was not a fighter.
So he paid his own way.
"I sold the remains of the car, my mother and wife's gold and went to India where I spent $8,500 [Dh31,000]. I still lost my eye," he said.
FIGHT%20CARD
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Other must-tries
Tomato and walnut salad
A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.
Badrijani nigvzit
A delicious vegetarian snack or starter. It consists of thinly sliced, fried then cooled aubergine smothered with a thick and creamy walnut sauce and folded or rolled. Take note, even though it seems like you should be able to pick these morsels up with your hands, they’re not as durable as they look. A knife and fork is the way to go.
Pkhali
This healthy little dish (a nice antidote to the khachapuri) is usually made with steamed then chopped cabbage, spinach, beetroot or green beans, combined with walnuts, garlic and herbs to make a vegetable pâté or paste. The mix is then often formed into rounds, chilled in the fridge and topped with pomegranate seeds before being served.
Japan 30-10 Russia
Tries: Matsushima (3), Labuschange | Golosnitsky
Conversions: Tamura, Matsuda | Kushnarev
Penalties: Tamura (2) | Kushnarev
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Alaan%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202021%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Parthi%20Duraisamy%20and%20Karun%20Kurien%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%247%20million%20raised%20in%20total%20%E2%80%94%20%242.5%20million%20in%20a%20seed%20round%20and%20%244.5%20million%20in%20a%20pre-series%20A%20round%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The biog
Alwyn Stephen says much of his success is a result of taking an educated chance on business decisions.
His advice to anyone starting out in business is to have no fear as life is about taking on challenges.
“If you have the ambition and dream of something, follow that dream, be positive, determined and set goals.
"Nothing and no-one can stop you from succeeding with the right work application, and a little bit of luck along the way.”
Mr Stephen sells his luxury fragrances at selected perfumeries around the UAE, including the House of Niche Boutique in Al Seef.
He relaxes by spending time with his family at home, and enjoying his wife’s India cooking.
