During Hurricane Laban in Al-Mahra Governorate, eastern Yemen, in 2018, hundreds of families whose homes were flooded as a result of the hurricane feared that they would be displaced. However, the homes of the unaffected people were open to shelter them, and those most affected by that hurricane were the “Harafeesh.”

During that disaster, a video was circulated showing Rajeh Bakrit, the governor of Al-Mahra in the internationally recognized government at the time, inspecting the people and residents of the affected areas, alongside field teams working deployed to evacuate citizens from dilapidated homes.

During the visit, Bakrit’s attention was drawn to a dilapidated house containing citizens of the “Harafeesh” group. He then got out of his personal car and evacuated them himself, guided them and took them to safer places.” These are words written by activists from Al-Mahra who widely shared that video on social media. However, this was surprising for some residents if Al Mahra, who believed that the Harafeesh did not need anyone’s help.

Recently, a number of marginalized camps in Al-Mahra have been exposed to successive fire incidents. At the beginning of last February, camps located in the Airport neighborhood in the Al-Ghaidhah town were exposed to a major fire in which approximately 100 marginalized families were residing.

On the thirteenth of last March 2023, unidentified gunmen burned camps for the marginalized in the Beit Samouda neighborhood in the same city. These camps housed about 120 marginalized families, which resulted in two children and a disabled man being seriously injured. The fire also caused major property losses to the marginalized citizens living in that camp.

At that time, the security authorities did not bother to investigate the circumstances and clues to the crime, as if the matter did not concern them, as stated by Abdullah Anbar, a thirty-year-old citizen, who said in his interview with Khuyut that" “I and other residents who call us the Harafish have suffered greatly from the failure of the security authorities to do their duty towards us, and until now we do not know the identity of the people who caused this fire and what their motives are. However, we are well aware that we have no voice and that racism haunts us to the point that the racists almost destroyed our lives forever.

 Marginalized people of Al-Mahra Governorate live on the outskirts of the city of Al-Ghaidhah, in the Sarfeet areas, and near the markets selling Qat in all Al-Mahra districts and neighborhoods. The majority of them are deprived of their livelihood rights due to the class and ethnic discrimination they suffer from

The families affected by these frequent fires received in-kind assistance from the Yemeni Red Crescent in Al-Mahra, most of which was focused on shelter materials and kitchen utensils. Speaking to Khuyut, Wael Karim, head of the emergency response team, pointed out that the marginalized people living in the camps that were exposed to these fires have lost all their possessions.

Between marginalization and integration

“The Harafish,” as the people of Mahra call them, are the socially marginalized group with dark-skinned are of the poorest there. Some of them live in dilapidated and slum homes, while the majority of them live in camps that lack the minimum requirements for a decent living for a human.

The origin of the term “Al-Harafish” or “Al-Harafsha” in the plural form is Harfush, goes back to a low class of people who lived in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in the Mamluk era. They were mentioned by historians such as Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi and Jamal al-Din Ibn Taghri, and the Egyptian writer Najeeb Mahfoooth used the name of the Harafish as the title of one of his novels, “The Epic of the Harafish,” in 1977.

In fact, the Harafish term is a modern name used by the people of Al-Mahra, Hadhramaut, and some southern and eastern regions in Yemen. It is a different name for the same group that in the northern regions of Yemen are called “Al-Akhdam” or the marginalized people.

Amin Mubarakout, a community activist from Al-Mahra, likens the “Harafish” class to an uncontrolled group, and the actions of some of them sometimes reach the point of disrupting public life, and in the weakest cases, they resort to begging. Therefore, it is difficult for the “Harafish” group to integrate into Mahri society in light of this situation.

  Mubarakout added that: “We say this not to belittle them, but because of their special condition and the ways they manage their lives, which reach chaos, and some of which escalate into serious crimes.

Marginalized people of Al-Mahra Governorate live on the outskirts of the city of Al-Ghaidhah, in the Sarfeet areas, and near the markets selling Qat in all Al-Mahra districts and neighborhoods. The majority of them are deprived of their livelihood rights due to the class and ethnic discrimination they suffer from as minority rights activist Salem Mikaish told Khuyut.

The Mahri “tribal” community refrains from marrying marginalized people to women from outside the group or marrying marginalized women, and private schools also refrain from enrolling students from the children of marginalized people, which the minority rights activist, Makish, considers this to be persecution and discrimination practiced against this group of society.

Political recruitment

Social activist in Al-Mahra, Amin Mubarakout, accuses one of the political parties, the “Yemeni Congregation Party for Islah,” of working to exploit the “Harafish” group, or the politically marginalized, in Mahra, by inciting them to create security chaos and problems that cause public tranquility in the governorate located in eastern Yemen.

The Harafish have been living in Al-Mahra for many years, and since the outbreak of war in Yemen nine years ago, their numbers there have increased to the point that some tribal figures in Al-Mahra considered this a plan by some parties to the conflict in Yemen with the aim of changing the demographic composition of the people of Al-Mahra.

On the other hand, the political activist, Ali Al-Awbthani, accuses the Southern Transitional Council of recruiting individuals from the “Harafish” category into armed forces outside the Yemeni government.

Al-Awbthani confirms to Khuyut that: This group is being exploited because it is poor and marginalized in society. Adding that on many occasions, when the leaders of the Transitional Council in Mahra feel that they are not accepted in the Mahri street, they mobilize the Harafish to organize demonstrations, and everyone in Mahra knows this well.

For his part, human rights activist, Mokaish believes that the living conditions and the miserable situation of the marginalized people in Mahra have been exploited for political gains by all parties to the conflict in the governorate. At the end of his speech, he called for the importance of standing with them and supporting them, and that local and human rights organizations must view the marginalized as citizens with equal rights and duties. Further, Mokaish also stressed that it is possible to integrate them into society through executing long-term activities and tailored rehabilitation programs in cooperation with the local authority, government agencies, and international organizations concerned with the rights of minorities in Al-Mahra.

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