The Daily - The Photo of the Yemeni Girl

In the three years that Saudi Arabia, supported by the United States, has been at war with the Houthis in Yemen, very few journalists have been allowed into the country to document what’s happening there. The New York Times journalist Tyler Hicks is one. This is the story of how he came to take a photograph of Amal Hussain that drew international attention to the country’s plight. Guest: Tyler Hicks, a senior photographer for The Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Duration: 25m
Broadcast on: 07 Dec 2018
Audio Format: other

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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And you can see actually on her right hand, there's a fly on her thumb, and she doesn't have the energy to push it away. It just sat there. And you took this photograph? Yes, yes. I took this photograph at a small clinic, not even a hospital, but really a field clinic in northern Yemen during a recent assignment there. I'm reluctant to display this picture, though it was on the front page of a major newspaper in the United States. Amal Hussein, she's a victim of famine in Yemen. This is what the decision is all about on the floor of the United States Senate. Will we continue to expend American taxpayer dollars, even American lives, in support of the Saudi regime in their invasion in the war in Yemen? I understand the threat of Iran, and I understand we have to stand up to their aggression when and where it takes place. But did we enlist in this war? Did the American people have a national debate about this war? Did we vote in the United States Senate to engage in this war? The answer is clearly no. In the three years that Saudi Arabia, supported by the United States, has been at war with the Houthis in Yemen. Very few journalists have been allowed into the country to document what's happening there as a result of the war. Time's photojournalist Tyler Hicks is one of them. This is the story of how he came to take that photograph of Amal Hussein. It's Friday, December 7.

So the north is where more of the humanitarian crisis is taking place. To go to the north, you're crossing from the government-backed Yemeni fighters to the Houthis side, who are still in control of Sun on the capital. Once we cross into Houthi territory, this is where things became more controlled. We have to have a minder to a government person who's watching over. Yeah, they're with you everywhere. So as I'm taking pictures, that person is either at my side or close by, keeping an eye on me. A lot of that has to do with they don't want photographs of bridges and government buildings and any kind of sensitive things. But what we wanted to really see was the malnutrition, which we'd heard so much about. There's malnutrition, there's cholera, and it's affecting not only children, but the parents. This all has to do with the fact that the economy is so destroyed there. There are no jobs. There's no money flowing into the hands of people. Now, this isn't something where there's actually no food. This isn't a drought. The food is there. People have no ability to purchase it. These are the areas that we wanted to go and see how these people were doing. And after a couple of days, I finally was on my way to a small town called Aslam. And there, there's a little clinic. It's not what you would expect as a big hospital where people are flooding in. I was actually surprised when I arrived there in the parking lot because it's just a little white building and a compound, not really anyone outside one or two people of guard walking around.

And I thought, what's going to be here? This doesn't look like much. But once I got inside, within seconds, I could see how serious the situation was. Most of the doors were open, and just looking from outside of the rooms looking in, you could see that there are these children, some laying on cots, some being held by their mothers that were so malnourished that it was really shocking. And I knew that I had arrived at the place where I could

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