Behind the Reporting: How to War in Yemen Became a Bloody Stalemate

At War is a newsletter about the experiences and costs of war with stories from Times reporters and outside voices.

Getting back to Yemen was probably the hardest trip I've ever had to arrange. It took months of work, two separate visas, Yemeni friends and helpers. We had to overcome the doubts of the Times about the safety of our plan. But in the end, the 11-hour drive from Aden to northern Yemen – the most dangerous stretch – tested strangely anticlimactic. Every time we approached one of the checkpoints manned by young Yemeni gunmen, I'd like to see a little less about Blackwater mercenary. (Lynsey Addario, in a full black niqab, were less conspicuous.) We are traveling through a lawless desert where all kinds of gangs and jihadists, including Al Qaeda, are active. But our 19 year-old driver just looked at me and laughed. "You can keep them on," he said.

The key to safety in Yemen is social networks. If you know a family with local and tribal connections, they can protect you in almost any situation. Our trip was made possible by a southern family. Their knowledge of the field, and their ties to various factions across the south, were worth more than any number of bodyguards or cars. But their influence extended to the south, the non-Houthi areas of Yemen. Nasser, who has negotiated Yemen's chaotic politics with unusual skill (and some luck). He always maintained a good relationship with Yemen's longtime ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh. After the Houthis captured Yemen's capital, Sana, in 2014, he made sure to stay on their good side. He helped link me to the people I needed to meet, as did a couple of other old Yemeni friends.

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Even then, we faced many obstacles getting the Houthis to talk. They are an Islamic militia with a profoundly conspiratorial mind-set. They were happy to show their enemies, and to recite their propaganda. But they do not want to talk to you, or to wait for funerals. Halfway through our trip, Lynsey and I were talking to a young Houthi when it became clear: This guy understood what we wanted. Not only that, he was willing to push hard to help us get it. From then on, we would have been more than a little dared, we would like to wake up at 7 am, and to accompany us everywhere – because only he, the insider, could persuade the Houthis to talk to us. .