The wind ripples through light green leaves of bushes on fields tended by Mutaab al-Jandubi's family. One of the Yemeni farmer's daughters is playing idly in front of the house, some 30 kilometres north of the capital Sana'a. The barefooted girl with the white headscarf is dragging a blue, cut-down petrol canister attached to a piece of string. She pays scant attention to the mortars thudding into the ground at five-minute intervals only a few kilometres away.
This family is living on a forgotten frontline, where troops of Yemen's elite Republic Guard and opposition tribesmen are waging war long after the ouster last year of long-serving president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The government is turning a blind eye to the conflict and the al-Jandubi children have grown used to the sound of war.
Last year, their home was hit by several rocket-propelled grenades. The southern facade of the three-storey building still bears the scars in the form of gaping holes. An unexploded shell lies in a crater in front of the house. "When the soldiers started shooting at the rebels in Sana'a last spring, some of us blocked off the entrances to two Republican Guard bases here in Arhab," al-Jandubi said. "We didn't want them to move towards Sana'a and start killing demonstrators."
He cannot remember the exact day on which this first act of protest took place, any more than the date when his house came under fire and one of his relatives was seriously injured. "I think the grenades came shortly before the start of Ramadan," he says after some hesitation, pointing to two holes in the wall of a reception room for guests.
Al-Jandubi does not understand much about politics. His family lives in the shadow of the military base of al-Sama and earns a living by cultivating khat, the leaves of which are chewed by millions of Yemenis every day. Khat-chewing induces a state of euphoria lasting for hours. The khat grown in Arhab is particularly sought-after and expensive.
The code of conduct upheld by Arhab's tribes, which stipulates that guests are to be greeted with gunshots expressing joy, also includes avenging the tribal dead. That is why fighting drags on in the area. It began on May 25, when Republican Guard soldiers killed four tribesmen at a checkpoint. It did not stop when political groups agreed in Sana'a in late 2011 on a roadmap for a peaceful transition.
A government of national unity was formed in December, and in February, Saleh's former deputy Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi was chosen as interim president in a kind of referendum. But despite all these developments, mortar fire continues to rain down on the al-Sama area.
"They're just shooting at the revolutionaries again," remarks Al-Jandubi. No gunfire disturbs this cool March morning, only the distant boom of mortar fire. Plastic bags are rustling in the wind between the widely-scattered houses on this idyllic expanse of flat green land.
A total of 151 armed tribesmen, women and children were killed in and around the Arhab district between May 2011 and January 2012, according to human rights activists. The government in Sana'a has chosen to ignore the Arhab conflict. It focuses on efforts to reconciliate with southern separatists and Shiite Houthi insurgents, and to combat al Qaeda terrorists. Besides, the man in charge of the Republican Guard in Arhab is Ahmed Saleh, one of ex-president's Saleh's children. Nobody has dared to challenge him so far. The armed conflict in Arhab is over, Defence Minister Mohammed Nasser Ali said.