Jemen

The attempted bombing on Christmas day of the Detroit bound airplane has focused sudden attention on the land of Jemen. Like the role Afghanistan has played in the initial burst of ‘war on terror’ narratives, Westerners are generally less interested in the country of Jemen as in it’s place in the continuing unrolling of the ‘war on terror’. These poor Muslim countries in the prevailing narrative and fear and insecurity are not geographic countries but characters in the stories of fear and trepidation, who will be or are exposed to blind Western military violence.

But a few basic orientations may help:

  • North Yemen became independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The British, who had set up a protectorate area around the southern port of Aden in the 19th century, withdrew in 1967 from what became South Yemen. Three years later, the southern government adopted a Marxist orientation. The massive exodus of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis from the south to the north contributed to two decades of hostility between the states. The two countries were formally unified as the Republic of Yemen in 1990. A southern secessionist movement in 1994 was quickly subdued. from the CIA’s World Factbook
  • bordered on the north by Saudi Arabia, on the west by the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the south and to the east Oman. Sitting on sitting on the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Jemen is important strategically, with regards to oil routes from the Gulf to Europe a piracy. Jeme is located across from Somalia on the Gulf of Aden.
  • a Jemen without a central government could unleash forces which could threaten the stability of Saudi Arabia.
  • Economy largely based on oil which will run dry around 2015 and water will become scarce within 2020.
  • Government is fighting, the Houthi,  a group who belong to a branch of Shia Islam in the north and a secessionist rebellion in the south.
  • U.S. conducted one of the first strikes in Jemen, killing  a leader of Al_Qaeda in Jemen. This action was undertaken with the Jemen government’s knowledge. Subsequent cooperative actions culminated in the elimination of Al Qaeda from around Nov. 2003 to Feb. 2006, whereupon some 20 Al Qaeda members escaped from jail and rebuilt the Al Qaeda presence in the country. The organization has built itself up based on past mistakes, such that it can not be ‘decapitated’. It is believed to be an autonomous organization rather than a subsidiary of some central Al Qaeda.