“THE SNAKE DEN: A PRIMER ON YEMEN”

Hugh Hewitt.com ^ | AUG 9,2013 | John Ford

[Hojczyk]

To understand Yemen you must begin by understanding that there is very little reason for Yemen to be a country. In fact, until very recently it wasn’t a country at all. For most of the last 500 years, Yemen has been divided into a north and a south. The Northern part of Yemen is predominately Shia Muslim. Until 1918 it was dominated by the Ottoman Empire and after that it was an independent country dominated by the Zaidi Shia.

The post-Saleh government of Yemen is sandwiched between two insurgencies it cannot seem to control. The United States continues to send substantial foreign aid to the government of Yemen in the hopes that Yemen’s government will be able to contain these twin rebellions but it is now obvious that as time goes by AQAP grows stronger while the central government grows weaker.

The hope going forward is that Yemen’s government will be less duplicitous now that Saleh is gone and that it will stop playing a double game between the US and al Qaeda. For the moment, the US has no real choice but to continue to prop up Yemen’s government in the hope that it can roll back the two insurgencies it faces. This task will prove difficult because Yemen has no natural reason to be a country and the two insurgencies fall along Yemen’s natural dividing line going back for hundreds of years: A Zaidi Shia north and a Sunni dominated south.

[353FMG]

Worked and lived in Saudi for 15 years and in Yemen for 5.

Preferred the latter in every way. Harder working people, better climate, beautiful scenery, interesting architecture and more personal freedom.

(But that was a long time ago)