Robert F. Worth: Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?
[Robert F. Worth was Baghdad correspondent for the NYT.]
Two thousand years ago, the area east of Sana held one of the earth's most prosperous kingdoms, a lush agricultural region of spices and fruits, fed by irrigation canals from a vast man-made dam. The Romans called Yemen "Arabia Felix," or Happy Arabia. Today, the eastern region is an arid wasteland. Most people scrape by on less than $2 a day, even though they live atop Yemen's oil and gas fields. There are few ways to make a living other than smuggling, goat-herding and kidnapping. The region is also, chronically, a war zone. Tribal feuds have always been part of life here, but in recent years they have grown so common and so deadly that as much as a quarter of the population cannot go to school or work for fear of being killed. The feuds often devolve into battles with bands of raiders mowing down their rivals with machine-gun fire or launching mortars into a neighboring village. No one knows how many people die in these wars, but Khaled Fattah, a sociologist who has studied Yemen's tribes for years, told me that hundreds of victims a year is a conservative estimate....
WHEN PEOPLE TALK about the government in Yemen, they really mean one man: Ali Abdullah Saleh. Despite the country's many political parties - Islamist, Socialist, Arab nationalist - the country is run almost entirely by Saleh, and he runs it exactly like a sheik: using his own tribe as a power base and constantly making deals to head off his rivals. Saleh came to power in 1978; pictures of him at the time show a skinny young man in a military cap that looks too big for him, his eyes covered by aviator sunglasses.
At the time, most of Yemen was still just emerging from isolation. In 1962 a group of military officers, inspired and aided by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, overthrew the xenophobic religious dynasty that, from its northern base, ruled much of Yemen for centuries. Some of the young officers hoped to modernize Yemen and make it more like other Arab countries. In the mid-1970s one Yemeni president, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, tried to tame the powerful tribal sheiks, extend the state's power throughout the country and unify with South Yemen, which emerged from British occupation in 1967. Yemeni intellectuals still talk about Hamdi with nostalgia. But the sheiks and their Saudi backers were not pleased. In October 1977, Hamdi was found riddled with bullets in his Sana home. The killers had thrown the bodies of murdered French prostitutes beside him to blacken his legacy.
Saleh was not a man to make such mistakes. He fought in a tribal army as a teenager and then made his way up through the ranks of the military, impressing superiors with his ruthlessness and charm. He became a tank commander - a crucial skill at a time when tanks were a new and essential weapon. When Hamdi's successor, Ahmad al-Ghashmi, was blown up by a bomb hidden in a briefcase, Saleh was a compromise replacement. No one expected him to last long.
Three decades later, Saleh retains a stiff, military bearing, with a strong jaw and glinting eyes. In person he conveys an impression of fierce pride and gruffness and the natural defensiveness of a man from a small tribe who fought his way up with no more than an elementary-school education. When I interviewed him in 2008, he seemed impatient and almost angry. His eyes darted around the room as he fired off commands to his aides in a guttural voice. He bridled at questions about the American role in Yemen. "Arrogant," he said, staring at me, then adding disdainfully in English, "Cowboys."...
Read entire article at NYT
Two thousand years ago, the area east of Sana held one of the earth's most prosperous kingdoms, a lush agricultural region of spices and fruits, fed by irrigation canals from a vast man-made dam. The Romans called Yemen "Arabia Felix," or Happy Arabia. Today, the eastern region is an arid wasteland. Most people scrape by on less than $2 a day, even though they live atop Yemen's oil and gas fields. There are few ways to make a living other than smuggling, goat-herding and kidnapping. The region is also, chronically, a war zone. Tribal feuds have always been part of life here, but in recent years they have grown so common and so deadly that as much as a quarter of the population cannot go to school or work for fear of being killed. The feuds often devolve into battles with bands of raiders mowing down their rivals with machine-gun fire or launching mortars into a neighboring village. No one knows how many people die in these wars, but Khaled Fattah, a sociologist who has studied Yemen's tribes for years, told me that hundreds of victims a year is a conservative estimate....
WHEN PEOPLE TALK about the government in Yemen, they really mean one man: Ali Abdullah Saleh. Despite the country's many political parties - Islamist, Socialist, Arab nationalist - the country is run almost entirely by Saleh, and he runs it exactly like a sheik: using his own tribe as a power base and constantly making deals to head off his rivals. Saleh came to power in 1978; pictures of him at the time show a skinny young man in a military cap that looks too big for him, his eyes covered by aviator sunglasses.
At the time, most of Yemen was still just emerging from isolation. In 1962 a group of military officers, inspired and aided by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, overthrew the xenophobic religious dynasty that, from its northern base, ruled much of Yemen for centuries. Some of the young officers hoped to modernize Yemen and make it more like other Arab countries. In the mid-1970s one Yemeni president, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, tried to tame the powerful tribal sheiks, extend the state's power throughout the country and unify with South Yemen, which emerged from British occupation in 1967. Yemeni intellectuals still talk about Hamdi with nostalgia. But the sheiks and their Saudi backers were not pleased. In October 1977, Hamdi was found riddled with bullets in his Sana home. The killers had thrown the bodies of murdered French prostitutes beside him to blacken his legacy.
Saleh was not a man to make such mistakes. He fought in a tribal army as a teenager and then made his way up through the ranks of the military, impressing superiors with his ruthlessness and charm. He became a tank commander - a crucial skill at a time when tanks were a new and essential weapon. When Hamdi's successor, Ahmad al-Ghashmi, was blown up by a bomb hidden in a briefcase, Saleh was a compromise replacement. No one expected him to last long.
Three decades later, Saleh retains a stiff, military bearing, with a strong jaw and glinting eyes. In person he conveys an impression of fierce pride and gruffness and the natural defensiveness of a man from a small tribe who fought his way up with no more than an elementary-school education. When I interviewed him in 2008, he seemed impatient and almost angry. His eyes darted around the room as he fired off commands to his aides in a guttural voice. He bridled at questions about the American role in Yemen. "Arrogant," he said, staring at me, then adding disdainfully in English, "Cowboys."...