2009.09.26 - Yemeni Dilemma

I had no idea that Yemen was in trouble. Due to blithe assumptions about the oil wealth of the region, I had always pictured Yemen as a smaller version of Saudi Arabia or a less extroverted cousin of the United Arab Emirates. Which is to say a basically severe but overall internally peaceful muslim dictatorship. I pictured it pretty wrongly.

The primarily Sunni government is a republic, but apparently only really controls the cities. Various Shia-led separatist groups control much of the outlying areas, and occasionally kidnap foreign tourists in order to wrangle concessions from the central Sunni government. Mostly these have resolved peacefully, but just this past June a group of 9 were kidnapped and 7 of them were massacred (2 children were spared). So far, no big deal, really.

But then there's the fact that Yemen is running out of water. Literally running out: the main water source for the capital city of Sana'a is an ancient aquifer that fills too slowly to matter. Of what water supply there is for most of Yemen, 30% of it is devoted to the cultivation of Qat. Qat (or Khat) is a narcotic with amphetamine-like effects, and 90% of the population is addicted to it. So, they're a country of tweakers wasting their resources on their habit.

As it happens, there's an ascetic group that abhors Qat, and they're growing in influence in Yemen. You might have heard of them: Al-Queda. Apparently Al-Queda is ramping up operations in Yemen for use as a staging ground, possibly prompting their trainees to do morbid shit like, say, kidnapping tourists and possibly massacring them. Making this even more troubling, the Sunni government is more worried about the separatists, considering the Al-Queda operations as mostly Somebody Else's Problem.

Here's another thing I didn't know: Yemen is famous for producing jihadists. Many of the insurgent combatants found filtering into Iraq are from Yemen. Yemeni jihadists were also well-represented in the battle to wrest Afghanistan from the Russians... say, I wonder what happened to those guys.

So, to recap, Yemen is a country with a severe internal socio-religious rift, they're a bunch of addicts who are on the verge of running out of the resource they need to continue their habit (and live), and are being molded by anti-civilization zealots to exploit their individual willingness to declare religious war.

What can be done to help any of this? Well, I guess desalination plants are in order, and some education. But that's not going to happen, is it. Part of my dislike of humanity is the futility of it all.