All posts by tabsir

The Yemen Protests and the Environment

"Arab Spring", Development, Environment, Yemen


The Dragon Blood Tree is native to Socotra. It gets its name from the red sap that the trees produce, which was used in the past by the locals for healing. Kay van Damme

Foreign researchers flee Yemen leaving conservation programmes in trouble

As the protests in Yemen intensify, foreign and local biologists are worried about the future of conservation efforts on the biodiversity rich island of Socotra.

by Mohammed Yahia, Nature Middle East, March 22, 2011

Public protests in Yemen that began on 27 January have escalated, with security forces now using extreme violence to disperse demonstrators. Snipers killed over 50 people last Friday with shots mostly in the heads and chests. Several generals and soldiers have defected and now side with the protesters. As Western countries warn their citizens against travel to the country and are evacuating those already there, biologists are worried that conservation efforts in one of the region’s richest areas for biodiversity, is under threat.

Socotra Archipelago, dubbed the Galápagos of the Indian Ocean, is one such place concerning biologists. It lies about 380 kilometres south of mainland Yemen in the Arabian Sea. The main island, Socotra, is the largest Arabian island. With over 300 unique plant species, a third of the island’s flora is endemic, found nowhere else in the world. More than 90% of the reptile species on the island are unique.

“In marine habitats, the extensive coral reefs bordering the island harbour a remarkably high biodiversity and provide an important source for local inhabitants. Both local culture and nature are strongly intertwined and mutually dependent,” says Kay van Damme, an ecologist at Ghent University, Belgium, and chairman of Friends of Socotra. Continue reading The Yemen Protests and the Environment →

Yemen’s future …

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Yemen


Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar

Yemen’s future hinges on its two most powerful men
By Sudarsan Raghavan, The Washington Post, Thursday, March 31, 11:25 PM

SANAA, Yemen — They are from the same village, the same tribe and the same clan. Once as close as brothers, they rose together in Yemen’s military, shared the same political vision, the same lofty desires. One is a conservative Islamist with reputed links to Osama bin Laden. The other is one of America’s closest counterterrorism allies.

For 32 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar have controlled this poor but strategic Middle East nation, the former as its ubiquitous president and the latter as its invisible yet most influential military leader. Now, they are engaged in a highly personal battle to shape the future of Yemen and their own places in history.

“They are like Siamese twins, one body with two heads,” said Hassan Zaid, a top opposition leader. “Now, each head is trying to cut off the other’s head and take control of the whole body.”

Over the past two months, the momentous events in Yemen have echoed those around North Africa and the Middle East: a populist rebellion, fueled by decades of injustice, rising up to demand its leader’s ouster.

But the twist that has emerged in the past two weeks has injected a narrative of Shakespearean proportions, one tightly focused on the two rivals, shrewd men from humble beginnings who grew wealthy and powerful amid allegations of corruption and ruthlessness, and who have now turned on each other. Continue reading Yemen’s future … →

Round about Sanaa (really round about)

Architecture, Photography, Sanaa, Yemen


With all the protests making the news about Yemen, it is important to remember why Sanaa is such an extraordinary city. There is a fascinating 360º view of the old part of the old city of Sanaa in Yemen. Check it out at http://www.360cities.net/map#lat=13.70174&lng=50.23665&name=sanaa-sunset&zoom=5. There are also several other panoramic views of Yemen on the site, including scenes of Jibla, Shibam Hadramawt, Rayyan Beach along the Gulf of Aden coast, and of the Dragon’s Blood tree in Socotra.

My thanks to Dr. Mohammed Jarhoum for pointing out this site.

Weapons of Mass Arm Twist Dealing

"Arab Spring", Books You Should Read, Libya, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue

As millions of dollars worth of U.S. and NATO military weapons are now raining down on the millions of dollars worth of weapons in Libyan leader Qaddafi’s recently expanded arsenal, there is a scenario that must make all the arms manufacturers of the world unite in smugness. Over a month ago Der Spiegel ran an article with the following news:

Helicopters from Italy, communication technology from Germany: When the arms embargo against Libya was lifted in 2004, the country’s dictator Moammar Gadhafi went on a shopping spree in the European Union. Now he is using those weapons against his own people — to the EU’s shame… According to an EU report, European Union member states provided the dictator with defense equipment worth €344 million ($474 million) in 2009 alone.

It must be a bit easier to destroy Qaddafi’s military machine, since the ones now destroying it are the ones responsible for creating it. One used to hear the fatalistic mantra: the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. It seems that the EU and NATO have replaced the Lord these days. I am not in any way defending Qaddafi, a brutal maniac who has plundered Libya for over four decades. Nor am I convinced one way or the other if the no-fly-in-the ointment strategy will work. But I recall the poignant words of author Jean Makdisi in her brilliant Beirut Fragments (Persea Books, 1990, p. 45):

“I ponder, for the ten thousandth time since this damnable war began, on the happiness of the manufacturers and salesmen of arms and ammunition. Every roar, whistle, and crash translates itself in my mind to the sound of a cash register, the tinkle of champagne glasses, and the hum of conversation at a very expensive restaurant somewhere. The glisten of shrapnel, the smoke billowing out of someone’s ruined home, the rumble of the big guns, are all echoed in my imagination as the glitter of jewelry, the smoke of cigars lazily puffed out of appreciative lips, and the rolling of drums for a hip-swinging, carefree dance. The screams of a terrified, burning child become the laughter of those who reap the gains of this havoc.”

Talk on Yemen

"Arab Spring", Conferences and Talks, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, Zaydi


Abdullah Hamiddaddin will be providing a lecture entitle “Whither Yemen” on Thursday, March 31, 2011 at Columbia University in 208 Knox Hall from 12:30-2:00 pm. the discussion will be about how to frame the current struggle in Yemen, the importance of tribal politics, and the overrated threat of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This is sponsored by Columbia’s Middle East Institute.

For more details, click here:

Charles J. Adams (April 24, 1924 – March 23, 2011)

Islam in America, Islam: Introduction, Pakistan, Scholars


Islamic Studies building, McGill University, Montreal

[I post here a letter from Richard Martin on the passing of Charles Adams.]

Dear Colleagues,

It is with great sadness that I learned yesterday that Charles J. Adams died in Mesa, Arizona on March 23 of this year. During his final years he lived in retirement in Arizona, suffering from the steady deteriorating effects of Parkinson’s Disease, which affected his body but not his clear, sharp mind. I had the good fortune to be able to visit Charles three weeks before his demise in his retirement village in Mesa, Arizona, where he lived with a friend and companion who looked after him in recent years. We had lunch together and got out books and reminisced about the evolution of the field of Islamic Studies during our lifetime, over which he had exerted such great influence through his many student and writings. He nonetheless felt sad and helpless that in his declining state of health he was powerless to any longer be a voice in the academic study of religion in the current climate of suspicion, fear and hate about Islam in the public sphere. Continue reading Charles J. Adams (April 24, 1924 – March 23, 2011) →

Faith Abundant

Gender and Sexuality, Literature, Morocco

by Anouar Majid, Tingis Redux, March 16, 2011

Many years ago, while sitting with a friend in a café in the Moroccan city of Tangier, I expressed my unfailing admiration for Mohamed Choukri, author of the acclaimed memoir For Bread Alone (al-khubz al-hafi) and its sequel Streetwise (the somewhat inexplicale translation of what should have been The Time of Error, or zamanu al-akhta’). I told my friend, a Ministry of Justice official on his way up to a judgeship, that what I liked most about Choukri was his literary courage (al jur’a al-adabiya). My friend, a conservative man with a classical education in Islamic Studies, dismissed such courage as mere silliness, the ranting of a down-and-out man seeking attention and literary fame. Our society, my friend pronounced, was light years away from appreciating such openness and candor. We trade in appearances, not in existential truths. We reward conformity and punish daring acts of individualism.

Things have changed since then, and Choukri is now universally acclaimed across Morocco and much of the Arab world. The die-hard Tangerian is long gone, too, as is my friend, who, one day, collapsed in Fez and never got up. Yet I now find myself asking the same question about the mesmerizing memoir of a Moroccan woman that kept me engrossed for two days straight. The more I read into Wafa Faith Hallam’s The Road from Morocco, the more I realized I was holding a book that—if all literary lights are not dimmed by convention—should become an instant classic. Continue reading Faith Abundant →