Category Archives: Development

When Yemeni springs stop flowing…

Development, Environment, Yemen


غيول» اليمن تموت استنزافاً

عمر الحيان
المصدر أونلاين – الحياة

January 5, 2012

تعدّ الأنهار، أو الغيول كما يسميها اليمنيون، الشرايين الحيوية للموارد المائية في اليمن، فأرض اليمن هبة الغيول، مثلما مصر هبة النيل. ومنذ آلاف السنين اعتمدت الحضارات اليمنية المتعاقبة على جريان الغيول في الأودية، وعلى ضفافها شيّد الإنسان اليمني حضارته وأقام جنات سبأ ومعين.

ومقارنة بشبه الجزيرة العربية، أضفت الطبيعة الجبلية وكمية المتساقطات والمدرجات الخضراء طوال العام جمالاً وغنى على اليمن، ما جعل الأوروبيين يطلقون عليها لقب الأرض السعيدة. لكن الوضع اليوم مختلف، إذ تربض العاصمة صنعاء فوق حوضها المائي المهدد بالنضوب سنة 2025، وفقاً لدراسة أجراها مشروع إدارة حوض صنعاء، لتصبح أول عاصمة في العالم بلا مياه ربما بحلول سنة 2017.

مدينة صنعاء، الواقعة على ارتفاع 2150 متراً فوق سطح البحر، والمتربعة على قاع منبسط تحيط به الجبال من كل الجهات، كانت قبل أربعين عاماً منبعاً للغيول التي يعتمد عليها السكان في الشرب والزراعة، ولعلّ أشهرها الغيل الأسود الذي ينبع من شمال صنعاء.

تغيّرت ملامح المدينة، واندثرت الأراضي الزراعية تحت مباني الأسمنت المتمددة في كل الاتجاهات، مع ارتفاع عدد سكانها إلى نحو مليون وخمسمائة ألف نسمة، يعتمدون على الآبار الجوفية للحصول على مياه للشرب وللأعمال الإنشائية والصناعية والزراعية. وقد أصبح في سجلات أمانة العاصمة نحو 16 ألف بئر، بعمق بات يتجاوز 1000 متر.

يحكي الحاج حسين علي، من أهالي صنعاء، أنها كانت تعتمد على الغيول والآبار اليدوية التي لا يتجاوز عمقها عشرة أمتار. ويشرح بحسرة كيف جفت آبار صنعاء القديمة بعد «مشروع السائلة»، الذي رصف مجرى السيول وسط العاصمة.

Continue reading When Yemeni springs stop flowing… →

The Zero/Sum Game and Israel

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Development, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


It seems this year that the Republican Antique Ideas Road Show is more about flubs than substance. Having made the cable-show “debates” (which are like T-ball compared to Major League baseball) the center of political attraction, the news media and late night talk show hosts are reveling in their good luck. With the crew assembled it is inevitable that one or more of them will stick their feet (or some other insignificant part of their anatomy) into their mouths. There was no “oops” moment last night in South Carolina, no 9-9-9 upside downside and no smoking gotcha gun moment, but Rick Perry is still as insensitive to political realities as Cain is to a woman’s dignity. Perry’s litmus test for “foreign aid” would be to start at zero and let each country prove it deserves our help. Each country, as Perry admitted, includes Israel. While his campaign was quick to release a statement assuring the Israel Lobby that they would obviously have no problem proving their case for Israel, the mere suggestion that American aid to Israel be re-evaluated is flirting with rhetorical fire. If Obama had made such a suggestion, Fox News anchors would be ranting above their usual derisive decibels.

Perry’s ignorance of foreign policy, while perhaps not as deep-dished as Herman Cain’s knowledge outside the pizza box, is front and center in this case. First of all, there is a cardinal rule in both major parties not to alienate the so-called “Jewish vote”; suggesting that aid to Israel can be reevaluated is not a wise political move, especially when it echoes the Libertarian sentiments of Ron Paul. I suspect that Perry is not aware of the recent book by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt arguing that it is not in the best interests of our government to continually bow to the “Israel lobby.” Continue reading The Zero/Sum Game and Israel →

Somalia’s Famine

Development, Somalia, Teaching Resources


Severely malnourished child from southern Somalia sits in Banadir hospital… (Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP)

A Diplomatic Surge to Stop Somalia’s Famine

By Ken Menkhaus, Enough Project, September 21, 2011

[Ken Menkhaus is a professor of political science at Davidson College and a specialist on
Somalia and the Horn of Africa. He worked on famine response policy in Somalia in 1991
and served as a political advisor in the U.N. Operation in Somalia in 1993-94. He is author of
over 50 monographs, chapters, and articles on Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and has testified
five times before congressional committees on aspects of the Somali crisis.]

Somalia is dying. Three-quarters of a million people are at immediate risk of famine;
another 750,000 are refugees in neighboring countries, and 4 million – half the total
population – is in need of emergency aid. It is a calamity that could join the ranks of the
Rwanda genocide and the Darfur crisis in terms of scale and human suffering. And for
Somalia it is a terrible repeat of the 1991-92 famine that claimed 240,000 lives.

The international response to date has been shockingly inadequate – not just because
funds for humanitarian aid have fallen short, but because of the absence of political will
to take bold diplomatic action to remove impediments to the delivery of aid.

Unless this changes, the 2011 Somali famine will be to the Obama administration what
the 1994 Rwandan genocide was to the Clinton administration – a terrible stain, an
unforgiveable instance of lack of political will to push policy beyond incrementalism.
And for the Islamic world, al-Shabaab’s role in the Somali famine will be remembered as
the Islamic Khmer Rouge, in which an armed group with a deeply twisted interpretation
of the faith presides over the mass deaths of its own people. Continue reading Somalia’s Famine →

No food for thought

Development, Environment, Somalia


Politics trumps virtually every other kind of news until a natural disaster breaks through. For those of us watching the daily reports of protests in the Middle East and North Africa, it is easy to be absorbed by the sheer amount of coverage and websites available. This morning I noticed two “front page” stories that stopped me in my tracks, one in the New York Times and the other a special report on the website of al Jazeera. Freedom from dictatorial rule is a dream shared across a spectrum of people, and not only in this part of the world, but there is no ultimate freedom from Nature.

Drought is as much a killer as any ruthless dictator, which is not to diminish the negative impact of even the worst of the lot. But Saddam met his fate, as will Qaddafi. With all our technological savy, however, Nature still calls the shots, whether it is a tsunami, hurricane or prolonged drought. There is a cruel irony that some places have far too much water, especially at the wrong time, and others have no water all. No place is more miserable both politically and from drought than Somalia, a land that has been racked with civil war creating one of the worst humanitarian crises around (and there are quite a few). The camp of Daabab just across the Kenyan border already has hundreds of thousands fleeing the turmoil in Somalia. The UN estimates that 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are suffering directly from this crisis. Picture what this number means. If these people were lined up so that each one took only one foot of space the line would stretch over 630 miles. This means that if a bread line started in Boston and stretched south to Washington, D.C. it would still have almost two hundred more miles to go before it would end. A car driving the distance would take at least ten hours. And this is just for the crisis in the Horn.

What if the money spent on military weapons per year were actually spent on food aid and development assistance to people who are in danger of dying? The drones sent to destroy suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan (and now in Yemen) cost about 4.5 million each. The U.S. just gave Kenya an extra 5 million dollars in aid to help cope with the influx of refugees, about one drone’s worth. As Mark Twain said in a speech in 1881, war is “a wanton waste of projectiles.”

Daniel Martin Varisco

India Orientalized for War, 2

Anthropology/Sociology, Bangladesh, Development, India, Orientalism, Pakistan, Photography

During World War II the Smithsonian Institution issued a number of “War Background Studies.” I recently came across #18 in this series entitled Peoples of India by William H. Gilbert, Jr. (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, April 29, 1944). I was struck by the archaic presentation of images and the overtly Orientalist writing of Gilbert, who is billed as a “Specialist in Sociology and Anthropology, Legislative Reference Series, Library of Congress” and posted an excerpt from his Introduction in a previous post. The following comments are in reference to this earlier post.

First, the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words is as apt today as ever. In the last post the image provided there (and again above) of a British “sojourner” in a palanquin shows the Brit, prone and pith helmut at his side, staring outside his box of privilege, while there are two bare-chested bearers in front and two behind. What a compelling metaphor for the colonial view of India. There is no direct engagement between the foreigner and the people; they are merely there to take him from place to place by hand. Ironically, the caption notes that the palanquin is no longer used since the arrival of the railroad, so this image becomes a vestigial reminder of how the present occupies the past for its own comfort. Int his case the white man’s burden is turned upside down; the white man is quite literally the burden here.

Second, notice the adjectival mode in the paragraphs cited in the previous post. Continue reading India Orientalized for War, 2 →

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 →

Vote for Sanaa Water

Development, Sanaa, Yemen


There is currently a contest for interesting sustainable living concepts in the Philips Livable Cities Award. One of these is about collecting rainwater in the Yemeni capital from rooftops. There is a short video on this that can be accessed here. You need to scroll down to the option called “Rainwater Aggregation.” Voting continues until March 24, 2011. If you vote, you might win a trip to the handing out of the award in The Netherlands.