Category Archives: Yemen

Kidnapping of Foreigners in Yemen 2010-2014

"Arab Spring", Terrorism Issue, Yemen

Changing Tactics & Motives – Kidnapping of Foreigners in Yemen 2010-2014

A study conducted by Safer Yemen.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

From 2010 to March 2014 there have been 47 realised kidnapping cases and more than 76 foreign victims held by kidnappers in Yemen. The country has witnessed a dramatic increase in kidnappings in this period, going from only one incident in 2010 to 19 in 2013, the highest number of incidents recorded in one year since the kidnapping of foreigners started in Yemen in the late-1980s.

The kidnappings in Yemen can be broken down into three different types: tribal, political and criminal. Each type involves a distinct set of perpetrators, motives and tactics; however, in the past three years these have often overlapped and the actors and motives of a kidnapping are often blurred. Prior to 2011, almost all kidnappings were tribal, with only one case of criminal kidnapping and very few political kidnappings. Post-2011, most kidnappings have been criminal and political and with high impact due to increased levels of violence, prolonged captivity, ill-treatment of victims and complex negotiations.

There are a number of reasons behind this trend, which have emerged from the political crisis in 2011 and the subsequent political transition. First, the Yemeni state’s capacity to provide security throughout the country has been severely restricted since 2011. Second, in parallel to tribal kidnappings in rural areas, a new form of criminal and political kidnappings in urban centres has emerged in recent years and has specifically targeted the international community and served as a political pressure tool. Third, the lack of political, legal or military consequences for kidnappers has inspired more actors to get involved. Fourth, the payment of high ransoms in several high-profile kidnapping cases involving European citizens has contributed to a perception that kidnapping is a highly lucrative activity. Continue reading Kidnapping of Foreigners in Yemen 2010-2014 →

Yemen from Janna to Jahannam

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Huthis, Obama Administration, Salafi, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, Zaydi

When I first arrived in Yemen, early in 1978, I found a virtual janna, a country building itself up by the sandalstraps, people who were welcoming, tribesmen who did more than wear their honor on their sleeves, a sense that the future would bring good things. It was not a land frozen in time, despite the lack of infrastructure and Western amenities, but a force for change as Yemenis took to entrepreneurship as second nature (which it, of course, always was). Development was in the air and on the ground, as bilateral and United Nations agencies poured money into Yemen, much of it ineffectual and wasted. In 1978 USAID was sponsoring a major sorghum improvement project in Yemen, a boondoggle that did little more than collect seeds for the University of Arizona’s seed bank. Given what I learned about Yemeni farmers’ knowledge, they should have been giving advice to the United States on how to grow sorghum. Much ado was made about building up the capacity of the central government, although the money flowing in through the various programs invited corruption rather than sustainable growth. Still, I have felt over the years that Yemenis, by and large, have the resolve and grit to persevere.

In the past three and a half decades Yemen has experienced ups and downs. A population estimated around 6 million or less back then has skyrocketed to some 24 million today. With the decline in subsistence agriculture, which at least filled stomachs, poverty and malnutrition are greater today than they were in 1978. The devastating loss of remittance wealth, which fueled Yemen’s grass-roots development in the 1980s, has led to chronic unemployment. The much touted unification in 1990, a kalashnikov wedding in hindsight, could not overcome the power politics and regional rivalry that have played out in the last two decades. The removal, or at least side-lining, of Ali Abdullah Salih has thus far not resulted in progress towards a peaceful solution to Yemen’s agonizing conflicts. The problem is not so much the inability of Yemen to renew itself, but the continual interference from outside forces. Continue reading Yemen from Janna to Jahannam →

South Arabian Agriculture

Agriculture, Archaeology and Antiquities, Yemen

The following is the abstract of a Yemeni MA thesis on agricultural crops in ancient South Arabia.

زراعة المحاصيل الزراعية في اليمن القديم
الباحث: أ / ليبيا عبد الله ناجي صالح دماج
الدرجة العلمية: ماجستير
الجامعة: جامعة صنعاء
الكلية: كلية الآداب
القسم: قسم التاريخ
بلد الدراسة: اليمن
لغة الدراسة: العربية
تاريخ الإقرار: 2009
نوع الدراسة: رسالة جامعية

الملخص:
موضوع هذه الدراسة “المحاصيل الزراعية في اليمن القديم” لا تتناول ماهية تلك المحاصيل فقط وإنما تتناول كل ما يتعلق بها من كافة الجوانب، من حيث البدايات الأولى لظهور الزراعة في اليمن القديم، والآراء المختلفة والمتباينة حول ذلك، وما كان يزرع من محاصيل آنذاك. وكذا بداية ظهور الري والاعتماد عليه في سقي المزروعات. بالإضافة إلى توضيح الوسائل المستخدمة في العملية الزراعية خلال تلك الحقب الزمنية. ثم تدرس باستفاضة المواسم الزراعية وفصول السنة وشهورها، بالإضافة إلى مصادر المياه المتمثلة بالأمطار وطرق الري المختلفة والمتناسبة مع هذا المصدر، منذ سقوطها على الجبال وانحدارها نحو الأودية وحتى وصولها إلى الأراضي الزراعية. وكذا المصدر الثاني وهو المياه الجوفية، وما يتطلب من حفر أبار لاستخراج تلك المياه من باطنها. كما تتطرق الدراسة إلى كيفية تقسيم المياه بين الأراضي الزراعية، والقائم بتلك العملية.
Continue reading South Arabian Agriculture →

Thimar: Research on Agriculture in the Arab World

Agriculture, Development, Environment, Yemen


[Thimar is a new organization that promotes research on agriculture, environment and labor in the Arab World. Check out their website, which is still under production.]

Problematic

The lands which formed a cradle of plant and animal domestication exhibit today the greatest ‘food insecurity’ of any region in the world. Stark dependence on imported food is often attributed, on the production side, to aridity exacerbated by climate change, soil salinity, and under-capitalized small land-holdings, and on the consumption side, to population growth and change in food cultures. Dominant political and economic interpretations would have us see the region’s food deficit as ‘natural’ (a result of aridity, population growth and the force of the market).

But this argument dismisses the centrality of economic, political and social policies. An important example is Syria, where changes in policy from the end of the 1980s have led the country by 2007 to face, for the first time in its history, major national food insecurity and growing rural child-malnutrition. A comparison with Iran since the late 1980s is telling. While Syria lost industrial production, scaled back support for agriculture, and failed to develop a national consensus about the relation between wealth distribution and population policy, Iran sustained the growth of its manufacturing sector, strengthened its programme of national food-security, continued to engage with pastoral producers, and opened a public debate on population and development which led to an effective family-planning programme operating through the country’s public primary healthcare service. Continue reading Thimar: Research on Agriculture in the Arab World →

A Hadrami Million

"Arab Spring", Aden, Tribalism, Yemen

Southern Yemeni Activists Prepare for Nationwide Rally
by Susanne Dahlgren, MERIP, April 24, 2014

For the first time, a Million-Person Rally or milyuniyya will be held in Yemen’s oil-rich eastern province of Hadramawt. It is being called milyuniyyat al-huwiya al-junubiyya or the Million-Strong Rally for Southern Identity.

The mass demonstration aims to unify all of the southern Yemeni protests against the Sanaa regime. For two years now, milyuniyya rallies have been held in Aden, the hub of southern Yemeni revolution, gathering large crowds of men from all over the southern provinces and women from less far-flung areas to give voice to the concerns of southerners before the world. The object of the April 27 rally is to commemorate the 1994 “war against the south” that led to the downfall of the southern army and the solidification of ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih’s rule, understood by many southerners as a northern occupation. The choice of Mukalla, Hadramawt’s main port, as the site for the demonstration is significant; only months earlier tribes gathered to form the Hadramawt Tribes Confederacy, in order to resist what is considered a systematic looting of the fruits of the land by the regime, which is distributing business deals to its cronies while marginalizing locals. The tipping point was the murder of a notable tribal sheikh at an army post, which sparked a full-blown popular uprising. Continue reading A Hadrami Million →