Category Archives: Yemen

A Swede and a camel in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Animals, camels, Photography, Travel, Yemen


by Iona Craig, The National, January 9, 2012

A Swedish adventurer crossing Yemen by camel hopes his journey will encourage tourists to see beyond the political turmoil and violence that has engulfed the country for nearly a year.

Mikael Strandberg set out on December 7 on a 380-kilometre trek across the treacherous highlands, the first leg of his Yemen venture, to disprove the purveyors of pessimism.

“I don’t know what they [the tourists] are waiting for … it is such a wonderful country with great potential,” he said, after arriving in Sanaa after a two-week march through the toughest terrain in the Arabian Peninsula.
Along with two Yemeni companions, Mr Strandberg is in the initial phase of a journey that will cross the country from the western coastal plains of Hodeida to the edge of the world’s largest sand desert, the Rub’ Al Khali, or Empty Quarter, and beyond to Oman.

The explorer, 48, who fell in love with both the country and his wife Pamela, an American, during a visit to
Yemen three years ago, holds fond memories of Sanaa and the Yemeni people.

“We decided to go and try to make a difference and give a different perspective from the one portrayed by the media,” said Mr Strandberg. Continue reading A Swede and a camel in Yemen →

South Arabia and the Berber Imaginary

Algeria, Animals, Anthropology/Sociology, Languages, Libya, Yemen


Mahri camels at the International Festival of the Sahara in Douz, Tunisia,
December 24, 2012. Photo by Sam Liebhaber.

by Sam Liebhaber

One of the long-standing myths of Berber ancestry places their origins in Yemen from whence they were dispatched to North Africa in the service of ancient Ḥimyarite kings. Although this chapter in the mythological prehistory of the Arab world can be refuted on the grounds that the Berber are indisputably indigenous to North Africa, the offhand dismissal of the South Arabian-Berber imaginary overlooks an important sociolinguistic kinship between the Berber of North Africa and one of the last indigenous linguistic communities of the Arabian Peninsula: the Mahra of Yemen and Oman.

A number of socio-cultural parallels distinguish the Berber and Mahra from the other minority language communities of the Middle East. For one, the Mahra and Berber are members of the Islamic ʾummah, unlike many of the other minority language communities of the Arab world where linguistic boundaries are frequently coterminous with religious divisions. Further, the Berber and the Mahra did not inherit a written tradition that includes religious and literary texts. As a consequence, the Mahri and Berber languages are frequently consigned to the category of “lahja,” an Arabic term that signifies any non-prestigious, vernacular idiom that lacks of historical or social value.

Without their own written history or affiliation to a prestigious, non-Arab civilization, the Mahra and Berber are more easily “willed” into historical narratives of “Arabness” (ʿurūba) than the other language minority communities of the Arab world. This motif is the mainstay of modern Arabic scholarship on Berber and Mahri genealogical and language origins. A sample of a few recent titles demonstrates this point: The Berber: Ancient Arabs (al-Barbar: ʿArab qudāmā, al-ʿArbāwī, Tunis: 2000), The Arabness of the Berber: The Hidden Truth (ʿUrūbat al-Barbar: al-Ḥaqīqa al-Maghmūra, Mādūn, Damascus: 1992), Comprehension of Arabic and the Secret of the Mahri Language (Fiqh al-ʿArabiyya wa-sirr al-lugha al-mahriyya, al-Ways, Sana’a: 2004) and Ancient Arabic and its Dialects (ie, Mahri, al-ʿArabiyya al-qadīma wa-lahajātuhā, Mārīkh, Abu Dhabi: 2000).

Even if contemporary scholarship on Mahri and Berber origins is problematic, it is conceivable that historical intersections between the Berber and the Mahra gave medieval Arab historians a justifiable basis to propose their common ancestry. Continue reading South Arabia and the Berber Imaginary →

The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

Conferences and Talks, Miniatures, Photography, Saudi Arabia, Teaching Resources, Tihama, Yemen



Slave Market in Yemen, 1237
Al-Maqamat, folio 105. Author: al-Qāsim ibn Alī al Harīrī al-Basrī. Illuminator: Yahya ben Mahmud al-Wasiti. Bibliothèque nationale de France. 021, an enslaved Ethiopian, Najah, seized power in the city of Zabid. This image represents the slave market at Zabid—at the time the capital of Yemen—in 1237. The illustration is part of “Al-Maqamat” (Assemblies), a genre of rhymed prose narrative. Both the author and the illuminator of this work were born in Iraq.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has posted online a very nice exhibition on the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean World with illustrations and scholarly text. Continue reading The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World →

Into the Snake Pit: The US and Restructuring the Military in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Obama Administration, Yemen


by Gregory Johnsen, Waq al-Waq, February 24, 2012

The closest thing the US has to a “Yemen Czar” is John Brennan, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, and so when he speaks on Yemen – as he did recently – it is a good idea to pay attention.

On Monday, the eve of Yemen’s one-man elections, Brennan was in Sanaa, and during his time there he sat down with some journalists, and the US Embassy has since published the transcript of his roundtable.

Brennan has a lot to say, and I would encourage everyone to read his full remarks, but one of the things that stood out to me was Brennan’s comments on military restructuring.

Obviously military restructuring is going to be one of the most important and most controversial processes of the post-Salih era in Yemen. Salih’s relatives and fellow tribesmen have a stranglehold on much of the military and security apparatus in Yemen. Salih spent more than 33 years building this network, and dismantling it is going to require a great deal of patience, effort and knowledge.

Imagine the security services like a giant Jenga tower and you get some idea of the problem: the US wants to remove some key blocks, without seeing the whole thing tumble down. Continue reading Into the Snake Pit: The US and Restructuring the Military in Yemen →

And the game goes on in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


The ink is barely dry on the thumbs of millions of Yemeni voters and the political rhetoric has once again heated up. One of the leaders of AQAP, Fahd al-Qasa‘a, is lashing out against the election of al-Hadi. Hardly any surprise here. But at the same time, as reported in the Yemen Post, he is blasting (so far only in words) Islah, the largest Islamic party in Yemen. For anyone who knows Yemen, this is also hardly a surprise, although many on the outside still think an “Islamist” is an “Islamist” no matter what the facts on the ground. Alienating Islah, which is as much a regional power block as a religious party, seems a sign of desperation or else a calculated outreach to disaffected southerners. Criticism of al-Hadi as a clone of the United States, Saudi Arabia and the GCC resonates well with many southerners, where AQAP hopes to make inroads. The former President of the PDRY and Vice President to Salih after unification, Ali Salim al-Baydh, has also labeled al-Hadi a hack in the grasp of foreign interests. Strange bed fellows indeed.

But the plot thickens. The statements by al-Qasa‘a were quoted in a newspaper owned by Ahmad Ali Abdullah Salih, the man who would be king after his father. You can follow his exploits on a Facebook page. The current dissension among the political rivals is anything but tranquil. It almost makes the current Republican debate circus in the United States look like a love fest. But one need not quote Machiavelli to see that the bottom line here is political power, not religious persuasion. Anyone who thinks that Zaydi vs. Shafi’i is still the way to carve Yemen up into sects or that Islah and AQAP are of the same cloth needs to do a lot of rethinking.

And the game is far from over.

The Yemen Election: No Surprises

"Arab Spring", Yemen


The Yemeni election was not destined to be a cliff hanger and never in doubt. With only one candidate, seemingly supported from many sides, millions of Yemeni citizens went to the polls yesterday with a blue thumbs up for the interim president-in-waiting, Abd Rabbou Mansour al-Hadi. Considering that al-Hadi has been in the innocuous position of Vice-President to the outgoing President Ali Abdullah Salih, for some 17 years, this changing of the guard is seemingly only at the palace gate. So some people might wonder why it was worth spending an estimated 48 million dollars to hold an election that was a foreordained outcome. The answer is not that democracy is served by having only one candidate to vote for, but democracy may be viable by the mere fact that Ali Abdullah Salih is no longer in charge. The vote for al-Hadi was less a vote for the consensus candidate al-Hadi than a vote to move on after the fall of Ali Abdullah. And despite the ongoing pockets of violence in several parts of the country, in effect this is the first relatively peaceful transfer of power where the leader is negotiated out of office rather than seeking asylum.

The issue is not whether Yemen is ready for democracy, as though democracy is pure only in its Western trappings, but if the various factions in Yemen can sort out their legitimate grievances without having a strong man in power for life. Before Ali Abdullah the tenure of Yemen’s military-coup leaders was cut short by assassinations. The fact that Ali Abdullah lasted for over three decades is remarkable, to say the least. While not the butcher that Asad has shown himself to be in Syria, the regime hardly had clean hands. But Yemen’s natural wealth has been squandered by corruption and incompetence, two problems that usually accompany dictatorships. The water is running out and so is the oil, so in a very real sense time is running out to resolve the political problems. The secessionists in the south and the Huthis in the north boycotted the election, but al-Hadi will have to bring them into the political framework. This is not an impossible task, but much now rests on the shoulders of a man who is not necessarily in control of the military, which itself is split. Continue reading The Yemen Election: No Surprises →