THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 150, June 7, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE EMPTYING OF YEMEN
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
HOW YEMEN THREATENS THE OUTSIDE WORLD: YEMEN AS AN EXPORTER OF VIOLENCE & TERRORISM -- AN
UNPRECEDENTED EMPTYING OUT OF YEMEN, WITH MILLIONS OF UNSKILLED & UNINVITED REFUGEES, FIRST IN THE
MIDDLE EAST, THEN IN THE WEST, DEMANDING ECONOMIC ASYLUM -- AN INCREASINGLY CATACLYSMIC WATER
SHORTFALL -- SCARCE FOOD RESOURCES, WITH THE NUMBER OF YEMENIS WHO FACE CHRONIC HUNGER GROWING
RAPIDLY -- THE PROSPECT OF ECONOMIC IMPLOSION LOOMING LARGER BY THE DAY -- YEMEN AS A POOR COUNTRY WITH
ONE OF THE HIGHEST BIRTH RATES IN THE WORLD, EXAZERBATING THE RESOURCE PROBLEM -- TOO MANY FACTIONS
COMPETING FOR POLITICAL POWER IN YEMEN -- THE GROWING POWER OF YEMENI ISLAMISTS -- CAN THE OUTSIDE WORLD
PREVENT CATASTROPHE IN YEMEN?
FULL STORY:
For the first time in its exceedingly long history, Yemen now threatens the outside world. It does so in two principal ways.
First, even before the current political upheaval began there on January 15, 2011, violence emanating out of Yemen
impinged on Westerners. As President Ali Abdullah Saleh's weak government controlled only a small part of the country,
violence had emerged both near to Yemen (such as attacks on American and French ships) and distant from it (Anwar
al-Awlaki's incitement to terrorism in Texas, Michigan, and New York). With Mr. Saleh's apparent abdication on June 4,
when he traveled to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, the central government's writ will further diminish, Yemen is set to
become an even greater exporter of violence.
But it's the second danger that staggers the mind: an unprecedented emptying out of Yemen, with millions of unskilled
and uninvited refugees, first in the Middle East, then in the West, many of them Islamists, demanding economic asylum.
The problem begins with an increasingly cataclysmic water shortfall. Gerhard Lichtenthaler, a specialist on this topic,
wrote in 2010 how, in many of the country's mountainous areas, "available drinking water, usually drawn from a spring or
a cistern, is down to less than one quart per person per day. Its aquifers are being mined at such a rate that groundwater
levels have been falling by 10 to 20 feet annually, threatening agriculture and leaving major cities without adequate safe
drinking water. Sanaa could be the first capital city in the world to run dry."
And not just Sanaa: as a London Times headline put it, Yemen "could become first nation to run out of water."
Nothing this extreme has happened in modern times, although similar patterns of drought have developed in Syria and
Iraq.
Scarce food resources, columnist David Goldman points out, threaten to leave large numbers of Middle Easterners
hungry and a third of Yemenis faced chronic hunger even before the unrest. That number is growing quickly.
The prospect of economic implosion looms larger by the day. Oil supplies are reduced to the point that "Trucks and
buses at petrol stations queue for hours, while water supply shortages and power blackouts are a daily norm."
Productive activity is proportionately in decline.
If water and food were not worrisome enough, Yemen has one of the highest birthrates in the world, exacerbating the
resource problem. With an average of 6.5 children per woman, almost 1 in 6 women is pregnant at any given time.
Today's population of 24 million is predicted to double in about 30 years.
Politics exacerbate the problem. Assuming Mr. Saleh's rule is history (the Saudis may not let him leave, too many
domestic opponents have risen against him), his successor will have difficulty ruling even the meager portion of the
country that he controlled.
Too many factions with contrary aims are competing for power – Mr. Saleh's forces, Houthi rebels in the north,
secessionists in the south, Al-Qa'ida-style forces, a youth movement, the military, leading tribes, and the Ahmar family
– for them to coalesce into a neat binary conflict. In a country governed by a "tribal system masquerading as a military
autocracy," anarchy along Somali or Afghan lines looks more probable than civil war.
Yemeni Islamists range from members of the Islah Party, which competes in parliamentary elections, to the Houthi rebels
fighting Saudi forces, to Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula. Their growing power boosts the Iranian-backed "resistance
bloc" of states and organizations. If Shi'ites prevail over Sunnis in Yemen, Tehran will gain all the more.
In combination, these several crises – ecological, economic, political, ideological – could prompt a mass, unprecedented,
and tragic exodus out of Yemen, leading to an epic anti-Yemeni backlash.
On a personal note: I was fascinated by Yemen on a visit as a student in 1972. A land so difficult of access that colonial
powers only lapped at its edges, it managed to keep its customs, including a spectacular style of architecture and a
distinctive culture of dagger-wearing men and most adults chewing qat.
Can the outside world prevent catastrophe? No. Yemen's terrain, culture, and politics all render a military intervention
untenable; and, at this time of Western deficits and Saudi dread, no one will take responsibility for its collapsing
economy. Nor will states volunteer to take in millions of needy refugees.
In this darkest hour, Yemenis are on their own.
© Daniel Pipes 2011
Originally Published in the Washington Times, June 7, 2011
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, June 7, 2011
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/9873/yemen-emptying
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and President of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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