Yemen

Base map of Yemen by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Yemen is a country in the Middle East, formed, in 1990, from North Yemen (a part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918), and South Yemen (a British protectorate until 1967). North Yemen had existed as the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen until 1962 and as the Yemen Arab Republic thereafter, with a capital in Sanaa, and South Yemen as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, having Aden as its capital. Ali Abdallah Salih, former president of North Yemen, is the current head of state.

The country has a shoreline along the Red Sea and the island of Soqotra, and shares borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

People

Yemenis, as opposed to other peoples of the Arabian Peninsula, do not have a nomadic tradition, but have long been settled in villages and towns. They are primarily Arab, although there are African elements on the coast. Tribes, therefore, have territories, producing a very different political dynamic than, for example, when the House of Saud became a leader of the nomadic Bedouin. Yemen has a unique balance of formal and tribal governance.

When the former states of north and south Yemen were established, most resident minority groups departed. Most are Muslim, divided into:

• The majority Shafa'i school of Sunni Muslims, found in the south and southeast
• Shi'a Zaidi sect, found in the north and northwest. The Houthi resistance group says it is fighting to stop marginalization of the Zaidi.

Arabic is the official language, although English is increasingly understood in major cities. In the Mahra area (the extreme east), several non-Arabic languages are spoken.

National history

Unification took place for a number of reasons. In President Salih's 1990 speech, three factors went into a broad desire for national identity:

• "the return to a lost “golden age”
• the removal of the effects of monarchy and imperialism
• the desire for pan-Arab unity, with Yemeni unity as a preliminary step."

Economics

Among the poorest countries of the Arab world, it has had average annual growth in the range of 3-4% from 2000 through 2007. Its economic fortunes depend mostly on declining oil resources, but the country is trying to diversify its earnings. Preliminary estimates for 2008 a GDP growth rate of 4.4 percent as compared to 4.2 percent in the previous year. "Higher oil revenues and some progress in tax collections also helped to reduce the fiscal deficit to 4.3 percent of GDP and the current account deficit to around 2 percent of GDP. Given that oil prices were very high during the first nine months of the year, the overall economic performance in 2008 is disappointing and underscores the difficult challenges faced by Yemen."

In 2006 Yemen began an economic reform program designed to bolster non-oil sectors of the economy and foreign investment. As a result of the program, international donors pledged about $5 billion for development projects. In November 2006, a World Bank-sponsored international donors conference held in London raised $4.7 billion for Yemen's development; the funds are to be disbursed between 2007 and 2010.

Officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries held a donors' conference in Saudi Arabia in June 2009. Approximately USD $3.5 billion was pledged to projects in 2007 through 2010. of which about nearly 90 percent has been made available to 50 development projects.

Agriculture

Diverting resources from food crops, and indeed necessitating the import of food, is the widespread propagation of the stimulant qat.

Government

While Yemen has formal governance mechanisms, the power of tribal leadership cannot be understated. Al-Qaeda has been reported to be focusing on building tribal alliances.

Government corruption is a severe problem. Human Rights Watch reported, in December 2009, that the government was dominated by northerners, who suppressed southern interests, , although the political dynamics of Yemen are far more complex than the binary distinction between North and South.

Executive

Yemen's head of state is the President of Yemen, who appoints the head of government and Prime Minister of Yemen as well as the vice president. The cabinet is appointed by the president with advice of the prime minister.

Ali Abdallah Salih, the incumbent President, had been president of North Yemen, and became national president when the two Yemens merged. He was reelected for a seven-year term on 20 September 2006, with 77.2% of the vote, and Faysal bin Shamlan receiving 21.8%. Bin Shamlan, who had held posts in the Salih government, died, of a long illness, in 2009.

Ali Muhammad Mujjawar has been Prime Minister since 31 March 2007.

Legislative

There is a legislative branch, but it is largely advisory. The bicameral structure consists of a Presidentially-appointed Shura Council of 111 seats and an elected House of Representatives of 301 seats.

A scheduled election was deferred to 2011.

Security issues

See also: U.S. policy towards Yemen

There is more than one internal security problem in Yemen, although Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) gains the most attention. The Yemen Post reports that a major conflict between the U.S. and Yemen is that Washington will not put the Houthi movement on its list of terrorists; it also criticized civilian casualties from a 17 December raid on AQAP.

The U.K. and U.S. Embassies briefly closed, in January 2010, over what was called a specific (but unspecified) security threat; the U.S. Embassy reopened after Yememenite forces conducted a raid that killed two terrorist suspects.

Resident organizations

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are legal in Yemen and have overt presence there.

Houthi movement

Mostly in North Yemen, Houthi rebels, named for their leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, are of the Shi'a minority. A peace accord signed in July 2008, is tenuous. Houthis have crossed the border into Saudi Arabia and been attacked by the Saudis; they have asked for help from Iran.

Southern secession movement

A secessionist movement in South Yemen, headquartered in Aden, asks the question, according to the Christian Science Monitor, posed by a member of the minority Yemeni Socialist Party, "Eighty percent of Yemen’s oil comes from the south but where does the money go? It goes to Sanaa. The people of the south have not benefited from any of this wealth and now it is running out." Also unnamed, a Northern government member says “The south has all the resources and only one third of the population. We cannot allow them to secede,” said a member of the opposition party Islah in the capital, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for the party. “Northerners will fight to keep Yemen together. They know it is a matter of survival.”

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has attacked targets in the country as well as operating transnationally; a suicide bombing against Korean tourists in March 2009 was one indication of domestic security problems. The group is a merger between Saudi and Yemenite groups. Itsh actions had been largely contained to the Arabian Peninsula, but it appears responsible for the attempted suicide bombing of a U.S. aircraft on 25 December 2009.

Its leader appears to be Nasser al-Wahishi‎.

Yemen's President has offered dialogue with AQAP members, if they "...lay down their arms, renounce terrorism and return to wisdom, we are prepared to deal with them...They are a threat not only to Yemen but also to international peace and security.”