Word: sana
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...Such hostages were rarely harmed until this June, when nine foreigners were kidnapped - including two German women and a South Korean woman whose mutilated bodies were later discovered by shepherds. After the attack, the government effectively stopped granting permission to foreigners - including journalists - to travel anywhere but the capital, Sana'a, and the coastal region around the port city of Aden. (See pictures of conflict in Yemen...
Western diplomats in Sana'a, however, suspect that the real culprits behind this year's attacks on foreigners come from the growing band of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Under pressure in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, al-Qaeda is turning the lawless mountain areas of Yemen into a new staging area. U.S. officials and terrorism experts don't think Yemen is close to becoming a failed state like Somalia - just across the Red Sea. But there are warning signs that things could get worse: the Houthi rebellion, secessionists in the south, Somali pirates menacing the coast, an economy that...
...region sent hundreds of fighters to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and, to judge by the number of captured, killed or identified insurgents in Iraq, continues to be one of the biggest suppliers of fighters to regional conflicts. It's common knowledge in the tearooms of Sana'a and in Western embassies that the government of northern Yemen used jihadis to help defeat the south in the civil war that ended in 1994. But the symbiotic relationship between the government and al-Qaeda shifted after 9/11 and the American invasion of Iraq, when the Yemeni government worried that...
...worried that Yemen isn't taking the threat seriously enough. In July, General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, visited the country to encourage President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be more aggressive. "The view from Sana'a doesn't match the view from Washington," says Gregory Johnsen, a U.S. expert on Yemen. "The Yemeni government is much more concerned with fighting the Houthis in Saada and with the secessionists in the south. Al-Qaeda ranks a distant third. The government doesn't see it as a Yemeni problem. [It sees it as] a foreign problem...
...arable land is devoted to the plant, which accounts for approximately a third of the country's water usage. And Yemen has very little water to begin with; almost all of it comes from underground aquifers filled thousands of years ago and replenished only very slowly. Experts predict that Sana'a, a city of almost 2 million, could run dry in as few as 10 years. The social upheaval from such an environmental catastrophe and the refugees it could produce might create an even more perfect breeding ground for al-Qaeda. "I tell [the U.N. refugee agency] that they should...