Word: yemen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Instead, with Saada in central focus, the Yemeni government is spending its dwindling funds at an alarming rate. Yemen's budget deficit is rising, and the conflict has become increasingly complex and far-reaching, with tribes that had not previously been involved joining the fight on each side...
...conflict up north - and the resources it's consuming - may be undermining efforts to deal with Yemen's other troubles. Nor is it certain that Iran is actually involved in the conflict. "There just isn't any evidence," says Gary Sick, a Persian Gulf expert at Columbia University. He says that waving the Iran card is a useful propaganda ploy in the Arab Middle East. "Although they may have had some evidence of Iranian rhetorical support for the Houthis, I think they took advantage of that limited amount of evidence and blew it up into something bigger to, in effect...
...Iran has been publicly linked to militant groups Hizballah and Hamas, as well as Shi'ite militias in Iraq, its Houthi link is tenuous. Zaydi Shi'ism is distinct from the "Twelver" Shi'ism practiced in Iran, and Houthi demands have centered on rights and resources, something Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnson says is rooted in Houthi feelings of marginalization following the 1962 Yemeni revolution. Observers are also quick to point out that Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh is himself a Zaydi...
Some point more cynically to a Saudi agenda lurking behind it all. The Saudis, Yemen's largest source of annual aid, were suspiciously quick to join the fight, says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen's Political Development Forum. The Saudis are troubled by Yemen's increasing lawlessness, its porous border, and the ability of local villagers to cross at will. "Now because of this war, they will have a chance to make a fence. And more than that, they will have a chance to clear the area on their side, take all of the villages off and make...
...against the Houthis isn't the grand regional proxy war that Yemen and Saudi Arabia are alleging, regional analysts say it could very well become one if the key players keep crying wolf. "One of the things that the Yemeni government has gotten particularly skilled at doing over the past several years is linking their own domestic crises to larger regional and western concerns," says Johnson, noting that at other times Yemen has attempted to link the Houthis and al-Qaeda, a militant Sunni group that has openly targeted Shi'ites in other contexts, such as Iraq. "I think...