Word: yemen
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With the current war raging, Yemen is getting a lot of support (though how much is unclear) from its larger wealthier neighbor, Saudi Arabia, which joined the fight last month. Separately, President Barack Obama recently requested $65 million for Yemen to help battle terrorism and al-Qaeda...
...Houthis says their quest for cultural and religious rights since 2004 intensified in August, when the government responded by razing villages in an assault the Yemenis called "Operation Scorched Earth." Yemen and Saudi Arabia say the Houthis, part of a Shi'ite Muslim sect known as the Zaydis, are receiving their funding, weapons and training from Iran in a bid to destabilize the region.(See pictures of the hidden war in Yemen...
Destabilizing is right on one count. Yemen is already reeling under the converging crises of lawlessness, growing poverty, a water crisis, a looming al-Qaeda threat, a southern separatist movement, and oil reserves that are quickly running dry. Indeed, analysts cite this multiplicity of factors as presaging Yemen as a failed state. "I think the major challenge for Yemen is really economic development," Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker Abdullah Al-Qirbi told TIME. "It could be a failed state in some aspects, certainly, if it doesn't get the support it needs...
...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...