Yemen's rumour mill has gone into overdrive after the reported discovery of a tunnel, some 80-90 metres long, running between what appears to be a large warehouse and the home of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Supporters of the ex-dictator are claiming this was part of an assassination plot...
Blog archive: Yemen
-
12th August 2014
-
31st July 2014No comment Posted by Brian Whitaker Thursday, 31 July 2014
-
1st July 2014The British withdrawal from Aden in 1967 left Yemen divided into two states – north and south – both of them aspiring to national unity. After a lengthy period of on/off negotiation and occasional conflicts they eventually unified in 1990. Unification soon turned sour, however, and in...
-
18th June 2014Earlier this year, Yemen embarked on plans to create a federal state comprising six regions. For some, a "United States of Yemen" offers the best hope of preserving national unity in the face of separatist activism. Others fear it will exacerbate separatist tendencies, possibly leading to the...
-
16th June 2014Scene of confrontation: the Saleh mosque in Sana'a Close to the presidential palace in Sana'a is the Saleh mosque. Build at a cost of $60m and opened in 2008 by President Ali Abdullah Saleh (after whom the mosque is named), it is one of the most extravagant buildings in Yemen, with five...
-
5th April 2014Yemen is one of the least known Arab countries and one of the most misunderstood. For outsiders, it can be a baffling place – a wayward republic among the Arabian monarchies, a society that is still largely tribal (and heavily armed to boot), a place where millions while away their afternoons...
-
13th February 2014Click here to enlarge map The year 1990 marked what many Yemenis hoped would be the start of a new era when the northern and southern states – relics of British and Turkish imperialism – merged into one. The British had taken Aden as a colony in 1839 and then extended...
-
20th November 2013Presidential extension? Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi Presidential contender? Ahmad Saleh Following the uprising that led to the fall of President Saleh in Yemen, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi was...
-
13th November 2013An article in the Washington Post by David Ignatius reveals previously unreported French involvement in Yemen's Houthi conflict last year. It says that the Saudis asked the US for imagery from surveillance satellites to assist their bombing of rebel positions in Yemen, but...
-
22nd July 2013Hashim al-Asimi, a 20-year-old Yemeni, was heading home last Monday night when two men on a motorbike approached and shot him dead. Drive-by killings involving unlicensed motorbikes are a regular occurrence in Yemen and usually they are blamed on militants linked to al-Qaeda. Mostly, these...
-
21st June 2013Following my blog posts about the coming-out of Yemeni revolution activist Alaa Jarban (here and here) I received an email from another Yemeni who identifies as gay. I'm posting it below, with the sender's permission: When I read Alaa’s coming-out news on Albab, I was...
-
11th June 2013On Sunday evening, just as I was about to post my interview with Yemeni activist Alaa Jarban, I saw the news about Edward Snowden. Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA, had decided to reveal that he was the source of leaks about American government...
