Archive: yemen

19th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
The international conference on Yemen, due to be held in London on January 27, is expected to last only a couple of hours, Ivan Lewis, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the Middle East told parliament yesterday.  This does sound rather a short amount of time to spend on saving the country… Read more
15th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
An email received from Yemen suggests the widely-reported killingof Adbullah Mehdar (or Mihdar) may not have been the victory against al-Qaeda that it was made out to be.  My correspondent writes: "The informed thinking down here is that Mehdar was not al-Qaeda but a senior tribes-type guy, who the… Read more
14th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
Mohammed al-Alwani, managing editor of the Yemeni websitesahwa.net (linked to the Islah Party) has received a telephoneddeath threat from a man claiming to work for the government's Political Security Organisation. Harassment of Yemen's non-governmental media has been stepped up considerably in… Read more
13th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
The humanitarian crisis caused by the Houthi conflict in northern Yemen is rapidly getting worse. Yesterday the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Andrej Mahecic, announced revised estimates for the number of people displaced by the fighting – putting the total at 200,000. This is an increase of 25… Read more
11th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
An editorial in the Washington Post at the weekend argued in favour of sustained, long-term – and probably expensive – American support for Yemen. So far, so good, but several things bother me about this editorial. First, the headline: "Why it's wrong to rule out nation-building in Yemen". Maybe… Read more
8th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
It's an unfortunate fact of life that whenever Yemen becomes front-page news, sensible commentary about the country becomes harder to find. Here, though, are two pieces worth reading. One is from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. The other – appropriately headed "Aiding Yemen or aiding Saleh?" – is from… Read more
4th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
For the first time in several months there are renewed hints of a possible ceasefire in northern Yemen's Houthi conflict. President Ali Abdullah Salih has set out a revised list of six conditions: 1. A full ceasefire, the re-establishment of safe passage on roads, and the surrender of mountain… Read more
4th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
Yemeni security forces opened fire on a sit-down protest outside the offices of the banned al-Ayyam newspaper in Aden yesterday,according to Reporters Without Borders. The Paris-based press freedom organisation accused President Salih's government of "taking advantage of support from foreign powers… Read more
4th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
Concerned about the "regional and global threat" from terrorists in Yemen, Gordon Brown is to host an emergency summit in London later this month. Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, is a country that tends to be off the radar except when something untoward happens affecting… Read more
2nd January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
The British prime minister's decision to call an international summit on Yemen is widely reported this morning. It appears to have support from the US and the EU, and there are suggestions that Saudia Arabia and other Gulf states may get involved. The talks will be held in London on 28 January,… Read more