Yemen: More Than a Global Security Threat

Why is the U.S. pledging to back a foreign military whose special operations forces have been accused of egregious human rights abuses?

Earlier this month, the U.S. promised to help the Yemeni military beef up its special operations forces. The Pentagon has been offering Yemeni security forces handouts all year: In February, for example, the Pentagon appropriated $150 million in military assistance for Yemen — an $83 million dollar increase over the previous year. Unfortunately, very little was offered to explain what would become of such a large chunk of change. (All that in addition to the Obama administration’s recent decision to sanction the targeting of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American cleric residing in Yemen. )

Such funds, it’s been reported, are intended to help the country target Al Qaeda. But we’re talking about Yemen here, a country that ranks 111th on the 2009 U.N. Human Poverty Index. It’s a country that’s received far less U.S. aid than most in the region. When it comes to Yemen, it seems the U.S. sees little more than a security threat.

Yemen has long represented the confluence of the region’s struggles with violent conflicts and resource shortages. The Sunni-led government has clashed with Houthi rebels in the North since last summer, even as it struggles to contain secessionist rumblings in the south.

Water shortage has intensified these conflicts and makes day-to-day conditions dire for Yemeni civilians, who are caught in the political and environmental crossfire. Yemen is in the top 10 most water-stressed countries on the planet, such that Sana’a could become the world’s first capital city to run dry.

Water shortage in Yemen is not new. For as long as humans have inhabited the land on the Arabian peninsula, people have sustained themselves using a complex irrigation system and sustainable farming practices. But the country does need help. The Yemeni government spends only 7% of its GDP on social programs. Not surprisingly, only 31% of people have access to sewage, while only 45% of Yemen’s rural population have access to safe water.

And yet despite the escalating public health and security conditions, U.S. rhetoric on Yemen has been harsh at best, framing it as little more than an ill-governed haven for the next batch of terror plotters, instead of what it is: a poverty-stricken, drought-plagued nation whose people are left with very few options. So far, we seem more interested in targeting individual suspected Al Qaeda operatives than addressing the conditions that led such groups to operate in Yemen in the first place.

Photo Credit: YXO

Laura Dean