Center for a New American Security

Yemen’s political crisis seems to be worsening. On Sunday, New York Times Magazine writer Robert Worth’s recent account was simply titled “Yemen on the Brink of Hell.” Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that “Yemen [has] been rendered ungovernable.”

While Yemen’s embattled President Saleh continues to hold onto power, many Yemenis continue to struggle in the face of perennial challenges that have beleaguered this Middle East nation. In particular, Worth’s story illustrates how Yemen’s resource challenges are exacerbating the situation for many struggling to live day to day.  “For those not on the payroll, life has gotten measurably worse since the uprising began at the start of the year, with food prices rising fast and water and cooking gas increasingly scarce,” Worth wrote. “If these trends continue, the appeal of hard-line Islamists or other extremists may grow, upsetting all calculations about the loyalty of Yemen’s military or its tribes.” 

The Yemeni government has had a poor track record with managing its resource challenges in a sustainable way. One need only look to the way in which the government has dealt with the state’s acute water crisis to see how vulnerable its resource management practices are: the government has used its oil revenue to subsidize otherwise expensive water extraction practices without addressing the need to manage its water resources better, for example, through conservation practices. But the country’s oil wells are running dry – with some experts predicting that the country could run out of exportable oil by 2017 – leaving the government without the wherewithal to continue to buy its way out of trouble.

Friday brings the conclusion of Yemen Week for the blog as well as the long awaited Photo of the Week.

As the coastal waters near Yemen continue to witness acts of Somali piracy, international forces continue their efforts to police the Gulf and surrounding waters, an area roughly four times the size of Texas. The above photo features a member of the U.S. Coast Guard gathering navigational information from Yemini fishermen to assist in U.S. anti-piracy efforts. A cooperative relationship with local populations, especially the fishermen who navigate the waters off Yemen’s coastline, could prove to be an important asset in overall U.S. goals in the region, a fact that other nations patrolling the Gulf of Aden may have recently learned the hard way.

Could aid dependency undermine efforts to bring stability to Yemen? Amid growing instability associated with acute water scarcity, dwindling oil revenue, continued calls for secession from the South, and conflict in the North between al-Houthi-led militias and government soldiers, many Yemenis – at least 175,000 – have been internally displaced and taken refuge in temporary camps where they may find a modicum of relief with access to food, water, and other aid rations. And given the government’s inability to provide, in many cases, the most basic public services, many of the displaced people are not looking to go home – at least any time soon.

In Yemen, unsustainable natural resource management and agricultural practices and a dependence on oil revenue to sustain otherwise expensive water extraction may be precursors to more extensive environmental collapse that could undermine Yemen’s economic development and stability if the government does not improve its environmental stewardship. Already these issues have led, in part, to low-level conflict and left many Yemenis without access to food, water, and other vital resources to sustain their own livelihoods. These dynamics are part of what’s driven many Yemenis from their homes to internally displaced person (IDP) camps.

In honor of Yemen Week here on the blog we wanted to to bring to your attention an oldie but a goodie, a super interesting 5 Questions with Someone Interesting over water issues and Yemen between Natural Security blogger Will Rogers and Gregory Johnsen, former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen and Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. 

Without any further introduction, let's get to the questions. . . again.

Yemen is becoming one of the most closely watched countries in the Middle East; ranked 18th in Foreign Policy’s “Failed State Index.” And one of the issues that we have been curious about here in the Natural Security program is how Yemen’s water crisis is combining with existing trends in Yemen to undermine stability and contribute to violence. I recently spoke with Gregory Johnsen, a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern studies at Princeton University and a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, who spoke with me about his experiences and helped me better understand the interplay between Yemen’s water scarcity and the myriad security challenges there. 

Johnsen has written for a variety of publications including Foreign Policy, The American Interest, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe and West Point's CTC Sentinel. He is also a co-contributor to Waq al-Waq, a blog that offers nuanced analyses of Yemen’s history and political affairs.

Rogers: As a Fulbright Fellow you spent your time in Yemen and were able to see firsthand how severe water scarcity engages existing issues, such as a weak central government and rising population growth, to contribute to instability and violence. Then you returned and co-authored this great piece in Foreign Policy back in February aptly titled “The Wells Run Dry.” I’m curious – how have you seen the situation in Yemen change since you published this article?

Yesterday an article in the LA Times caught my eye. As if Yemen didn’t have enough to worry about, it now has a good old fashion revolution in the south, with separatists declaring, “Yemen is not our country. South Arabia is our country.” So what does this have to do with Natural Security? In the words of a South Arabian activist “Look around. We have oil and gas and fertile lands and ports.”

In addition to complaints over land and oil, lack of services such as education and infrastructure also top the secessionists’ list of issues with the Yemeni state.

With the majority of known Yemen’s oil located in the South, governmental development of southern oil (and to a lesser extent natural gas) reserves has been a key grievance for South Arabian rebels, who have begun “opposing with manly firmness [Yemen’s] invasions on the rights of the people.” The region’s residents too have taken a similar stance, or so suggests the reported 70 percent of residents looking to secede and their recent kidnapping of Chinese oil workers in the South.

While doing some background work on Yemen, I came across this nifty graph. I don’t think I need to explain just how wide the gap between the world average (per capita) usage of energy and Yemen’s average is; clearly Google has done that for me.

A few weeks back, upon receiving my ever-treasured Wired in the mail, I read and fell hopelessly in love with a piece by Clive Thompson, “Why We Should Learn the Language of Data.” It is a call for the importance of understanding the barrage of statistics we hear daily, and ends in a beautiful line: “Statistics is the new grammar.”

Writing about statistics seems to be an increasingly popular nerd sport. Yesterday’s New York Times magazine included another thought-provoking piece on the numbers we choose to represent non-numerical human phenomena. It pleas:

Unless we know how things are counted, we don’t know if it’s wise to count on the numbers. The problem isn’t with statistical tests themselves but with what we do before and after we run them. First, we count if we can, but counting depends a great deal on previous assumptions about categorization. Consider, for example, the number of homeless people in Philadelphia…Is someone homeless if he’s unemployed and living with his brother’s family temporarily?

• Pakistan's energy sector is in need of support, and Pakistan is looking to Iran to support it, according to UPI
• AFP reports that the UN has cut funding to alleviate food issues in Yemen
• According to an article from Biofuels Digest, the Department of Energy has awarded a California company $4.7million to research new initiatives in carbon capture and sequestration technology
• Russia's State Duma looks to draft new legislation to protect its seas from oil spills, in wake of the recent Gulf oil leak, according to ITAR-TASS
• A block of Nile states may move forward with a water treaty without the support of Egypt and Sudan, reports Circle of Blue

Last week, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu undertook what I would characterize as an energy diplomacy tour of the Middle East, spending the first two days of his four day trip in Saudi Arabia, followed by a visit to Abu Dhabi in the UAE, and finally Qatar. While it was certainly exciting to me the trip as a whole didn't get too much coverage, so to save you the hassle of rifling through the annals of Google, I've provided you with a short recap of each day.  

Day One (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia):

Secretary Chu kept a tight schedule, meeting with multiple officials. The day began with a discussion with King Abdullah and Saudi Petroleum and Resource Minister Ali Al Naimi. Topics of their talk included climate change, energy security, and the future role of alternative resources.  Chu brought these topics together for the public during a speech at the International Energy Forum Secretariat, which hit on some solid natural security points. Chu also outlined the added stress that climate change could add to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, by increasing levels of water scarcity – a problem already endemic in areas such as Yemen, whose instability has already been a thorn in the Kingdom's side. 

Yemen is becoming one of the most closely watched countries in the Middle East; ranked 18th in Foreign Policy’s “Failed State Index.” And one of the issues that we have been curious about here in the Natural Security program is how Yemen’s water crisis is combining with existing trends in Yemen to undermine stability and contribute to violence. I recently spoke with Gregory Johnsen, a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern studies at Princeton University and a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, who spoke with me about his experiences and helped me better understand the interplay between Yemen’s water scarcity and the myriad security challenges there.

Johnsen has written for a variety of publications including Foreign Policy, The American Interest, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe and West Point's CTC Sentinel. He is also a co-contributor to Waq al-Waq, a blog that offers nuanced analyses of Yemen’s history and political affairs.

Rogers: As a Fulbright Fellow you spent your time in Yemen and were able to see firsthand how severe water scarcity engages existing issues, such as a weak central government and rising population growth, to contribute to instability and violence. Then you returned and co-authored this great piece in Foreign Policy back in February aptly titled “The Wells Run Dry.” I’m curious – how have you seen the situation in Yemen change since you published this article?