See the Northern Border? That's the "Empty Quarter" of the Saudi Kingdom, the Yemeni side is roughly translated as "place of death"...enjoy your stay.
Welcome to Yemen, nestled in the extreme southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and also encompassing 200 islands in the surrounding Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. This is a poor, poor nation, with half of its 23,000,000 residents living on less than a $1.25 a day. It's not that it's small: Yemen is twice the size of Wyoming; it's just that there's nothing really to export. Yemen's only real natural resources are rock salt, quartz and fish.
I think I'm forgetting a major source of revenue...
And oil. Though not a lot of oil. Yemen exports about 23,000 BBL/oil per day. Not too bad, and surely enough to keep the economy afloat right? Actually, no. Like Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Emirates, and other nations with black gold, Yemen relies heavily on an exported work force and the technical expertise of westerners, mainly from the U.S. All told, the native workforce engaged in construction, oil, labor, services --and hell, even farming-- accounts for less than half of the Yemeni population. As you can imagine, this imported workforce doesn't please the locals; an Allah-besotted Wahabbi state.
Why yes, I suppose Yemenese Jihad does count as employment...Expect our bill for the U.S.S. Cole to be arriving shortly.
So, now we get to the crux of one of the main problems. Yemen is bustling with terrorists. As part of the Arabian Peninsula, it is -apparently- a sacred duty to ensure that there is only "one religion" on this sand-humped, oil-laden font of misery. This injunction is one that the ill-educated locals took a bit too seriously, and --like the Qutbist/Wahabbi Saudis-- believe to mean "No Christians, Jews, Animists, Wiccans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Taoists, etc..." One such Yemeni native holds this belief:
You? Again?
Despite the relatively recent news of Yemeni nutsy-ness; this is a very, very old place. Allusions to its main city, Sana'a, exist in the literature as far back as the 2nd Century BCE. The city itself is believed to have sprung up in the 6th Century BCE, and natives claim it is the oldest city in the world. It might be. However, nothing was truly ever "Yemenese", it was always a part of something else.
Sana'a...just because it's cool.
Per the good ole Wiki, since the 6th Century BCE, Yemen has always been a part of another dynasty or empire: Sabaean, Awsanian, Minaean, Qatabanian, Hadhramawtian, Himyarite, and then Ottoman. And, it wasn't poor, it was filthy rich, mainly because it was part and parcel of the lucrative spice trade of its imperial masters.
Not that spice, although I guess Yemen could be part of Arrakis.
Following Yemen's release from the prolapsed Ottomans in 1918, Yemen promptly decided to split into two sections: South Yemen was under Communist regimes, while the North became a staggering republic under the British yoke. After flirting with civil war for a few decades, in 1990 the Yemeni decided that what binds them is stronger than what seperates them, and they unified to form one of the few Republics in Arab world.
Damn Yemen. Don't you know that self-respecting republics don't go around publically executing people to satiate clerics with Shari'ah on the brain?
And, give them their due, despite being bombarded with Somali refugees, beseiged by fundamentalists, drowning in imported Westerners, having absolutely noo border between it and the Saudis, and being drastically poor, the fucked Yemens are still giving it a go.
Long term prognosis? Wondering when some other country, far scarier, will come swallow it up.
LOL
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