Robert Worth reviews books by Bonnefoy, Lackner and Brandt on Yemen’s catastrophe
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Tag: yemen
Salafi mission calls into question Saudi concept of moderation – LobeLog
MBS spreading Salafism in Yemen.
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Al Jazeera bureau in Yemen forcibly closed | Al Jazeera
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Au Yémen, les Emirats arabes unis se rapprochent des Frères musulmans
UAE joins KSA in engaging Yemeni MB party Islah.
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Saudi barred Yemeni president from going home, officials say
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Reporting on Yemen
A Yemeni reporter for the Washington Post talks about a war that is not too close for comfort:
Increasingly, Sanaa is turning into a ghost town. The universities, once bustling with students, have closed. So, too, have many businesses. People are packing their belongings into their pickup trucks and sedans and driving to far-away villages, hoping to avoid the air raids that have turned the mountains surrounding Sanaa into fiery-orange volcanoes.
The campaign, with a coalition of Arab nations, is an effort to dislodge Houthi rebels sweeping through Yemen.
The evenings are what alarm me most. That’s when the bombings intensify.
With Sanaa increasingly deprived of electricity, the lack of lighting creates an eerie darkness that is punctuated by the flashes — and explosions that quickly follow — that briefly illuminate my home town.
I’m also increasingly away from my wife. I’ve moved her family into our home because of the air raids. To make room, I’ve been staying at my father’s house, which is across town. I think that the family is safer this way, but all I want is to be home with my wife.
I spend my evenings trying to sleep, but often I can’t. I think about how I’ll report on the following day’s events. Will the Houthis capture the southern port city of Aden? I then inevitably ponder my own mortality. Will my family be killed in the attacks? Will I wake in the morning?
“The US doesn’t really have a policy on Yemen”
Brian Whitaker, writing in The Guardian :
Viewed from Washington, Yemen is not a real place where people are demanding social justice and democracy so much as a theatre of operations in Saudi Arabia’s backyard, veteran Yemen-watcher Sheila Carapico told a conference in January.
In fact, she added, the US doesn’t really have a policy on Yemen. What it has instead is a longstanding commitment to the security and stability of Saudi Arabia and the GCC states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates), coupled with an anti-terrorism policy in which Yemen is treated as an extension of the Afghan/Pakistani theatre. The result, she said, is “pretty much the antithesis” of what Yemenis were aspiring to when they set about overthrowing President Saleh in 2011.
Links for November 28th
Automatically posted links for November 27-28th:
- Critical writer jailed in Tunisia – On Monday, police in Sfax, Tunisia’s second largest city, detained Slim Boukhdhir, a well-known blogger and contributor to the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi.
- ‘Aqoul: Hirsi Ali: Ideological Chameleon – Holy CRAP! Hirsi Ali’s rightward shift
- tabsir.net » Al Qaeda?s generational split – Yemeni tactics for splitting jihadist groups
- Talking Points | National Security Network – Website of reality-based security types
- Le Monde.fr : Une vidéo-amateur contredit la version de la police sur l’accident de Villiers-le-Bel – Amateur video indicates initial shock of police car against motorbike not very violent, car was damaged with metal bars afterwards and police is lying about it
- WHO’S WHO OF PREZ CAMPAIGN SECURITY ADVISERS – New list of security / FP advisors to US presidential candidates, surprisingly does not include the more well-known rabid neocons in Rudy’s list
- Hillary Clinton’s advisers too gung-ho on Iraq war, critics say – Is Hillary Clinton the hawk masquerading as the dove?
- ‘Not very good’ Saddam spy gets 4 years – Yahoo! News – More examples of the terrible threat to the US that Saddam represented. Hmm, let me think, what other Middle Eastern country successfully infiltrated spies in critical national security institutions?
- Police say Paris rioters are armed as clashes escalate – Officials in Paris last night warned that rioters in the suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were armed with hunting rifles and air rifles as clashes with police continued to escalate.
- Boom fuels new Saudi spending spree | Business | The Guardian – Annual revenues of $165bn are funding six new cities to create jobs – but can it last?
- Cairo International Film Festival – Home Page – Schedules, events, etc. (apparently Morocco is focus of festival)
- In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means by Robert Blecher and Mouin Rabbani – “As for the Annapolis meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily lives or substantive progress toward the end of an Israeli occupation now in its fifth decade.”