What the conflict in Yemen means to the world

Dr.Daniel Pipes talking to Theo Caldwell of SUN TV and writing in detail on the threat of Yemen to the world at the WashingtonTimes:

For the first time in its exceedingly long history, Yemen now threatens the outside world. It does so in two principal ways.

First, even before the current political upheaval began there on Jan. 15, violence out of Yemen already impinged on Westerners. As President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s weak government controlled only a small part of the country, violence had emerged both near to Yemen, such as attacks on American and French ships, and distant from it, like Anwar al-Awlaki’s incitement to terrorism in Texas, Michigan and New York. With Mr. Saleh’s apparent abdication on June 4, when he traveled to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, the central government’s writ will further diminish, leading to yet more attacks being planned inside Yemen for execution outside the country.

But it’s the second danger that staggers my mind: An unprecedented emptying out of Yemen, with millions of unskilled and uninvited refugees, first in the Middle East, then in the West - many of them Islamist - demanding economic asylum.

The problem begins with an increasingly cataclysmic water shortfall. Gerhard Lichtenthaeler, a specialist on this topic, wrote in 2010 how in many of the country’s mountainous areas, available drinking water - usually drawn from a spring or a cistern - is down to less than one quart per person per day. Its aquifers are being mined at such a rate that groundwater levels have been falling by 10 to 20 feet annually, threatening agriculture and leaving major cities without adequate safe drinking water. Sanaa could be the first capital city in the world to run dry.

And not just Sanaa: As a London Times headline put it, Yemen “could become first nation to run out of water.” Nothing this extreme has happened in modern times, although similar patterns of drought have developed in Syria and Iraq.

Scarce food resources, columnist David Goldman points out, threaten to leave large numbers of Middle Easterners hungry and one-third of Yemenis faced chronic hunger before the unrest. That number is growing quickly.

The prospect of economic collapse looms larger by the day. Oil supplies are reduced to the point that “Trucks and buses at petrol stations queue for hours, while water supply shortages and power blackouts are a daily norm,” according to Reuters. Productive activity is proportionately in decline.

If water and food were not worrisome enough, Yemen has one of the highest birthrates in the world, exacerbating the resource problem. With an average of 6.5 children per woman, almost one in six women is pregnant at any given time. Today’s population of 24 million is predicted to double in about 30 years..........


h/t: Pam