This article on the Yeman conflict that seems to be in and out of the news..what we get is it seems it's the latest hot bed of al Quida on that peninsula.
As this piece tries to explain, it seems on the surface, it's the old , before "Nation States", of a powerful tribal leader taking on all the aspects of the State to himself, like a tribal leader, and stayiing in power by bribary, playing one side against the other, keeping enemies alive, not crushing them , so he would have a enemy to rally the populace against, thus keeping his power and authority by directing dissatisfaction against another danger, more so then himself, like the 'God Father " of the novel and the film.
I present it for any interested in the area, it seems to be a importasnt place on the globe, at least according to our officials, as it is mentioned from time to time.
The fact that we have troops on the ground there, they are special units, and our people feel it is a trouble spot now and possible one even more important in the future.
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english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115228013977326.html------------------------------------------------------
{Click on link to read article}
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Opinion
The crucible of Yemen
The two opposing forces of unity and disunity are helping to shape the future of the struggle against Saleh in Yemen.
Saleh's attempts to squash the uprisings in Yemen are aimed at preventing an unceremonious ousting, such as those of Mubarak of Egypt, or Ben Ali of Tunisia [GALLO/GETTY]
There has never been a single Yemen, and maybe there will never be one. What is nonetheless exceptional about the revolt engulfing Yemen is that it represents a united stand, a cry for freedom and dignity. Thus it echoes the cry for freedom in Tunis' Habib Bourguiba Avenue and Cairo's Tahrir Square.
However, Yemen presents a prominent specificity; it's a unity-disunity pairing that shapes and re-shapes the current moment of popular empowerment, constantly stirring the politics concocted within the Yemeni crucible.
Note that Yemenis feel insulted by the brand of nepotism and dynasticism engineered by Saleh and his ilk. The fissiparous forces which Saleh controlled, kept in check or used to his own ends through cunning, money, and even violence, are today largely rallied against him.
He dropped them like hot potatoes when political expediency demanded it. Now they are returning the favour. In this, Saleh's foes seem to be united.
The interplay of unity and disunity are responsible for both Yemen's moment of popular empowerment and weakness, as far as democratic protest and change are concerned.
One Yemen, many Yemens
In every sense, Yemen is breathtaking. It is a quilt of colours, climes, landscapes, regions, sects, tribes, customs, ideologies, histories and identities. Anthropologists would have a field day exploring it. But not so if one approaches Yemen with a narrow political science set of lenses. The risk to miss the "Archimedean point" - wherever that might be - is greatest here.
If the state is a necessary evil, then nowhere is that truer than in Yemen, so parachuting Western-type statism on such a rich human geography is a travesty of diversity. In theory, with such richness, states like Yemen (which is also true of Lebanon, Syria and Sudan) have in heterogeneity a natural platform for mapping out plural polities with much potential for greater representation of differences.
Prior to the modern nation-state, these differences mastered the art of self-representation in politics and the battlefield as much as in poetry, and other types of self-constructive narratives."
