Underpaid Genius

Apparently qat, the mild narcotic plant, uses a tremendous amount of water, and that — along with other water uses — spells doom for the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen.

Hugh Macleod and John Vidal, Yemen threatens to chew itself to death over thirst for narcotic qat plant

Most experts predict Sana’a, the fastest-growing capital in the world at 7% a year, will run out of economically viable water supplies by 2017. That is the same year the World Bank says Yemen will cease earning income from its oil, which currently accounts for three-quarters of the state’s revenues.

The cost of water in some suburbs of Sana’a has tripled in the last year, and armed conflicts over water resources around the city are increasing. Shortages in the summer months leave thousands of families with taps run dry, forcing them to spend a third of their meagre incomes on buying water from trucks.

According to Mahmoud Shidiwah, chair of the Yemeni government’s water and environment protection agency, 19 of the country’s 21 main water aquifers are no longer being replenished after a long drought and increasing demand. He says Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, receives under 200 cubic metres a person a year, well below the international water poverty line of 1,000 cubic metres. The water basin in Taiz, one of Yemen’s largest cities, has already collapsed. Neighbouring Amran is close, as is Saada in the north.

The water situation is so serious that the government has considered moving the capital, as well as desalinating seawater on the coast and pumping it 2,000 metres uphill to the capital. A third solution would be to transfer water over the mountains from another basin. Shidiwah says: “We have a very big problem. All options have been found to be unacceptable.”

The best solution, everyone agrees, is to reduce qat growing, which sucks up the largest share of water use. But this is also fraught with social and political problems, says Shidiwah, because in a country where half the population earn less than $2 a day it provides many jobs.

Buried in a story about economic chaos in Yemen, and the political fall out from that, is perhaps the real root cause: Yemen is running out of water, and fast.

Robert Worth and Laura Kasinoff, Chaos in Yemen Drives Economy to Edge of Ruin

The most fundamental of Yemen’s diverse woes is lack of water. Since the political crisis began in January, the price of water has risen fivefold in some areas, tenfold in others. The drills that pump water from Yemen’s rapidly dwindling underground supplies are falling silent, because the diesel they require has grown so expensive and scarce. The area around Sana is especially arid, and it could become the first capital ever to run out of water, said experts at the World Bank.

Syria and Iraq have had almost a decade of drought, leading to widespread migration and the abandonment of many villages (see here and here), and Yemen’s drought has been a long term problem, as I reported a year ago, long before the political upheaval. This drought extends to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon.

The Nile region, including Egypt and its upstream neighbors, has terrible water issues, which are likely to lead to open conflict.

The fundamental economic issue in the entire middle east and extending to North Africa is a shift toward an increasingly hot and arid climate, and the rapid overuse of water resources.

Meanwhile, we outside the region view the turmoil there as being driven by some renaissance of democratic ideals. The hard reality may settle in after the dust settles on the revolutions and elections and parades and backslapping, when people begin fighting over the little water remaining in the region, and the refugees start heading north to Europe.

The simmering civil conflict in Yemen seems to be breaking out again. The Houthi in the north are Zaydi adherents (see Fighting The Fivers), and as such they have great antipathy to Saudi Arabia.

Robert Worth, Yemen Clashes Reflect North-South Tensions

The violence in the north started to spike last week, when Houthi fighters killed 11 soldiers and tribesmen fighting with the government in the Harf Sufyan area. A Houthi spokesman, Abu Hashem, said the group had fought only government soldiers.

The Houthi conflict has the potential to further destabilize Yemen, because it has sectarian overtones and has already once drawn in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis briefly became involved late last year after Houthi fighters crossed into Saudi territory and killed a Saudi border guard.

Many in the region feared that the conflict would spread, in part because the Houthis belong to an offshoot of Shiite Islam known as Zaydism and have been accused of drawing support from Shiite Iran. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab countries are deeply concerned about Iran’s influence in the region, but Iran has denied support for the Houthis, as have Houthi press officers.

Violence also appears to be on the rise in Yemen’s south, where the five soldiers were reported killed Thursday morning, and a sixth seriously wounded. Last week, about 20 gunmen assaulted a government security compound in Zinjibar, killing three policemen and wounding 11. Al Qaeda’s Arabian branch later claimed credit for the attack.

Let’s just hope that the trigger-happy hawks in the US Government don’t start to scale up our involvement in Yemen.

Recent airstrikes by the Yemeni mitiary have killed over 30 people in recent weeks:

Separatists threaten Yemeni govt. with armed battle

Yemeni separatist leader Tareq al-Fadhli threatens to arm his supporters while over 30 people have been killed in the latest government airstrikes on the South.

Witnesses say al-Fadhli made his threats on Thursday, in response to what he called “official violence.”

“We will provide weapons and megaphones to our supporters, and we will protest peacefully, or, failing that, we will confront the official violence,” the witnesses quoted Fadhli, a strong supporter of independence in the South, as saying during a rally in Jinzibar.

Several protests in recent months have sparked bloody clashes with Yemeni security forces. The demonstrations in South Yemen are usually held by protesters who want secession from the North.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch said state forces have killed 11 unarmed protesters over the past two years, in addition to other abuses.

Meanwhile, Yemeni security officials claimed the country’s air force has killed 34 “suspected al-Qaeda militants” in the Al-Said district in the southeastern province of Shabwa.

While the government claims that only militants are killed in its aerial bombardments, witnesses say that mostly civilians are targeted in the attacks.