Small Wars Journal

U.S. Approach to Yemen is Challenged as Country Splinters and Government Vanishes

Sun, 09/23/2018 - 12:21am

U.S. Approach to Yemen is Challenged as Country Splinters and Government Vanishes by Kareem Fahim – Washington Post

When Yemeni soldiers freed this whitewashed port city from the grip of al-Qaeda in 2016, it was hailed as a signal moment in the government’s effort to reunite a nation splintered by civil war.  

But more than two years after al-Qaeda’s retreat, Yemen’s government is still absent. The local governor, Faraj al-Bahsani, relies on local revenue rather than state contributions for his budget. He courts international investors to fix the region’s crumbling infrastructure. His main security partner is a foreign government, the United Arab Emirates, that pays salaries to a portion of the most powerful local military force.

If Mukalla has become a model of resilience during Yemen’s four-year civil war, the city is also a warning about how the country is being pulled apart. Some regions are battlefields, lost to violence. The rule of law has been eclipsed in other places by the authority of militias, gangs and assassins. Most of the country — from cities such as Mukalla to rural hamlets — is ill-equipped to fend for itself…

Read on.