Yemen Development

The Yemen, is the birth place and hub for a number of monotheistic religious convictions . In its North West region, just 243 kilometers away from San'aa, the official capital of the Republic of Yemen , lies a spiritual center, a holy metropolis known as Saa'da  .
It is to Zaidi Islam as Qum is to Shia Islam and Mecca is to Sunni Islam. It is where the scholars dwell, to read, learn and teach their disciples to carry on the doctrine and preserve the faith throughout history.
It is here that the Houthi phenomenon first appeared.
This study focuses on the very beginnings of Houthism as a phenomenon, it's source and affiliations. It is but the first part of a series of papers that will delve into the movement as it expands over time.

«Arab spring» in Yemen and Syria took place in 2011 year. Revolutionary events grew into revolution, which has continiued now days. This article analyses consequences of revolutionary events in Yemen ana Syria. Consequances of events «arab spring» have a direct impact on political, economic, social development not only of countries of the Middle East and North Africa, but also of European countries.
The main conclusions of the paper are the following. First, events of «arab spring» lead to political destabilization. Second, after «arab spring» in this countries is observed critical humanitarian situation. Third, revolutionary events didn’t promote developing democratic development.

The Arab-Governance -Report III/2017 is a periodical report published by UNESCWA.
I contributed to writing the part dedicated to Yemen, PP139-171.  It focuses on the building of the State institutions in Yemen in case of the hostilities are brought to an end.
It contains historical background, explanations, and proposals related to the rebuilding of the Financial, Security, Administrative, Judicial, and Political Institutions, as well as the Private Sector and NGO's.
The study has been written in 2017. Some of its recommendations are actually applied to the current situation after the Agreement of Stockholm, concluded  in the end of 2018.

How will historians a generation or two from now write about this war on Yemen? Will there be any interest in inspecting more deeply what happened, why, and under whose watch such a crime was committed? Or will future historians resort to repeating the dominant frames used to characterize (or ignore) this war on Yemen used today?

Written in 2014, ahead of the current conflict in Yemen, the article outlined how the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) has sought to change its standard way of working in the face of political/security/development challenges. Along with piloting multi-year humanitarian funding – which allows agencies to better plan their work, build national capacity and help transition to longer-term support – DFID has used third-party monitoring and cash transfers to overcome some of the obstacles to humanitarian action in Yemen.

The author posted independently in his blog the answer that he gave to a viewer of a video-presentation of my article "Yemenis are Not Arab - Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis". The video is uploaded in many portals; indicatively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpOx9xiHNGc
The author referred to me before replying and so his answer fully represents my opinion on the matter.
https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/if-yemenis-are-not-arab-why-did-the-romans-call-yemen-arabia-felix/

This Brief focuses on the contributions of Yemeni civil society to six core areas central to supporting sustainable peace: the economy, politics, culture and society, security and justice, education, and the environment. It is part of a wider project that encourages Yemeni-international research cooperation on peace requirements in Yemen, which CARPO is implementing on behalf of the Deutsche Executive Summary

Secular arabic traditions have emphasized the potential of dreams to foretell the future.  Sometimes the prediction is seen as obvious and on other occasions elaborate systems of symbolic translations were consulted such as the tenth century Oneirocriticon of Achmet.
    In Islam, many of the foundations of the Koran were revealed to Muhammad in dreams. Muhammad ordered the practice of adhanthe daily call to prayer from the minarets and a central ritual of Islam to this day after one of his followers dreamed of it. The split of Islam into the conflicting factions of Sunni and Shi'ite was based partly on a dream of Mohammed, which the Sunnis used to justify their rights as his successors.
    The autobiographies of Muslim rulers often contain extensive dream diaries and examples of decisions obstensibly based on dreams.  When the Shah of Iran was deciding whether to seek a loan from Russia, he dreamed that a famous theological figure dressed in primitive Muslim garb approached the Shah and threw at his feet a sack containing gold and silver.  The interpretation of this dream was that the Shah shouldn't make any new loans with unbelievers but should trust that fellow servants of the faith would restore his finances. Sadam Hussein reported dreaming that Allah told him to enter and take back Kuwait just before the first Gulf War. Before the second Gulf War, he reported a dream that a snake came upon his path but he chopped off it’s head with a sword which he interpreted to mean western invaders would be vanquished.
    Because of this emphasis on dreams as foretelling the future rather than arising from the past, Arabs who are having PTSD nightmares of an event occurring each night--such as Kuwiati survivors of the Iraqi invasion or Iraqi survivors of the American invasion--experience even more anxiety over whether this will indeed occur again than dreamers in other cultures.
    The positive side to this emphasis on dreams foretelling the future happens when oppressed people dream of positive outcomes.  These are a source of much inspiration in arab society, while in western traditions they would be dismissed as "wish fulfillment" without the beneficial impact.
    We  collected dreams associated with events of the Arab Spring and discuss how they inspired and guided those taking part, and what dreams right now may have to offer the reshaping of the Arab world.

In the years ahead, Yemen may have another chance of progress and radiation. This will happen only if the Yemenites assess better their non-Arab history and identity. Yemen should join other Eastern African countries in an economic, political, and cultural union, closing the door to the fictitious Arab world.
First published in Buzzle on 4th August 2005
www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-4-2005-74197.asp
Republished: http://phoenicia.org/imgs/YemenAfricaArabWorld.pdf

The decision of the British Government in 1912 to convert its naval ships from coal to oil set in motion one of the greatest periods of exploration of the twentieth century, the search for oil in the Middle East. In 1945, after a lull caused by the Second World War, exploration was set to expand again and twenty-one year old Douglas Michael ("Mike") Morton embarked on an empty troop ship bound for Palestine to begin his career as a geologist with the Iraq Petroleum Company.

Arriving in Jerusalem, Mike soon found himself surrounded by the Arab-Jewish conflict which led to the bombing of the King David Hotel. Then moving to Iraq, Mike and his colleague René Wetzel unravelled the geology of many parts of northern Iraq. Their field work in the 1940s and 1950s has never been repeated and is the foundation of our knowledge of Mesozoic outcrops. The results, incorporated in the Stratigraphic Lexicon of Iraq (Centre Nationale de Recherches Scientifique: 1959), continue to be used by geologists, geophysicists and students to this day.

During a series of ground-breaking expeditions in southern Arabia between 1947 and 1954, Mike travelled where the famous Arabian explorer, Wilfred Thesiger, had feared to tread: the mysterious Mahra country. Expedition leader Major Tony Altounyan was advised by "one very old and expert resident of Aden...to carry, hidden on my person, a small weapon or a phial of poison for use on myself to end the final agonies of torture!" Mike also visited other parts of the Aden Protectorates such as Shabwa, Beihan and the Bedouin well at Thamud.

The story moves to Oman, where Mike took part in the first expedition to open up the interior of the country to oil exploration. It was a venture that was filled with excitement and danger, as well as valuable scientific work: in 1959, he presented a paper entitled The Geology of Oman  to the 5th World Petroleum Congress in New York.  In the 1960s, he worked in Qatar, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi and was in charge of geological operations when the massive Bu Hasa oilfield was discovered. In 1971, he was appointed deputy leader of a Royal Geographical Society expedition to one of the remotest parts of Arabia, the Musandam Peninsula. Finally, in 1984, working for the Hunt Oil Company, he helped to find the first commercial oil in Yemen.

In the Heart of the Desert describes an extraordinary world and a rich parade of characters: autonomous sheikhs and their fiercely independent tribes, nomadic bedouins, colourful expatriates and a group of intrepid geologists driven by an oil company’s search for oil. The author presents a detailed and thoroughly researched account of his father’s life which culminates in the story of his own journey to southern Arabia and a poignant meeting of the present with the past.

Did the civil war in North Yemen during the 1960s ‘make’ the new Yemeni state? If it did, how did it do so, and what was the nature of the state it made? To answer these questions, the thesis draws on hitherto untapped Egyptian and German archival material. It develops a
model of the specific and contingent processes linking practices of civil war to state formation outcomes and uses the model to trace the processes whereby war (trans)formed the state.

The thesis reveals dynamics of state formation that have been hitherto neglected or misunderstood during this decisive episode of Yemen’s history. Wartime violence and the practices associated with its mobilisation, administration, and financing shifted the political
settlement of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). The prominence of tribal leaders during the 1980s and 1990s and the concomitant tribalisation of the military and militarisation of the tribes are shown to be outcomes of the civil war. Similarly, the investigation reveals a dramatic and largely untold fiscal transformation of the YAR during the 1960s, which meant
that government income came to rely primarily on external donors. Finally, the war, or rather the practices associated with it, altered the very idea of political order in North Yemen between 1962 and 1970. Spurred by competition for public support, elite discourses converged around the rhetorical commonplaces of modernity, development and the people.
Although fragmentary and contradictory, these new commonplaces all privileged the central state as an actor and addressee of claims.

In addition to these insights into the specific legacies of the civil war, the thesis uses points of disagreement and slippage between the model and the rarely studied case of Yemen to problematise and suggest additions to the literatures on civil war, state building, and state formation.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the scope of Yemen’s tribal system as a challenge to Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Due to the dynamic nature of inter- and intratribal relationships at the national and governorate levels, AQAP is capable only of working at the local level, through close friends and family members. The study includes identification of 890 tribal entities and over 4,600 villages ascribed to them in native Yemeni Arabic tribal scholarship, as well as 180 governorate-level tribe maps rendered in Google Earth .kmz files.

Soqotra, the largest island of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago, is one of the most uniquely diverse places in the world. A UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, the island is home not only to birds, reptiles, and plants found nowhere else on earth, but also to a rich cultural history and the endangered Soqotri language. Within the span of a decade, this Indian Ocean archipelago went from being among the most marginalized regions of Yemen to promoted for its outstanding global value. Islands of Heritage shares Soqotrans' stories to offer the first exploration of environmental conservation, heritage production, and development in an Arab state. Examining the multiple notions of heritage in play for twenty-first-century Soqotra, Nathalie Peutz narrates how everyday Soqotrans came to assemble, defend, and mobilize their cultural and linguistic heritage. These efforts, which diverged from outsiders' focus on the island's natural heritage, ultimately added to Soqotrans' calls for political and cultural change during the Yemeni Revolution. Islands of Heritage shows that far from being merely a conservative endeavor, the protection of heritage can have profoundly transformative, even revolutionary effects. Grassroots
claims to heritage can be a potent form of political engagement with the most imminent concerns of the present: human rights, globalization, democracy, and sustainability.

In the areas of Yemen under Ansar Allah’s control, the war and recent policy changes have together led to significant changes to local governance.
There has been, first, a multi-phase takeover of local institutions. Ansar Allah appointees and networks of ‘supervisors’ have displaced the dominance of the former ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), and its networks of patronage at the local level.
Second, the state is now more visible and present at the local level, due to renewed efforts to collect taxes and other revenue and due to increased centralisation, coupled with new forms of central oversight and control. Together, this has created a significantly more centralised and securitised system than that which operated under President Saleh; and this new system is extracting a greater share of resources from the domestic economy.
Finally, there has been a collapse of local budgets and salary payments. These financial shortfalls, caused by war and a blockade of Ansar Allah-controlled territory, have coincided with limited investment in service delivery as scarce resources were redirected to security and military
institutions. As a result, responsibility for services has fallen to international aid organisations.
Ultimately, war, the economic blockade of Yemen, Ansar Allah’s policies and international aid have combined to hollow out the existing local authority structures in Yemen.

In the years ahead, Yemen may have another chance of progress and radiation. This will happen only if the Yemenites assess better their non-Arab history and identity. Yemen should join other Eastern African countries in an economic, political, and cultural union, closing the door to the fictitious Arab world.
First published in Buzzle on 4th August 2005
www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-4-2005-74197.asp
Republished: http://phoenicia.org/imgs/YemenAfricaArabWorld.pdf

Call for submissions/abstracts to attend the Global Research Meeting sponsored by the GRC (Geneva/Cambridge) held in Cambridge August 24-27. Abstract attached. Deadline Feb. 28. For details and instructions see http://gulfresearchmeeting.net/callforpapers/GRM-2015-CALL.jpg

Abstract: Building the capacity of civil servants, especially in management training, is a new field of study in Yemen. Research is needed to develop a paradigm, basic principles and a guiding strategy for capacity development. This article explores informal behavioral and management aspects within Yemen's civil service by considering interaction between formal and informal institutions. A clear understanding of this is a pre-condition for identifying problems and (re)formulating sound policies to build and improve managerial capacity.

The Construction industry in Yemen confronts many development constraints, such as the inadequate implementation of appropriate building materials and labour construction technologies. Thus, this research looks over building materials and labour construction technologies used on the local housing construction projects by verifying the percentage of construction expenditure consumed by the main construction components (Materials, Labour and Overhead and Profit), along with the implemented construction technologies. The paper conducts a survey to acquire the cost distribution of the construction main components. The outcomes of the survey were discussed; the discussion was supported by literature on similar issues from some countries. The outcomes confirmed the relatively limited percentage in labour cost and profit, and the elevated percentage of construction materials cost, which are because of the excessive and inappropriate use of materials. What’s more, established that the exces...

Yemen, located on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. Quite
apart from the continuing catastrophic conflict, the massive overdraw of existing groundwater due to unregulated drilling of tube
wells since the 1970s has created a major water crisis that affects the future of the county’s estimated 28 million people. While
once known for its rich traditions of agriculture due to its extensive highland terrace systems, spate flow and runoff water
harvesting, Yemen is now food insecure, relying almost entirely on food imports. This article surveys the range of water resources
in Yemen and their sustainability in light of climate change predictions. I examined government and development aid reports to
highlight the causes of the water crisis and the failure of previous governments to resolve it. The situation is even more critical
today, given the ongoing war between a Saudi-led coalition and a Huthi alliance that has created one of the worst humanitarian
crises in the world. I conclude with priorities for mitigating the water crisis and promoting sustainable agriculture for Yemen’s
post-conflict future.

Yemen Dosyası - Fakirlik ve Terör Kıskacında Bir Ülke

Yazarlar: Serpil Açıkalın/ Gamze Coşkun/ Sedat Laçiner

Boyut 13.50x20.00
Sayfa Sayısı 224
Basım Yeri Ankara
Basım Tarihi 2010-06
Kapak Türü Ciltsiz
Kağıt Türü 2. Hamur
Dili Türkçe
ISBN: 9786054030347

Yemen konusunda Türkçe literatürde alanının ilklerinden olan Yemen Dosyası kitabı, ülkenin coğrafi, tarihi, demografik, ekonomik ve siyasi alanda sahip olduğu önemi akıcı bir dille okuyucuya sunmaktadır. Konuyla ilgili araştırma yapanlara ve genel bilgi edinmek isteyen okuyucuya ülkeyi tüm yönleri ile bütünlüklü bir şekilde görme imkânı sunan bu eser, Osmanlı döneminden günümüzdeki Güney-Kuzey çatışmalarına dek geniş bir perspektif verme amacını taşımaktadır.

Yemen Dosyası - Fakirlik ve Terör Kıskacında Bir Ülke (The Yemen File - A Country in the Grip of Poverty and Terror) (Ankara: USAK Pub., 2010). co-author with Serpil Açıkalın, Gamze Coşkun. ISBN: 9786054030347

In May 2016, a delegation from Yemen travelled to Kuwait hoping to make space for women in the UN-supported peace negotiations. At first, the image of the seven women trying to influence the peace process seemed to run against a common narrative in the West according to which political actors in the Middle East are almost exclusively male. However, far from being a novelty, the delegation’s hard work can be seen as part of a long, albeit bumpy, historic series of attempts to expand women’s political participation in what is now one of the poorest countries in the region.