Yemen
Republic of Yemen
Capital: Sanaa
The Yemen Bulletin
Weekly Brief: October 12, 2015
Top Story Russia announced on Monday that its “volunteer” ground forces would join the fighting in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he will not send Russian soldiers to Syria, but the plan to deploy irregulars parallels Russian operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The news comes as Russia intensified airstrikes it began last […]
Weekly Brief: September 21, 2015
Top Story The influx of refugees from Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa continued to make headlines last week. Migrants attempting to reach Western Europe have been stymied by Hungarian border security, where police used tear gas and water cannons to keep them from overwhelming crossings along Hungary’s border with Serbia, […]
Weekly Brief: May 4, 2015
Top Story Representatives from around the world traveled to New York this week to begin the ninth review conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Review conferences have been held every five years since the NPT entered into effect in 1970. American Secretary of State John Kerry, who will lead his country’s […]
Weekly Brief: April 20, 2015
Africa Al-Shabab militants drove a car loaded with explosives into a government compound in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Tuesday. After the explosion, gunmen stormed the government offices and killed at least 17 people, including eight civilians and two soldiers. Security guards and Somali special forces soldiers eventually managed to secure the building, killing five attackers.
Weekly Brief: April 13, 2015
Africa One of the gunmen responsible for the attack on Kenya’s Garissa University College last week, which killed 148 people, was the son of a Kenyan district official. He had been missing for over a year, since dropping out of law school. His father has been cooperating with authorities since reporting his son missing last […]
Weekly Brief: April 6, 2015
Top Story Parties negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear program announced a framework agreement on Thursday, which they intend to finalize by the end of June. The talks had intensified ahead of a March 31 soft deadline for a deal. By Monday, three primary sticking points remained: the process of lifting restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after 10 years, […]
Weekly Brief: March 30, 2015
Middle East Fighting in Yemen continued to escalate this week. On Wednesday, the Houthi rebels seized an airbase as they moved closer to the city of Aden, where President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was sheltered. By Thursday, Mr. Hadi had briefly sought shelter in Oman before moving on to Riyadh. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia led airstrikes against the Houthis in […]
Weekly Brief: March 23, 2015
Africa On Wednesday, gunmen stormed a museum in Tunis, Tunisia, killing 22 people and injuring at least 22 more. Tunisian security forces killed two attackers in the ensuing firefight, but three remained at large. No organization immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but local groups affiliated with al Qaeda are active in the country, and the […]
Weekly Brief: August 2, 2013
This is the first installment of the International Security Bulletin‘s Weekly Briefs, which will recap the top security stories from around the world this week. This installment includes updates on elections in Zimbabwe, unrest in Egypt, potential al Qaeda activity in the Middle East, counterterrorism in the United States, potential attacks on computer encryption algorithms, […]
History
North Yemen became independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The British, who had set up a protectorate area around the southern port of Aden in the 19th century, withdrew in 1967 from what became South Yemen. Three years later, the southern government adopted a Marxist orientation. The massive exodus of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis from the south to the north contributed to two decades of hostility between the states. The two countries were formally unified as the Republic of Yemen in 1990. A southern secessionist movement and brief civil war in 1994 was quickly subdued. In 2000, Saudi Arabia and Yemen agreed to a delimitation of their border. Fighting in the northwest between the government and Huthi rebels, a group seeking a return to traditional Zaydi Islam, began in 2004 and has since resulted in six rounds of fighting - the last ended in early 2010 with a cease-fire that continues to hold. The southern secessionist movement was revitalized in 2008 when a popular socioeconomic protest movement initiated the prior year took on political goals including secession. Public rallies in Sana'a against then President SALIH - inspired by similar demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt - slowly built momentum starting in late January 2011 fueled by complaints over high unemployment, poor economic conditions, and corruption. By the following month, some protests had resulted in violence, and the demonstrations had spread to other major cities. By March the opposition had hardened its demands and was unifying behind calls for SALIH's immediate ouster. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in late April 2011, in an attempt to mediate the crisis in Yemen, proposed an agreement in which the president would step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution. SALIH's refusal to sign an agreement led to heavy street fighting and his injury in an explosion in June 2011. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 2014 in October 2011 calling on both sides to end the violence and complete a power transfer deal. In late November 2011, SALIH signed the GCC-brokered agreement to step down and to transfer some of his powers to Vice President Abd Rabuh Mansur HADI. Following elections in February 2012, won by HADI, SALIH formally transferred his powers. In accordance with the GCC initiative, Yemen launched a National Dialogue to discuss key constitutional, political, and social issues in mid-March 2013.
Geography
Metric Units
| Total Area | 527,968 sq km |
| Land Boundaries | 1,746 km |
| Border Countries | Oman 288 km, Saudi Arabia 1,458 km |
| Coastline | 1,906 km |
| Terrain | narrow coastal plain backed by flat-topped hills and rugged mountains; dissected upland desert plains in center slope into the desert interior of the Arabian Peninsula |
| Minimum Elevation | 0 m |
| Maximum Elevation | 3,760 m |
| Climate | mostly desert; hot and humid along west coast; temperate in western mountains affected by seasonal monsoon; extraordinarily hot, dry, harsh desert in east |
| Natural Resources | petroleum, fish, rock salt, marble; small deposits of coal, gold, lead, nickel, and copper; fertile soil in west |
| Arable Land | 2.2% |
| Permanent Crops | 0.55% |
Economy
| Gross Domestic Product | $54.85 billion |
| GDP (per capita) | $2,200 |
| GDP Growth | -1.9% |
| Unemployment Rate | 35% |
| Population in Poverty | 45.2% |
| GINI Index | 37.7 |
Budget & Debt
| Expenditures | $12.01 billion |
| Revenue | $7.63 billion |
| Current Account Balance | $-2.19 billion |
| External Debt | $6.73 billion |
Trade
| Exports | $7.96 billion |
| Export Items | crude oil, coffee, dried and salted fish, liquefied natural gas |
| Export Partners | China 29.5%, Thailand 13.4%, South Korea 10.6%, India 7.5%, Japan 6%, US 5.8%, UAE 4.7% (2011) |
| Imports | $8.89 billion |
| Import Items | food and live animals, machinery and equipment, chemicals |
| Import Partners | UAE 18.8%, China 11.8%, Saudi Arabia 8.9%, Kuwait 6.6%, India 6.5%, France 4.7%, US 4.2% (2011) |
People
| Population | 25,408,288 |
| Population Growth | 2.5% |
| Ethnic Groups | predominantly Arab; but also Afro-Arab, South Asians, Europeans |
| Religion | Muslim (Islam - official) including Shaf'i (Sunni) and Zaydi (Shia), small numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Hindu |
| Life Expectancy | 64.47 years |
| Infant Mortality | 1.03 deaths/1,000 live births |
| Maternal Mortality | 4.6 deaths/100,000 live births |
Energy
| Electricity Production | 6.34 billion kWh |
| Electricity Consumption | 4.7 billion kWh |
| From Fossil Fuels | 100% |
| From Nuclear | 0% |
| From Hydroelectric | 0% |
| From Renewable Sources | 0% |
