Houthinews

This is all from the last 24 hours

Yemeni Rebels Kill 12 Soldiers, Injure 55, Kidnap 228 in Series of Attacks Bloomberg
Is Yemen in the Middle of Another Undeclared War? TIME
Houthi Ceasefire Holds, Yemen Says UPI
Yemen: President Makes Offer to Rebels NY Times
and the follow-up,
Yemen President Accuses Rebels of Rejecting Peace AFP
Yemen Claims to Form 12,000 Strong Army in Southern Yemen Xinhua - this is influenced by a Hadith attributed to Mohammed that, at some point in the future, an army of 12,000 would come out of southern Yemen. But to be honest, AQAP's chances of raising an army of 12,000 (when their current numbers are around 200) is on par with their attempt to HARNESS THE POWER OF LIGHTNING! No, that's not a real thing, but it has just as much chance of happening. When Iraq invaded Kuwait back in the day, bin Laden made a similar claim to the Saudi defense minister:

[Bin Laden:] I am ready to prepare 100,000 fighters with good combat capability within three months. You don't need Americans. You don't need any other non-Muslim troops. We will be enough.
[Prince Sultan:] There are no caves in Kuwait. What will you do when he lobs missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?
[Bin Laden:] We will fight him with faith.

I can only imagine Prince Sultan sitting through this with an arched eyebrow and ending the meeting with a "don't call us, we'll call you!"

Sana'a Zoo

The city doesn't do well when it rains.
It was one of my friend's last days in Yemen and he decided to go out with a bang. After spending the morning driving out to the edge of the city to have his photo taken on a motorcycle while holding a Kalashnikov in the air with a hunting falcon on his shoulder, he wanted to go to the city zoo. 'Interesting' is the best word to describe the place. As we walked up to the gates I felt some trepidation as zoos outside America and Europe tend to be depressing enough to warrant Prozac dispensers and lithium milkshakes within the grounds. As Yemen's national zoo goes it certainly isn't the worst out there but it's still enough to make one go 'awww' and cringe inside as another piece of innocence is taken away with the laughing wind.


This fat-tail sheep is the zoo's headliner and he knows it.
It being Friday, the last day of the weekend and the big religious day of the week, it was family day at the zoo. However, we were informed that, unlike back home where family day means you get a discount when you bring the kids, in Yemen family day means only families are allowed in. Our Somali friend that we sent to the ticket window (to avoid getting the extra 'white foreigner' charge) was sent away because 'he wasn't with any women'. We sent up one of our own next who just said, 'Yeah, I'm here with my family'. Our group of four guys was given a surly look by the guard taking the tickets as we played the 'I'm an American who doesn't speak your demon-tongue' game immortalized by our tourists worldwide, thus avoiding his questions about the location of our women.

Chutes for what could only be scientifically formulated, baboon-specific popcorn.
The zoo actually had an impressive collection of animals that you rarely see in captivity (because they generally do... poorly when confined). Hyenas, mongeese, honey badgers, baboons, and several very rare wildcats native to the Arabian Peninsula. There were a few other species of animals divided into what must be universally-followed zoo sections: tame animals, birds, wild animals and monkeys. Among all the mammals was the obsessive-compulsive behavior you find in caged animals: some lions would rub their head along the length of fence and back; a hyena would run to one side of its cage, rub its neck up the wall as high as it could go on its hindlegs, then run to the other side and do likewise, repeating this pattern indefinitely; a mongoose zipped around its cage in an X, pausing every 10 seconds to look out of the same bars. It's behavior that you never see in the wild and only very rarely see in a US zoo, but here it was just everywhere except among the cage of fat-tailed sheep, who just seemed happy they weren't going to get eaten any time soon (the name comes from their fatty tail, which is the size of a large human palm; it's a delicacy I haven't been able to find yet)

And on the way out of the zoo, more animals. And a Yemeni man wearing an Eagles jersey.
It was pointed out to me by a friend that in the Middle East (and much of the world in general) there are no anthropomorphic cartoons for children. No Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny or Simba, no sympathetic characters that make you go "NO! They got Bambi's mom!" Animals are rarely pets and often a food source. Each day you run into the butcher's shop to order some fresh chicken or lamb. Dogs and cats are stray animals that pick through the trash and carry disease. It's the opposite of the US, where pet ownership is ubiquitous, animals rights are fairly mainstream and where we have very well-publicized societies of loons who are well-off enough to tell us to 'Save the Sea Kittens!' ('Sea Kitten' is socially maladjusted speak for 'fish')

And one more pic of Leg-Head for the road.

About the Latest Yemenews...

To add a note about how the recent violence has affected the capital, there haven't been big, overt signs of imminent danger. The soldiers sitting guard in their little booths along the street still seem languid and their cheeks are, as always, full of qat. The government still allows the Ajnabi (foreigners) outside the city and around the same sections of the country they always have.
But that aside, the reserves have been steadily called up; one of our guards was recently called back to duty. The sound of jets taking of from Sana'a International (yes, the commercial airport is also the capital's only air force base - the MiGs use the same runway as the Airbuses) has definitely increased. The latest truce with the Houthis (the 6th, I want to say) looks like it will dissolve and lead to the seventh war against the northern rebels. The southern secessionists are growing loud and, in the case of the government's resumption of hostilities with the rebels it's possible that they'd do their best to stage the biggest uprising of which they're capable, which could be large or small, no one knows (North and South Yemen were united in 1990, then separated in 1994, and after a short civil war rejoined that same year). Al-Qa'eda is also playing an active role, with several recent attacks on curiously unguarded government facilities (in a country with over 3 guns per person, how is it possible to have a police station with no armed guards?).

Yemen's never boring.

Yemenews: Rebels, Separatists and al-Qa'eda Edition

Will attempt to update with a handful of posts tomorrow if the electricity cooperates. For now, here's a collection of news reports on the recent uptick in violence throughout the country.

Yemen Smolders Amid Houthi Insurgency and Al Qaeda Attacks L.A. Times
Yemen's Separatists Call for Southern Uprising VOA News
Yemen: Fighting Intensifies Between Rebels and Government NY Times
In Yemen, Violent Confrontations Between Tribes and Rebels Le Monde (French)
Yemen Clashes Reflect North-South Tensions NY Times
'Al Qaeda' Ambushes Yemeni Soldiers Al Jazeera
Houthi Rebels Take 'Yemen Army Position' BBC
US Turns up Head on Internet Imam Awlaki NPR

Kamaran Pics

Got the pictures working. The post will come later but for now here are some shots of Kamaran.


Yes, those are whale bones. Where did they get them? Didn't want to know.


My room

Grand Mosque of Sana'a

My posting has recently been late and rare. I'm currently in a class with two Europeans, a Dane and a German, with a greater breadth of Arabic than myself, and I've been consumed by work in the language - that, plus four contiguous hours of class a day plus trekking out to the gym leaves little time to blog for the benefit of my mother and those stumbling on this page from misspelled Google searches. Anyway...
Today we made a visit to the Grand Mosque of Sana'a. At 1,400 years old it's one of the oldest mosques in the world; in fact, it's generally placed as the third oldest. As a widely-followed rule, non-Muslims are barred from entering mosques, but we were able to visit the sections of the mosque that are currently being renovated (they started several years ago and think they'll be finished by 2014). In the first section we were in the first thing I noticed was the pit dug in the ground; small sections of the mosque have been given the green light for archeological digs down, down, down to the original floor of the building about 12 feet down. As time has gone by and the land changed, the mosque's floor has crept up centimeters at a time. The side of the hole had dozens of lines, over a hundred distinct levels as the floor slowly grew closer to the carved wood of the ceiling - if the pattern continues, in one or two hundred years even the diminutive Yemenis will have to stoop under the arches connecting the room's columns.
The mosque is also old enough that, squirreled away in the walls and the ceiling, wooden blocks with carvings of animals and even people were found (images of people and animals are generally frowned upon in Islam) in addition to the discovery of old versions of the Qur'an that were kept hidden by the mosque's keepers for some time; much like the Bible, the Qur'an went through several revisions and variations in the early years until a universal version was established. Such early versions are very rare and clergy approach them with trepidation - they cannot be destroyed as they are part of the holy Qur'an but they definitely can't just be left lying around or, even worse, disseminated. Thus, centuries upon centuries ago, some enterprising people stuffed the manuscripts into a space between the ceiling and the roof, much like they placed the wooden animal carvings behind niches and inside walls in the hope that ages of neglect will solve their catch-22.
There are no pictures as they weren't allowed - there are future publications envisioned by the archaeologist in charge and his cohort of helpers, and photos of the work in progress would put a damper on the surprises of any papers. And I'm trying to post an entry on the Island of Kamaran in the Red Sea but my camera's deciding that it would rather not transfer its photos.

Another Dose of Yemenews

Sorry that it's been a while. Power outages have been getting more frequent and the rainy season's started, meaning that it rains for most of the day every day, and in a city with no sewer system the streets flood very, very fast and cause a lot of electrical shorts. Here's another roundup of Yemen news and I should post pictures of my visit to Kamaran, an island in the Red Sea, later.

The Growing Power of Al-Qaida in Yemen
Yemen intelligence office attacked
Security Brief: al Qaeda's new glossy
Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?... I don't know, is the New York Times the next National Enquirer? A good article with one of the dumbest titles I've ever seen.
Yemeni Demonstrators Killed in Clashes with Police - more unrest in the South. The government's been calling up all its reserves recently, so there's a pretty good chance something big will happen soon.

Cairo Castle

Cairo literally means 'the Conquerer', and Qalat al-Qahra, Castle of the Conquerer, is perched on a high roost overlooking the city of Ta'izz; as the centuries have passed its stone has gradually enveloped more and more of the hill it was built upon. We drove up until we reached its lower walls, and from there it was a hike to the keep. The fort still functions as a military base in case of Southern unrest, as Yemen is one of the few remaining countries where a castle is still an insurmountable redoubt.


My Arabic teacher and a 100-year-old Ottoman sabre.

Ibb, Jibla

Apologies for taking a while to put this up - I got sick from something I ate (and since this is Yemen, it could have been anything I ate) and have been under the weather. But here goes...
We set out from Sana'a Thursday morning, driving southwest through the mountains ringing the capital for hours, stopping once for a break at a police outpost on a cliffside, the bathroom of which was the disgusting wrongness of Hell given physical form. After four hours of driving, we rolled into the southern city of Ibb and ate lunch on the floor of a restaurant that, for reasons left unknown, had been swathed in astroturf. As we were ajnabi (foreigners), the waiter immediately carried out an armload of Cokes, because that's what Westerners drink, of course.

Ibb was the seat of an emirate until 1944 when it was enfolded into Yemen, and among the older men at least it seemed there is still some resentment of Yemeni authority, and especially distrust of foreigners - we got more stares than usual and as we were leaving an old men with henna in his beard (generally a bad sign for Westerners - dying one's hair with henna is traditional when a conservative man reaches a certain old age, and it often dovetails nicely with xenophobia) came up to our bus yelling. He was nearly impossible to understand with a cheek full of qat, and as he screamed something about the CIA, Iraq, and foreign dogs, masticated qat saucers hummed out of his mouth.

After pulling away from the out-of-his-mind-high septuagenarian, we drove a few miles into the hills of Ibb to the town of Jibla. The hillside town was mostly built up centuries ago by Queen Arwa, who ruled until she died at the age of 92. We made a stop at her mosque and, in a nice change, were allowed inside (generally non-Muslims aren't allowed inside mosques, but this rule really depends on the liberalism or conservatism of the area and the local congregation). On the downhill, cobble-stoned walk back to our bus we experienced the light drizzle of our first rain in Yemen.