Amid the bloodletting in war-torn Yemen, the
Arab world's poorest state is facing a rapidly mounting humanitarian crisis
from hunger, poverty and dwindling resources, aid officials warn.
Oil production is
slumping and even the water's running out. At current rates, Sanaa, the
country's ancient capital with a population of 2 million, looks like being dry
by 2025, the first metropolis in the world to run out of water.
By all accounts, Yemen
is facing economic collapse, a crisis that is probably more dangerous that
al-Qaida's growing power or the escalating secret war against the jihadists
being waged by U.S. President Barack Obama and could act in al-Qaida's favor.
"Unless urgent humanitarian action is taken, Yemen will be
plunged into a hunger crisis of catastrophic proportions," declared Jerry
Farrell, Save the Children's country director for Yemen.
Much of the problem can
be laid at the door of longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose 33-year
rule was notorious for its culture of corruption and inept governance.
He failed to build
infrastructures that would have averted the coming calamity and it was possibly
for this as much as his repression of Yemen's 23 million people that the
country now faces a humanitarian crisis.
Saleh, backed by the
Americans for years, was forced to step down in February as Yemen was wracked
by a pro-democracy revolution.
That made him the fourth
Arab dictator brought down by the so-called Arab Spring in a year.
Saleh's successor, his
former deputy Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi, is focused on trying to crush al-Qaida's
growing strength in southern Yemen.
But aid workers and
analysts say the greater danger to the country probably lies in the emerging
economic and social crisis and Hadi may not be up to the task.
Yemen's oil reserves,
pegged at 4 billion barrels in the 1990s, a meager total by Middle East standards,
are dwindling rapidly.
That's critical because
75 percent of state revenue and 90 percent of exports come from oil.
Dominic Moran, the Arab
World Project Coordinator for Greenpeace, says it's possible to trace a link
between the growing intensity of the current conflict in southern Yemen and the
crippling drought of 2008-09.
The U.S. National
Intelligence Council noted in a report a few weeks ago that "water
problems -- when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental
degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions --
contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure."
Mark Janssen of the
Federation of American Scientists observed: "This is particularly true in
Yemen, which, perhaps more than any other state, sits at the nexus of water and
national security.
"Water insecurity may indeed adversely affect U.S. national
security in the future, but certain U.S. national security operations can also
contribute to water insecurity today."
Growing water scarcity,
with highland aquifers shrinking by 10-20 feet a year, is threatening
agriculture in Yemen whose population, the World Bank says, is exploding at an
estimated 8 percent a year.
The water problem,
obscured by the fighting and al-Qaida's rise, is worsened because Yemenis use
40 percent of their available water to grow qat, a mildly narcotic plant that's
the country's largest cash crop and highly prized across the Arabian Peninsula.
That's far more than
they allocate to grow food.
"It's no coincidence that these areas are now outside
government control," the Middle East Research and Information Project
observed.
A report by the U.S.
firm McKinsey and Company for the Sanaa government said that worsening water
shortages could cost Yemen 750,000 jobs and slash incomes by as much as 25
percent over the next decade.
Water shortages are
already causing a major demographic shift from the countryside to the cities,
heightening the social crisis.
Unlike the oil-rich Gulf
states, Yemen cannot afford expensive desalination plants to overcome its water
shortage.
The World Food Program
says one-fifth of the population, around 5 million people, is in need of
emergency food aid.
The United Nations has warned
that 500,000 children may die in 2012 from malnutrition or famine, with around
750,000 children under five malnourished.
Rising food and fuel
prices, drought, the global economic meltdown, political instability and years
of bloodletting all contributed to the crisis.
"For years the deteriorating crisis has been ignored,"
lamented Joy Singhal of Oxfam's team in Yemen. "Now the country's at
breaking point."
