The recent escape of 23 suspected al-Qaeda inmates from a maximum security facility in Yemen has spawned some baroque theories about their prison break. One theory presently circulating in Yemen is that the escape was orchestrated to transfer them into U.S. custody, thereby circumventing extradition laws.

One of the most corrupt states in the world, Yemen is plagued with embezzlement, smuggling, mismanagement, and corruption, which in the aggregate have ruined its economy. Unemployment and poverty rates are very high. Land ownership, business ownership, political and military power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small elite.

The E.U. has called Yemen "the forgotten crisis."

Of the four million children under the age of five, half are physically stunted from malnutrition, half never enter first grade, and 11 percent die before their fifth birthday-about half of those deaths from diarrhea. Nearly 90 percent of the population does not have access to clean water.

Yemen has good odds of developing into a giant problem at some point. Calling the government corrupt isn't strong enough. This article uses the term "kleptocracy".

So far to the best of my knowledge, we have only appeased Yemen in order to get cooperation from them. It doesn't look like its been working. They seem to view terrorist insurgent style fighters as a key national asset. Fitting for the ancestral homeland of Osama Bin Laden... Yemen continues to be one of the largest sources of foreign fighters in places like Iraq. Yemen is also one the the major arms trading ports in the world, and does business with some of the nasty nasties. I remember back in 2002 a vessel was stopped shipping SCUD missiles (hidden under concrete slabs) to Yemen from North Korea. The ship was let go after determining that there wasn't a way we could legally stop it.

Yemen was not, in the opinion of the United States, "looking for missiles for terrorism," a senior administration official told CNN, adding that Yemen is "in an area of the world where respect, prestige and protection come from the barrel of a gun."

Well gee.. When taking that into account, I guess that since Yemen has an AK-47 for every man, woman, and child, they are attempting to build their society based on fundamental respect for all people. Maybe I should stop being so darn ethnocentric.

The Two Faces of Yemen