A Yemeni government tank used against Houthi rebels in the north. Photo: Al Jazeera video

For the past 15 years, Dwight Bashir has worked on international conflict, human rights and religious freedom issues. He is a senior advisor for an independent U.S. commission focusing on international religious freedom. The views expressed here are his own personal views.

A war of words is heating up between Iran and Saudi Arabia over an ongoing armed conflict in northern Yemen between Shi’a Houthi rebels and Yemeni security forces. This week, Iran accused Saudi Arabia of state-sponsored “Wahhabi terrorism” in Yemen, while the most senior Saudi cleric accused Houthi rebels of being backed by Iran to spread Shi’a Islam in “Sunni Islam’s heartland.”

Both Yemen and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of providing financial and/or military support to the rebels. Iran denies any kind of support for the rebels.

The conflict in Yemen is complex — with numerous interlocking factors, such as underdevelopment, limited resources, tribal tensions, political exclusion and security concerns. Some have posited that the conflict is exacerbated by the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaging in a proxy war on Yemeni soil.

The truth is that for 30 years both Iran and Saudi Arabia have spent billions of dollars exporting competing religio-political ideologies in the region and globally, while committing egregious human rights violations at home to defend and bolster their respective ideologies.

Ever since Saudi Arabia entered the conflict two weeks ago after Houthi rebels crossed into Saudi territory from northern Yemen and allegedly killed two Saudi border guards, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have risen almost daily.

UN officials have estimated that, since 2004, as many as 175,000 people have been displaced in northern Yemen. And at least 240 villages in Saudi Arabia have been evacuated in recent weeks.

To better understand the conflict, it is important to understand religious demographics in Yemen. Between 40-45% of the Yemeni population of 23 million are Shi’a Muslims, mostly from the Zaydi school of Shi’a Islam founded more than 1,000 years ago.

Although Yemen’s majority is Sunni, Zaydi Muslims make up a majority of the population in the north where the fighting is taking place. In general, there are few societal tensions between Yemen’s Shi’a and Sunni Muslims.

The Yemeni government claims that Houthi rebels — considered a Zaydi militant group — have sought to develop a political faction modeled on Hezbollah in Lebanon, in order to undermine the government and impose Shi’a Islamic law. This is similar to how the Iranian government’s interpretation of Twelver Shi’a Islam is the law of the land in Iran.

The rebels follow the late Zaydi cleric, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (hence “Houthi rebels”). Al-Houthi is a former Yemeni parliamentarian who was killed during a 10-week rebellion in 2004 against the Yemeni government in the northern province of Saada, where the fighting started more than five years ago. The rebels claim they are fighting against government repression, although they have never articulated clear objectives, political or otherwise.

Despite both the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels insisting that the conflict is not sectarian in nature, the Iranian government is doing everything it can to portray the conflict as two predominantly Sunni Muslim states, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, cooperating to massacre Shi’a civilians in Yemen. Despite the complexities, these Iranian claims are exaggerated, at best, and downright contrived at worst.

Some Zaydi Muslims in Yemen have been subject to discrimination and harassment for perceived or actual sympathy toward Houthi rebels. According to human rights groups in the region, some Zaydi Muslims not connected to the rebels have been inadvertently targeted by the Yemeni government.

Because Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been promoting competing religio-political ideologies, it is not surprising that both countries would fan the flames of sectarian warfare. Yemen is a fragile state with an active al-Qaeda presence that threatens regional security, and its government is fighting for economic and political stability.

To date, the international community has not played an active role in the conflict. With the spillover into Saudi Arabia, the international community must engage and help broker an end to the current crisis. If not, the conflict could quickly escalate and the region may be facing a new security reality that would likely have wider implications.

- Dwight Bashir

A North Korean sailor on the U.S.S. Pueblo, captured in 1968. Photo: Ben Piven.

KOREAS: A North Korean patrol ship exchanged fire with a South Korea naval vessel along their disputed western naval coast. The North Korean ship was badly damaged and retreated in flames. Both sides blamed each other for the incident.

JAPAN: Japan’s government has pledged five billion dollars in aid to Afghanistan over the next five years. The money will mostly go to civilian aid, infrastructure, job training and rehabilitation efforts for former Taliban soldiers.

AUSTRALIA: An environmental group wants the Australian government to categorize koalas as endangered.  The Australia Koala Foundation says the population of koalas has declined by 90% in the past two decades due to drought, over-development and disease.

LIBYA: Libya’s interior minister on Monday said that the country has reduced the number of  African migrants attempting to reach Europe illegally by sea by 90% through greater cooperation with Italy.

RWANDA: A Belgian court has ruled that the case against Ephrem Nkezabera, also know as the “Banker to the Genocide,” will go ahead despite his absence due to illness. Nkezabera is charged with helping to fund the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

SOMALIA: The United Nations is warning of significant displacement of Somalis due to heavy rains. The rains also make aid distribution even more difficult.

UK: Lloyds Bank has announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs by the end of 2010.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Czech officials said they would discipline soldiers for wearing Nazi symbols while in Afghanistan.

TURKEY: The Turkish government announced a plan to make peace with its Kurdish insurgents who have been waging a separatist battle for decades.

RUSSIA AND CIS: Swine flu cases in Russia have surpassed 4,500, and 19 people have died from the pandemic. In the far eastern Khabarovsk region, people working in shops, food services and the transportation sector are required to wear masks; those who refuse to comply will be fined.

Some 72 percent of Russians consider themselves happy, up from an all-time low of 42 percent in 1992, according to a poll conducted by the All Russian Public Opinion Research Center. The “happiest” respondents were young people living in the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Russians today celebrate the birthday of Mikhail Kalashnikov, founder of the AK-47, who turns 90, and note the death of Nobel-prize winning physicist Vitaly Ginzburg, who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb.

Russia’s security service caught fourteen members of an international prostitute ring. The ring, including citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, recruited girls from the Russian provinces and sent them to Europe, where they were forced into prostitution.

Russia’s Constitutional Court held hearings yesterday on whether or not to reimpose the death penalty in the country. There is currently a moratorium on the death penalty, which expires on January 1.

Videos posted by a policeman from Novorossiisk have become a media sensation in Russia. Policeman Alexei Dymovsky posted the videos last week, in which he addresses corruption in the police and appeals to Prime Minister Putin to improve conditions for the demoralized force. In response, Dymovsky was fired from his post. He now faces three investigations, including one for slander.

PAKISTAN: At least 30 people were killed and 50 injured in a bomb blast ripped through a busy traffic intersection in northwest Pakistan.

SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Defense Minister said that his country’s military will continue its air assault against Yemeni rebels until they retreat from the two countries’ border. Also, a Saudi Arabian government adviser says the kingdom has imposed a naval blockade on northern Yemen’s Red Sea coast to try to prevent weapons and fighters flowing to Shiite rebels in the area.

ISRAEL: Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said that the Lebanese group Hezbollah currently possesses tens of thousands of rockets, some capable of reaching up to 185 miles within Israel.

LEBANON: Months after parliamentary elections, Lebanon’s prime minister Saad al-Hariri formed a new Cabinet, which includes members of Hezbollah and its allies.

PALESTINE: Aides close to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said that he intends to resign and that other Palestinian officials would follow suit.

MYANMAR: The United States wants to see real progress in Myanmar towards democracy before any policy changes, said a senior U.S. diplomat after the first high-level talks between the two nations in more than a decade were completed.

JAPAN: Toyota Motor Corporation announced a surprise profit last quarter, suggesting a gradual recovery may be under way for Japan’s automakers.

CHINA: China’s ministry of health is going to ban the use of beating to treat teenagers addicted to the web. There are dozens of treatment centers in the country that offers to help teenagers withdraw from their web addiction by using military-style boot camp methods with tough extreme physical exercise and counseling.

NIGERIA: Late Wednesday Nigeria recorded its first swine flu case. The virus was found in a 9-year old girl from the United States living in Lagos.

MAURITANIA: Despite a law enacted in 2007 criminalizing slavery, the practice still persists in the northwest African country of Mauritania. That’s according to an independent UN representative who recently toured the country.

GERMANY: Thousands of Opel workers went on strike to protest GM’s move to stop the sale of Opel, a move which GM has said will cost thousands of German jobs.

SWEDEN: The Scandinavian country approved a gas pipeline which would bring natural gas from Russia to Germany. The move has already been approved by Denmark, and needs the go-ahead from Finland, Russia, and Germany to move forward.

UK: The Bank of England said Thursday it would inject an additional 25 billion pounds into its economy.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Forty-five percent of Czech citizens believe that social conditions are better today than before 1989, according to a poll published prior to the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Seventy-four percent pointed to the desire for freedom as the main factor behind the revolution.

RUSSIA AND CIS:

Russian investigators have arrested two people they say are responsible for last summer’s killings of human rights activist Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburina.

Swine flu deaths are on the rise in Russia, where fifteen people have died thus far from the epidemic. Buryatia–the latest region to declare a swine flu emergency–has banned all mass gatherings and is requiring every individual to wear a mask in public.

A Wassily Kandinsky painting has sold at Sotheby’s for $9.4 million. Sales of Russian art at Sotheby’s this week have netted more than $13 billion.

Police have seized more than 48 buckets of salmon caviar and 9 boxes of crab meat from poachers on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. Illegal poaching is a main source of livelihood for many residents of the area.

Time reports on global warming skeptics in Russia and the challenges the rest of the world faces in getting Russia to sign on to reductions in emissions targets in advance of next month’s Copenhagen conference.

Bloggers and free speech activists are criticizing Russia’s largest search engine Yandex for pandering to Kremlin censorship, the Times of London reports.

MEXICO: An American airman was killed in a Ciudad Juarez bar along with five other people last night, bringing the total number of homicides to 30 over the last four days.

Authorities in Mexico have arrested three doctors and a nurse at a private hospital for telling mothers that their newborns had died and then selling the babies.

CUBA: Russia and Cuba have signed four accords that will allow a Russian state energy firm to run oil exploration projects on the Island for the next 25 years.

ISRAEL: Haaretz newspaper reports that a ship seized on Wednesday by Israeli security forces has been released. Israeli officials said it contained tons of weapons supplied by Iran to Hezbollah.

LEBANON: In its official channel Al Manar TV, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah denied Israeli allegations that the ship Israel intercepted on Wednesday was headed for Lebanon. Hezbollah says that Israel is creating a distraction from the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza.

IRAN: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s said that a resolution to the dispute over Iran’s ongoing nuclear program could be the key to a stable Middle East.

PALESTINE: In an emotional speech, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed he will not seek reelection.

SAUDI ARABIA: Al Jazeera English is reporting that Saudi fighter jets have pounded the strongholds of Houthi combatants in northern Yemen after an earlier confrontation between Shia fighters and Saudi security forces killed two Saudi security men.

PAKISTAN: The Pakistani military said it has killed some 28 militants in South Waziristan.

AFGHANISTAN:The United Nations announced today said that it is temporarily relocating more than half its international staff in Afghanistan following last week’s deadly Taliban attack against UN workers. Also from Kandahar, Afghanistan, an overnight airstrike by international forces killed nine civilians, including at least three children.

South Yemenis in favor of secession from the North protested around the world this week on the anniversary of an uprising against former colonial power Britain.  In New York, a few hundred vocal Americans of South Yemeni descent demonstrated outside the United Nations building.

South Yemen was an independent nation after the British left in 1967. North and South Yemen unified in 1990 and a new country- the new Republic of Yemen  - was born with Ali Abdullah Saleh as its leader and San’a as its capital.  But the union has been uneasy and southerners have complained of being marginalized.

“We are a nation living under occupation,” said Hamza Saleh Meqbel, Vice President of TAJ (Southern Democratic Assembly), a South Yemeni political organization based in the United States.
Mr. Meqbel says the central government in the capital Sanaa has reneged on all commitments it promised and signed with the south upon unification.

“The unification treaty is invalid because the regime in Sanaa has lost its credibility. It was supposed to be a partnership, but the north has turned to occupiers and we no longer want a part of this unity.”

Ahmad al Muthana, the President of TAJ, claims that his group represents the majority of people in the south. “We are constantly in communication with our brothers in the south, we fully support them in their struggle,” he says.

So far the separatist South Yemenis have resorted to peaceful means in their quest for independence, including marches and protests. But al Muthana says, “if the regime keeps oppressing and killing our people, we will turn to arms.  We have no choice.”
That sentiment was echoed by many of the protesters. On Friday, Yemen’s interior ministry banned demonstrations in the south.

The problem in the south is not the only challenge for the Yemeni government.  Its forces have also been engaged in a military confrontation with Shiite rebels in the north.  The Yemeni government accuses the rebels of being loyal to Iran.

An unstable Yemen may spell disaster for the rest of the world.

Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility on several attacks in Yemen against tourists and U.S. interests, most notoriously the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 in the Red Sea port of Aden.

Yemen’s intelligence and military apparatus are busy with rebels in the north, as well as the separatists in the South, which makes it easier for Al Qaeda members to operate inside the country.

- Mohammad al-Kassim

Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sudan topped the list of failed states this year — rankings based on human rights, governance, economic activity and other indicators.

Also among the top 10 are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Poverty is endemic in many failed or failing states; in others, the government has lost legitimacy and control. As economic pressures increase with the global financial crisis, and environmental pressures contribute to water and food shortages, even more countries are at risk of failure.

But these dire conditions have implications far beyond individual borders, as failed states — with their high rates of poverty and violence — may serve as breeding grounds for terrorists with global ambitions.

Displaced persons in Yemen, which may be on the verge of becoming a failed state. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores what it means for a state to fail, from the impact on daily life to widespread geopolitical ripple effects.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosts a panel of guests:

Pauline Baker is the president of The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing war and alleviating the conditions that cause conflict. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Christopher Boucek is a research associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on regional security challenges. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and lecturer in Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School. Boucek has written widely on the Middle East, Central Asia, and terrorism.

Georgette Gagnon is the director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch and led a research mission to Darfur in 2004. She previously investigated human rights violations in Rwanda and directed the Human Rights Department at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

David Sanger of the New York Times, the author of the book “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” joins Martin Savide to discuss why al-Qaeda members are fleeing and how they might be caught.

For more on al-Qaeda’s role in Somalia, read our Q&A: Somalia’s state of emergency.

Eric Rosand, a senior fellow at the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, joins Martin Savidge to discuss how Obama’s approach to counterterrorism will differ from that of the previous administration, other major terror threats and Saudi Arabia’s security alert.

Women celebrate International Women’s Day in Oslo, Norway — the country that ranked first in gender equality.

Norway ranks number one for gender equality, followed by a handful of other Scandinavian countries, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2008.

The report measures economic participation and opportunity, educational access, political empowerment and health/longevity.

The “Linköpinglivin’” blog writes that gender-equal policies do not always ensure similar attitudes in Sweden, which ranked third in the report and is generally seen as progressive.

Ireland improved its rating by one place (8th), but blogger “Conor Reidy” argues that the use of gender quotas is essentially undemocratic.

Australian blogger “Julie Novak” writes about a government survey that showed a firm glass ceiling in the country (ranked 21st). She weighs the pros and cons of quotas.

Yemen ranked last on the list, although a 10-year-old Yemenese girl recently won a “Woman of the Year” award for fighting to get a divorce from her abusive husband — possibly the first such divorce in the country.

Saudi Arabia, Chad and Pakistan also rounded out the bottom of the list.

Activists in Pakistan are currently outraged at the appointment of two “anti-women” politicians to cabinet positions. The two are accused of supporting honor killings.

The “Impudent Observer” blog writes that Benazir Bhutto – the first woman elected to head Pakistan and the victim of a 2007 assassination – would have opposed the selection.

The United States ranked 27th out of the 130 countries surveyed.

Photo courtesy of TOMOYOSHI under a Creative Commons license.

On Tuesday, Yemen announced it would ban entry of Ethiopians and Eritreans in response to an influx of refugees, though Somalis are still permitted entry.

Dr. Maximo Migliori of Doctors Without Borders describes the scene at the village of Ahwar in southern Yemen, where refugees wash up on shore — dead or alive.

Below, bloggers in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere in the region discuss the refugee dilemma and international coverage of Somalia.

Yemeni blogger Omar Barsawad expresses his amazement that Yemen, itself extremely poor, has aided Somali refugees in ways that richer countries have not.

The “Yemenade” blog assesses Yemen’s resources, arguing that they are insufficient and that the international community must take action.

A blogger at “East African Philosopher,” raised in both Kenya and Somalia, discusses the most recent Transparency International report, which listed Somalia as the world’s most corrupt nation. He argues that Somalia is a failed state rather than a corrupt one and criticizes the U.S.’s handling of Somali warlords.

Blogger Nick Wadhams, a freelance journalist based in Kenya, argues that press coverage of piracy ignores the seriousness of the crisis in Somalia.

Journalist Rob Crilly responds, claiming attention on Somalia in any form is an improvement and suggesting journalists “smuggle in some of the serious stuff just below your reference to Johnny Depp.”

The recent pirate attacks brought international attention to war-torn and drought-stricken Somalia. The country’s ongoing fighting — a result of a power vacuum and conflict between warlords and insurgents — has received less attention, though it has displaced over 160,000 Somalis this year alone and left millions hungry.

Worldfocus producer Bryan Myers reflects on his experience covering the conflict in the 1990s: Remembering Somalia before the pirate attacks.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ISN Security Watch under a Creative Commons license.