The challenge of Yemen

For most Americans, Yemen is a distant and forbidding place, intruding upon our lives only in the context of terrorism — be it the bombing of the USS Cole, its status as Osama bin Laden’s “ancestral homeland,” or the attempted Christmas Day 2009 bombing of Northwest Flight 253. But while this parched, impoverished land at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula is unknown to many, it stands at the center of the struggle against al Qaeda.

Thousands of dedicated Americans throughout our government are focused on preventing another major attack on America that many believe will be masterminded from Yemeni territory.

{mosads}As home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a separatist movement in the southern part of the country, and the Houthi insurgency in the northwest along the Saudi border, Yemen commands American attention and assistance. But, as I came to appreciate during a recent visit to Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, the country faces three additional challenges: a young and chronically underemployed population, a severe water shortage and the depletion of the country’s oil reserves. These three factors — demography, environment and economy — threaten Yemen’s survival and could foster further instability in an already unsteady region.

As we flew over Yemen, the country’s geography revealed itself as an additional challenge. Twice the size of Wyoming, Yemen is geographically diverse and sparsely settled outside of major cities and towns. It is easy to disappear there, as there are only 7,705 kilometers of paved roads in the entire country (neighboring Oman, by comparison has more than 16,000 kilometers of paved roads, but is only 60 percent as large as Yemen). Yemen’s lengthy land and maritime borders are also porous and difficult to defend. While much of our attention in recent months has been focused on the government’s fight against Houthi rebels based along the western part of the frontier with Saudi Arabia, the longer-term threat emanates from Yemen’s proximity to and longstanding historical ties with Somalia, whose present could be Yemen’s future. Both countries have become a sanctuary for al Qaeda leaders who have been flushed from their redoubts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The al Qaeda threat in Yemen has not gone unnoticed by American policymakers over the past decade. In the wake of the Cole bombing and the 9/11 attacks, our counterterrorism cooperation with the Yemeni government increased markedly. That effort has now moved to a new stage as economic and security assistance to Sana’a has been greatly increased in the past couple of years (the Obama administration has requested $63 million in fiscal 2011, a 20 percent increase over the previous year) and American and other allied nations are training Yemeni security forces.

Ultimately, however, this cannot be America’s fight alone. Our military has been stretched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; we cannot afford a new, large-scale financial commitment given our budgetary crisis; and the goal of resuscitating Yemen is better left to regional players, who cannot be so easily portrayed as anti-Muslim imperialists looking to broaden American hegemony in another Islamic country.

{mosads}There are encouraging signs that Yemen’s neighbors have come to appreciate the danger in their midst. In December 2009, the United Arab Emirates pledged $650 million in aid. Saudi Arabia pledged a billion dollars in aid in 2006 and was drawn into the Yemeni government’s fight last fall with the Houthi rebels, a tacit acknowledgement that, as the Kuwaiti newspaper al Watan opined last month, “The security of Yemen means the security of the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf.” This year there have already been two international conferences on Yemen. A January meeting in London, sponsored by the British government, drew Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other world leaders, who discussed how best to counter the disintegration of the Yemeni state as well as ways to counter radicalization there. This was followed up by a donors’ conference in Riyadh at the end of last month, at which the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the European Union, the United States and international financial institutions continued to hammer out a rescue plan for Yemen.

Leaving Yemen, I concluded that the threats to the country cannot be solved by counterterrorism assistance and training alone, but will require sustained, multilateral engagement that relies on Yemeni and other regional players to assume the lead role. Time is not on our side, however, as Yemen’s dwindling oil and water supplies will put even greater pressure on Sana’a’s ability to reassert control over its own territory and people. America has a crucial role in helping our Arab allies in Yemen. Our technical expertise, military power and intelligence capability will play a vital role in helping to stabilize the country. Our ability to coordinate large-scale development projects will help to inform a multilateral aid program that may give Yemen’s impoverished millions — 45 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day — a chance at a better life, while bolstering our own security.

Schiff is a member of the House Intelligence Committee.