Residents of Sana, Yemen, waited at a gas station for fuel last week. Shortages of gas and other basic goods and services have heightened tensions in the city and set off fights and protests. Retrieved from: www.nytimes.com
“As foreign currency supplies dwindle, the elaborate system of patronage and corrupt payoffs that maintained a modicum of stability in Yemen is starting to crack, with former loyalists breaking off and fights erupting over a smaller and smaller pool of cash. The embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, desperate to keep his supporters happy, has demanded multimillion-dollar loans from Yemen’s top businessmen in recent weeks, according to Yemeni officials and members of the business elite.
The most fundamental of Yemen’s diverse woes is lack of water. Since the political crisis began in January, the price of water has risen fivefold in some areas, tenfold in others. The drills that pump water from Yemen’s rapidly dwindling underground supplies are falling silent, because the diesel they require has grown so expensive and scarce. The area around Sana is especially arid, and it could become the first capital ever to run out of water, said experts at the World Bank.”
“The bigger challenge than the political mess is the economic mess,” said one Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity under standard diplomatic protocol. Even if the political situation stabilizes, the diplomat said, the opposition’s hopes of increasing foreign investment and changing Yemen’s endemic corruption will not be realized “in one month, six months or even the next year.”
Read more: New York Times
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