Yemen for dummies

Yemen — it’s the new black, or, the new country that as of Dec. 25 the United States realized it should be paying attention to. But if we’ve learned anything about Yemen in the two weeks since the Pants Bomber so thankfully failed, it’s that virtually nobody in the media or government, at least on ...

Yemen -- it's the new black, or, the new country that as of Dec. 25 the United States realized it should be paying attention to. But if we've learned anything about Yemen in the two weeks since the Pants Bomber so thankfully failed, it's that virtually nobody in the media or government, at least on the Hill, knows much about it. So, a blog post to help fix that. Here are some basic, good sources of information on the country and the debate about it.

Yemen — it’s the new black, or, the new country that as of Dec. 25 the United States realized it should be paying attention to. But if we’ve learned anything about Yemen in the two weeks since the Pants Bomber so thankfully failed, it’s that virtually nobody in the media or government, at least on the Hill, knows much about it. So, a blog post to help fix that. Here are some basic, good sources of information on the country and the debate about it.

  • Foreign Policy‘s own Marc Lynch has an excellent run-down and take-down of Washington’s pack thinking on Yemen
  • Local news sources in English: the Yemen Observer and Yemen Times
  • On the Knife’s Edge, a November policy brief on Yemen from Andrew Exum and Richard Fontaine at the Center for a New American Security; Exum and Fontaine also took to the pages of the L.A. Times hawkishly advocating U.S. intervention and earning them some pushback
  • The State of Yemen, a report by Alistair Harris and Michael Page of the Royal United Services Institute (requires subscription)
  • "Disorder on the Border" explains Saudi Arabia’s war with Yemen, by Joost Hilterman in Foreign Affairs
  • Bruce Reidel at the Brookings Institution is an expert on the issue and has been publishing feverishly
  • A good primer on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from BBC News
  • Among the best western reporters on Yemen is Ginny Hill, a frequent contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and policy analyst at Chatham House. See her work here.
  • Other to-follows: The Majlis and Waq al-Waq, a blog by Foreign Policy contributor and Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen and Brian O’Neill, a former editor at the Yemen Observer
Annie Lowrey is assistant editor at FP.

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