Saturday, April 25, 2015

Mapping Chaos in Yemen

Most of Yemen’s 24 million people live in the west of the country (area in box).


Years of American Involvement

Yemen is home to one of Al Qaeda’s most active branches, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Since 2009, the United States has carried out at least 100 airstrikes in Yemen, according to an analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has done a detailed analysis of strikes there.
Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist group operating in Yemen. Last week, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for bombings at two Shiite mosques in Sana that killed more than 135 people. The presence of ISIS could drive Yemen into a “full-blown sectarian conflict,” said Katherine Zimmerman, an analyst for the American Enterprise Institute. “What ISIS wants to do is to recreate in Yemen the sectarian war its predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq, stoked there.”

Historical Divisions
South Yemen was a separate country until 1990. The northwest, an area historically called Yemen, is mostly Shiite. The southeast, known as Hadramawat, is home to a mostly Sunni population. “Yemen and the Hadramawat have seldom been part of the same political entity in the past and have maintained separate identities for a long time,” said Michael Izady, a historian and cultural geographer who has mapped ethnicity and religion for Columbia University.

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