Yemen is collapsing. That may be its salvation [Los Angeles Times]
On the rare occasion Yemen shows up in the news, it’s a land of famine and war, home to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
So it was a surprise on a recent visit to coastal Shabwa province to find not only a white sandy beach that Instagrammers would drool over but a row of bungalows under construction to receive them.
The bungalows are part of a proposed resort named Shabwa Bride, which is under the personal supervision of the provincial governor, Mohammad Saleh Bin Adio. It’s one of many projects he points to as proof that, in the grim litany of Yemen’s disasters, Shabwa is an exception.
Advertisement
“We can say it’s the first province in Yemen completely liberated of armed militias, which submits to the state and receives its directives from the president,” Bin Adio said.
Yet many credit Shabwa’s rise less to the presence of the Yemeni government than to its absence.
Without the central government vacuuming up all of Shabwa’s oil profits and tax revenue, local leaders for the first time have had both the motivation and the means to develop the province as they see fit, said Nadwa Dawsari, a Yemen conflict analyst at the Middle East Institute.
A family buys traditional Yemeni jewelry at a gold shop in the market area of Ataq, the capital of Shabwa province, Yemen.