Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world
At least that’s what this AP article would have us believe! The article ends with this charming description of Yemen:
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, is Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland and has a persistent al-Qaida movement that has attacked and killed foreigners on several occasions.
It is true that either al-Qaida or a movement inspired by al-Qaida has attacked and killed foreigners in Yemen. But — the “poorest country in the Arab world” and “Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland” — that’s just lazy and incomplete journalism.
By what standard is Yemen the poorest country in the Arab world? Is it because every single hectare of land has not been penetrated by Western development agencies? Is it based on some World Bank calculation of GDP and other bullshit statistics? To label a country as the “poorest country in the Arab world” is placing all kinds of Western-guided standards on a population which has seemingly rejected many of these practices.
Furthermore, the discussion of “poverty” in the context of “terrorism” (the AP article was a brief on an explosion at a foreigner housing compound in Sanaa) is fraught with all sorts of errors and latent suggestions for “solutions” to this poverty. Specifically, the World Bank is already very active in Yemen — so, by connecting “poverty” with “terrorism” could be a possible impetus for the Bank’s further encroachment on Yemen’s local economic structures. Poverty is not at the root of terrorism.
As for the claim of Yemen being Bin Laden’s “ancestral homeland” — this might be true, but it’s probably also true for, like, half of the Arabs in the Middle East! Many of the Shi’a of Jabal Amal (southern Lebanon) also claim ancient roots in Yemen from companions of the Prophet Mohammad, but this fact is not mentioned in every article about southern Lebanon! The attempt to portray Yemen as this dark country, full of “poverty” and relatives of Bin Laden is irresponsible at best, and a propaganda tool for Western companies and development agencies at worst.
Over 42% OF Yemenis live on under USD 2.00/day. Half of children under five are stunted from chronic malnutrition. The average income is around $725.00 for the year.
About 70% of women are illiterate. There is no doubt that Yemen is full of poverty and is the poorest country in the Arab world by far.
About 3/4 of Yemenis live in rural areas which are sorely lacking basic services including health care, educational facilities, water and electricity. But even a major city like Taiz only gets public water once every 40 days. About 30% of the country has any sort of sewage system. Kudos to the AP for highlighting the miserable condition that most Yemenis live in.
The major contributing factor to Yemen’s persistent and worsening poverty is the rampant corruption of the dictatorial regime led by Ali Abdullah Saleh and his family and tribesmen. Unfortunately corruption is so bad that reform minded ministers are thwarted at every turn and the contributions of donors are squandered, misspent or in some cases, unspent. Really, millions and billions in donor funds are a total waste, subject to elite capture and rarely benefit their intended recipients. The 4.6 billion pledged at the Novemeber 2006 donors conference has had little positive impact.
With 70% of Yemen’s national budget derived from oil revenue, the oil is expected to run dry within a decade. Economic diversification has not progressed and most of the agricultural land is used to grow the semi-narcotic shrub, qat, the business of which only further transfers funds from the poor to the rich.
So no, its not all about bad western labels stero-typing misunderstood Arab countries, sometimes its about millions of starving children subjected to an brutal and uncaring government, and by any human standard, they are poverty stricken.
But I do agree that terrorism and poverty have little correlation.
I agree with you that sometimes “by any human standard” poor means poor, but the statistics that you quote have all been gathered by the World Bank and other western development agencies. I am not saying that these statistics are inaccurate, but I do say that they are based on western concepts of “development” and do not always reflect the realities that people faced. Many times, if societies do not adhere to standards of western “development” then they are labeled as “underdeveloped” or “poor,” but at times, it is merely a difference of local economic solutions vs. global capitalism.
I disagree that “the major contributing factor to Yemen’s persistent and worsening poverty is rampant corruption.” Undoubtedly, there is corruption in Yemen and surely it has contributed to poverty, but there is also a whole network of development agencies and foreign companies that have deepened this type of poverty. Believe it or not, “donors” who give money to Yemen do not always have alleviating poverty as their primary goal, in fact, one of the central goals of “poverty alleviation” projects is actually to incorporate “rural, underdeveloped” groups of people into a market economy.
Well I get what you mean about development aid. However its important to keep in mind that corruption in Yemen occurs on a grand scale. The word “kleptocracy” was invented to describe Yemen. Corruption pervades every government office and bureaucratic institution. Of the goverment’s approx 1.5 billion dollar governmental budget, one third is allocated to oil subsidies. Of that, over 80% is lost to oil smuggling by regime affiliated individuals. Another third of the budget is spent on the military, and a good portion of that is for weapons purchases which are then illegally sold around the region by military commanders. Even child smuggling to Saudi Arabia is accomplished in conjunction with some members of Parliament. Health Ministry officials are also the retailers of smuggled medicines which total an astounding 70% of all medicine in Yemen, many of which are counterfeit or expired.
Poor governance, or rather the capture of the state by elite criminal gangs, is an internally generated configuration. Yemen was cut off from Western aid during the 1990’s and it is only since 9/11 that the US took a renewed interest in Yemen’s development. In fact, poverty in Yemen began to spiral after Yemen’s 1990 UN vote against Gulf One when Saudi Arabia expelled nearly a million foreign workers in retaliation, drying up an important source of funds in Yemen- expatriate remittances. So while donor policies (like the World Bank’s insistance on reducing oil subsidies) does have a negative impact on the poor, the prevelence of child hunger in Yemen is largely due to unfettered executive authority and the criminalization of the state. In my view anyway…
Actually its 1.5 trillion riyals for the government budget, sorry, I’m pre-coffee.