On A Dagger's Edge
Yemen has become America's surprise ally in fighting terrorism. But can the Muslim nation survive its own struggle with endemic poverty and extremism?
Shoo-in. Amid all this, Yemen has somehow managed to remain one of the most democratic nations in the (admittedly autocratic) Middle East--and one of the very few with a relatively free press. The government tolerates a raft of opposition parties and independent newspapers. Yemenis, for the most part, feel free to criticize the government, and even Saleh, in public. A presidential election is scheduled for September, and while Saleh is assumed to be a shoo-in, he will face several other candidates.
Still, it's not clear how much the government is capable of changing. The democratic reforms all stop short of threatening Saleh's rule; in the last election, he won 96 percent of the vote. The state maintains its monopoly on radio and television stations--perhaps the most influential media in this predominantly illiterate society. The government has also been backsliding on press freedom in recent months, as more journalists are being harassed and several newspapers have been shuttered in recent weeks.
Yemen is not getting all that much help through foreign aid these days, either. Donors are growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress and the overriding problem of corruption, leading to large cuts in aid this past year. "We are giving them just enough to maintain the status quo," says one U.S. official. "They need aid that's transformational--billions of dollars that they're not going to get. We won't increase it because the leadership is just not there."
Robin Madrid has run the Yemen program for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes democratization, for five years and used to be an optimist about the prospects for reform. But she is finally fed up with the "gridlock" on election reform, "skyrocketing" corruption, and increasing harassment of journalists. The final straw came when her staff recorded "appalling cheating" by government officials during a by-election for a parliament seat. "This past year, the scales dropped from our eyes," she says. "We're tired of promises. We're tired of good intentions. It comes to a point when it's not enough to say that you held the country together as it fell down the tubes."
Accountability. In the past two months, however, Madrid says she has noticed a subtle shift in the government's attitude, perhaps in response to some of the aid cuts. Several reform measures have suddenly moved forward, including a bill to strip the president of his role as head of the judiciary and one that would create an anticorruption agency. "In the past, we have been lenient when it comes to accountability," says Qirbi, the foreign minister. "Now we are making the people who are responsible accountable for any poor performance. We have overcome a major obstacle, which is admitting that there are deficits."
Still, even the best of intentions tend to get sabotaged by the endemic corruption. One glaring example is the education sector, which has been a particularly weak spot for Yemen, where about half of adults are thought to be illiterate. "We have maybe the worst educational quality in the world," says Arhabi, the minister of planning. "I have myself seen students in sixth grade, who if you ask them to pronounce the alphabet, they aren't able to finish it. Forget about reading and writing."
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