NEW YORK // A UN aid official says no one has answered an appeal to help those escaping north Yemen's fighting, which poses a growing threat to security across the Arabian peninsula. Rashid Khalikov, the director of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), urged Gulf Co-operation Council members to help their neighbouring "brothers and sisters" during Ramadan.
Analysts say the six-nation GCC should boost development aid to Arabia's poorest country or watch Yemen collapse deeper into failure as a state and turn into a breeding ground for al Qa'eda terrorists. Ocha's appeal this month for US$23.7 million (Dh87m) to assist northern Yemenis has not received a single response, Mr Khalikov said. Only European and North American donors have signalled a willingness to help.
"We are appealing to the countries of the GCC - they have to support these multilateral actions and provide assistance to their civilian brothers and sisters in Yemen," he said by telephone on Tuesday. Speaking after spending four days visiting refugees in the mountainous north, Mr Khalikov urged the GCC to shoulder some of the burden and provide some aid before Eid al Fitr festivities begin. After meeting some of the 3,700 residents of al Mazrak camp, in Haradh, the aid chief described growing numbers of displaced people spending days herding livestock across the sun-scorched terrain in a desperate bid for refuge.
He also called on Saudi Arabia to permit UN aid workers access across its southern border to assist the refugees camping out in Yemen's hills after fleeing the battlefields around Sa'ada city. The UN estimates that 50,000 people have fled since the latest bout of fighting erupted between al Houthi rebels and government troops in July, bringing the total to about 150,000 from six rounds of violence since 2004.
Combat has spread from the streets of Sa'ada across the region and into nearby Hajjah, Amran and al Jawf, with fleeing villagers braving soaring temperatures and roads strewn with unexploded ordnance in search of safer places. The rebels, adherents to the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam in Sunni-dominated Yemen, criticise their government as a corrupt, Saudi-sponsored entity and seek to restore the Zaidi imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 coup.
Al Houthis are accused of financing their rebellion with Iranian cash, charges that suggest Iran has opened another front besides Lebanon in an effort to extend its influence across the Sunni-dominated Arab world. Saudi Arabia is likewise accused of supporting Yemen's army and launching air raids against al Houthi positions, with some suggesting the fighting represents a dangerous proxy confrontation between Riyadh and Tehran.
The al Houthi rebellion, however, is just one of many problems in this country of 23 million. Water shortages, over-cultivation of khat, a stimulant, an unemployment rate of 35 per cent and dwindling oil reserves have left officials struggling to provide for a population that is expected to double over the next 20 years. An influx of Somali refugees across the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden and a secessionist uprising in the south have weakened the government. Yemen's territory is now exploited as a haven for al Qa'eda.
The suicide bomber in last month's failed attack on Saudi Arabia's antiterrorism chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, crossed into the kingdom from Yemen, backing reports that militants are using the country to launch cross-border attacks. According to Unicef, the death last week of Fawziya Youssef, a Yemeni child forced into marriage with a man twice her age, after suffering extensive bleeding during childbirth, is emblematic of the country's myriad woes.
Ann Veneman, the director of the UN's agency for children, said the 12-year-old child bride's death underscored the "poverty and ignorance" pervading Yemen and the need to "address the underlying causes" of a turbulent country. Christoph Wilcke, a regional expert who recently returned from a research trip to Yemen for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based pressure group, said officials had been outgunned by numerous political and environmental woes.
"The southern movement, the al Houthi movement, the al Qa'eda presence and economic worries with drought and weather conditions - in all of those areas the government has not led a problem-solving approach but rather exacerbated tension and conflict," he said. Marisa Porges, a counter-terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, paints a dismal picture of the GCC's "weakest neighbour" collapsing further into chaos and "dragging down the region". "We could see people flowing across borders as part of a refugee crisis and the danger of al Qa'eda, transnational terrorists using Yemen to target its neighbours," she said. "This could be combined with other, more traditional, threats, such as arms smuggling, drug trafficking and piracy issues."
In a paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Christopher Boucek, a researcher, described "unprecedented" dangers that could overwhelm the government and turn Yemen into a breeding ground for terrorists. "If left unaddressed, Yemen's problems could potentially destabilise Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states," Mr Boucek said. "The inability of the Yemeni central government to fully control its territory will create space for violent extremists to regroup and launch attacks against domestic and international targets."
Cash-strapped Yemen needs donors to finance upgrades to police and the courts, he said. Gulf states should permit Yemen conditional entry to the exclusive GCC club, he added, warning: "Inaction is not an option." jreinl@thenational.ae
