People right now are divided in two groups as far as speculation goes when it comes to the current situation in Yemen: some believe that this whole thing is being blown out of proportion, and that the Huthi problem is under control, Al-Qaeda is just a phase that will pass, and that the government is in full control of the situation; others are freaking out, taking their savings out of banks and into chests under their beds, stocking on canned foods, gas, medicines, etc, especially those who lived through the 1994 war. This weird devide between the paranoid overreactors and the indifferent overconfident is very unsettling; you don't quite know who to believe and what to do. So i might not be buying cans of beans yet, but i'll probably put that money under my mattress.
The tricky part is that the situation is not really that easy to decipher because there are multiple piles of shit all hitting the fan at the same time: The Huthis are absolutely relentless, although one of their prominent leaders was killed about a week ago; Al-Qaeda is elusive and no one really knows how to track them down, and you could NEVER tell what their support base is like; the leftists are reactionaries and not very efficient or pressing with their demands as a valid political entity, but citizens of many a southern governorate are able to cause problems with assasinations, kidnappings, vandalism, etc. without the need for a political agenda; there is also a "mini" tribal war in Abyan that no one really is talking about, and the whole area has been sealed so those guys would keep their bullets for eachother. Not many expected that all of these issues would arise at the same time, but alot of people have been fearfully waiting for things to get out of hand because of the government's lack of foresight and planning. When all you've been doing is stuffing your pockets for 30+ years, at some point you'll look up to see urself in a big hole.
If you just ask people on the street, most would tell you that this is what happens when the government is too corrupt to actually play the political game which would insure a certain loyalty from different factions, and we're talking thousands of tribal leaders here. With repression, these concerns are always well-hidden, only the socialists et all in diaspora are talking about it from time to time, but everyone knows they have no power anymore, so their talk wil always remain talk.
As for the recent Al-Qaeda developments, everyone has a different opinion about it. Some people see a connection between them and the Huthis, some think such an idea is ridiculous (Huthis being Shiite and Al-Qaeda being Wahabi), some people believe in the theory that Iran and Saudi are the "masters of puppets" in this whole thing, but then also some believe that the whoel Huthi crisis has been created and played by the government for specific financial gain. But one thing that most people would agree with is that the deployment even of ten US troops would open the mouth of hell, for it would be the perfect excuse for whoever has any western intolerance to unleash their weapons, literally. The big problem wud be the fact that even people who are now denouncing the attacks on foreign interested would not feel so oblidged to do so if there is a US militray deployment in the country. Unfortunate as it is, it's still a fact that the hate for America, if not just out of sheeply ideological following, is either because some people are genuinly pissed that the US supports financially a government that is a tyrannical dictatorship, or because they believe that the US has a hidden agenda and an interest in the region and just wants in (conspiracy theory #1: it started with the whole somali pirates thing, and then with a guy wanting to explode from his boxers who did not even have a history of extremism). Either way, Al-Qaeda support would soar, and war wud not even begin to describe such a situation.
Now, alot of people say that there is already a military existance in the South, but no one can really prove it (other than the guys from all over on the look out for those pirates). But what I can confirm is that a couple of days ago, in borad daylight, people on the street saw huge rockets flying over the Sana'a sky heading towards Al-Qaeda targets, some resources claim those were US rockets.
Excuse me if issues and ideas are colliding in this post, i am just jotting down whatever i remember from the past couple of days.
