Yemen: A Nightmare We Will Never Wake Up From

I was writing about Yemen for a slightly longer piece and I thought I briefly list the elements that make Yemen a perpetual disaster:

• The country has gone through two civil wars. The previous civil war pitted the royalist forces and Saudi military against the republicans and Egypt. The most recent one in 1994 after South Yemen seceded just four years after unification. One of the grievances that was never resolved was that Yemen's oil fields are in South Yemen, yet the region does not benefit from the oil revenue. Unfair distribution of oil wealth by the central government, especially when the oil is extracted outside the home of the capital has been a major source of instability in Sudan, Iraq, and Angola. 
• The national government's control is non-existent outside the capital, there is a strong secessionist movement in the south, and tribal warlords in the north.
• There has been a Zaidi Shiite insurgency, often referred to as Houthis, in the north since 2004. Saudi Arabia launched attacks against the Houthis afraid that trouble in Yemen would spill over the border and into the kingdom.
• Yemen is widely regarded as the most heavily armed population in the world, its water supply is dwindling, and khat use is rampant. 
• Oil reserves make up 75% of government revenues, account for 90% of exports, and will dry up within a decade. 
• It has the same population of its neighbor Saudi Arabia and 25% of the land mass. The average age is 18. When speaking at the University of Minnesota, Fareed Zakaria noted that one of the causes of the Arab Spring was an increase in the percentage of the population that are young men. 
• Yemen is also host to the most active Al-Qaeda franchise. 

These are all elements that do not bode well for the future.