Yemen's decidedly bleak future - Cake and Armageddon

Yemen remains in the grip of a bloody internal power struggle. Since 11 August, Yemeni troops backed by their tribal allies have engaged the Shiite Zaidi Houthi rebels in fierce battles across the impoverished and mountainous northern Yemen in the aptly named Scorched Earth operation. The battles have claimed dozens of lives and displaced thousands more. In the primary urban centre, Saada City, thousands of civilians are without power and water and food supplies are running low - this state of affairs led the government to announce a ceasefire on Friday so as to allow aid groups access to the governorate and assist those worst affected. The ceasefire, according to state media, lasted only a few hours and was finally rejected on Saturday when Houthi rebels reportedly massacred a group of women and children in a remote northern village. The claim by the government should be taken with a pinch of salt of course and is most likely propaganda, used to stir up popular support for the army's war effort in the north. Then again the Shiite rebels are certainly not what one would call Peace Corps material and a massacre or two can not be put past them. Heavy fighting continued yesterday around Saada City with Yemeni armoured columns surrounding the Old City in Saada, a rebel stronghold. The fighting has raised concerns, yet again, that Yemen may be descending, yet again, into complete anarchy and failed state status. Such declarations of doom are made regularly when discussing Yemen. Separatist sentiment in the south, persistent tribal and clan violence and the growing presence of the routed Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda branch in the country's lawless eastern provinces are often mentioned as precursors to Armageddon in the southern Arabian Peninsula. We at Mecasr believe that these issues are secondary to the real problem in Yemen - the political system is the real issue. Racked by corruption and propped up by an unstable patronage system, the Yemeni polity is one disaster short of a complete collapse. The GPC, the ruling party, has dominated Yemeni politics since unification in the early 90s and is led by the iron willed but ageing Ali Saleh (sounds decidedly like North Korea, Libya, Niger, Zimbabwe…etc etc). This volatile mix of political exclusionism and rise of popular discontent have created a deadly mix of revolutionary cake of which Marie Antoinette would be proud. Naturally it is up to the people themselves if they wish to take a bite.