The Fight for Yemen (PBS Frontline)

This video contains information on the current conflict in Yemen, including the Houthi rebels, AQAP, and the Saudi coalition.

See the full video here.

Sources of Instability in the MENA Region

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CSIS. “The Causes of Stability and Unrest in the Middle East and North Africa: An Analytic Survey.” February 13, 2012.
A great briefing that looks at the underlying causes of instability in MENA. This report Arab Spring instability will continue for at least ten years. Some factors destabilizing MENA include a booming youth population, unemployment, the illusion of oil wealth, high costs, clash within a civilization, rapid change, weak rule of law, weak institutions, and corruption. CSIS argues that IGOs, NGOs, and watchdogs should gather “data in key areas like unemployment and underemployment, income distribution, the efficiency of the state sector, barriers to growth and economic development, the size and function security forces and police, and quality of governance,” and “statistical standardization” between states.” Ultimately, the results of Arab Spring go further than regime change, and into the realm of nation-building. For the MENA region to succeed, the new administrations need to reevaluate the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and state. For economics, this change means working with international partners and NGOs to develop critical infrastructure while diversifying spigot economies to prevent long term financial ruin and corruption. Furthermore, the state can seek to regulate rather than crack down on informal economies. For politics, this opportunity means the creation of a legitimate government, which follows the rule of law, has institutions that facilitate political institutions that cooperation with the population to eliminate social grievances. For society, this impetus means the establishment of new networks including “strong” links through the local level of government and business – education, police, and welfare, and “weak” links through the international community and specific issue groups through multilateral institution cooperation and advances in communications, utilizing social media as a vehicle for advocacy and reform.

Arab Spring Timeline

Arab Spring Timeline, courtesy of the Daily Mail U.K.

Blight Garry, Sheila Pulham and Paul Torpey. “Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests.” The Guardian. January 5, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interactive-timeline.

This multimedia interactive has a detailed timeline from December 12, 2010 through December 17, 2011 on the Arab Spring protests that swept the MENA region.[1] The analysts used a simple typography, diving up events by a key (Protest/Response to Protest, Political Move, Regime Change, and International/External Response). The countries included Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, and Yemen.[2] Each event has a brief synopsis and links to pertinent Guardian articles. The key changes over this period are: people in the MENA region gradually evolved to see themselves more as citizens of a state than subjects of an administration, and the growth of web-based epistemic communities through social media as a vehicle for reform.