For the Hot Stratfor Babe to accompany the article I selected Agnes Ayers, who starred with Rudolph Valentino in the 1921 silent film The Sheik.
The Sheik is actually set in Algeria rather than Yemen, so technically this makes my choice of Agnes Ayers even more dubious than my usual Hot Stratfor Babe selection, but one desert is pretty much the same as another in my book, so it's close enough for me.
Agnes plays a sort of proto-feminist, who rather stupidly heads off into the desert by herself because she's so head strong and free spirited. She gets captured by the Sheik which leads to the famous Tent Scene where he attempts to compromise her chastity. Much silent screen ham-bonery ensues, and amidst tribal raids, sand storms and the like she falls crazy mad in love with the Sheik. Feh, sounds like Stockholm syndrome to me.
At any rate, it all ends happily when, conveniently for the attitudes of the day, it turns out he's really an orphan of a British father and Spanish mother so there are no pesky racial issues in their romance.
"Why have you brought me here?"
"Are you not woman enough to know?"
By the way, at the end of the Stratfor article I've embedded a video of the famous Tent Scene if you want to see what made women swoon, and men roll their eyes, back in 1921.
AQAP AND THE VACUUM OF AUTHORITY IN YEMEN
By Scott Stewart, March 31, 2011
While the world's attention is focused on the combat transpiring in Libya and the events in Egypt and Bahrain, Yemen has also descended into crisis. The country is deeply split over its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and this profound divide has also extended to the most powerful institutions in the country -- the military and the tribes -- with some factions calling for Saleh to relinquish power and others supporting him. The tense standoff in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa has served to divert attention (and security forces) from other parts of the country.
On March 28, an explosion at a munitions factory in southern Yemen killed at least 110 people. The factory, which reportedly produced AK rifles and ammunition, was located in the town of Jaar in Abyan province. Armed militants looted the factory March 27, and the explosion reportedly occurred the next day as local townspeople were rummaging through the factory. It is not known what sparked the explosion, but it is suspected to have been an accident, perhaps caused by careless smoking.
The government has reported that the jihadist group Aden-Abyan Islamic Army worked with militant separatists from the south to conduct the raid on the factory. Other sources have indicated to STRATFOR that they believe the raid was conducted by tribesman from Loder. Given the history of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) activity in the Loder area, if the tribesmen were indeed from Loder, it is highly likely they were at least sympathetic to AQAP if not affiliated with the group.
While it is in Saleh's interest to play up the separatist and jihadist threats as a way of showing international and internal parties how important he is and why he should remain in power, these threats are indeed legitimate. Even in the best of times, there are large portions of Yemen that are under tenuous government control, and the current crisis has enlarged this power vacuum. Because of this lack of government focus and the opportunity to gather weapons in places like Jaar, militant groups such as AQAP, the strongest of al Qaeda's regional franchise groups, have been provided with a golden opportunity. The question is: Will they be capable of fully exploiting it?
The Situation in Yemen
The raid on the arms factory in Jaar was facilitated by the fact that government security forces had been forced to focus elsewhere. Reports indicate that there was only a company of Yemeni troops in Jaar to guard the factory and that they were quickly overwhelmed by the militants. While the government moved a battalion into Jaar to restore order, those troops had to be taken from elsewhere. This confrontation between troops loyal to Saleh and those led by Brig. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar in the capital city has also caused security forces from both sides to be drawn back to Sanaa in anticipation of a clash. It has also resulted in a vacuum of power in many parts of the country. Currently, government control over large parts of the country varies from town to town, especially in provinces such as Saada, al-Jouf, Shabwa and Abyan, which have long histories of separatist activity.
It is important to understand that Yemen was not a very cohesive entity going into this current crisis, and the writ of the central government has been continually challenged since the country's founding. Until 1990, Yemen was split into two countries, the conservative, Saudi-influenced Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the Marxist, secular People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. In 1994, following a peaceful unification in 1990, a bloody civil war was fought between the north and the south. While the north won the war, tensions have remained high between the two sides, and there has long been a simmering anti-government sentiment in the south. This sentiment has periodically manifested itself in outbreaks of armed hostilities between the armed southern separatist movement and government forces. [continued after jump]
