Dangers Build in Arabia's Most Volatile Corner

SANA'A (Nov. 11) - To enforce government rules that keep foreigners from seeing just how close Yemen is to tearing apart at the seams, everyone in this ancient Arabian nation uses a particular hand gesture: Put your open right hand in the crook of your left elbow, then lift the open left hand forty-five degrees from horizontal. It means "Show me your travel permit" -- tasrih, in Arabic -- an elusive document the government rarely, if ever, issues for the areas just north and east of the capital, Sana'a.

The Yemeni government still allows visitors to travel around the capital's spectacular Old City and the surrounding mountain villages, which teeter on such stark and steep slopes that they look in constant danger of sliding into oblivion. But virtually everywhere else, war, terrorism, kidnapping and insurgency are constant threats, and the Yemeni government desperately wants to protect its tourists from stray bullets -- and itself from bad PR.

The most urgent trouble is in the north, where the Yemeni armed forces and their partners from the Saudi armed forces across the border are trying to put down an increasingly fierce rebellion with an all-too-familiar origin: divisions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Yemen's government has been Sunni-dominated since 1962, and in recent years, it has embraced a particularly strict form of Sunni Islam popular in Saudi Arabia. The sizable Shiite minority, called the Zaydis, began fighting back in 2004 in Sa'dah, a largely Shiite enclave on the Saudi border. The Zaydis, who are nostalgic for the Zaydi monarchy abolished in 1962, are led by Yahya al Houthi, who now lives in Germany and is resisting Yemeni efforts to extradite him to Sana'a to stand trial for supporting armed rebellion.

The Houthi revolt has graduated from minor nuisance to huge problem for the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, and therefore to the region. Saleh's government is already accused of disastrous levels of corruption, and the county's oil and gas deposits are declining fast. The government now has to deal with an estimated 150,000 displaced residents who have fled the war in Sa'dah.

If Yemen crumbles into a failed state, it will be almost certain to become an A-list source and destination for al-Qaida fighters. The country, Osama bin Laden's ancestral home, is remarkably well stocked with Salafi mosques. Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born imam who reportedly exchanged e-mails with Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan, is thought to be in hiding in Yemen and continues to be sought by the Yemeni government for alleged ties to al-Qaida.

Since Yemen bars reporters from the conflict zone, news trickles out meagerly from the government and refugees, and in strange and unpredictable bursts from the rebels' press machine. Last week, to demonstrate that the government hasn't defeated them yet, Houthi warriors posted videos of Saudi military equipment engulfed in crackling flames, and of one captured Saudi sergeant, wounded in the face and visibly shaken.

On the other side, optimistic reports of solid progress emanate from the public affairs units of the Yemeni and Saudi militaries, but no one can verify their reports independently. The Yemenis and Saudis have also claimed that Iran is helping the Zaydis. Both the Iranians and the Zaydis, who adhere to a different blend of Shiism, deny the allegation, but Houthi has appeared on Iranian state television.

If the threats to Saleh's government resided only in the north, these problems might be managed. But more challenges loom virtually everywhere else. A separatist movement is stirring around Aden, the principal port city and site of the USS Cole bombing in 1999. In Ma'rib, a town just to the east of Sana'a that has been the site of al-Qaida-linked suicide bombings, malcontents have cut off the capital's natural gas supplies, allegedly because the government intercepted an arms shipment.

If Yemen is lucky, it will quash all these revolts. In a slightly worse-case scenario for the region, the Yemeni state will simply implode. But the most ominous prospect, if things continue to slide toward anarchy, is that Yemen will explode and threaten the stability of the Arabian Peninsula.