A Hill in Sanaa

Despite appearances I have not forgotten about Waq al-waq, and while I’ll spare you the usual and tired excuses for my lack of posts I will direct you to the National, which today ran an op-ed I wrote on the US Embassy attack last week in Sanaa.

Here is the first paragraph: 

Forty years ago the US embassy in Yemen was a tower house in the heart of downtown Sanaa. Mud-brick and beige, it blended into the neighbourhood, which in 1972 also included the Soviet Embassy. At the time Sanaa was little more than a village; 50,000 people inside walls that had stood for centuries. The revolution that had begun a decade earlier was finally sputtering to an end after years of brutal fighting, and most Yemenis alive today had yet to be born.

To read the rest of the piece visit the National here.