Anniversary (With Embarassing Update)

Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the end of the 1994 Civil War(Suggested gift: Crystal). There have been a few bombings of oil pipelines the last couple days- successful and not– but I would doubt they are directly connected to the anniversary (readers invited to disagree in the comments).

This anniversary comes at a bad time for Yemen. Human nature, for whatever reason, gives greater weight to nice, round numbers. At a time when discontent in the south is boiling, and the very nature of the state is in question, having a stark reminder could be a dangerous thing. The land grabs, the oppression, the destruction of the brewery- all of these things are remembered in starker relief due to the inexorable nature of time’s arrow, here.

The turmoil is also highlighted by the death penalty handed down to seven al-Houthi rebels. The state is in disrepair. Oddly, every headline I saw about this said appx. “Death penalty…Shi’ite rebels”, which, as we’ve argued, is not really the most exact way to describe the rebels. Interestingly, an organization called the Minority Right’s Group International listed Yemen as a “Major Riser” in a report on minority suppression. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, so I don’t know how much they focus on Yemen, but I will get to it tonight, and then have a post on labels and identification and the semantics of war.

I hope it will be more interesting than that description, which frankly sounds unbearable even to me.

UPDATE

I do, in fact, know when the actual anniversary is. I do not, however, know how to read my calendar. It was a very long weekend. I’ve been thinking all day that this was the 7th.