"Yemen teeters on brink of failure"

'HRH, Prince-General-Playboy Khaled bin Sultan, reviewing the troops'

LATimes, here

" ... In Sana's snug alleys, men speak of war, secession and Al Qaeda, which is busy scouring schoolyards and mosques for new recruits while much of the population spends hours each day getting a mellow buzz from chewing khat leaves.

If Yemen were a theater, which sometimes it appears to be, it would be an unnerving place of trapdoors and shifting facades. This is the poorest nation in the Arab world and one of the most strategically located, with 3 million barrels of oil sailing daily past its shores, tucked between Saudi Arabia and Somalia.

And it is a teetering mess that some in Washington fear could draw the U.S. into a conflict with extremists at the intersection of the Middle East and the lawless Horn of Africa. "We are a failed state," said Abubakr A. Badeeb, a leading member of the opposition Socialist Party. "Yemen can no longer protect the rights of its citizens."......

Washington's concern about Yemen has intensified since 2000, when militants slammed a motorboat packed with explosives into the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, killing 17 sailors. .......

But non-military U.S. aid to Yemen has remained modest; this year totaling $24 million, up from $9.3 million the previous year. The Obama administration has requested about $65 million in counter-terrorism and military assistance.....

The secessionist movement in the south threatens to split the country, but bombs and a surge of more than 175,000 people fleeing the war in the northwest is the consuming topic these days. There, Houthi rebels, Shiites of the Zaidi sect that had ruled for centuries, are battling Yemeni and Saudi forces along a border that stretches to the shipping lanes of the Red Sea....

Riyadh fears two scenarios: The uprising will inspire unrest among the country's persecuted Shiite minority near its eastern oil fields, and that it will create a porous border for Al Qaeda militants to enter the kingdom to attack oil depots and government institutions...."