Watching Yemen

I feel like I should be trying to learn more about this:

"Lambasting the dubious role being played by Iran in the stand-off between government forces and Al Houthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi analysts accused Iran of breeding ‘Al Houthi Hezbollah' in order to create a security headache for the kingdom.

"Dr Ali Al Atiyyah, a political analyst, said Al Houthi rebels are simply tools in the hands of a big player."

In the Christian Science Monitor, Laura Kasinof reports on another angle:

"While domestic insurgencies chip away at the control of Yemen's central government and an Al Qaeda branch gains strength in regions beyond the government's reach, another crisis — one that affects Yemen's entire population — has the potential to contribute to the country's instability and potential trajectory toward failure.

"Yemen is running out of water – fast.

"But the water crisis and the rise of militancy are not unrelated perils said Abdulrahman Al Eryani, Yemen's minister of Water and Environment, in an interview. Much of the country's rising militancy, he argues, is a conflict over resources.

"'They manifest themselves in very different ways: tribal conflicts, sectarian conflicts, political conflicts. Really they are all about sharing and participating in the resources of the country, either oil, or water and land,' said Minister Eryani. 'Some researchers from Sanaa University had very alarming figures. They said that between 70-80 percent of all rural conflicts in Yemen are related to water.'

"Khalid Al-Thour, a geology professor at Sanaa University, adds that recent reports have indicated that Sanaa's wells will run dry by 2015 at current water-usage rates."