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Yemen : what everyone needs to know / Asher Orkaby.

by Orkaby, Asher, author.

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New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Ṣāliḥ, ʻAlī ʻAbd Allāh.

Yemen (Republic) -- History.

Yemen (Republic) -- Politics and government.

9780190932275 (paperback) :

0190932279 (paperback)

What everyone needs to know.

xvi, 195 pages : maps ; 21 cm.

Regions, Sects, and Tribes -- Arabia Felix: An Early History of Yemen -- Imperial Yemen - Ottoman and British Empires -- An Era of Modernization: the Formation of the Yemeni Republic -- Ali Abdullah Saleh's Regime, Unification, and al-Qaeda -- The Houthi Wars (2004-2010) -- Agriculture and Economy -- Arabian Minorities -- Education and Society -- The Arab Spring in Yemen -- Yemen's Modern Civil War.

"On March 21, 1942, a son was born to a poor family in the village of Beit al-Ahmar near Yemen's capital city of Sana'a. His father, who had worked as the village blacksmith, died at an early age leaving the orphaned boy to be raised by his mother. Every dry season, the family moved from village to village in search of grazing land for their small flock of sheep. The task of tending these sheep was given to the young boy. Local educators discovered him to be a precocious student with a talent for memorizing religious texts and writing. At the age of 12, he left home to go visit his older brother in the army barracks south of their village. So enamored was he by the comradeship of the army that he lied about his age and enlisted. Driven by personal ambition and love for his Yemeni homeland, he dedicated his life to the army and was selected to join the officer's school in 1960, paving the way to military and political leadership. The character in this story of rags to riches, who was able to rise above deep personal tragedy, was none other than the notorious Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's former president and the individual who had the most profound impact on the modern state of Yemen. Over the course of his 33-year presidency, Saleh crafted the modern Yemeni state, which was built on precarious foundations of tribal agreements, temporary truces, negotiated boundaries, political nepotism and patronage, and widespread corruption. Only Saleh understood the intricacies of his own creation and, as the country discovered, after he stepped down from the presidency in 2012, only Saleh could control all its moving elements. His alliance with the Houthi rebels in 2014 was the ultimate betrayal for the last remnants of Yemeni society that still revered him as a revolutionary leader. As president, he was a mirror of Yemeni society, exuding optimism in the early 1990s and marking the first stages of the country's gradual decline a decade later, a consequence of Saleh's mismanagement and exploitation of Yemeni resources for his own personal gain. The story of modern is Yemen is, in part, the biography of its longest serving president, but it is also the story of a historic people with a rich culture, religious tradition, language, and heritage. Even before Saleh's death in December 2017, the Yemeni people and their remaining leadership have struggled to redefine their country whose borders, politics, and tensions were so closely tied to the presidency of one man. This book will trace the country's history, society, economy, and politics, to present a comprehensive picture of what everyone needs to know about Yemen"--

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