David Commins: evaluation

Transcript context

…Why is Yemen so unstable when the rest of the region looks really quite stable? I think a Yemen expert could give a better answer than I could, but my understanding is that the Yemen Arab Republic that formed in 1990 from the union of North and South Yemen was stable because of a very delicate political compromise between powers in different parts of the country. That political compromise, of course, has been exploded by a number of different factors, among which is this phenomenon of Zaydi revivalism represented by the Houthis, which represents a very strong regional religious tendency that is different from the rest of the country. Then, of course, outside intervention has made it difficult for Yemenis to see that, look, we have to live with each other. We can’t reach out to one power or another to clobber our local rival. It’s a lot like Lebanon was for 15 years, from 1975 to 1990. They never had this period of nation-building analogous to what the Saudis had from the Najdis?…

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