FROM the balcony of his hilltop palace, the governor, Major-General Ahmad bin Bourek, surveys Mukalla, the port and capital of Yemen’s largest province, Hadramawt. It is not yet his kingdom. But to mark the first anniversary of the expulsion of al-Qaeda, the jihadist group that seized the city in 2015, he declared a public holiday and hosted thousands of grandees at a conference at which he pushed his demand for autonomy. Flunkeys distribute badges with his portrait, hang banners proclaiming him leader along the city’s highways and organise military parades. Backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which last April wrested back control of the port in an assault by land and sea, he sees a new political map of Yemen emerging from two years of war. “We can’t wait for them to liberate the rest of the country,” he says. “If the conflict lasts much longer, Yemen will split into duwailat (principalities).”
If so, it would be reverting to type. For 139 years, the British avoided the north and nannied 14 bickering sheikhdoms across southern Yemen. When the British Empire withdrew, socialists in the south...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2p7zBEd
EmoticonEmoticon