BIRD-WATCHING IN YEMEN

Excerpt from Chapter 5: No Mocha in Mocha

That evening I found two tourists in the hotel restaurant. The first I had seen on either visit to Yemen, they were male, middle aged and sipping soup.

‘We're from the Suffolk Birdwatchers Club,’ said one, his broad grin revealing a gap in his teeth.

‘I’m Herb and this is Norman,’ he indicated his sandy haired companion.

‘We`ve been doing avifauna checks on the Tihama,’ said Norman. ‘The rest of our group has left, but we want to do some spotting on the plateau. You’re welcome to come.’

I met Herb and Norm in the lobby next morning. They were wearing khaki safari gear, multi-pocketed gilets, and canvas hats. I was in brown linen trousers and a cream high necked shirt, as worn by Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. The taxi-driver had on jeans with a sleeveless sheep’s wool jacket and a black baseball cap with Baltimore Orioles on it.

‘Siddiq, friend America,’ he said clearly pleased I had noticed.

The rugged central plateau of Yemen abounds in birdlife. Creeping about the giant euphorbias with expensive Luger binoculars, Herb identified Arabian babblers, amethyst starlings, rollers, shrikes, warblers and weavers for Norm to record in a log-book.

The driver looked on as though they were mad. A task for small country boys in Yemen is to scare birds off the crops. Beginning at dawn, they spend all day seated in the fields firing stones at them from homemade catapults. The iridescent throat of the grey rock pigeon makes it an easy target.

‘Look!` said Herb, whistling through his teeth as a beautiful bird alighted on a fig tree. It was a shimmering paradise fly-catcher which our driver, deftly miming the action, explained will nip off its tail in order to confuse a predator.

After an hour’s bird-watching, Herb and Norm spread out a tartan blanket and sat down with a thermos of tea. It was still too soon after breakfast for me and I wandered off along a track where a tall woman was climbing up from the ravine.

She wore a smock over black harem trousers embroidered at the ankles, gold bracelets and a piece of muslin wound around her head securing a bunch of marigolds. A goddess of the coffee terraces, showing no sign of astonishment at our meeting, she walked up and kissed my hand all in a single movement, and continued striding up the hill.

Travels With my Hat for publication 2012.

YEMEN'S LAST DANCE

A prime objective within al Qaeda's long-term strategy of establishing a pan-Islamic Caliphate, is the burning desire to overthrow the House of Saud. Other operations, though catastrophic, have been largely red herrings to distract attention from its gradual infiltration of Yemen, the back door to Mecca, and the Holy Shrines.

It comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Yemen, that this fascinating, but dysfunctional country, has become centre stage in the battle to contain worldwide terrorism.

Yemen's domestic history is a mix of on-going religious and tribal conflict.

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, it fell under control of the Zaidi imams, a Shi'ite sect embedded in the north and on the central plateau, and contested by the Shafi's, a Sunni school of law, inhabiting the western mountain slopes and the Tihama coastal plain.

A Zaidi imam ruled the country until the dynasty was overthrown in a military coup in 1962, allegedly lead by the current President - Ali Abdullah Saleh.

This tangled bacground has resulted in swathes of Yemen being ruled by dissident tribesmen. Notably the Sa'dah area along the Saudi border, Wadi Jawf - the ancient conduit for frankincense caravans travelling north from the Hadramaut, and the Shabwa governorate, south-east of Sana'a, allegedly operational base of AQAP (the self styled Al Qaeda of the Arabian peninsula).

The Sana'a central government has no authority in these areas where foreigners, taken hostage to highlight a local need for investment in health and education, have usually been released unharmed (certain elements of the British media have even joked about going on an 'expenses free holiday' in the Yemen).

Such activities became sinister in March 2009, with the murder of Korean tourists in Shibam - a UN World Heritage town in the Hadramaut - followed in June, by the deaths and kidnappings of medical workers in Sa'dah for which al-Haithy rebels are likely responsible.

Since then the armed forces of Yemen, assisted by Saudi air-strikes against rebel incursions, have stepped up resistance to the northern revolt lest disaffected tribes compound the terrorist problem.

Despite the fact that Yemen now has more 'no go' areas than a Swiss cheese has holes, in October, the Yemen Tourism Promotion Board, launched a campaign to attract visitors by bringing a folklore troupe to dance on Paddington station, and at key spots on the Continent.

The Minister of Tourism subsequently received the 'Golden Rudder Award' for creativity, presented in Jeddah, by Arab tourism members of the GCC States - Gulf Co-Operation Council which Yemen would dearly like to join.

Abu Dhabi's announcement of a $US650 million fund to bolster the shaky Sana'a government indicates growing regional concern by the Gulf States already feeling threatened by Iran.

And Obama's U-turn over the closure of Guantanamo, largely relates to the fact that 45% inmates are Yemenis. Could Sana'a be trusted to put them on trial. Or would they be released, to potentially re-group with al Qaeda?

Yemen's destiny remains unknown. But what seems certain, is that further destablisation caused by either Zaidi rebels, or disenchanted southerners, will serve an AQAP element, thought linked to al-Shabaab, in Somalia.

While Yemen may not espouse outside intervention, the alternative to propping up the central government, could see a pincer grip on either side of the Bab al-Mandeb, the strategic entrance to the Red Sea.

copyright: Christine Osborne.
image: A Yemeni tribesman.
source: www.copix.co.uk

FRANKINCENSE NONSENSE

The BBC's Frankincense Trail with Kate Humble (27.08.09) contained many errors of which outstanding was the reference to the beginning of Islam as 1700 years ago: ie. before the Prophet Muhammad was born.

The Omani tribesmen (officials) in Persil white robes and the 300 unruly camels, were also clearly designed to entertain an audience unfamiliar with the area.

Kate herself needed some education on how to dress and behave. She looked merely silly dancing with the bare-chested jebali camel-herder and she wore the same yellow shirt throughout the BBC constructed journey from Dhofar, through Yemen, via Aden, to Sana`a.

The ancient Minaean and Sabaean caravans travelled east of Sana'a along Wadi Jawf, but as this region is controlled by dissident tribesmen, the film crew turned their cameras instead on the spectacular old Yemeni capital. Good PR for Yemen (if only it was entirely safe).

There were in fact many incense trails leading out of Arabia. If they had stayed in Dhofar, where the film began, the logical route Kate would have taken wound north from Salalah, headed east along the edge of the Empty Quarter, to emerge somewhere on the Gulf.

But from Sana'a she flew to Riyadh (quick shot of Yemenia logo) still wearing her yellow shirt, and I can only imagine the BBC obtained special dispensation for her not to cover her head in this misogynist country where even the Queen, on her own visit, was obliged to wrap up.

In Riyadh, Kate declared her amazement at its modern shopping malls and interviewed the shari`a court judge on 'execution square' as to whether it was cruel or not, to chop off someone`s head. We only do so if relatives of the deceased insist, he replied.

But we had already been shown the sport of 'camel jumping' which likewise bore no relation to the frankincense trail. And why was Kate walking anyway? To make things a little more plausible, she should have been riding a camel with the 90 kilos (!) of frankincense following on a pack animal.

A good puff for tourism in Southern Arabia but it was trite as well as inaccurate. Three episodes to go: let's hope she is wearing a different shirt.

c.Christine Osborne

Images: Cutting frankincense in Dhofar Province of Oman

Source: www.copix.co.uk