It's difficult to imagine a worse state of affairs. Yemen has been battered for six decades, and there seems no end to it. The creation of the republic in 1962 was followed by five years of civil war, with Saudi Arabia backing supporters of the deposed Imam. South Yemen, created after the departure of the British from Aden in 1967, was soon at loggerheads with the north. The unification of the two Yemens in 1990 was followed by yet another civil war. Against a background of political turbulence and assassinations, remote areas of Yemen received little financial support from the capital, Sanaa. Oil production was in decline. Misrule and corruption made things worse. Yemen became the poorest country in the Middle East.
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