Violence in Yemen

On April 24th, a shooting took place near a small business in Yemen's capitol between U.S. officials and Yemeni civilians. Apparently, the group of Yemeni citizens tried to kidnap the U.S. officers and that's when the shots where fired, killing two of the attackers. It sounds like this is a pretty bad time for an event like this to unfold. Violence has been steadily increasing and this is probably not going to help. Since the incident the U.S. citizens involved have been removed from the country. The president of Yemen, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is already under fire for working with the United States to find members of Al Qaeda through drone strikes. The bitterness from Yemenis stems from the belief that the drone strikes are not only killing their targets, but also civilians. I probably wouldn't want some country to come in and kill my people either. The release of the details of the shooting could ignite a firestorm in an already unstable environment. There have been attacks on important government buildings in Yemen in response to the killings. The U.S. has closed the embassy in Sana and an investigation into the incident is underway. Since the shooting, violence has escalated on both sides as the government there has been launching attacks on Al Qaeda strongholds. It will be interesting to see if the violence continues and what this means for the relationship between Yemen and the United States. I think that the implications of the current situation will probably hurt relations moving forward. The link for the article is right here.

Katie Krupica