With a great deal of fanfare, two months ago, Yemen announced a weapons buy-back program (to be financed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.) The regime subsequently took possession of weapons worth over ten billion riyals (USD 5 million) according to the Interior Ministry. Last week, the ministry gave a tour to journalists of two weapons storage facilities. One facility housed the mortars, anti-personal and anti-vehicles land mines, hand grenades and other types of explosives that had been purchased from the Yemeni public and dealers. The other facility contained Ground-Ground and Ground-Air missiles and rockets, as well as large long range machine guns. Yesterday, a rock fell on one of the facilities and it blew up. Seriously, that's what they said.

Reuters: "The explosions at a camp east of the capital Sanaa resulted from rocks falling on old ammunition in a storage facility at the camp located on a slope," the site, www.26sep.net, quoted a defence official as saying. "It was caused by rain."

Earlier this week, officials took reporters to the depot to display bombs, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and other weapons bought or seized from civilians as part of a crackdown in the Arab country where arms are openly carried.

It is thought that the robust weapons smuggling trade in Yemen is accomplished by "influential persons" including high ranking military officials. So one of the president's relatives or associates in theory could bring the weapons in, sell them, buy them back with donated funds, and then sell them again locally or internationally. That's a pretty good return on investment, considering they likely use public money to buy them in the first place.

In the end, everybody gets a cut, except the Yemenis themselves, many of whom are destitute (42% live on under $2.00 a day), sick (one doctor for every 11,00 people), starving (half of Yemeni kids are stunted from malnutrition), illiterate (about 70% of women) and/or without electricity and clean water (65% in rural areas).

Posted by: JaneNovak at 07:31 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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