Apart from when the occasional “terror” plot is linked to a group operating in its mountainous hideouts and large wildernesses, Yemen is simply not a priority, regionally or internationally. The war was born of a failed political transition after Arab Spring-inspired protests, a movement dubbed the “forgotten revolution” long before the current fighting became Yemen’s “forgotten war.”
Farea al-Muslimi of the Carnegie Middle East Institute believes the country’s isolation is to some extent its rulers’ doing.
Low spending on education by Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the country for 33 years, meant that contacts with the Western world were more limited.
Until a few years ago, he told IRIN, “it would have been easier to get an AK-47 in Yemen than an English dictionary.”
Lacking the same strong diaspora of an Egypt or a Syria, Yemen “is a country of untold stories,” al-Muslimi says.