Yemen

So there I was, lying on my back in a bikini on a deserted white-sand beach in Yemen, squinting into the shimmering turquoise sea to the west, wondering if I could make out Somalia from here.

I couldn't. Propped on my sandy elbows, all I could see were my own toes, a tract of impossibly fine white sand, and miles and miles of the Arabian Sea, which faded ever so slowly through a spectrum of teals before settling into a deep sapphire blue before, I couldn't help thinking, bumping up against Somalia, 160 miles away.

Last week, it was reported that the CIA may attempt to capture or kill Anwar Al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based American cleric with ties to al-Qaeda.

Some say that's bad news.

Not because Awlaki is a particularly loveable guy – he's linked to both Umar Farooq Abdulmutallab's attempted bombing of the plane on Christmas day, and to Major Nidal Malik Hasan's shooting rampage at Fort Hood last fall – but because he's not important enough to kill.

The southern parts of Yemen were part of the independent, pro-Soviet nation of South Yemen until 1994.

In these southern provinces, opposition to the central government is growing. Some fear that the rebellion may be turning more violent and that increasing instability in the fragile nation could create room for Al-Qaeda to grow.

Supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, freelance reporter Paul Stephens reports on the latest developments from Sana'a, Yemen.

SANAA, Yemen — On the streets of Sanaa, an angry crowd gathers around a gas delivery truck. Children run down the alleyways rolling gas canisters in front of them, men wave their money at the deliverymen and veiled women who have been standing in line for hours shake their heads in exasperation.

Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old New Jersey man suspected of being an al-Qaida member, reportedly shot his way out of a Yemeni hospital Sunday and into American headlines.

"It was like the movies," said Zaid al-Olfah, who was visiting a family member at the aging, Soviet-style building in the Yemeni capital on Sunday. "There was shooting and smoke coming out the windows and down the hallway." The window of Mobley's former hospital room is still blackened.

Perhaps it was the spandex shorts.

When a group of about 200 young people gathered to watch two-dozen or so foreigners rollerblading their way down the road, joint pads and shiny black helmets glinting in the afternoon sun — and yes, an occasional glimpse of spandex — the looks on Yemeni faces ranged from delighted to quizzical to astonished.

Of course, given the group — students and the disabled — had been bussed into the capital for the occasion, there was much cheering and waving of Yemeni flags, too.

It's a little surreal being in Yemen on International Women's Day. This place is not exactly a feminist's paradise.

Sheikh Abdu Alrib al-Naqib, a gray-haired separatist leader from Yemen's rural south, sat on his couch in this ramshackle port city, waving two American flags and humming an approximate version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"We love America," he said, grinning beneath his cream-colored turban. "We are not terrorists. We only want our human rights and our freedom from the authoritarian regime in the north."

In the rural villages around southern Yemen, the signs that a separatist movement is growing are unmistakable.

Residents fly the South Arabian flag – a red, white, blue and black symbol of the former South Yemen – outside their homes, and paint it on shop fronts, street signs or on the stocks of their guns.

Since South and North Yemen united in 1993, there has been a growing sense of dissatisfaction in the southern provinces, but it was only three years ago that movement gained an organisational structure.

Yemen is prettier than it looks on TV. If you drive the length of this rugged nation—from the border with Saudi Arabia in the north to the sparkling turquoise of the Gulf of Aden in the south—the landscape outside your window will slip from something resembling New Mexico, to West Texas, to Baja California, until finally you'll arrive in a place that is as desolate and craggy as the moon.

I recently traveled with the French Red Cross to a rural region of Yemen to see the water distribution projects they are helping to build there (see the audio slide show above.)

In nearly every news story about Yemen, the author is forced to go through the laundry list of Yemen's problems. Usually toward the end of the list is the brief mention that a water crisis threatens Yemen's long-term stability.

SANA'A, Yemen — Mohammad Said Ali spends the money he makes repairing electronics during the day on his family's dinner at night. He has no extra savings, no rainy day fund, so when daily power outages shut down his one-man repair shop — the entirety of which could fit snuggly in the backseat of the average American sedan — for an hour, or sometimes four or five hours at a time, he and his family are in trouble.