Kidnappings and other Yemen Warning Or Danger Tips

A spate of kidnappings in the second half of the nineties gave Yemen a very bad name. What's worse, after a lull from 2002 to the summer of 2005 kidnappings resumed. The last one was in September 2006. Although they were all resolved peacefully and various kidnapped travelers simply continued their travels in Yemen as if nothing had happened, one would naturally want to avoid this happening to you. If you're planning on travelling through Marib and Shabwah, make sure beforehand what the current travel advice is and ask your tour operator or guide about precautions he's taking (routes to be taken, possibly arranging for police escort).

Police escorts often will appreciate some money to buy qat. This is in no way compulsory and as a matter of principle you may not want to do this. Then again, if you feel like it you may not want to be too moralistic in this respect.

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Yes and no. Death toll is staggering (2500 per annum, compared to less than 800 in the Netherlands). Everything that's probably officially not allowed is to be expected: igoring red lights, driving on the wrong side of a dual carriage way, horrendous speeding, bad lighting both on the cars and on the streets, overall appalling state of maintenace of most vehicles, underage drivers, drivers with tunnel-vision due to qat use, women drivers with limited lateral vision due to their wearing of the niqaab. Add to this winding roads alongside steep ravines, and during Ramadan all of this aggravated by fatigue in the morning and hunger in the afternoon.

So what about the no in the first sentence? Just expect the unexpected. Sounds like a cliché, but it works.

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...is still largely absent among the population. And for the most part it's not a great concern to the authorities either. Desertification is setting in as the groundwater table sinks. In the Sana'a basin water is being pumped up from the fourth (and last) aquifer, up to 1000 metres of depth. In other areas agriculture has knocked itself out already through over-pumping for irrigation. The island of Socotra is still a biodiversity hotspot but unscrupulous developers might end that as soon as they smell money. And garbage collection is greatly lacking. One of the good exceptions is the city of Sana'a, where the mayor decided to offer a job to an army of 'akhdam', the lowest caste, supposed to have descended from Ethiopian conquerors long ago. Pay is low, but it provides for steady income AND a remarkably clean city.

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