SANA, YEMEN — A brutal insurgency rages in the northern highlands. Separatist discontent grows in the south. Al Qaeda is moving in, targeting oil facilities and foreigners as well as ordinary Yemenis.
In the latest unrest, at least five people were killed Saturday in an explosion at a post office in the northern town of Sadah, one of numerous hot spots in this Arabian Peninsula country of 23 million.
Observers fear that Yemen is descending into chaos -- a prediction made more dire by its proximity to a critical choke point through which one of every 25 barrels of the world's daily oil output passes en route to the United States and Europe.
"Yemen is located next to some very important real estate where there's a lot of oil," said Mark Katz, a George Mason University political scientist who has studied Yemen for a quarter of a century. "Even if everything goes right in Iraq, even if we have rapprochement with Iran, Yemen is still a time bomb for the region."
The Bab al Mandab strait, off Yemen's southwestern edge, is one reason the West, Iran and neighboring Saudi Arabia have taken a heightened interest in this once-ignored corner of the Middle East. The U.S. State Department recently sent an envoy to Sana, the capital, to discuss weapons smuggling, one of Yemen's many afflictions.
A badly destabilized Yemen would be a "disaster" for the Middle East and the Horn of Africa as well as the West, said Mohammed Abulahoum, a leading member of Yemen's ruling party.
"You don't want another Somalia in this region," he said.
Like those before him, long-reigning President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ruled the fractious Muslim country by pitting tribe against tribe and sect against sect. But critics say at least one of his gambits misfired disastrously, spurring a Shiite insurgency that has drained scarce government resources.
"The war has established a network of interests and financial interests," said Nabil Subaye, editor of the newspaper Neda, whose managers are being tried in court for reporting on details of the fighting. "The government doesn't want anyone to know what is happening. We are not even allowed to go to the military hospital to see wounded soldiers."
Five peace agreements have collapsed since the fighting began four years ago, with each renewal of clashes more fierce than the last. Time and again, employees of aid agencies working in the north have seen massive convoys of tanks heading north and reported helicopter sorties targeting rebel fighters, estimated to number 3,000 to 15,000, holed up in the caves and mountains of Sadah province.
