Four people were killed and ten wounded when clashes erupted between two tribes in Aab province over claims to a water well. A Yemeni police official said the al-Bahm and al-Tweiti tribes have been shooting each other up for the past year. The two sides used all types of light and intermediate weapons and somehow managed to burn down Ze al-Houd village. Armed clashes between tribes are very common in Yemen. It is estimated that Yemeni civilians own more than 60 million weapons, an average of three for every citizen.Kinda makes you think about Heinlein's statement that "an armed society is a polite society," doesn't it?
Posted by Jan 3/7/2002 12:53:17 AM I understand they're elaborately polite to each other on an individual level, but downright prickly about "points of honor." The shootin' arn also equates to manliness - without a rod (of either kind) you don't count. So you might have to modify that to read "an armed society is a polite society, but if it's primitive it's also bullet-riddled."
Posted by Fred 3/7/2002 9:50:29 AM This episode brings up basic political science to me: one mark of an organized society is when the government has a monopoly on large scale violence. Yemen has not met that basic quality in its hinterlands yet, and your quote [Jan's] of Heinlein was taken out of context as it presupposed the existence of an organized society.
Posted by Tom Roberts 3/7/2002 9:57:15 AM I'll bet the surviving Yemenis are more polite now.
Posted by Anonymous 3/10/2002 3:24:26 PM |