The five-year old war in Yemen has not only created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today, but destroyed much of the country’s development designed and funded over several decades by international agencies and foreign states. Since the overthrow of the Zaydi imamate in 1962 and consequent civil war in the north as well as the liberation of the south from Britain, development aid poured in from its oil-rich neighbors, major countries on both sides of the Cold War and international agencies like the World Bank and the United Nations. While strides were made in expanding the infrastructure and attempting to build up the ministries of the central government, much of the development funding had a limited impact and far too much was siphoned off by corrupt officials. In the 1970s through the 1980s the most impressive development occurred at the local level due to cooperative self-help fueled by remittances from the many Yemeni workers abroad. It is obvious that post-war reconstruction will require a massive input of development aid, given the economic collapse of the country and dwindling supplies of its oil and gas resources. It is not clear that this aid will be effectively used to allow the Yemeni people to rebuild their country the way they choose. This paper analyzes the major problems in Yemen of past development efforts, which were inextricably intertwined with the political agendas of the various donors. Past aid was never provided freely, but always with a desire for influence. This was especially the case for the massive amount of funding provided by Saudi Arabia, which has wanted to have influence over Yemen since the invasion of the Tihama region by Ibn Saud in 1934. Given the ongoing proxy-war rhetoric between Saudi Arabia, supported by most Western powers, and Iran, the withdrawal of Saudi and United Arab Emirate interference is unlikely. But the fact that Yemen has a population of 29 million people suggests that at some point Yemen must settle internal differences and seek a future that is not imposed from outside. Lessons from past development policies, both negative and positive, offer options worth pursuing. Will Yemen be allowed to develop itself? It is certainly worth the effort, despite the difficulties that must be overcome.

"Lessons from Yemen's Past: Restoring Agricultural Diversity in the northern Highlands" Accumulated knowledge in maintaining and protecting agricultural diversity is a primary legacy of historical Yemen's past experience, with rich potentials for building the country's peaceful future. The present talk will focus on terraced agriculture, protecting water resources,and gardening as three main pillars of material and cognitive resources that are indispensable for restoring agricultural diversity in Yemen's northern highlands

This paper argues that the idea of a central state – with the brief exception of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s rule from 1990-2012 – has never truly existed in Yemen. Instead the area known as “Yemen” has always been an accumulation of diverse and different parts. Using the history of these different regions within Yemen, this paper will examine how the ongoing war in Yemen has broken the country into seven different zones of political control. These competing statelets, this paper will argue, are unlikely to be reconstructed into a single political entity. Instead, the country is likely to remain fragmented for the foreseeable future. This paper also untangles the messy threads of the current war in Yemen, and argues that the country is actually suffering from three separate but overlapping wars, only one of which is likely to end in the near future. It is the third of these wars – the local civil war – which is likely to follow the end of the Saudi-led war in Yemen that will solidify the existing divisions on the ground and ensure that no single Yemeni state will emerge from the chaos of conflict.