al-Zubayri

Today, as many know, is the 44th anniversary of the assassination of one of this blog’s hero and a hero to many in Yemen, Muhammad Mahmud al-Zubayri. This blog takes its title from, among other things, one of al-Zubayri’s books.

One fun game to play in the early, lighthearted hours of a qat chew is to hypothesize about how Yemen would be different today if al-Zubayri had lived and not been killed around Jabal Barat. Would the civil war have ended four or five years earlier? Would there even be an al-Huthi revolt today? Academic, maybe, and not necessarily in the best sense of the term. But still, worth some thought.