Yemen Portrait: The Protests, the President, and His Supporters in Washington (Filkins)

A Western diplomat in Yemen said, “O.K., fine, Saleh goes. Then what do you do? There is no institutional capacity—in the bureaucracy, in the military, or in any other institutions in this society—to really step in and pick up the pieces and manage a transition.” A failed state in Yemen, coupled with an already anarchic situation in Somalia, could provide Islamist militants with hundreds of miles of unguarded coastline, disrupting the shipping lanes that run from the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean.

The senior Administration official put it bluntly: “Our goal is to help prevent a coup or a usurpation of power by Muslim Brotherhood types or by Al Qaeda.”

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