Yemen’s loss

I did not know Chris Boucek, who died today at 38, well.  We crossed paths at a few meetings, and I always found what he said interesting.  But we only occasionally exchanged a few words, not much more than hello really.  But I regarded him as among the most interesting, amiable and perceptive people in a community of frequently interesting, mostly amiable and highly perceptive people.

The best memorial I can think of on peacefare is a quote from a piece dated October 27 on the Carnegie Endowment website:

The three biggest things that the United States can do to help Yemen and reduce the threat of terrorism are increasing access to water for all Yemenis, helping fight corruption, and supporting land reform….There needs to be a better balance in U.S. support and more attention paid to prevent terrorism before it gets worse. It’s shortsighted to only rely on counterterrorism efforts and more work needs to be done to ensure that the ungoverned spaces in Yemen don’t get any bigger.

Yes, he also discussed al-Awlaki, President Saleh and other matters, but it is striking and characteristic that Chris could not finish an interview on Yemen without this thoughtful attention to the less obvious but critically important issues of water, corruption and land.

Yemen has lost a good friend. America has lost a fine mind. I hope his family can take some comfort from knowing that even those of us who did not know him well treasured his contributions.