Returning Yemenis Burden Economy

HODEIDAH, Yemen —  Saeed Abdullah sells bread in a tumbledown market called Saddam Street that sprang up during a Gulf crisis exodus of up to a million Yemeni workers from neighboring states.

Like the majority of those who left Saudi Arabia when their residence permits were withdrawn last September, the baker abandoned a thriving business and sold most of his possessions at a fraction of their worth.

Often forced to live in hastily erected shantytowns, the workers are a double burden on the struggling economy of this newly unified country.

Their arrival has doubled Yemen’s unemployment rate to 30% and deprived the government of millions of dollars of remittances that used to be North Yemen’s main source of foreign exchange.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said that the Gulf crisis had cost the country about $3 billion.

Economists say inflation has soared to an annual rate of at least 45%, mainly because Yemeni businessmen cannot find the hard currency to import basic goods.

The black market rate for Yemeni riyals has risen to 27 riyals per dollar--more than twice the official rate of 12 to the dollar--from around 14 riyals when tribal North Yemen merged with the Socialist South one year ago.

Cars with temporary black license plates crowd the streets of the main cities of Hodeidah on the Red Sea and the capital Sanaa. Wealthier workers have set up shops, but most of those who returned are unemployed.

Many have returned to villages in remote mountain areas but in some cases the welcome is wearing thin.

Yemenis in the shantytowns, living off savings or the sale of things they managed to bring with them, are growing frustrated.

“I don’t want to go back to Saudi Arabia,” said Yahia Abdullah, a welder who worked for 23 years in Jeddah. “But we want our government to do something for us--they haven’t given us anything and we even have to pay for water and electricity.

“This is my country. I have to stay, I am content. But it is very difficult to get money and the government doesn’t help us enough--the price for flour has doubled since I came back and sometimes there is none to buy.”

In retaliation for Yemen’s sympathy for Iraq during the Gulf crisis, Riyadh told an estimated 1.5 million Yemenis living in the kingdom they had one month to find Saudi sponsors and three months to find Saudi partners if they owned businesses.

Most of the traditionally proud Yemenis rejected the option and streamed back home after their government told them they would be exempt from customs duties on cars and belongings.

Officials say 1 million people returned, but independent estimates put the number between 600,000 and 900,000.

Foreign aid officials say little has been done to help the workers who returned. The crux of the problem is that few countries want to help Yemen, which with nearly 12 million people is the poorest and most populous state on the Arabian peninsula.

Wealthy Gulf Arab states, which used to provide billions of dollars of financial aid, withdrew their support after Yemen refused to join the allied military coalition against Iraq.

The United States also cut off an estimated $21 million of annual economic assistance. Other Western countries used to provide support are suddenly not interested.