The timing was “impeccable,” says Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists. He had just briefed an interagency gathering of federal officials on 29 October about an FAS plan to bring US and Yemeni scientists together to try to solve Yemen’s critical water shortage. Just hours later came the news that two expertly crafted bombs planted in packages originating in Yemen had been located aboard cargo planes that were headed to the US.
Ferguson believes that the foiled terrorist incident might improve chances that the FAS will receive the federal support it needs to send scientists to Yemen to attend conferences and conduct field research on water with their Yemeni counterparts. He and an Arabic-speaking FAS staffer had already held preliminary talks with Yemenis in Sana’a, the capital city, where the water supply is projected to dry up within 10 years. Social scientists must help, Ferguson notes, because...
