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I'm still excavating my Google Reader backlog (you honestly cannot take a vacation these days, even a short one), so this stuff might be old news to some readers -- but two items worth reading on democracy promotion in the Middle East.

Making news out of Yemen this week: Huthi rebels in the country's north have returned a prisoner of war to Saudi Arabia, and Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told investigators that he trained with other English-speaking Al-Qaeda terrorists-to-be in the country.

Not making news out of Yemen this week: American aid to the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis displaced by the Huthi rebellion.

I spent a little time last night poring over the State Department's new civilian plan for Afghanistan (pdf). Evan covered the question of Taliban reconciliation last night; we'll wait to see what Afghan president Hamid Karzai unveils at next week's London conference.

The rest of the plan focuses on a wide range of goals -- everything from improving electricity production to investing in local governance to training more prosecutors. A few things jumped out at me.

It's Sunday afternoon and I should probably be watching football, but this Cowboys-Redskins game was so dreadfully boring that I found myself reading about Yemen instead.

I imagine the Obama administration is starting to think about a "Yemen policy" (if it hasn't already). The country is making headlines because of the insurgency in the north and an ongoing problem with al-Qaeda, which reportedly kidnapped a Japanese engineer last week (though the Yemeni government denies this report). And Yemen is also starting to get some attention on the D.C. think-tank circuit -- most recently from the Center for a New American Security, which published a paper on Yemen last week.

Against that backdrop, it's worth asking a fundamental question: Just how much can the U.S. hope to influence events in Yemen? The answer, I think, is "not much at all."