Heading out to Ma'arib

I set out to Google Earth over Yemen, from Sana'a north to Ma'rib, the city of the Queen of Sheba.

And what did I find? This crap :

This is a small village that has some water underneath it.

Some asshole has come in and sold them rotary irrigators.

The guy who has the land at the top right seems to be doing ok for now.

The first suckers, with the dead land at the bottom left hand side, are as usual, f***ed.

You can dump a lot of water on a desert, and you'll see a miraculous flowering. But that's it. If there's nothing but sand for nourishment, don't hope too much.