Sunday 31 July 2011

President Saleh calls opposition for dialogue as the only way to get out of the crisis 

Source: Reuters 31/07/2011


SANAA - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on Sunday for dialogue with his opponents during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan to help resolve a crisis over demands for his removal which has paralysed Yemen and confounded efforts at mediation.

The opposition has previously rejected invitations to negotiate, saying talks can only take place after Saleh signs a Gulf Arab plan to ease him out of power after 33 years in office.

"There is no alternative to dialogue which sets out from national and constitutional principles," said Saleh in a statement issued for Ramadan and carried by the state news agency Saba.

Saleh has frustrated hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who hoped they had seen the last of him when he flew to Saudi Arabia, where he is still convalescing after undergoing eight operations following an assassination attempt in June.

He has proved a wily political survivor, holding on to power despite six months of protests against his rule and international pressure on him to leave.

"We reiterate on this occasion the need for commitment by all sides to the Gulf initiative," Saleh said, referring to the plan which he has three times appeared to accept and then backed out of signing at the last minute.

"The political state which Yemen has reached ... makes it incumbent upon us to work together to get past it."

The political impasse has paralyzed the impoverished state, which is on the brink of civil war with rebels in the north, separatists in the south and army generals defecting from Saleh.

Yemen's south has descended into bloodshed in recent months, with Islamist militants suspected of links to al Qaeda seizing areas of the flashpoint province of Abyan, including Zinjibar, its capital.

Western powers and neighboring oil giant Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda is exploiting the security vacuum in Yemen, from where it has previously launched failed attacks against the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Al Qaeda  is a threat in Yemen : US Senator

  As U.S. senator for Pennsylvania, I am committed to ensuring that the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to address this threat to U.S. national security.

Source: Pennlive, 31/07/2011
By Sen. Bob Casey Jr.

Since the beginning of the year, we have seen stories of political transformation across the Middle East in places such as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain and Syria. Similar unrest has occurred in Yemen, the only Middle Eastern country experiencing a political transition where al-Qaida maintains a vibrant presence. 

From the attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000 to recent attacks in the last two years, Yemen has been used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks on the U.S. The implications of the transition in Yemen will have a significant impact on U.S. national security, requiring a deliberate and thoughtful response. This is why I chaired a recent Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing to examine these concerns.
During this period of sweeping change in the Middle East, Yemen often goes overlooked. However, the power vacuum left by President Abdullah Saleh’s evacuation to Saudi Arabia after an assassination attempt in June has led to serious questions over the government’s ability to prevent al-Qaida from gaining a stronghold in the country, as well as broader concerns about the humanitarian and economic crises plaguing Yemen today.

Al-Qaida’s presence in Yemen is not new, but it has grown worrisome. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, has been linked to multiple attacks against Americans in recent years. We all remember the foiled Christmas Day bomber attack in 2009, which revealed AQAP’s strategy of direct attacks on the U.S. homeland. And in October, Yemeni terrorists targeted the U.S. homeland with cargo packages containing explosives.

One of these packages was bound for Philadelphia International Airport and could have caused serious harm to Pennsylvanians. As U.S. senator for Pennsylvania, I am committed to ensuring that the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to address this threat to U.S. national security.

Counterterrorism in Yemen must be a central tenet of our national security strategy. But it is clear that our counterterrorism concerns in Yemen are closely intertwined with complex political, economic and developmental challenges, and therefore must be part of a comprehensive policy approach. 

First, we need a better understanding of the Yemeni opposition and prospects for democratic reform. Acting President Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi has a weak power base, and the political opposition appears fractured between a prominent coalition called the Joint Meeting Parties and other influential individuals, such as Ali Mohsen, former commander of the 1st Armored Division, and Sheikh Sadeq al Ahmar, leader of the powerful Al Ahmar family.

Meanwhile, the validity of the recently announced 17-member transitional council, or “shadow government,” remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that a transition process eventually will take place, and the U.S. must be prepared for this post-Saleh government, whatever form it might take.

Second, we must address the serious humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which has only gotten worse as a result of the recent unrest. Yemen is the poorest country in the region, where the average citizen survives on less than $2 a day and one-third of the population is undernourished.

Some predict that Sana’a could be the first capital to run out of water, sometime within the next decade. These conditions can contribute to the development of extremism. While the U.S. cannot solve all of these daunting challenges, we should continue to support efforts that mitigate their potentially devastating impact.

Third, the U.S. and our international partners should develop a long-term strategy on conflict resolution in Yemen. The significant development concerns noted above can exacerbate tensions between and among different armed groups.

In a country rife with tribal conflict, most notably the northern Houthi rebellion and southern secessionist movement, al-Qaida has found safe haven. This is a clear example of why our counterterrorism strategy must have a civilian component. USAID has conducted programs aimed at fighting youth extremism, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Our able diplomats must continue to engage with all nonviolent and democratic-oriented elements of society to ensure that we understand and can better react to the aspirations of the Yemeni people.

To achieve the goal of fighting extremism that can breed terrorism, Yemen cannot be viewed through the single lens of counterterrorism. In a country where vast political, security, humanitarian and development challenges continually converge, the U.S. must endeavor to formulate short-term and long-term policies to achieve our core national security goals. I will continue to work on policies that better meet the legitimate needs of the Yemeni people and ultimately combat the threat that al-Qaida poses to the U.S. homeland and to the state of Pennsylvania.

Sen. Bob Casey Jr. is the senior senator from Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Saturday 30 July 2011

Brother of top Al Qaeda leader injured, death toll raised to 40 in mistaken airstrikes and clashes

Brother of top Al Qaeda leader injured, death toll raised to 40 in mistaken airstrikes and clashes
By Nasser Arrabyee/30/07/2011

The brother of the top leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen, Khaled Al Wahayshi was injured in the ongoing battles between the government troops and Al Qaeda fighters in the southern province of Abyan, said medical sources on Saturday.

Khaled Al Wahayshi was admitted to the hospital of Ja’ar after he was injured on Thursday July 28th, in the area of Dofas, close to the coastal city of Zinjubar, medical sources from the hospital said.

Al Wahayshi was admitted to Ja’ar hospital along with a relative of the leading member of Al Qaeda Abdul Latif Al Said, the source said.

The state-run Saba news agency said Saturday that four Al Qaeda operatives were arrested in a check point close to Zinjubar.

One of the four was identified as Abdulla Saeed Omar Hubaibat and described as one of the most dangerous elements.

“Hubaibat was behind attacks on several check points,” the agency quoted an unidentified security official as saying.

The top leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular, Nasser Al Wahyashi, left Zinjubar, the capital of the volatile province of Abyan, on Thursday July 21st, 2011 after battles intensified, according to reliable tribal sources.

The reliable sources from Abyan and Shabwah, said that Nasser Al Wahayshi is now leading the battles from the town of Azzan in Shabwah.

The same sources also said that the Yemeni-American terrorist Anwar Al Awlaki was seen last week in the same city of Azzan, the new stronghold of Al Qaeda leadership.

Meanwhile, the death toll raised to 40 tribesmen in mistaken airstrikes and clashes with Al Qaeda operatives before the dawn of Saturday, nearby Zinjubar, said tribal sources. The sources mentioned 29 of those dead by names and tribes.

The mistaken airstrikes happened after at least 15 tribesmen were killed by Al Qaeda operatives in a tribal check point close to Zinjubar in the southern province of Abyan.

Al Qaeda operatives attacked the check point in Shukrah, 48 km east of Zinjubar, at Friday night after the tribesmen killed an Al Qaeda fighter and arrested another in the same check point, the sources said.

The cars and weapons of the tribesmen ,mostly from Al Marakish tribe, were taken by the Al Qaeda operatives.

Al Qaeda implemented the attack in retaliation for the killing one of them on Friday, said the sources.

Earlier on Friday, one of Al Qaeda operative from Mareb called Saleh Ali Faras was killed while his friend Al Mekdad Saleh Tuaiman from Mareb also was arrested when both of them clashed with the tribesmen in the check point of Shaykh Salem between Zinjubar and Shukrah along the coast of the Gulf of Aden, said the tribal sources.

About two hours later after Al Qaeda operatives returned to Zinjubar with the cars and weapons taken from the defeated tribesmen, the airplanes came and hit mistakenly the rest of the tribesmen in Wadi Hassan and Shaykh Salem areas in the middle between the coastal cities of Zinjubar and Shukrah.

The tribal and military blockade on Zinjubar, which was held by Al Qaeda late last May, started last week. But Al Qaeda is still controlling about half of the city.

A military source said that guerilla war of Al Qaeda and their style of using the suicide bombings against the forces delayed army and tribesmen from totally controlling the city.

“We need some time to take some technical steps to avoid Al Qaeda suicide operations and also to weaken their abilities by blockading,” the military official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to press.

Opposition tribesmen threaten to strike Sana’a international airport

By Nasser Arrabyee/30/07/2011

Armed opposition tribesmen threatened to strike the Sana’a international airport calling all airliners to stop dealing with it, according to a tribal statement on Saturday.

The tribesmen said the “coming” attack on the airport would be in retaliation for the army attacks on their villages in Arhab area, about 30 km north of the airport of Sana’a.

“The barbaric aggression on our areas has reached its climax by the remnants of Saleh’s regime, they used against us all kind of weapons they have, tanks, artillery, missiles, and finally airplanes,” said the statement which was sent to local website early Saturday.

“Therefore, we will strike the international airport of Sana’a with all methods of war in retaliation for that aggression.”

The armed opposition tribesmen of Arhab tried again on Friday to seize a strategic military camp close to the Sana’a international airport, said military and tribal sources. But the attack was foiled by the army, said the sources.

The failed attack of Friday came less than 24 hours after about 100 people were killed including 20 soldiers when airplanes hit thousands of these tribesmen while storming a part of the Sama’a camp of the republican guards, about 30 km north of the Sana’a airport.

The armed tribesmen from areas around the camps are led by the two Islamist prominent figures from Arhab district, member of parliament Mansor Al Hanik and cleric Abdul Majid Al Zandani, who is wanted by the UN and US as a global terrorist.

Local sources from Arhab said tribal leaders are still mobilizing more fighters from other provinces like Mareb , Al Jawf, and Amran. A tribal meeting was held in Zandan, Al Zandani’s village, late Friday.

The defected general Ali Muhsen supports the tribesmen of Arhab who use artillery and missiles in their battles against the three brigades of the republican guards camps in their areas of Arhab.

Tribal sources said that Sheikh Abdul Majid Al Zandani urged over the last few weeks the tribesmen in his tribe Arhab and other areas to join the tribal fighters against the army.
A tribal mediation failed to stop the armed confrontations between the Islamist opposition and the republican guards.

A prominent tribal leader involved in the mediation said the tribesmen keep evading a truce in hope that the regime will collapse.

“The tribesmen who fight the army do not have a specific demand, every time we tell them there must be a solution or at least a truce, they ask for time for consultation and nothing happened after that,” said Tribal leader Abddul Jalil Senan who is leading the tribal mediation in Arhab.

“They have not refused mediation and they have not agreed on a truce, but after the attack on the camp of Samaa, it became clear they were only buying time,” Senan said.

Al Qaeda killed 15 tribesmen in retaliation for killing one of them

By Nasser Arrabyee/30/07/2011

At least 15 tribesmen were killed by Al Qaeda operatives in a tribal check point close to the coastal city of Zinjubar in the southern province of Abyan, said tribal source Saturday.

Al Qaeda operatives attacked the check point in Shukrah, 48 km east of Zinjubar, at Friday night after the tribesmen killed an Al Qaeda fighter and arrested another in the same check point, the sources said.

The cars and weapons of the tribesmen ,mostly from Al Marakish tribe, were taken by the Al Qaeda operatives.

Al Qaeda implemented the attack in retaliation for the killing of their comrade earlier on Friday, said the sources.

Earlier on Friday, one of Al Qaeda operative from Mareb called Saleh Ali Faras was killed while his friend Al Mekdad Saleh Tuaiman from Mareb also was arrested when both of them clashed with the tribesmen in the check point of Shaykh Salem between Zinjubar and Shukrah along the coast of the Gulf of Aden, said the tribal sources.

The two men were trying to escape to their province Mareb.
The tribal and military blockade on Zinjubar, which was held by Al Qaeda late last May, started last week. But Al Qaeda is still controlling about half of the city.

A military source said that guerilla war of Al Qaeda and their style of using the suicide bombings against the forces delayed army and tribesmen from totally controlling the city.

“We need some time to take some technical steps to avoid Al Qaeda suicide operations and also to weaken their abilities by blockading,” the military official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to press.

Friday 29 July 2011

Two fighting fronts in Yemen

By Nasser Arrabyee/29/07/2011

Armed opposition tribesmen tried again to seize a strategic military camp close to the Yemeni capital Sana’a international airport, said military and tribal sources on Friday. But the attack was foiled by the army, said the sources.

The failed attack of Friday came less than 24 hours after about 100 people were killed including 20 soldiers when airplanes hit thousands of opposition tribesmen storming a part of the Samaa camp of the republican guards, about 30 km north of the Sana’a airport.

The armed tribesmen from areas around the camps are led by two Islamist prominent figures from Arhab district, member of parliament Mansor Al Hanik and cleric Abdul Majid Al Zandani, who is wanted by the UN and US as a global terrorist.

Local sources from Arhab said tribal leaders are still mobilizing more fighters from other provinces like Mareb , Al Jawf, and Amran. A tribal meeting was held in Zandan, Al Zandani’s village, late Friday.

The defected general Ali Muhsen supports the tribesmen of Arhab who use artillery and missiles in their battles against the three brigades of the republican guards camps in their areas of Arhab.

Tribal sources said that Sheikh Abdul Majid Al Zandani urged over the last few weeks the tribesmen in his tribe Arhab and other areas to join the tribal fighters against the army.

A tribal mediation failed to stop the armed confrontations between the Islamist opposition and the republican guards.

A prominent tribal leader involved in the mediation said the tribesmen keep evading a truce in hope that the regime will collapse.

“The tribesmen who fight the army do not have a specific demand, every time we tell them there must be a solution or at least a truce, they ask for time for consultation and nothing happened after that,” said Tribal leader Abddul Jalil Senan who is leading the tribal mediation in Arhab.

“They have not refused mediation and they have not agreed on a truce, but after the attack on the camp of Samaa, it became clear they were only buying time,” Senan said.


The second fighting front is in the southern province of Abyan where troops and tribesmen are fighting Al Qaeda which is still occupying less than half of the city of Zinjubar.

Troops and tribesmen are surrounding the city from all directions.

One Al Qaeda operative from Mareb called Saleh Ali Faras was killed while his friend Al Mekdad Saleh Tuaiman from Mareb also was arrested when both of them clashed with the tribesmen in a check point outside Zinjubar said, tribal sources on Friday. The two men were trying to escape to their province Mareb.

About 14 tribesmen were killed by mistake in an airstrike on Al Qaeda in Wadi Hasan, Shakh Salem area east of Zinjubar, said local tribal sources late Friday. Al Qaeda fighters took the dead bodies and refused to hand them to their relatives, the sources added.

The blockade on the Zinjubar, which was held by Al Qaeda late last May, by the troops and tribesmen started last week. Al Qaeda is still controlling about half of the city.

A military source said that guerilla war of Al Qaeda and their style of using the suicide bombings against the forces delayed army and tribesmen from totally controlling the city.

“We need some time to take some technical steps to avoid the car-bombs and weaken their abilities by blockading,” the military official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to press.

Yemen Al Qaeda military commander calls for killing Saudi rulers

Source: AFP, 29/07/2011

DUBAI — Al-Qaeda's military leader in Yemen called for Saudi rulers to be killed as "apostates," in an audio tape released on Friday, SITE Intelligence Group reported.

"To the scholars ... of the family of Saud ... I say to you, your King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and his crown prince, his interior minister and his son Mohammed, are considered by us to be apostates and must be killed," said Qassim al-Rimi.

In the almost seven-minute tape, the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula commander said Saudi authorities had arrested a group of women who had protested outside the interior ministry on February 5 to call for the release of relatives.

"In the north of the country and its south there are wounded women who are requesting the release of their sons and daughters from the prisons of oppression," said Rimi, according to the English translation provided by SITE.

Saudi authorities "tricked them by putting them into buses in order to meet the criminal (Deputy Interior Minister Prince) Mohammed bin Nayef in order to release their captives, then they dragged them to prisons to remain there for more than 10 days," he said.

Witnesses said in February that women, men and children asked to meet with ministry officials to call for the release of family members.

Those detained were arrested in 2003-2004 at the height of a security sweep against Al-Qaeda suspects during a wave of attacks on oil installations and foreign targets in the Gulf kingdom.

"Here we say to our sisters and mothers, we promise you that we will achieve victory for your chastity and purity, and that any hand that was extended at you should be cut off," said Rimi.

The Yemeni-American terrorist AlAwlaki and his offshoot may use chemical or biological weapons to attack US

 Source: Dawn , 29/07/2011

Anwar  al-Awlaki gets that,'' Leiter said, naming the US-born radical cleric of the Yemeni branch. And so do other offshoots, like the Pakistani Taliban, which sent a bomber to try to blow up a car in the middle of Times Square a year ago, he said. - AP (File Photo)

ASPEN: A chemical or biological attack by Al Qaeda and its offshoots remains a threat, despite the killing of terror leader Osama bin Laden, top former US counterterrorist officials said Thursday.

Mike Leiter, the just-retired director of the National Counterterrorism Center, made the comments to an audience at the Aspen Security Forum.

”We still have pockets of Al Qaeda around the world who see this as a key way to fight us,” especially the offshoot in Yemen,” he said. ”The potential threat from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is very real.”

Leiter said the new breed of terrorists understands that killing a few Americans can cause as much fear as the massive plots bin Laden backed.

”The most likely are simple forms of chemical or biological weapons” rather than a nuclear attack, Leiter said, using the poison ricin as an example of something that’s easily made.

”Is it going to kill many people? No. Is it going to scare people? Yes,” he said.

”Bin Laden was really prioritizing the big attack,” Leiter added. ”Some of them may have fantasies about pulling off another 9/11,” but his affiliates realize they can affect US strategy and society with smaller scale attacks.

”Anwar al-Awlaki gets that,” Leiter said, naming the US-born radical cleric of the Yemeni branch. And so do other offshoots, like the Pakistani Taliban, which sent a bomber to try to blow up a car in the middle of Times Square a year ago, he said.

With bin Laden gone, Leiter and former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin both predicted new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri launch similar smaller scale campaign.

”Zawahiri will probably favor smaller targets,” McLaughlin told the audience. ”Bin Laden did not.”

Leiter and McLaughlin both said Zawahiri’s core Al Qaeda was weaker after bin Laden’s killing.

”I think it is now possible to actually visualize, to imagine its collapse,” McLaughlin said, speaking of the original core group. But he warned against underestimating Zawahiri or his followers.

”He’s not as charismatic but he may be more disciplined, he said, adding that Zawahiri is a physician who has long been interested in using weapons of mass destruction to attack.

”What we will know is there has been no successful inbound attack since 9/11 that we can attribute directly to Al Qaeda,” added Charles Allen, who has held multiple top positions at the CIA over the years. ”But we can see this metastasized network linked by Internet that is self-sustaining across the world.”

Leiter said the trove of information, including inter-Al Qaeda communications, taken from bin Laden’s compound where he was killed by US commandoes showed the group already was struggling.

He said the documents revealed bin Laden was not the CEO of a large multinational corporation, as analysts thought, but the ”slightly out of touch coordinator of a broad dysfunctional family who, frankly, were operating on their own agendas more than his.”

But he said Al Qaeda and the other groups still have enough organization and staff to keep attacking.

Leiter warned that intelligence and military leaders had to figure out how to keep their staff members, who joined after Sept. 11 to track and fight terrorists in war zones, from getting bored and leaving, because while the US may be drawing down its military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the anti-terror war is far from over.

”Smaller scale terrorist attacks are with us for at least the foreseeable future,” Leiter said.

”This is going to happen,” Allen added.

Thursday 28 July 2011

More internal divisions among Yemen opposition as deadlock continues

Source: Reuters, 28/07/2011

SANAA-Frustrated over President Ali Abdullah Saleh's staying power and desperate for change, Yemeni opposition groups have taken a gamble by forming transitional governance councils that risk further splintering their fragile alliance.

Tens of thousands of people have massed across the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state for six months -- a motley crew of secularists and Islamists, separatists and nationalists, tribesmen and urbanites, protesting at 33 years of Saleh rule seen as scarred by repression, corruption and joblessness.

Yemenis had hoped to mimic the impact of Libyan rebels' Transitional National Council, which has received international recognition. The problem is they have already formed two councils, and loyalties are divided.

"The opposition was never really united except in its opposition to Saleh's regime.

The cracks that are appearing were destined to come sooner or later," said analyst Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates.

In "Change Square," where thousands camp out daily in the capital Sanaa, youth groups credited as the driving force of Yemen's protests have plastered their tents with signs trumpeting allegiance to their "Transitional Council."

They aim to set up a shadow government in a country facing a growing power vacuum, where a powerful branch of al Qaeda is thriving, since Saleh went to Saudi Arabia to recover from a June assassination attempt.

He has vowed to return to rule.

But other tents in Sanaa are conspicuously bare, a sign they back the "National Council for the Forces of the Revolution" being developed by the Joint Meetings Party (JMP), an opposition coalition that once was part of Saleh's government.

South of the capital, in the protest hotbed of Taiz, some JMP supporters are not only chanting against Saleh, but the youth's Transitional Council, which they argue weakens their fight against a president clinging to power.

"No to the council of division," they shout.

Emerging fault lines could trigger fighting among some in a country where perhaps half the population of 23 million own a gun. Clashes have begun to flare near the border with Saudi Arabia, home to the world's biggest oil fields that foreign powers are eager to protect from Yemen's growing chaos.

A tenuous partnership between Shi'ite Muslim insurgents known as Houthis and Sunni Islamists of the Islah party has been shattered by violence that has killed dozens in recent weeks.

The United States and Saudi Arabia, both targets of foiled attacks by al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, are wary of turbulence ideal for the group's operations.
But they have yet to make decisive diplomatic moves and instead continue to back dialogue and a faltering power transition plan brokered by Gulf states.

The JMP, under criticism from youth protesters for sticking with the plan, accepted three different versions of the deal. Each time Saleh backed out at the last minute.

Saleh now says he will return to Yemen to lead a dialogue and may later call for elections.

"SAME OLD TRAP"

Critics accuse Saleh, a shrewd political survivor, of dragging out the political process until the opposition's latent divisions begin to undermine it.

"The opposition knows Saleh has always survived by playing them against one another. They were wary of falling back into that same old trap," said Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen of Princeton University. "So it was a gamble of desperation, I think, forming these councils."

As the deadlock drags on, conditions are growing worse for most Yemenis facing water, fuel and power shortages. Prices are skyrocketing for a population that cannot afford it. Even before the transition crisis, around 40 percent of Yemenis lived on less than $2 a day and a third faced chronic hunger.

As the wounded Saleh remains resolute, a full victory for the opposition looks less likely and analysts say neither Yemeni council stands much chance of drawing foreign support.

But Transitional Council members said they faced pressure from the thousands of street activists to act.

"The fear of dividing the opposition is no excuse. This council was demanded by the protesters," said council member Houria Mashour, a fiery woman in her 50s, her hair covered in a colorful veil as she campaigned for the youth-backed body.

To many protesters, forming councils was the only way they could think of challenging the months of political stalemate.

"What else did the JMP want us to do? We waited six months and they did nothing. We gave hundreds of martyrs and thousands of wounded, and the JMP is still living in this delusion of a Gulf initiative," said Sanaa protester Maysoon Abdulrahman, a supporter of the Transitional Council.

Some JMP leaders insist the vying councils will not cause problems, and could eventually cooperate.

"I don't think this will deepen divisions as much as start moving stagnant waters," said Abdelqawy al-Qaisi, spokesman for the powerful tribal leader Sadeq al-Ahmar, part of the JMP.

But Qaisi warned of consequences of protesters' eagerness to end the deadlock: "The opposition chose the political route, it is a long path but it is safe. The youth may not prefer this."

In Sanaa's Change Square, angry Mahmoud Abdullah, an impoverished civil servant, demanded more action and less talk.

"I'm not for any council. We need an escalation, to march to the presidential palace," he said. "We can't wait for America and Saudi Arabia to make our revolution for us."

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Tribesmen cleaned town from Al Qaeda in fear of US airstrikes

By Nasser Arrabyee/27/07/2011

Armed tribesmen forced Al Qaeda fighters to leave a southern Yemeni town in a peaceful way, said tribal leaders Wednesday.

Tens of armed young tribesmen stormed the houses of Al Qaeda fighters inside the city of Lawdar, in the volatile southern province of Abyan, forcing them to leave immediately, said the local tribal leader, Tawfik Al Junaidi.

“No single fighter is left now in our city except for some children who were deceived by Al Qaeda,” Al Junaidi said “ But we coordinated with their parents to help their sons to return to normal life.”

All the children who were recruited by Al Qaeda in the mosques and Quran schools were less than 14 years old.

In coordination with the parents , the tribesmen prevented the children from going with Al Qaeda fighters.

Lawdar, whose population is estimated at 120,000, is about 120 km north of Zinjubar which was declared as an Islamic Emirate late last May, but the government troops and tribesmen also started earlier this week to tighten the noose for liberating the coastal city on the Gulf of Aden.

The local residents said Al Qaeda fighters walked out from the city Tuesday and Wednesday to the neighboring mountains in the eastern direction of Shabwah province.

The tribesmen from Lawdar and the areas around it like Modyah and Wadia, gave the fighters an ultimatum of 48 hours to leave the mountains of their areas.

“We would fight them if they stay in our mountains,” said Al Junaidi over phone from Lawdar. “We held a big meeting today here in Lawdar and we decided to this fight them if they do not leave our areas alt permanently .”

The leader of Al Qaeda fighters in Lawdar was identified by the tribesmen as Adeeb Al Nakhi.
Several checkpoints were made in and around the city to prevent any possible return of the Al Qaeda operatives.

The local resident say they got rid of Al Qaeda now because they are afraid of any possible war and airstrikes like those which hit Zinjubar and displaced about 100,000 people from their houses.

“ At the beginning we thought that they were preachers and they serve the religion, but after what happened in Ja’ar and Zinjubar, we realized that they are against the religion,” said Al Junaidi.

And Khaled Al Abed from Modyah, said the Yemeni tribesmen are not like Afghan tribesmen of Bashtoon.

“ We want to protect ourselves from the American airstrikes, this is why we united now against Al Qaeda,” said Al Abed

Brigadier General, Salem Cotn called the tribesmen and all the society to stand against terrorism and protect their country and their religion from the evil of terrorists.

“ The real Jihad is to fight these evils, the real Jihad is to protect our Islam from these terrorists,” said commander Cotn who is supervising the military operations against Al Qaeda in south.

“Islam is against all forms of terrorism,” he said.

Yemen president won't give up power by force: minister

Source:Reuters
27\07\2011

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who escaped an attempt on his life by opponents, will only cede power through the ballot box and the country will descend into civil war if he is forced from office, his foreign minister said.

A popular uprising against Saleh's 33-year rule, high profile defections, and an assassination attempt in June which left him with severe burns and forced him to undergo eight operations have all failed to persuade him to give up.

"President Saleh made this very clear. He repeatedly said he is ready to transfer power anytime, but through early elections, through the ballot box and by adhering to the constitution," Abubakr al-Qirbi told Reuters in an interview.

"Now the issue is for the ruling party and the opposition parties to agree on a date for early elections," he said.

Saleh, 70, has brought relative stability and unity to the impoverished tribal state, which is awash with weaponry and corruption and beset by separatism in the south, a Shi'ite uprising in the north and a growing al Qaeda presence.

When he first became North Yemen's president in 1978, Yemen had suffered two decades of civil war and violence, and the two presidents who preceded him had both been assassinated.

The United States and Saudi Arabia, both targets of foiled attacks by a wing of al Qaeda based in Yemen, have been involved in talks to end the crisis and avert a spread of anarchy that could give the global jihadist network more room to operate.

Qirbi said the timetable set for a transfer of power under a deal, brokered by Gulf states and Washington, was not realistic.

HIGH COST

Under the agreement, Saleh and the opposition have 30 days to form a national unity government after which Saleh would resign and elections would follow 60 days later.

"This time schedule has proven to be difficult to implement ... Elections cannot take place in 60 days. Therefore, if President Saleh resigns after 30 days and no election can take place in 60 days we will run into a constitutional vacuum in the country," Qirbi said.

"The president is not scrapping the agreement. It is just the timetable for the implementation that need to be readdressed," he said.

The GCC mediated three deals with Yemeni opposition parties under which Saleh would step down and be spared prosecution for bloody crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets, emboldened by Egyptians and Tunisians who ousted their autocratic leaders.

Each time, Saleh backed out at the last minute.

Qirbi said his government was trying to start a dialogue with the opposition to agree on "a feasible and practical election date" under the supervision of international and regional observers.

He said six months of street fighting and political protests had cost the economy as much as $5 billion, scared away tourists and investors, and swollen budget deficits.

Some of Yemen's biggest losses are related to fuel in a country that relies on oil for 60 percent of its income. He said Yemen has had to import gasoline and diesel, at a high cost.

Damaged pipelines have also cut off an important source of income for the world's 32nd largest oil exporter and 16th biggest seller of liquefied natural gas.

"We had about three to four months stoppage of our oil exportation because of attacks on pipelines. As result we had to import a lot of gasoline and diesel."

"We are in a very difficult situation. We are trying to get out of it. The solution has to be a political and it has to be a Yemeni solution. Now we have to save the future of our country.

Even before the uprising, Yemen was in deep trouble. The government, reliant on foreign aid and dwindling oil revenue, was running out of cash.

Four out of 10 of the population live on less than $2 a day. Two thirds of Yemen's fast-growing population of 23 million people are under 24. Unemployment stands at around 40 percent.

The turmoil has also renewed fears Yemen could become a failed state on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia, which holds the world's biggest oil reserves.

Rivaling Pakistan and Afghanistan as an incubator and shelter for al Qaeda, Yemen shows signs of becoming a serious international threat.

Qirbi said al Qaeda was the main beneficiary from the chaos convulsing the country. It has mobilized its militants and tried to take control of the southern Abyan province, he added.

"The political crisis creates the right atmosphere for extremists and for al Qaeda to take advantage of," he added.

Qirbi said failing to reach a political agreement would be disastrous.

"There are many scenarios as to what will happen. The worst case scenario unfortunately maybe civil war, maybe fragmentation of the country," he said.

"I think the majority of people neither want civil war nor to see Yemen divided again, but this will depend really on wisdom prevailing amongst policymakers on both sides -- on the government side and the opposition side."

Captors of 3 Frenchmen in Yemen linked to al-Qaida

Source: AP, By AHMED AL-HAJ,
27/07/2011

SANAA,-Three French aid workers abducted in Yemen are being held by men linked to the country's al-Qaida offshoot who are demanding $12 million in ransom, security officials and local tribesmen said Wednesday.

The two women and one man were abducted three months ago while working for the aid group Triangle Generation Humanitaire, which is based in Lyon, France. They were seized in eastern Yemen's Hadramawt province, which is home to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Intelligence chief Ghaleb al-Qamish and other senior government officials have asked prominent figures in the town of Sayoun to try to mediate their release, the security officials and tribesmen said.

They said the three were being held by al-Qaida members or by people affiliated with the militants. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

After the aid workers' disappearance on May 28, Yemeni officials initially said they feared the group had been taken by tribesmen, who frequently use abductions — including of foreigners — to press the government for concessions, such as the release of fellow tribesmen in prison.
In most of those cases, the captives are freed unharmed. In the past few years, however, al-Qaida has begun kidnapping foreigners as well, sometimes with lethal results.

The director of the French aid group, Patrick Verbruggen, said it has had no contact with the kidnappers since the abduction in May.
He said he had no information on whether the aid workers were being held by al-Qaida or if a ransom had been demanded.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Wednesday that the ministry also had not heard that the group is held by al-Qaida and that they are demanding a ransom.
"We have been fully mobilized since the beginning to obtain the release of our compatriots, and in their interest, we should observe the greatest discretion to preserve the effectiveness of our actions," he told an online briefing.

Al Qaeda top leader: We are behind the anti-government protests in Yemen

By Nasser Arrabyee/27/07/2011

The top leader of Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) said his supporters have been mainly participating in the six-month protests against the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“We, Mujahideen, are with the people of Umma in the squares of change and freedom until the Sharia rules,…” said Nasser Al Wahayshi in a 10-minute video message posted in Al Qaeda-linked websites on Tuesday.

Al Wahayshi, who pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden’s successor, said that his supporters in Yemen represent the majority of the population while the political parties from both the ruling and opposition represent only the minority. And this “minority is loyal to the Crusaders”.

Exploiting the current unrest, AQAP and Insar Sharia have been battling with the government troops for about two months in Abyan province where they declared two town at least as Islamic Emirates.

According to local information from Abyan, Nasser Al Wahayshi escaped from Zinjubar to MuKairas on Thursday July 21, 2011 after the government troops and tribesmen tightened the noose on his fighters in the city and its outskirts. Mukairas is close to Al Wahayshi village, Ghail Al Wahayshi in Al Baidah province.

“We , Mujahideen, the sons of the nations, we are from it and within it, we share with it the happy and unhappy times, and we are with in the squares of change and freedom to establish the rule of Sharia, and to make Shura come, security return, and justice prevail,” Al Wahayshi said in his message to his Shaykh Zawahri.
“Our people have gone beyond the political parties that want to take the victory of the Umma for their interest to please the Americans and Crusade West,” He said. “ The parties represent the minority, and they are loyal to the Crusaders.”


"As for the American Crusader enemy, they stood incapacitated towards the situation in Yemen, except by doing some intelligence work and air bombing with unmanned planes, with acceptance from the government and the opposition, and with silence from other institutions towards this intervention and penetration of airspace," Wuhayshi said.

"We will not stand with our hands tied. Our war with this Zio-Crusader campaign is ongoing, for they are the ones who choose war, and their people clapped for them. We are people of war; we were born from its womb and we grew up in its midst. It is as if we were only created to fight them and bother them."

Wuhayshi also said that al Qaeda seeks to impose its brand of Islam across the globe, through force of arms.

"Our project is to institute the Shariah of Allah on Earth and reject the man-made laws and constitutions," Wuhayshi said. "Nothing will rule the country other than the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of Allah's Messenger, Allah's peace and prayer be upon him, [especially] not with words written in a constitution to deceive people: 'Islamic
Shariah is the source of legislation.

Monday 25 July 2011

Yemen Democratic Transformation Stalled  By Tribal  Legacy 

Tribes and Tribulations

Yemen’s tribal society is at odds with democratic reform

Source: The Majalla


By Manuel Almeida, 25/07/2011


Amidst the current political standoff in Yemen, hopes are rising that this can simply be a period of political transition during which Yemen can move towards a modern, democratic state. But to what extent is a democratic state compatible with Yemeni society and its strong tribal system in particular?

In an arid region, Yemen stands apart from any other Middle Eastern country due to the sheer scale of its water problems. Before the Arab uprisings of this year, experts feared that Sana’a could very soon become the first capital city in the world to run out of water. In 2009, a study by a group of researchers from Sana’a University indicated that between 70 to 80 per-cent of Yemen’s rural conflicts were related to water.

Yet water was not always a problem for the Yemeni people. The land that today is called Yemen is one of oldest irrigation civilizations in the world. As a report by the Middle East Research and Information Project explains, for millennia local farmers “have practiced sustainable agriculture using available water and land.” Using mountain terraces, elaborate water harvesting techniques and community-managed flood and spring irrigation systems, farmers managed with no great trouble to meet the population’s needs.

The industrialization of Yemen’s agricultural sector—starting in the early 1970s—tipped that millennia-old balance by greatly expanding the cultivation of non-local, water-intensive crops such as citrus fruits and bananas. Matters were made much worse with the huge expansion in the cultivation of the stimulant plant qat, also highly water intensive. Today, it is estimated that qat cultivation absorbs roughly 40 percent of Yemen’s water supplies.

The pressing issue of water scarcity in Yemen, at least partly the result of the implementation of an agricultural system alien to the local context, is a good analogy to the nature of the political challenge faced presently by the Yemeni people. Indeed, the country’s grave crisis seems to be, to an important extent, the consequence of a failed adoption of the state, a form of political organization that was alien to the peoples of the region until the twentieth century, to Yemeni society, and vice-versa.

Amidst the current deadlock, with the opposition demanding a new political order and President Saleh refusing to step down—though he is still currently in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment—many inside and outside Yemen are starting to imagine how a new, post-Saleh political order would look. In particular the hope that the Yemeni state could evolve towards a democratic system is rising.

Close observers of Yemen’s reality, however, support the idea that Yemen’s tribal system is largely incompatible with a modern, democratic state. As Mohammed Jumeh, a Yemeni columnist for the Arab daily newspaper Asharq Alawsat told The Majalla, “Yemeni society is still mainly tribal, and as you know the leader of the tribe is not elected in a democratic way by the tribesmen, he becomes the leader because he succeeds his father. We need to work on changing the people’s culture and their social life-style in order to be ready for receiving the values of democracy.” Jumeh belives such a transition, if it happens, will take a very long time to come about.

Nasser Arrabyee,  a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a, says that Yemen’s tribal system “is still one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of a modern, democratic, rule of law-based state”. According to Arrabyee , this does not mean that the tribes are completely against the idea of democracy. Simply, the tribes’ traditional and conservative outlook is still hugely influential and to counter this is a very difficult task. As Arrabyee  explains, “if you ask people in Yemen what is the law, many people will tell you it is the tribal law, not the state’s.”

While it makes no sense to deny the existence of a natural tension between the tribal way and the idea of a modern, democratic Yemeni state, it is worth questioning why people turn to the tribe in the first place. Beyond being a deeply entrenched cultural code, why do many Yemenis rely on the tribe for security or law enforcement—two tasks which fall within the remit of the state? Probably, part of the answer lies in the fact that the Yemeni state and President Saleh’s government have largely failed to provide for both.

The relationship between Saleh’s own tribe, the Sanhan, and the state is one of the notable exceptions when it comes to the failure of Saleh’s government to provide the Yemeni with the rule of law, jobs beyond the security sector, or basic public services through responsible state institutions. Although a small tribe, the Sanhan has traditionally enjoyed “tremendous access to state resources,” as Sarah Phillips, from the University of Sidney, writes in Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis.

Surely Saleh’s mission wasn’t an easy one. In 1990 he became the President of the new Yemen, faced with the task of unifying a country still dealing with the legacy of nine years of civil war. His 21 years in power (33 if one counts his time as president of north Yemen), however, tell a long a story of ruinous government, societal alienation, dismal corruption and political repression. Saleh’s network of patronage and alliances was supported by an overemphasis on the security sector, under the banner of the threats posed by Al-Qaeda, the Houthi rebellion in the northeast, and the uprisings in the south. But Saleh’s real underlying goal was to enhance his own power and dissuade any possible challengers.

In the meanwhile, a booming, young population—Yemen has one of the highest fertility rates in the Middle East—found no jobs, no future, and no voice. Just before the Arab spring, statistics showed that 60 per cent of Yemen’s population was under the age of 20, and about 40 per cent of the country’s 23 million people were unemployed.

So what next for the Yemeni? It could be assumed that, in the face of such a negative legacy, forcing President Saleh to resign would be the first thing to do. While the Yemeni opposition strongly supports this, the international community seems to think otherwise. As Arrabyee  puts it, “from the very beginning of the crisis until today, the international community, namely the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and the EU, keep saying that power should be transferred in a constitutional and orderly way.” Arrabyee  explains, “Saleh is the only one who can do this [so] I can guarantee you 99 per cent that he is coming back.” It seems like, for the Yemeni, the promise of the Arab Spring is still a distant prospect.

Five  officials rejoined the ruling party after resignations 

By Abeer Arrabyee, 25/07/2011

Two more members of Parliament from the ruling party rejoined Monday the party after they resigned in objection of violence against protesters last March.

The MPs Ahmed Al Azzani, and Khaled Al Sadi,said the failed assassination attempt against President Ali Abdullah Saleh and senior officials earlier last June.

Earlier on Sunday, two Members of Parliament have rejoined the ruling party , the General People's Congress, GPC, in refusal and condemnation of the terrorist attack on the mosque of the presidential palace early last June.


The two MPs, Shwqi Shamsan and Amin Al-Selwy, had resigned from the GPC after the March 18th shootout at the potest square in Sana'a, in which 52 protesters were killed.


Earlier this month, Abdul Jaleel Hazem, MP, had also re-joined his party ,GPC, for the same reasons.

The three MPs said in their recantation statements that what happened in March 18 against protesters was wrong enough to make them resign from their party, but what happened in June 3 against president and senior officials of the state was even more dreadful to make them rejoin their party and stand with their leadership.

The Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansor Hadi welcomed the three MPs on Sunday in an extensive meeting which brought together the parliamentary block of the ruling party, the government and the general committee , the highest authority of the ruling party.

Three officials rejoined their ruling party after resignations 

 
 


By Abeer Arrabyee, 25/07/2011
 
Two Members of Parliament have  rejoined  the ruling party , the General People's Congress,  GPC,   after the terrorist  attack on the mosque of the presidential palace early last June.

 
The two MPs, Shwqi Shamsan and Amin Al-Selwy, had resigned  from the GPC after the  March 18th shootout  at the potest square in Sana'a, in which  52  protesters were were killed.
 
 
Earlier this month, Abdul Jaleel Hazem, MP, had also re-joined his party ,GPC, for the same reasons.

The three MPs said in their recantation statements that what happened in March 18 against protesters was wrong enough to make them resign from their party, but what happened in June 3 against president and senior officials of the state was even more dreadful to make them rejoin their party and stand with their leadership.

The Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansor Hadi welcomed the three MPs on Sunday in an extensive meeting which brought together the parliamentary block of the ruling party, the government and the general committee , the highest authority of the ruling party.

Sunday 24 July 2011

Suicide bombing kills four soldiers, as noose tightened on Al Qaeda in south Yemen

By Nasser Arrabyee/24/07/2011

The two-month war in south Yemen between Al Qaeda and government troops intensified over the last few days and entered what can be called a bone- breaking stage.

Al Qaeda lost senior leaders along with tens of fighters after local tribesmen in Abyan sided with the government troops for the first time. Local people say many airstrikes were implemented by US drones.

The two governments of Yemen and US acknowledge there is cooperation and coordination between them to defeat Al Qaeda which tries to exploit the current unrest in Yemen.

The majority of Zinjubar, the capital of Abyan, is now under the control of the government troops and the tribesmen who closed entrances of the city four days ago, according to local sources.

However, Al Qaeda is still resisting inside and outside Zinjubar.

At least four soldiers were killed and 21 others injured when a car bomb exploded a reinforcement convoy while on their way the troops in Zinjubar, the ministry of defense said Sunday.

The reinforcement troops were nearby the air defense camp in Al Mansora area of Aden in their way to Zinjubar to help the troops of 25th Mica who now are fighting after about two months of siege at the eastern outskirts of the city.

The suicide bomber , an Al Qaeda operative, who was killed in the blast, was driving a pick-up car, Hilux, the defense ministry said.

The suicide attack would not turn away the armed forces from continuing to cleanse Abyan province from terrorists, said a military source to the website of the defense ministry after the attack.


The parts of the body of the suicide bomber were scattered away in the site. His identity is not known yet, but a security official said investigations are going on to know that.

Tens of Al Qaeda operatives including middle level leaders were killed and injured in Zinjubar over the last two weeks.

Local tribesmen played an essential role in the last decisive battles. Tribesmen got angry after about 90,000 people displaced from their houses in Zinjubar because of the fighting.

"It is the first time that Al Qaeda is in direct confrontation with the tribesmen ,"said Saeed Obaid, chairman of Al Jemhi center for studies and researchers, a recently-established think-tank concerned with Al Qaeda affairs.

Al Qaeda fighters in Zinjubar, who call themselves Insar Shariah, supporters of Shariah (Islamic law),came from all over the country, mainly from Shabwah, Mareb, Al Jawf,and Hudhrmout.

Non-Yemenis are also participating in the battles. For instance, The Saudi Waleed Asiri, and the Egyptian Saleem Heba, Abu Eyman Al Mesri, were found among the dead bodies over the last few weeks.

" All Insar Shariah are part of AQAP in terms of ideological system, but not all of them are necessarily a part of the organizational system of AQAP," said the expert Obaid, the author of the book Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Aidh Al Shabwani, the leader of Al Qaeda in the eastern province of Mareb was buried in his home village in Abaida on Wednesday July 20 after he was killed in Zinjubar.

The death and burial of Al Shabwani was confirmed by many relatives and friends who attended the funeral and burial.

Musab Mabkhoot Al Sharif was also buried in Mareb two week earlier this month after he was killed in Zinjubar also where he was fighting with Al Qaeda operatives.

Mabkhoot Al Sharif, father of Musab, is the head of the opposition Islamist party, Islah, in Mareb.

Saleem Heba, abu Eyman Al Mesry, the Egyptian Al Qaeda operative was killed in Zinjubar earlier this month.

Abu Eyman Al Mesry lived with his wife in a farm under the protection of the prominent tribal leader of Bakil tribesmen in Al Jawf province, Ameen Al Okaimi.

At least four soldiers killed and 21 others injured in Al Qaeda suicide bombing

At least four soldiers killed and 21 others injured in Al Qaeda suicide bombing

By Nasser Arrabyee/24/07/2011

Four soldiers were killed and 21 others injured when a car bomb exploded in reinforcement troops in Al Mansoura in the southern city of Aden, the ministry of defense said Sunday.

The reinforcement troops were nearby the air defense camp in Aden in their way to Abyan where the government troops and tribesmen are tightening the noose on the Al Qaeda operatives who have been controlling the capital of Abyan Zinjubar since May 29 when they declared it an Islamic Emirate.

The suicide bomber , an Al Qaeda operative, who was killed in the blast, was driving a pick-up car, Hilux, the defense ministry said.

The suicide attack would not turn away the armed forces from continuing to cleanse Abyan province from terrorists, said a military source to the website of the defense ministry.

More details later .

Saturday 23 July 2011

Yemeni opposition rejects UN envoy's call for dialogue, demanding power transfer

Source: Xinhua, 24/07/2011

SANAA,-Yemeni opposition coalition on Saturday expressed rejection to the efforts for conciliation by the visiting UN envoy to start dialogue with the ruling party, demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh to transfer power to his deputy at first, an opposition official said.

"The leaders of the opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMPs) told the UN envoy Jamal bin Omar that President Saleh should first transfer power to his Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi before the commencement of any dialogue between the JMPs and Saleh's ruling party General People's Congress," the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Bin Omar arrived in Yemen on Wednesday on a mission to help the Yemeni rivals end the long-running political impasse, calling on the ruling party and the opposition to conduct a constructive national dialogue to head off the unrest.

The UN official has met with the acting president Hadi, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qerbi, some high-ranking government officials, and the opposition leaders.

On Thursday, bin Omar held a meeting with opposition tribal leader Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, during which al-Ahmar "warned that the UN's weak stance in pressing Saleh to peacefully transfer power could turn Yemeni opposition youths to a Libyan-style rebellion in order to achieve their demands," according to local independent media News Yemen.

According to eyewitnesses and opposition officials, al-Ahmar recently deployed a large number of his armed tribesmen in downtown Sanaa. The tribesmen dug several hideouts in the main streets of the Hassab district, after a fragile truce ended their pitched street battles with the government forces early last month, which left hundreds of people dead.

Islamist party pushes Yemen towards Somalia-style chaos, analyst says

By Nasser Arrabyee/23/07/2011

The Islamist opposition party Islah may lead Yemen to an absolute chaos like Somalia by its supporting armed tribesmen and Al Qaeda, said a Yemeni political analyst Saturday.

The socialist opposition analyst Ahmed Saleh Al Feqi warned from the wars launched by the Islah party against the army in many places in Yemen like Arhab and Abyan.

“These irresponsible acts from Islah pave the way towards Somalization here in Yemen,” Al Faqi said in a lengthy article titled “Islah and Somalization” and published in Al Tagheer website.

“ Islah is leading us in the same road of Somalia, although there are many ways to deal with the mistakes of the army other than attacking and destroying it,” said Al Faqi referring to many operations implemented by Islah tribesmen against the army in Nehm and Arhab areas over the last few days.

Islah party mainly leads the 6-month protests that demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and it also leads the opposition coalition which includes the Islamists, Socialist, and Nasserites.

Aidh Al Shabwani and his nephew Awadh were buried in their home village in Abaida of Mareb province last Wednesday, about one week after they were killed in Zinjubar, the capital of the southern province of Abyan where Al Qaeda fighters have been battling with the government troops and the local tribesmen since they declared an Islamic Emirate late last May. Some tribal leaders including Al Shabwani’s relatives belong to Islah.


Aidh Al Shabwani, the leader of Al Qaeda in the eastern province of Mareb, survived an assassination attack by airstrikes on his farm last year. The death and burial of Al Shabwani was confirmed by many relatives and friends who attended the funeral and burial.

Musab Mabkhoot Al Sharif was also buried in Mareb two week earlier this month after he was killed in Zinjubar also where he was fighting with Al Qaeda operatives.

Mabkhoot Al Sharif, father of Musab, is the head of the opposition Islamist party, Islah, in Mareb.

Saleem Heba, abu Eyman Al Mesry, an Egyptian Al Qaeda operative was killed in Zinjubar earlier this month.

Abu Eyman Al Mesry lived with his wife in a farm under the protection of the prominent tribal leader of Bakil tribesmen in Al Jawf province, Ameen Al Okaimi. The eastern province of Al Jawf is totally under the control of Al Okaimi and his tribesmen since last April when the governor and security and military commanders returned to Sanaá leaving military camps and every thing for the opposition tribesmen.

Like Mabkhoot Al Sharfi in Mareb, Ameen Al Okaimi is the top leader of the Islamist opposition party, Islah, in Al Jawf.

The two Al Qaeda operatives Musab Al Sharif and Abu Eyman Al Mesry,and their ties to prominent Islamist leaders in these two provinces raised many questions about the role of the Islah party in the ongoing war in many places in Yemen.

In the capital Sanaá, for instance, two of the Islah prominent leaders, Sadeq Al Ahmar and his brother Hamid, are still in a war with the government troops despite a fragile truce after a great deal of casualties and damages from both sides during about 40 days of war in Al Ahasaba area starting from late May.

The billionaire Islah leading member Hamid Al Ahmar is one of the main financial supporters of the anti-Saleh protests. He has been grooming himself for presidency since 2006 when his presidential candidate Faisal Bin Shamlan lost.

Other tribal leaders belong to Islah are also in continuous war with the armed forces loyal to President Saleh four areas at least: Arhab, north of Sanaá, Nehm, east of Sanaa, Al Haima, west of Sanaá, and Taiz south of Sanaá.

Almost daily clashes take places in these areas between the republican guards and armed tribesmen led local heads of Islah: Mansour Al Hanik of Arhab, Abdullah Shibana of Nehm, Rabish bin Wahban of Al Haima, Hamoud Al Mekhlafi of Taiz.

The defected general and Islamist-oriented Ali Muhsen, who has excellent and historic relations with leaders of Islah, is widely believed to be supporting all those tribesmen in all those areas in an attempt to weaken the most highly qualified forces of the republican guards.

-

Thursday 21 July 2011

Defected general accused of being behind Saleh’s failed assassination

By Nasser Arrabyee/21/07/2011

A party of Yemen’s political crisis was involved in the failed assassination attempt against the President Ali Abdullah Saleh on June 3, said the Yemeni deputy minister of information on Thursday.

The deputy minister Abdul Janadi did not give any further details.

“The indicators of the ongoing investigations of say that a party of the political crisis was behind the terrorist attack on the mosque of the Presidential Palace,” he told reporters in a press conference held in Sana’a.

“This party is involved now in military confrontations in Arhab and it tries to control the international airport of Sana’a,” said Abdul Janadi.

“If he thinks he has supporters in Arhab, he should know that the other s have their own supporters,” said Abdul Janadi in a clear reference to the defected general Ali Muhsen. Muhsen is accused of supporting the Islamist tribesmen in Arhab where clashes take place almost every day with the republican guards.

Arhab is about 40 km to the north of the capital Sana’a where international airport of Sanaa is not far.

Season of councils as crisis remains unsolved in Yemen

By Nasser Arrabyee/21/07/2011

The main opposition parties are planning to announce what it called national council after they refused transitional council declared a group of young protesters. The spokesman of the preparatory committee, Mohammed Al Sabri expected the new council to be declared on August.

A total of 12 young protester groups declared Thursday July 21st, their own council which they called “the revolutionary council” after they refused the transitional council declared on Saturday by the leading protester Tawakul Karman. Even before this council, many other groups declared their councils and some others are in their way to declare.

Last Sunday July 17th marked the 33 anniversary of the President Ali Abdullah Saleh' rule who is still recovering in Saudi Arabia from burns and injuries he sustained In a failed assassination attempt on June 3.


While Saleh's supporters celebrated the anniversary in the capital Sana’a and all the other provinces, the anti-Saleh protesters escalated their six-month protests by accusing Saudi Arabia and US of supporting Saleh.

The international community including US and Saudi Arabia, keep saying the power should be transferred in a constitutional and orderly way.

On July 17th and from his hospital in Riyadh, President Saleh confidently called the opposition parties for dialogue and told the protesters in the streets that violence and chaos would never replace the democracy.


Saleh highly praised his deputy Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi who now makes consultations with all internal and external parties for solving the crisis.


All officials including the vice president insist that Talks on power transfer should only happen When Saleh return from Saudi Arabia.


On the eve of 33 anniversary of Saleh's rule, a group of protesters led by an Islamist female activist,announced unilaterally a transitional council of 17 members to run the country.

The council was not recognized by any of the opposition parties and was described by some critics as " a dead newborn".




This transitional council may lead to a civil war and repeat the Libyan experience,an opposition group warned immediately after it was declared.


"What we should do now is to continue our work until the regime is collapsed," said a statement by Al Houthi groups who call themselves in the protests square, Asomood,(steadfastness).

"Declaring a transitional council before collapse of the regime will only repeat the Libyan experience," warned the statement.






Muhsen Bin Fareed, secretary general of the opposition party, Ray, whose name was mentioned in the council, refused it and called for a national council instead between the south and the north with each side represented with 50 per cent of the council.


Backlashes among the protest groups and individuals were almost not different.


For instance, protesters from Al Zandani radical and fundamental university of Al-Eman,totally refused the council.

"I would call this council, Tawakul and Khaled al Ansi's council,it's one hundred per cent failed," said Adel Al Musanif referring to the two leading protesters widely believed to be behind the non-recognized council.


"Those behind this council should have listened to our clerics," added Al Musanif from his tent where hundreds of students of Al Eman university are camping out.


He referred to his Shiekh AlZandani who prohibited transitional councils earlier this month.


However, Abdul Rehman Al Qubati, independent leading protester said,
"The council is a good step towards the completion of the revolution regardless of its drawbacks."


"The timing was not good, and we have some reservations over some names in the council," said Al Qubati.


Hamid Qahtan a leading member of Islah said , "This council is only to thwart our revolution,and I think Tawakul and Khalid Al Ansi are working with foreign bodies against Yemen,"
Qahtan, belongs to the same Islamist party of Tawakul and Al Ansi.

Another group of protesters calling themselves, a civil alliance of Yemeni revolution , refused the transitional council in a statement.


"We refuse the so-called 17-member presidential transitional council declared by the so-called the preparatory committee of revolution youth council," said a statement of the alliance issued Sunday.


"This council will never succeed, it was done and declared overnight without even the agreement of its members," said the leading protester Najib Abdul Rehman.


Judge Fahim Muhsen, one of the 17 members declared, denied his knowledge of the council.


"I heard about this council only from media,I am still doing my work,and we as judges will always keep away from politics,"said Judge Fahim whose name was mentioned in the alleged council as chairman of the supreme judicial council.


The deputy minister of information said the council would not work at all.

"The government is till there, the institutions are still there, the legal and elected president is still there," said Abdul Janadi, deputy minister of information.


"So they can form their council only in the sky, and it's allowed there," he added.


The leading protester Najeeb Abdul Rehman believes that the idea if a real transitional council was killed by declaring a council without coordination .
"I think Tawakul was secretly told by her party to kill our dreams of forming a real council, now the idea is killed and this is what the Islah wants," said Najeeb Abdul Rehman.

Earlier last week, the cleric Abdul Majeed Al Zandani, the most extremist and influential cleric in the Islamist party, Islah, said that forming a transitional council is violating the rules of Shariah and those who want to form a council should review their religion.


At least two more groups of the protesters declared transitional councils, and many more are on their way to declare.


The leading protester Adel Abdu, said no council would succeed without representation of the majority of the forces including the ruling party.


"I think what was declared Saturday was just an attempt to confuse the public before the return of President Saleh," said Adel."This council is a dead newborn."


However, the leading protester Ameen Arrabyee agreed with the council, saying the opposition parties would not do anything if they wait.


"This is what the young people should do, we should not wait, and I think we have taken the right step," said Arrabyee who is a lawyer.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Top opposition figure escaped assassination in Sanaa 


By Nasser Arrabyee,20/07/2011


The top leader of the largest Islamist opposition party,Islah, survived an assassination attempt, said the opposition coalition in Yemen late Wednesday.

Gunmen opened fire on the car of Mohammed Al Yadomi, the chairman of the  opposition Islamist party, Islah while driving in the area of Mathbah, north of the capital Sanaa.

 The Islah-led  opposition coalition which includes Islamists,Socialist and Nasserites,accused the sons and nephews of the President Saled of being behind the assassination attempt.

"Targeting the chairman of Islah is an  attempt to escalate and pushing the country into a civil war," said the opposition coalition in a statement.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

US says President Saleh's role in resolving crisis  is essential 

US ignores unilaterally declared transitional council

Source:AFP,20/07/2011
 
WASHINGTON — The United States said Tuesday that dialogue was essential to resolve Yemen's political crisis and played down the opposition's announcement of a "presidential council" to run the country.

Testifying before the Senate, US officials acknowledged question marks over the political transition in Yemen. Veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh was wounded in a bomb attack on June 3 and hospitalized in Saudi Arabia.

"We believe that political dialogue is essential to unravel this set of knots that the Yemeni political process finds itself in," said Janet Sanderson, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

"And we believe that Saleh's role in that is going to be critical," she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
John Brennan, US President Barack Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, last week went to Saudi Arabia to visit Saleh whose face still showed burns. A Yemeni official later said that Saleh would return home "soon."

Yemen's opposition at the same time announced a 17-member "presidential council" including a former premier to steer the country.
Sanderson said she understood that some nominees were "caught unawares" that they would serve on the council.
"It seems to us that at this point this council does not have a lot of traction, but the political environment in Sanaa remains quite fluid," she said.

Saleh has ruled Yemen since 1978 and worked closely with the United States on fighting Al-Qaeda, but cooperation has been sharply curtailed this year due to the turmoil. Al-Qaeda militants seized the southern city of Zinjibar in late May.
Daniel Benjamin, the State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator, voiced confidence that cooperation would resume once the political chaos is resolved.

"It is important to underscore that our counter-terrorism partnership goes beyond one individual, and based on our conversations with a broad cross-section of Yemenis we are confident that it will continue once a political resolution is achieved," Benjamin told the Senate committee.

US very concerned about Al Qaeda trying to take over strategic waters in Yemen

Source: Washington Times,20/07/2011

The Obama administration fears al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen will gain access to strategic waters in the Gulf of Aden, based on recent gains by extremist rebels in the southwest part of the Arabian state.

“It is a matter of great concern that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sees this opportunity to establish a territorial hold on this area in Zinjibar,” a town in southwest Yemen, Daniel Benjamin, State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, told a Senate panel Tuesday.

“It is something that we are watching with great concern,” he said. “Obviously, when they have a safer haven in which to operate, we are worried that they threaten the city of Aden to some extent, and, if they are able to get access to the sea, that presents other concerns.”

Aden is Yemen’s main port and the site of al Qaeda’s 2000 bombing of the guided-missile warship USS Cole that killed 17 sailors and wounded 39. If al Qaeda is able to hold the port city, it would give the group the potential to import sophisticated weaponry, and also serve as a base to support other al Qaeda affiliates in the region, such as al-Shabab in Somalia.

Mr. Benjamin said in an interview with The Washington Times after the hearing that he thought it would be “extremely difficult” for al Qaeda or other rebels to take and hold Aden.

Janet Sanderson, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said at the hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that militant foes of the central Yemeni government in Sanaa have been able to take advantage of the government’s emphasis on counterterrorism operations in the cities.

“What we have seen as a result of the focus of the government on the security situation in the large cities is a growing space in which extremists have been able to operate,” she said.

“There are reports that Islamic militants, among them including some members of al Qaeda, have gone in and taken control of the city of Zinjibar. There are reports that smaller cities in that area have been taken over by militants. We do know the revolutionary guard in the Zinjibar garrison is under siege.”

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been linked to the Dec. 25, 2009, attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. One of that group’s leaders, Anwar al-Awlaki, is a U.S. citizen who has emerged as al Qaeda’s most effective English-language recruiter.

In the past six months, the political situation in Yemen has deteriorated. In June, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was nearly killed in an assassination attempt. He is being treated in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Saleh’s vice president and Yemen’s interim leader, Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, has said that his government has no control five of Yemen’s 21 provinces. In February, the United States had to suspend its counterterrorism assistance to Yemen because of the deteriorating security situation.

The province of Abyan, where Zinjibar is located, has experienced heavy clashes in recent months. On Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported that an al Qaeda-affiliated leader in the province, Hassan Basonbol, was killed in fighting with security forces.

Despite the state of near civil war in the country, U.S. officials Tuesday said Yemen’s citizens do not hate America in the same numbers as Pakistanis do, according to recent polls.

Christa Capozzola, a deputy assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development said. “In general USAID’s experience is that the reception of Americans and our aid is positive.”

Sunday 17 July 2011

Transitional council may lead to civil war and repeat Libyan conflict,opposition group says

By Nasser Arrabyee/ 17/07/2011

A  transitional council now   may lead  to a civil war and repeat the Libyan experience,an opposition group warned Sunday refusing the transitional council    Declared earlier  by a group of protesters.

In a statement sent to local websites,
Al Houthi groups in protest squares said
The council is "A dangerous step and it may lead to a  fighting and civil war"

"What we  should do now is to continue our work until the regime is collapsed," the statement said.

"Declaring transitional council before collapse of the regime will only repeat the Libyan experience,"  warned the statement. 

The Houthi groups, As-Somood coalition as they call themselves in the protest squares, were not represented in the 17-member council.


Muhsen Bin Fareed, secretary general of the opposition party, Ray, whose name was mentioned in the unilaterally declared  council, refused this  transitional council and called for a national council instead  between the south and the north with each side represented with 50 per cent of the council.

Backlashes  continued among the protest groups and individuals  on Sunday.
A post-graduate student from Al Zandani radical and fundamental university of Al-Eman,totally refused the council.
 
"I would call this council, Tawakul and Khaled  al Ansi's council,it's one hundred per cent failed," said Al Musanif referring to the two leading protesters widely believed to be behind the non-recognized council.

 "Those behind this council should have listened to our clerics," added   Al Musanif from his tent where hundreds of students of Al Eman university  are camping out.

He referred to his Shiekh AlZandani who prohibited transitional councils earlier this month. 

Abdul  Rehman Al Qubati, independent leading protester,however said,
"The council is a good  step towards the  completion of the revolution regardless of its drawbacks."

"The timing was not good, and we have some reservations over some names in the council like Ali Nasser Mohammed," said Al Qubati.

Hamid Qahtan a  leading member of Islah said , "This council is only to thwart  our revolution,and I think Tawakul and Khalid Al Ansi are working with foreign bodies against Yemen," 
 Qahtan  works as principal of secondary school in Sanaa and he is a leading protester ad well.


A  group of protesters calling themselves, a civil alliance of Yemeni revolution , refused the  transitional council in a statement published Sunday.


 The alliance,which includes a number of modern and  liberal groups from different political backgrounds, said the 17-member council was made without any consultations and agreements with the effective forces.

"We refuse the so-called 17-member presidential transitional council declared by the so-called the preparatory committee of revolution youth council," said a  statement of the alliance issued Sunday.


Earlier on Saturday immediately after that council was declared, Yemeni leading  protesters voiced their refusal  describing the council as a dead newborn.

The 17-member council was declared by the female leading protester Tawakul Karman without agreement of the main opposition parties  including her Islamist party ,Islah that leads the opposition protests.
  
"This council will never succeed,it was done and declared overnight without even the agreement of its members," said the leading protester Najib Abdul Rehman.
Judge Fahim Muhsen, one  of the 17 members declared, denied his knowledge of the council.

"I heard about this council only from media,I am still doing my work,and we as judges will always keep away from politics,"said  Judge Fahim whose name was mentioned in the alleged council as chairman of the supreme judicial council.

The deputy minister of information said the council would not work at all.
"The government is till there,the institutions are still there,the legal and elected president is still there," said Abdul Janadi,deputy minister of information.

"So they  can  form their council only in the sky, and it's allowed there," he added.
 The leading protester Najeeb  Abdul Rehman believes that the idea if a real transitional council was killed today by declaring a council without coordination .
"I think Tawakul was secretly told by her party to kill our dreams of forming a real council, now the idea is killed and this  is what the Islah wants," said Najeeb Abdul Rehman.
 
Earlier last week, the cleric Abdul Majeed Al Zandani,the most  extremist and influential  cleric in the Islamist party, Islah,said that forming a transitional council violating the rules of Shariah and those who want to form a council should review their religion.


At least two more groups of the protesters declared transitional councils,and many more are on their way to declare.

Adel Abdu,spokesman of the group who delayed their council last Tuseday,said no council would succeed without representation of the majority of the forces including the ruling party.
"I think what was declared today is just an attempt to confuse the public before the return of President Saleh," said Adel."This council is a dead newborn."

However the leading protester Ameen Arrabyee agreed with the council, saying the opposition parties would not do anything if they wait.
"This is what the young people should do, we should not wait, and I think we have taken the right step," said  Arrabyee.

Increasing refusal to 'Dead newborn' transitional  council

 No single opposition party recognizes this council

By Nasser Arrabyee/ 17/07/2011

A  civil alliance of Yemeni revolution refused a transitional council declared earlier on Saturday by another alliance protesters.
 The alliance,which includes a number of modern and  liberal groups from different political backgrounds, said the 17-member council was made without any consultations and agreements with the effective forces.

"We refuse the so-called 17-member presidential transitional council declared by the so-called the preparatory committee of revolution youth council," said a  statement of the alliance issued Sunday.


Earlier on Saturday immediately after that council was declared, Yemeni leading  protesters voiced their refusal  describing the council as a dead newborn.

The 17-member council was declared by the female leading protester Tawakul Karman without agreement of the main opposition parties  including her Islamist party ,Islah that leads the opposition protests.
  
"This council will never succeed,it was done and declared overnight without even the agreement of its members," said the leading protester Najib Abdul Rehman.
Judge Fahim Muhsen, one  of the 17 members declared, denied his knowledge of the council.

"I heard about this council only from media,I am still doing my work,and we as judges will always keep away from politics,"said  Judge Fahim whose name was mentioned in the alleged council as chairman of the supreme judicial council.

The deputy minister of information said the council would not work at all.
"The government is till there,the institutions are still there,the legal and elected president is still there," said Abdul Janadi,deputy minister of information.

"So they  can  form their council only in the sky, and it's allowed there," he added.
 The leading protester Najeeb  Abdul Rehman believes that the idea if a real transitional council was killed today by declaring a council without coordination .
"I think Tawakul was secretly told by her party to kill our dreams of forming a real council, now the idea is killed and this  is what the Islah wants," said Najeeb Abdul Rehman.
 
Earlier last week, the cleric Abdul Majeed Al Zandani,the most  extremist and influential  cleric in the Islamist party, Islah,said that forming a transitional council violating the rules of Shariah and those who want to form a council should review their religion.


At least two more groups of the protesters declared transitional councils,and many more are on their way to declare.

Adel Abdu,spokesman of the group who delayed their council last Tuseday,said no council would succeed without representation of the majority of the forces including the ruling party.
"I think what was declared today is just an attempt to confuse the public before the return of President Saleh," said Adel."This council is a dead newborn."

However the leading protester Ameen Arrabyee agreed with the council, saying the opposition parties would not do anything if they wait.
"This is what the young people should do, we should not wait, and I think we have taken the right step," said  Arrabyee.

Saturday 16 July 2011

Transitional council of protesters facing refusal

By Nasser Arrabyee/16/07/2011

Yemeni leading  protesters refused a transitional council declared Saturday by  a  group of their colleagues describing it as failed step.

The 17-member council was declared by the female leading protester Tawakul Karman without agreement of the main opposition parties  including her Islamist party ,Islah that leads the opposition protests.
  
"This council will never succeed,it was done and declared overnight without even the agreement of its members," said the leading protester Najib Abdul Rehman.
Judge Fahim Muhsen, one  of the 17 members declared, denied his knowledge of the council.

"I heard about this council only from media,I am still doing my work,and we as judges will always keep away from politics,"said  Judge Fahim whose name was mentioned in the alleged council as chairman of the supreme judicial council.

The deputy minister of information said the council would not work at all.
"The government is till there,the institutions are still there,the legal and elected president is still there," said Abdul Janadi,deputy minister of information.

"So they  can  form their council only in the sky, and it's allowed there," he added.
 The leading protester Najeeb  Abdul Rehman believes that the idea if a real transitional council was killed today by declaring a council without coordination .
"I think Tawakul was secretly told by her party to kill our dreams of forming a real council, now the idea is killed and this  is what the Islah wants," said Najeeb Abdul Rehman.
 
Earlier last week, the cleric Abdul Majeed Al Zandani,the most  extremist and influential  cleric in the Islamist party, Islah,said that forming a transitional council violating the rules of Shariah and those who want to form a council should review their religion.


At least two more groups of the protesters declared transitional councils,and many more are on their way to declare.

Adel Abdu,spokesman of the group who delayed their council last Tuseday,said no council would succeed without representation of the majority of the forces including the ruling party.
"I think what was declared today is just an attempt to confuse the public before the return of President Saleh," said Adel.

However , the leading protester Ameen Arrabyee agreed with the council, saying the opposition parties would not do anything if they wait.
"This is what the young people should do, we should not wait, and I think we have taken the right step," said  Arrabyee.

At least four killed in semi-war supported by defected general in Taiz

By Nasser Arrabyee, 16/07/2011

The yemeni government accused the opposition parties of planning to assassinate senior security officials in the city of  Taiz where  a high ranking security official was killed Friday by armed tribesmen who try to  control the city.

Night operations and sporadic clashes and shellings are continuing between   security forces and armed opposition tribesmen supported by defected military commanders in the central province of Taiz.


Three people at least were killed and 10 others injured when the government troops shelled the house of the defected military commander Sadeq Ali Sarhan in As-Salam zone in the city of Taiz.

 One of those killed was the son of the commander Sarhan, Abdul Rahman, according to  one of the relatives.

Sarhan is the commander of the air defense at the first  armored division of the defected general Ali Muhsen.

Sarhan, who is originally from Taiz,was sent a few days ago  by the defected general Ali Muhsen to help the armed opposition tribal leaders who  are in almost a war with the government forces since the Taiz sit-in Square was crushed early last June.
 
Sheikh Hamoud Al Mekhlafi, Islamist, and sheikh Sultan Al Samee, socialist, are the most famous and   prominent two tribal leaders who lead groups of armed tribesmen against the government forces in the city of Taiz.

Heavy and medium-sized weapons was sent from Ali Muhsen in Sanaa camouflaged with  normal  luggage, according to security sources.

Muhsen  supports the armed opposition tribesmen loyal to his Islamist party in many places outside the capital Sanaa like Arhab, Nehm,and Taiz, with the aim of  weakening  the most-highly qualified forces of the republican guards, led by the eldest son of President Saleh, Ahmed Ali.

Separately, the  security director of Sharab Rawna,Ahmed Razaz Mudhesh was killed and three of his bodyguards were injured when  armed opposition tribesmen smuggling weapons to the city of Taiz, clashed with them.

The opposition tribesmen were riding a car laden with weapons and heading to Taiz,in the area of Al Duaisah where the security forces followed them but they refused to stop, according to independent tribesman from the area.
 
A security official said these developments come  in the framework of an escalation of the opposition.
" the opposition in Taiz has an escalation plan to kill the security officials," the unnamed security official was quoted by the state-run news agency ad saying.

Friday 15 July 2011

Opportunistic tribal,religious and military opposition leaders hijacked  Yemen's revolution   

  

Source: Foreign Policy

By Stacey Philbrick Yadav
 15/07/2011

After six months of ongoing peaceful protests, a fracturing of the armed forces, and ongoing violence in numerous parts of the country, Yemenis face increasingly dire conditions each day. And yet they keep showing up. While non-democratic (nay, anti-democratic) neighbors fitfully engage in mediation efforts while also giving refuge to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the U.S. continues to interpret the crisis through the lens of counterterrorism. Concerned about the risk of an emboldened al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the U.S. has offered tepid support for the aspirations of the country's majority, pinned its hopes on an atavistic autocrat, and opted to increase controversial drone attacks in some of the most unstable parts of the country. 

This strategy is mistaken. It presupposes a narrow understanding of U.S. interests centered on counterterrorism, which I and others have argued against elsewhere. But it also assumes that working against the revolutionary aspirations of millions of Yemenis is, in fact, the best way to counter the threat of AQAP. Supporting the development of a democratically-constituted Yemen and offering support to its leaders as they build legitimate state institutions makes more sense. This Friday, the Organizing Committee of the Revolution, which is advocating for Saleh's immediate transfer of powers and the formation of a transitional council, has issued a call for a march in pursuit of a "Civil State." Yemenis from across ideological, occupational, generational, and class lines will gather around the country to demand a state accountable to its rights-bearing citizens. It will be the twenty-fifth Friday on which they have done so, camped out in the squares for the weeks in between.

Opportunistic, "spontaneous," and organized oppositions

It has been widely observed that Yemen's opposition movement is in fact a very wide tent, featuring multiple groups with shared (and some not-so-shared) visions of Yemen's ideal political future. The six-month standoff between the opposition and the regime has by now also produced considerable de facto devolution of authority in this highly regionally-divided and socially stratified country. But the emphasis on the different factions of the opposition has been too frequently inverted in media accounts, placing undue (and historically short-sighted) stress on those groups engaged in armed conflict with elements of the Yemeni armed forces loyal to President Saleh and his family.

Attention has focused mainly on the "opportunistic opposition" composed of various tribal leaders (especially the Ahmar brothers), military figures (notably Ali Muhsin and his First Armored Division) and insurgents (including the Huthis in the North and an array of Southern secessionists, usually unnamed). What these groups have in common is that they are willing to use force, and that they are "latecomers" to the movement for political change. All that we know of their substantive politics is that they would like a piece of the leadership pie in a post-revolutionary Yemen. Some, undoubtedly, have larger appetites than others. All of this is certainly important, and it means that they are relevant to a political solution, but it does not mean that they are central to it. For this, we ought to look more closely at the other two sources of political opposition.

In contrast to these latecomers, who mainly joined opposition protesters after the March 18 massacre, the leaders of the "Change Revolution" took cues from their Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts and mobilized an absolutely unprecedented, nonviolent opposition movement that has stretched across the country. Beginning in earnest in February, protesters issued a critique of both the regime and of the ineffective opposition parties that abetted Saleh. Gradually, the hundreds of semi-organized groups camped out in "Change Squares" across Yemen's major cities have come to articulate a more specific set of demands. Still, the complete removal Saleh, his immediate family, and the remnants of his political regime remain at the top of the list.

Yet it is misleading to call this a "youth" revolution, or to assume that its February origins were sui generis. The ages and social positions of its leaders vary tremendously, and many leaders of this "spontaneous" opposition have their roots in the partisan politics of the ideological opposition. They are called "youth" in part because of their (relative) age, but also because the common thread in their organizing is one of hope for the future, making youth a logical rhetorical motif. It is a metaphorical youth, perhaps, but its aspirations are unquestionably forward-looking.

The massive and utterly unprecedented protests organized by these groups are astounding, in their scope, duration, and peacefulness. But the biggest misperception about the Yemeni revolution is that it began with the protests of more or less spontaneously organized youth.

For over a decade, the organized political opposition has sought to substantially reform the political regime in Yemen and to replace Saleh through legal and non-violent mechanisms. This opposition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), is itself a cross-ideological umbrella of religious parties, socialists, and other leftist nationalists. Indeed, it is so ideologically diverse that issues of procedural and institutional reform have, for a long time, been all that the groups can agree to pursue in common. The Youth revolutionaries' critique of the JMP has centered on its gradual and incremental approach, and its perceived neglect of grassroots. Alienated over time from constituencies outside of Sana'a, the JMP had difficulty articulating a common position on the Huthi crisis, all but missed the emergence of the Southern movement, and was able to carve out only minimal concessions from an encroaching regime. In other words, until a mobilizing push came from Cairo and Tunis and they began to organize (reformist, but not revolutionary) protests of their own in January, the JMP appeared to be teetering on obsolescence.

So why should we care about JMP? For two reasons: first, because the JMP and the "youth" leaders are not entirely discrete categories and there has been a great deal of cooperation, mutual reinforcement, and ideological co-articulation across this porous border; second, because revolutions beget new institutions. If Yemen's revolution succeeds, it will be JMP leaders who will be best able to navigate (and, they hope, craft) whatever new institutions take shape in Yemen. The protesters themselves seem to appreciate this.  As one activist complained recently, "Our problem now is not with [Saleh], but with the JMP." Some of the youth leaders complain that the JMP is "hijacking" the revolution by taking control of Sana'a's Change Square in cooperation with Ali Muhsin's forces, and marches of "Independent Youth" are being organized against the member parties. At the same time, members of the Yemeni Socialist Party and other leftists have now also begun to raise the specter of an Islamist takeover within the JMP itself, as well as in the squares.  But neither accusation seems entirely fair to the historic role of the JMP, or of Islamists within the alliance.

What about the Islamists?

As in Egypt and elsewhere, at least some of the U.S. ambivalence toward the revolution in Yemen relates to the possibility (or probability) of substantial Islamist participation in a post-revolutionary democratic regime. But rather than ask "what if" Islamists were allowed to legally participate, we ought to ask how Islamists have functioned to date.

Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen has enjoyed a much higher degree of political competitiveness over the past two decades. Islamists have been organized and integrated into the existing regime. During the 1990s, they even participated briefly in a power-sharing Presidential Council and held several cabinet portfolios.  Over the past decade, however, as the Saleh regime blurred the boundary between the ruling party and state institutions to deepen its advantages, the electoral system has become less competitive and press more openly suppressed. Meanwhile, the Islamist Islah party, Yemen's second largest party since the 1993 elections, moved into the opposition. Since its nascent stages in 2002,  the Joint Meeting Parties  has served as an increasingly institutionalized vehicle for coordination between Islah, their former rivals, the Yemeni Socialist party, and a handful of smaller parties.

So what does the experience building and sustaining the JMP tell us about Islah and the likely future of Islamism in a post-revolutionary Yemen? First, cross-ideological cooperation has tended to cohere around "non-controversial" issues of procedural democratic reform. The issues that have cemented the alliance have been questions of transparency, anti-corruption, devolution, electoral reform, etc., and there is a generation of Islamists conversant in the idioms of and committed to building a democratic regime. The most divisive issues have been related to issues of gender equality and, to some extent, sectarian and regional concerns. But even on these thornier questions, the alliance has not broken, even when it has been bent by disagreement.

By far the most important lesson from the decade of JMP coordination, however, has come from developments within member parties. While deep fissures exist within both the Islamist Islah party and the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), the process of building and sustaining the alliance bolstered the internal position of moderates within both parties and isolated ideological extremists. As the Southern Movement gained ground, secessionists did not advance to leadership in the YSP. And in the 2007 internal Islah elections, a slate of young activists with deep commitments to the JMP were voted to the party's internal governing council. It's worth noting that 13 women, including current protest leader Tawakkol Karman, were elected, despite the party's unwillingness to field a female candidate in national elections. The popularity of these younger JMP activists within Islah was an indictment of more radical leaders, like Shaykh al-Zindani, who was voted out of his leadership position and who had publicly opposed this faction, especially the women. Many activists, both inside and out of the party, credited the internal shakeup to the younger cadre's role in mobilizing cross-ideological support for political reform -- of building the antecedents of the revolution.

It should come as no surprise, then, that many of this younger cadre of activists have been central to the peaceful, democratic revolutionary movement, and have provided a critical link across the porous border between the JMP and the "youth." Islamists in a democratically-constituted Yemen will be socially conservative on some issues, but they will be democrats.  U.S. policy, favoring a myopic focus on AQAP, has bypassed the story of these Islamists for too long.

U.S. interests in Yemen

Any effort to "get Yemen right" is likely to get lost in the noise, but there are plenty of ways to get Yemen wrong. Unfortunately, viewing the country largely (if not exclusively) through the lens of counterterrorism has been the dominant approach adopted over the past decade and strengthened considerably under the Obama administration. Using John Brennen, counterterrorism advisor and former CIA station chief in Riyadh, as the primary public face of U.S. policy in Yemen communicates this approach -- as does his meeting with President Saleh in Saudi Arabia. Words of tepid support from U.S. diplomats regarding political transition show that the Washington still pins considerable hopes on the idea that Saleh (or his successor) might still serve as a "good czar" in Yemen, ruling the country with a firm hand in order to limit the spread of AQAP or its ability to stage an attack on the U.S. or its allies, notably Saudi Arabia.

But the status-quo strategy has substantively increased risk to U.S. strategic interests and stands to continue to do so. Saleh has been, at best, an inconsistent ally. He has abetted the rise of AQAP, cooperated fitfully with counterterrorism policies while building ties with some advocates of violence, and used aid earmarked for counterterrorism assistance to squash his domestic critics, including many in the JMP. His unwillingness to yield to popular pressure for reform (even before the current crisis) has increased the chaos and undermined the legitimacy of those Yemeni institutions that will be needed for future counterterrorism cooperation.

There is no good reason not to support the protesters' demands for a transitional council in Yemen. Supporting a new regime and, in time, encouraging that regime as it rebuilds the institutional legitimacy that has been destroyed or prevented by decades of mismanagement can help to produce the good will necessary for long-term cooperation in counterterrorism. The alternative -- support for an aging and injured autocrat and/or his designated successors, plus a strategy of drone strikes that violate Yemeni sovereignty with impunity -- will lead to a wellspring of anti-American sentiment. With good cause.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav is an assistant professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, where she is coordinator of the Middle Eastern Studies Program. She is a member of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies and conducted fieldwork in Yemen during 2004-2006 and 2008-09.