Obama fumbles Yemen

“By thwarting regime change in Yemen, the United States risks empowering al-Qaeda and alienating a nation,” my article at PJM:

Yemen is a complex country that has been under considerable turbulence. Yet understanding Yemen tells us a great deal about the contemporary Middle East, Obama administration foreign policy, and the direction of the “Arab Spring.”

While Americans may think that their government’s recent policies and leadership have made the United States more popular in the region, the truth — as polls show — is generally the opposite. Obama administration policy is to support the existing dictatorship or at most to back a relatively cosmetic change in the regime. Thus, the Yemeni opposition weekly al Sahwa asked, “Why is America silent about the use of `counter-terror’ forces against the Yemeni people?”

It’s a good question. Since February, youth protests in Yemen morphed into a nationwide and intergenerational revolution to overthrow President Ali Abdullah Saleh and all his relatives, after 33 years in office. Protesters said they wanted a civilian interim council to oversee a new constitution and fair elections, with the ultimate goal of achieving a civil democratic state. In response, state security forces have murdered nearly 1,000 citizens around the country.

Thomas Krajeski, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, summed up the policy as follows: “Ali Abdullah Saleh is our main conduit to everything we are trying to do in Yemen.” The U.S.’s primary goal in Yemen is to vanquish al-Qaeda. And the Obama administration believes that Saleh, or at least his apparatus, is best able to do that.

This is precisely the short-sighted approach that Obama has criticized when attributing it to predecessors’ policies in the Middle East. Under Saleh’s regime, torture is systemic, political kidnapping common, and artillery fire a frequent remedy to anti-regime sentiment. Economic opportunity, political power, and local authority are available only through access to Saleh and his family. Corruption and embezzlement of oil revenues and international aid mean a near absence of basic services. Water scarcity and hunger were already at critical levels, but as the economy ground nearly to a halt, things are even worse.

After snipers killed 58 demonstrators in March, much of the Saleh administration resigned, galvanizing the revolution. The unsavory General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, a powerful military commander and Saleh’s half brother, brought the First Armored Division to Sanaa to protect the protesters and offered to leave the country alongside Saleh. In May, after dozens sleeping in tents were burned to death by security forces, Sadiq al-Ahmar, paramount sheikh of Saleh’s powerful Hasid tribe, announced his support for the opposition, calling Saleh a butcher.

The opposition Joint Meeting of Parties (JMP) initially disavowed the national uprising in fear of regime reprisal and due to Western pressure, reinforcing the schism between the formal opposition and the revolutionary youth.

In June, an explosion rocked the presidential palace leaving President Saleh severely injured. Millions rejoiced when Saleh flew to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, assuming he would never return. However neither the Saudis nor the United States want too much change. Thus, the Obama administration endorsed Vice President Mansour Hadi as interim leader although Hadi refuses to assume the presidency as required by the Yemeni constitution.

The U.S. government opposes the protesters’ demand for a transitional council and instead supports a deeply flawed plan drafted by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The GCC plan calls for Saleh to pick his successor and resign in return for immunity from prosecution. It proposes a unity government of the hegemonic ruling party and ineffective opposition parties, the JMP. This approach followed by quick elections would re-entrench the Saleh regime. Saleh agreed and reneged three times, using weeks of negotiations to empty the banks, smuggle oil, and reposition troops. The protesters were incensed.

With nearly half the government and military and most of the public calling for regime change, in March, Saleh’s pretense of legitimacy was bolstered by U.S. statements and especially the State Department’s urging dialog among political parties to resolve the “political crisis.”

In his Middle East speech in May, President Obama devoted one line to Yemen, calling on “our friend” Saleh to follow through on his commitment to transfer power. During a July visit, U.S. officials warned the JMP against escalating protests or recognizing a transitional council. Obama administration officials merely meekly urge Saleh to accept the GCC deal, which in fact signals tolerance toward the regime.

The hundreds of millions of dollars in counter-terror funding allocated to Yemen since 2006 ran through Saleh’s son and nephews (known locally as the Four Thugs) who head the security services, counter-terror units, and other forces. The aid is stolen by them and at times they even help al-Qaeda. Since February, the Four Thugs are too busy attacking the Yemeni public to take on al- Qaeda. After warning of an al-Qaeda takeover, the state withdrew forces from Abyan and al-Qaeda quickly moved in to occupy Zinjibar City. Yemenis rather uniformly assert coordination of the events, as the Saleh regime historically has had cordial relations with al-Qaeda.

Thus, American policy is aimed at defending an unpopular, corrupt, and repressive system on the grounds that it helps combat al-Qaeda. The problem is that the regime is not effective in doing so.

The Saudis, too, support the regime, seeing it as a bulwark against Shia rebels. The irony is that while al-Qaeda has very little popular support in Yemen, the U.S and Saudi policies, by destroying any political alternative and backing a government that doesn’t really fight al-Qaeda, may end by strengthening that group’s appeal and the territory it controls.

Yemen’s Saleh plays the al Qaeda card

At first glance, the FOX News headline, “al Qaeda: Yemen province now an Islamic Emirate,” is pretty disturbing. But it’s not remotely true. The US media is getting played by the King of Spin, President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his legion of Baghdad Bobs, again.

As anti-government protests calling for Saleh’s ouster engulfed Yemen and military commanders defected, the Saleh regime pulled back its remaining military and security forces and distributed weapons to proxies. In Abyan, state-jihaddists looted an ammo factory and took over the building housing a radio station. The terrorist mercenaries made an announcement on the radio that the city of Ja’ar in Abyan was deemed an Islamic Emirate and women were confined to their homes without a guardian. Later over 150 villagers, mostly women and children, scavenging the factory were killed in a horrific explosion. Yemenis claim the blast was remotely detonated.

Yemen’s state-jihaddists are al Qaeda types who work as mercenaries for the regime. The Saleh regime is very good at “cloning,” a tactic to undermine the opposition and confuse the west. The state has created look-alike newspapers, governmental non-governmental organizations (GONGO’s), and fake opposition parties. Beyond deploying security thugs in civilian clothes, as Mubarek did, the Saleh regime has a large contingent of jihaddist mercenaries on the payroll. Many of these “state-jihaddists” were released from jail after a pledge of loyalty to Saleh.

After the tragedy in Abyan, Yemenis across the nation accused Saleh of playing the Al Qaeda card to spin the western media and US, a frequent practice. They say that the state fosters and deploys al Qaeda mercenaries to elicit counter-terror funds, equipment and training, which are then used against internal opposition. As the Senate found last year, Saleh diverted US trained counter-terror units and US supplied equipment to the Saada War. (Indiscriminate bombing displaced over 300,000 residents in the northern Saada province as the state withheld food and medicine in a pattern that constituted collective punishment, Human Rights Watch found.) Beyond the 150 killed in the Abyan blast, dozens of others are suffering severe burns with little medical support.

The leaders of the raid on the ammo factory, Khaledabdul Nabi and Sami Dhayan, have worked for the state for years. Nabi, of the Abyan Aden Islamic Army, trained and led jihaddists into battle on behalf of the Saleh regime during the Saada Wars (2004-2010) against northern Shia rebels who claim religious discrimination. Nabi’s group, not AQAP, made the radio announcement. The residents in Ja’ar formed a local security committee which now has control of the area.

Yemenis are bewildered at the stance of the Obama administration in light of Saleh’s chicanery. Secretary Gates has repeatedly stated that the Saleh regime is an important partner to the US and the protests are an internal affair. At the same time, the US Ambassador in Sanaa is lobbying to keep Saleh’s sons and nephews in charge of the counter-terror units. A former Foreign Minister, Abdullah al Asnag, long in exile, detailed the regime’s duplicity from the USS Cole bombing to the 2010 US airstrikes in Yemen. Watan, the Coalition of Women for Social Peace, appealed directly to the American people yesterday,

Our stance depends on evidences proved that Selah is using al-Qaeda, and the American war against terrorism to receive generous financial support, and intensive training for the Special Forces, Central Security, and National Security, which all headed by his son and his nephews and use to suppress the Yemeni for more than a decade.

The last American stance, which was expressed by Robert Gates, reinforces our belief that the U.S. government is not serious in fighting terrorism and promoting democracy. The money is used in the name of the American people and the fight against terrorism to support dictatorial regimes and Al-Qaeda, against nations’ choices and demands for democracy. Yemen comes at the forefront of these nations.

American people, the hands of Yemeni people who have been in the streets in a peaceful revolution since two months, still rose demanding the elimination of the dictatorial regime and establish a modern civil state. However these hands are facing your weapons, your money, and the shameful attitude of your government, which we know that they do not reflect the spirit of the American nation which based on principles of freedom and human dignity.

Lift up your hands against your government that on your behalf and via your money is supporting the repression of peoples, democracy and peace.

Yesterday in Hajjah, 230 were wounded when Saleh’s thugs opened fire from rooftops on the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators, echoing last Friday’s massacre when snipers killed 53 during a protest in Sanaa, largely by head shots.

Yesterday protesters issued a video statement to US Ambassador Feierstein along with a draft list of demands that represents a consensus among all the protesters around the county. Unlike in Egpyt where protests were centered in Cairo, Yemen is witnessing large sustained anti-government protests in nearly every province and even on the island of Socotra.

http://www.examiner.com/yemen-headlines-in-national/yemen-s-saleh-plays-the-al-qaeda-card

Yemen on the Brink of War

On May 3, the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a issued a statement on the political violence in South Yemen that claimed eight lives last week. The United States stressed that “Yemen’s unity depends on its ability to guarantee every citizen equal treatment under the law.” What the Yemeni government calls unity, the protesters call occupation.

Since protests erupted in South Yemen in May 2007, dozens were killed, hundreds injured and over a thousand arrested. As police shot into the crowds, Southern claims of institutionalized discrimination turned into calls for independence. After regional protest marches last week, Yemen began shelling the town of Radfan. Some Southerners took up arms for the first time.

Yemen Spirals Toward Disintegration

As war renews in Yemen’s North and protests turn to riots in the South, terror attacks have hit the capital, and the opposition is boycotting upcoming elections. Civil liberties are under attack and traditionalism growing as the central government turns to hard liners for support and the population’s basic needs go unmet.

Violence Explodes on Multiple Fronts in Yemen

Twenty-one people died in political violence across Yemen this weekend, including southern protesters, northern rebels, tribal paramilitary fighters, and Yemeni soldiers. A mortar attack by al Qaeda in the capital heightened tensions.

Yemen Mobilizes Military to Quell Riots

Yemen has rounded up opposition political leaders in response to several days of riots that caused extensive damage to government buildings and vehicles. Over the last 48 hours, the Yemeni military deployed dozens of tanks, armored vehicles and fighter jets into the southern Yemeni governorates.

Massive Protest in South Yemen

A rally in the southern Yemeni governorate of Dhalie on Monday drew several hundred thousand protesters from the governorates of Hadramout, Aden, Abyan, and Shabwa. Some estimates put the crowd at more than a half million.

Unsteady Peace in War Torn North Yemen

A three-year war in Sa’ada, Yemen generated thousands of casualities, wide-scale destruction, tens of thousands of internal refugees and cost upwards of a billion dollars. Progress toward implementing a cease-fire agreement negotiated by Qatar reached an impasse this week as both the Yemeni military and several thousand Shia rebels refused to abandon their positions. Reports of a prison massacre are heightening tensions amid sporadic skirmishes in the province, which borders Saudi Arabia.

Yemen’s Intifada

يواجه اليمن عدم استقرار غير مرئي منذ الحرب الأهلية في 1994م زادت من حدته الحرب التي خاضتها الدولة مع الثوار الشيعة

في محافظة صعدة الواقعة شمال اليمن، حيث خلفت تلك الحرب أكثر من 50000 لاجئ داخلي، ورغم أن التمرد انتهى في يونيو/ حزيران الماضي إلا أن التهديد ما زال قابلا للاشتعال بسبب عدم تطبيق أي من الطرفين لشروط وقف إطلاق النار.

التهميش السياسي والاقتصادي لقطاع واسع من المجتمع ساهم في التمرد وبالتالي خلق فسادا حكوميا مستوطنا.. قلة الخدمات الأساسية والتدابير الأمنية المتشددة كانت من أهم العوامل المحفزة لاحتجاجات جنوب اليمن واسعة الانتشار والتي جذبت أكثر من 100.000 محتج والتي راح ضحيتها حتى الآن عشرة محتجين زعم أن قوات الأمن هي من قتلتهم بالإضافة إلى ضرب واعتقال الكثير منهم.

Yemen’s Intifada

Yemen is facing instability unseen since its 1994 civil war. A war with Shiite rebels in the northern Sa’ada province left over 50,000 internal refugees. The rebellion ended in June but threatens to re-ignite as neither side has fully implemented the cease-fire conditions. The political and economic marginalization of vast segments of society contributed to the rebellion as did endemic governmental corruption, lack of basic services and draconian security measures. These factors are also the catalyst for widespread protests in southern Yemen, some of which attracted over 100,000 protesters. Ten protesters were killed, allegedly by security forces, and many were beaten and arrested.

Bloody Protests Continue in Yemen

Since May, Yemen has witnessed widespread civil unrest in the southern governorates including Aden and Marib. Three protesters were killed during demonstrations in Mukallah, and two more were killed in Dhalie. On October 13, five people were shot dead at a sit-in in Radfan, Lahj when security forces opened fire on the crowd. Witnesses reported a dozen wounded. Over fifty thousand people gathered the next day in Radfan for a previously scheduled demonstration despite these brutal security practices.

Yemen on the Brink of Civil War?

Tensions simmering since the Yemeni civil war in 1994 have flared into violence that may engulf the nation.

“We want equal rights,” retired Brigadier General Ali Moqbel stated. The simple declaration expressed the sentiment of tens of thousands of Yemenis who have repeatedly clashed with security forces in Aden, Makallah, Dahlie and other towns in southern Yemen since the spring.

Reform in Yemen: Progress and Obstacles

Yemen is a country facing substantial problems. It is one of the most undeveloped, poverty stricken countries globally. Basic services are scarce, and corruption is rampant. Half of Yemen’s 20 million citizens are under 15. High fertility rates and early marriage mean the population will double within decades. Oil, a mainstay of the economy, is rapidly depleting. Both illiteracy and unemployment are high. International donors and many within the Yemeni administration recognize the urgency of the issues facing the nation. However some governmental strategies are undermined from within the regime itself. Both water management and corruption mitigation efforts have been limited by the failure of ministries to coordinate among themselves.

Ceasefire In Yemen

The Sa’ada war in northern Yemen may be coming to a close. The Yemeni government announced on June 15 that a cease-fire had been negotiated through the good offices of the Emir of Qatar. Shiite rebels agreed to lay down their arms after nearly three years of fighting. Hopes are high that an end to hostilities will allow immediate assistance to over a half a million Yemenis in Sa’ada province adversely affected by the fighting.

Tensions Flare in South Yemen

Demonstrations and armed conflict in southern Yemen are heightening fears of growing instability in the impoverished nation, already battling an insurgency in the North.

Yemen has experienced marked instability since September’s 2006 presidential election. In the northern Sa’ada province, about 60,000 soldiers have been embroiled in a guerrilla war with about 2000 Zaidi Shi’a rebels since January. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting and military bombing, and many are without shelter, food, water, and medical care.

A Day in the Life of a Failing State

An outbreak of chickenpox in Yemen goes a long way in demonstrating the challenges of daily life for Yemeni citizens. The incident is also a snapshot of the factors that may lead Yemen toward state failure. Barhan is a typical village in Yemen where most villages have no electricity, no sewage system and no clean water. Nationally, one in ten kids dies by age five; contaminated water contributes to half their deaths. Of the millions of kids not in school, the highest percentage is among rural girls.

Democracy or Failure

Ahmed Al-Rabei recently described the worst case for Yemen as, “an Afghan scenario and a civil war that will spread to the borders of GCC countries.” Al-Rabei, a columnist for Alsharq Alwasat, wrote with great affection for the Yemeni people of his concern for the future of Yemen. Al-Rabei is not alone in his assessment of an uncertain future for Yemen. A variety of international organizations and reports have highlighted increasingly dysfunctional Yemeni institutions and governance.

Drug Smuggling, Gun Running and Other Crimes

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen is scheduled to visit the United States in November for a round of meetings with President Bush and other high-ranking officials. As the representative of the Yemeni people, Saleh deserves a great deal of respect and hospitality. Yet it has become increasingly apparent that the regime, under the total domination of President Saleh, is engaged in a wide variety of criminal activities to the detriment of regional stability and the Yemeni people themselves.

Protests in Yemen

Widespread popular protests in Yemen grabbed attention in the West even though some international journalists were prohibited from broadcasting video of the violence via satellite. Tanks and military vehicles line the streets, giving Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, an eerie resemblance to Iraq. The protests were triggered by a reduction in governmental subsidies on many commodity items in this desperately poor nation. The price of petroleum has risen by around 90 percent and the price of gas has increased almost80 percent. In a country where the per capita G.D.P. is $508 a year and half the population is in poverty, the price increases mean more people will be starving. But there is a broader context to the protests than the lifting of subsidies: governmental corruption, brutality, and repression. Much of the anger on Yemen’s streets is directed toward the government itself. “Prices have risen and we’re afflicted while not one single corrupt official has been held accountable,” said Mohammaed al-Baazany, a 25-year-old unemployed university graduate.