Yemenis protest against al Qaeda

In a direct rebuke to the terror group, residents of Taiz held a major protest against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) on Thursday evening after prayers. Protesters held signs denouncing AQAP that said, “Your racism will do nothing but make us stronger.”

Taiz is the largest city in Yemen, often setting the tone for the six month revolution seeking to overthrow the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh. The goal of the revolution is the establishment of a civil (non-military) democracy with equal rights and opportunities for citizens.

Protesters also denounced al Qaeda’s media statements, including the “Inspire” magazine, which they say distorts western perceptions of Yemen.

Regime change has been opposed by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Both states seek minor cosmetic changes in Yemen’s leadership on the pretext of counter-terror concerns.

Hundreds of thousands on the streets also condemned AQAP’s takeover of Zinjibar in Abyan. In chants, they expressed solidarity with the 90,000 Yemeni citizens who fled from the violence and al Qaeda’s attempted imposition of a Taliban style culture in the city.

Ray News reported that the protesters rejected the state’s slander and use of the al Qaeda “bogeyman” to garner western support and affirmed that Taiz is known as a “city of science and always stands against terrorists and terrorism.”

Protesters also reiterated their demand for a civil state and a transitional council.

Most Yemenis believe that the state colludes with AQAP, a premised based on a decade of state facilitation and leniency with the group. Current events in Abyan also give rise to concerns that al Qaeda is working with the ruling family to ensure its longevity.

In May, security forces attacked the protest camp in Taiz City. Commanded by Yemen’s counter-terror chief, Ahmed Saleh, the president’s son, security forces shot protesters point blank and set fire to the tent city in the early morning hours. Several children and disabled persons were unable to escape the flames and burned to death. The death toll of the massacre was 57 and over 1000 were injured from burns and bullet wounds, Bloomberg reported.

–Jane @ Examiner.com

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 strikes multi-faceted deals with al Qaeda

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh recently struck a deal with Ayman Zawahiri, and Yemen is in the process of emptying its jails of known jihadists. The Yemeni government is recruiting these established jihadists to attack its domestic enemies as it refrains from serious counter-terror measures against the newly formed Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The tripartite relationship between the Yemeni regime and al Qaeda enables all participants to further their goals at the expense of national, regional and global security.

Yemen releases 95 jihadists

Al-Qaeda In Yemen: Mercenaries or Terrorists

القاعدة في اليمن مرتزقة أم إرهابيون؟ [23/4/2008] ? : – جين نوفاك*- ترجمة خاصة بـ[يمنات]

لقد تم الإعلان عن تناقض وجهات النظر بين محللين سياسيين غربيين ويمنيين حول اندلاع الهجمات الإرهابية في اليمن حيث بينت إحدى المقالات في مركز مكافحة الإرهاب أنه«تم التغلب على القاعدة في اليمن بسبب التعاون الوثيق بين اليمن والولايات المتحدة أثناء المرحلة الأولى من الحرب (2000 – 2003) لكنها – القاعدة – تعلمت من هذه الخسارة»وكيفت تكتيكاتها وأهدافها.
الجيل الجديد من هذا التنظيم يرفض التفاوض مع نظام الحكم اليمني وتبشر به إستراتيجية جديدة ورقي مستمر،عبر الدعاية الخاصة بالشبكة العنكبوتية.

في الوقت الذي تستحوذ فيه الضغوطات الداخلية على اهتمام نظام الحكم اليمني، تأتي فيه السيطرة على هذا التنظيم في آخر الأولويات.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Mercenaries or Terrorists

The dichotomy of viewpoints between Yemeni and Western analysts on the recent outbreak of terror attacks in Yemen is pronounced. An article at the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point finds that “Al-Qa`ida in Yemen was defeated by the close cooperation of the United States and Yemen during the first phase of the war (2000-2003), but it learned from the loss,” and adapted its tactics and goals.

Yemen’s Truce with Al-Qaeda

THE AMERICAN ATTEMPTS to rehabilitate the Yemeni regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh have not succeeded. Yemeni authorities recently pardoned Jamal Al-Badawi, convicted mastermind of the 2000 USS Cole bombing. Almost all the terrorists who bombed the American warship and killed 17 American sailors are free, except those dead or in U.S. custody.

The USS Cole Bombing: A Seven Year Perspective

On October 12, 2000 two Yemeni suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden dingy into an American destroyer, the USS Cole. Seventeen US service members were killed and forty-nine injured. The destroyer had been invited by the Yemeni government to refuel in the port of Aden.

In the light of historical perspective, several facts have become clear. Intelligence warnings generated prior to the attack were never forwarded to the commander of the Cole. The investigation afterwards was marred by turf wars within the US government, leaving links between the Cole bombing and the attacks of 9/11 unexplored. The Yemeni government worked diligently to limit the scope of the US investigation. Almost all the Yemenis involved in the Cole bombing are walking free. The involvement of some Yemeni officials in the bombing is documented; however, the scope of that involvement is not.

Training Day, How Yemen Aids and Abets Iraqi Insurgents

YEMEN OPERATES LARGELY under the radar as a supporter of the global jihad. Both Yemeni and U.S. officials publicly tout Yemen’s partnership with the United States in the war on terror. The U.S. embassy in Sana’a described the February 2006 escape of 23 al Qaeda operatives from a maximum security jail as “understandable in a way,” considering Yemen’s rampant corruption, weak institutions, and bureaucratic incompetence. (The escapees included several Cole bombers and an American associated with the Lackawanna, New York terror cell.) Presidential assistant Frances Townsend has described the Yemeni regime as an “inconsistent” partner in the war on terror, but Yemen has been quite consistent in its appeasement and facilitation of al Qaeda and related jihadi groups, and, as a result, has played a significant role in the destabilization of Iraq.

Al-Qaeda Escape in Yemen: Facts, Rumors and Theories

One theory circulating in Yemen these days is that the recent escape of 23 prisoners from a maximum security intelligence facility was orchestrated to transfer them to U.S. custody, circumventing Yemen’s extradition laws. Certainly the U.S. would have interest in obtaining custody of the escapees. Several were convicted of complicity in the bombing of the USS Cole which killed 17 US service members on October 12th 2000. Others include convicted bombers of the French oil tanker, the Lindburg, and an American, Gaber Elbaneh, convicted in the U.S. of involvement in an al-Qaeda cell in Lackawana, New York.