the Second Day Clash between Islah Members and Peaceful Southern Movement supporters - Crater - Aden - May 24,2012

Press Release from House of Light Foundation in Aden City

The Yemeni Center for Human Rights and Beeatona " our environment" organization and in collaboration with House of Light Foundation have finished a workshop targeted 25 participants from various youth initiatives and foundations in Aden. The workshop theme is to engage youth in development and social peace in areas of armed conflict and it aims to contribute in providing a sustainable protecting environment to reinforce community contribution in development.

In a press release , Amal Almakhedhi , executive manager of Yemeni centre of human rights, declared that this workshop aimed to distribute initial information on a number of life skills that will contribute in boosting the next stage of the project , which will include implementation of activities by the participants in their provinces. The participants have selected the issues that increase conflict in Aden as lawlessness and importance of enforcing the national identity.

On the other hand, Sahar Nuraddin , Executive Director of House of Light Foundation, emphasized on the importance of  collaboration between civil society organizations  to engage youth into development process. Further, she explained that House of Light Foundation adopts all youth initiatives and welcomes them to use its facilities which serve youth empowerment and engagement

.

Through the three days ,25 participants were trained on principles of human rights, role of media on youth engagement in community development, principles of voluntarism , documentation and monitoring, writing reports ,leadership and problem solving skills.

This training was conducted in Aden with partnership of Wedyan society for development , House of Light Foundation, Bader foundation for development, Women center for studies, Basmat Shabab initiative, Mawadda society and Aryab foundation for development.

What is happening in Aden ?

Written by: Mr. Alaa Isam and Nashwan AlOthmani

The world’s media have been timid and weak when it comes to reporting what is going on, this is not to mention the unreliable reporting of the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, blogs). The only reliable evidence of what is going on is the growing number of videos and photos that have been taken by those who wish to show the world what is happening in Aden.

Daily life

In general, daily life appears to be to an extent ‘normal’, trading outlets are open, yet not for long, usually closing around 7 or 8 p.m. Buses and taxis are operating at a capacity to ensure that people are able to carry out their normal activities.

Except that all that was described of the normal Adeni day is dependent on the events of the day. For the days where there are announcements that there will be big protests via the social networks, text messages, or emails, there is a complete standstill in activity. Shops do not open their doors, roads are clear of pedestrians and traffic, and employees and students do not go their respective workplaces and schools.

The security situation

Whilst travelling around Aden it is clear that there is a feeling of an unnanounced security alert. The roads leading to and from the 8 departments that make up the governate are blocked with government checkpoints. The departments which have seen the most unrest, such as Mansoura, Ma’ala, and Khormaskar have seen armed army vehicles, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and army personnel from time to time.

The road blockade on Aden means that those coming from other governates to Aden cannot, apart from rare cases such as families and medical emergencies, and of course qat, which comes from the governate of al-Dhalie, a distance of 92 km to the north.

Depending on the unrest in the day’s protests there is an equal ratcheting up of the security situation, and the inhumane response of the army and the security services, deploying their heavy artillery. It appears that the videos of the attacks on the peaceful protesters in Mansoura, Ma’ala, and Khormaskar are the only way of showing what is going on on the ground.

The protests

I believe that the day the security forces fear the most in Aden is Friday. After Friday prayers the worshippers leave their mosques in the various departments of Aden, and come out into the streets. If there was no response from the security forces in Aden it is probable that the city would fall to the protesters in a dramatic and fast manner. Therefore, on Fridays, we see a huge deployment of the security forces and the army, with their light and medium artillery, in an attempt to repel any gathering or movement that would take the situation out of the hands of their choking hold.

On a geographical note to the protests, there have been two major gatherings in Aden city, one in Mansoura, and one in Crater. This does not mean that there have not been protests in the other departments, for there have been sporadic protests in Dar al-Saad, Khormaskar, Sheikh Othman, Ma’ala, Tawahi, and Little Aden, and they could become permanent as the days go by.

Strength

Without a doubt it is the youth who have called for these protests and demonstrations, for they are the biggest demographic on the ground, and in the mix of the events. Howeverm, the Adeni street is not operating solely on the orders of the youth movement. There are other organisations which are attempting to move the youth in different directions, and are attempting to appear on the ground and in the media.

The Southern Movement:

The principal movement. It has emphasised, since the beginning of the protests in Aden, that it should help this bravery of the youth, and it has translated this into the appearances that the leaders of the movement, have made at the protests. Notable leaders such as Hassan Ba’oum, Qassim Askar Jibran, Qasim Othman al-Da’iri, Ali bin Ali Shokri, Dr Yihya Shaif al-Shuaibi, and Dr Aidroos al-Hirri, have appeared, along with others. Calls have been made for the protests in the governates of Lahj, Dhalie, Abyan, and Hadhramout, to the city of Aden, in an attempt that can be seen as supporting the youth, and maintaining the momentum.

It is important to remember that the areas that can be said to be under the control of the Southern Movement are Khormaskar, Mansoura, Daar al-Saad, Sheikh Othman, and Little Aden.

Islah Party (Muslim Brotherhood):

Members of the Islah Party have been moving energetically and clearly; in the protests in Crater, Ma’ala, and Tawahi, they led the street protests, and supported the movement in an orderly manner. In the Crater protests, especially the Friday protests, they joined with vehicles manned by members of the Islah Party, in order to help any of those injured during the protests, especially those under the fire of the security forces.

Also, the members of the Islah Party are those who carry the microphones that send out the slogans, and they are the ones that gather worshippers after Friday prayers to protest, and I have seen this up close myself.

In the other departments, such as Mansoura, Sheikh Othman, Daar al-Saad, and Little Aden, the members of the Islah Party do not take leadership positions, as they have done in Crater, Ma’ala, and Tawahi.

Socialist Party:

The party ruled the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) for 12 years, and the state still talks of the agenda of the Socialist Party, which is apparently a call for the citizens to separate, or what is being called ‘breaking the connection’ by many of the Southern Movement. The movement’s message is becoming clearer now, with the announcements being made in the name of ‘The Socialist Party Movement – Aden’, in addition to the emergence of a number of leaders of the Socialist Party who are speaking to the media on behalf of the media. This is in addition to some of its youth members who are taking part in the demonstrations, despite the Socialist Party members not taking on the same level of leadership as the members of Islah have. However, they are appearing prominently in the Khormasker department that is seeing statements being released by the Socialist Party backing up the calls of the Southern Movement.

Marginal movements:

There is also movement on the ground by other marginal movements which are not large in number. The current role of these groups is to simply grow. Firstly there is the ‘Association of the Sons of Yemen’ (Raiy) party, the party that brought about the first women’s protest in Aden calling for the fall of the regime. A number of the participants in this protest were female members of the ‘Raiy’ party, in addition to a number of prominent figures in the Socialist Party.

Independent and liberal parties have had little impact. A number of other groups with specific agendas have attempted to attract protesters from other parties. One such person at the protest in Crater said that he had left his job and had come to protest with his brothers, the youth, in Aden. When I asked him about how much he and those with him had, he replied that he had $10,000, half of which he had gathered from his old job in Sana’a where he was a manager at a maintenance company for medical supplies. The other half he gathered from donations from some businessmen relatives of his, who come from the Yafai region that is separated between the Lahj and Abyan regions, where they transfer to him sums of money in Saudi Riyals. In this manner he is able to support the youths in their protests to bring down the regime, according to him.

In conclusion…

Signs of local contestation over the leadership and direction of the street protest are clear to the observer. It has actually started in Crater, where there were fistfights between Islah Party members and some youth who supported the Southern Movement. This ended with there being two protests, one by the Islah Party calling for the fall of the regime and fighting corruption, and the other supporting the Southern Movement which raised banners calling for separation and the return of the separate country.

There have also been indicators of an alliance between the Southern Movement and the Socialist Party in Aden. The Islah Party has been incubating the other movements and parties who are more inclined to support them, and are more open to, in an attempt to make themselves familiar to the street.

Security firing on peaceful protest in Mansoorah district, Aden - Feb 16,2011

Confrontations between the Peaceful protests and GPC supporters - Feb 14, 2011

The names of 13 detainees in a demonstration in Aden ..

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

The Yemeni Security in Aden has arrested 13 young men from Aden for their peaceful protest while they were calling for Saleh remove. the names are below:

1. عبده بن عبده صالح

Abdo Bin Abdo Saleh

2. نياز نجيب عبدالحميد

Niaz Najib Abdul Hameed

3. محمد سهيل

Mohammed Suhail

4. معتصم سعيد العتش

Mutasim Said Alach

5. عبدالحافظ احمد علي

Abdull Hafez Ahmed Ali

6. بسام عبده عبدالله

Bassam Abdo Abdullah

7. منصور محمد علي راجح

Mansour Mohamed Ali Rajah

8. عواد محمد محمود

Awad Mohamed Mahmoud

9. علي حسن سيف

Ali Hassan Saif

10. صادق سعيد حسن، أبكم وأصم

Said Hassan Sadeq, a deaf and mute

11. عدنان باهارون

Adnan Baharoon

12. علي محمد ناجي العماري

Ali Mohammed Naji Al-Amari

13. أمان عبدالجبار شرف.

Aman Jabbar Sharf

More information, Please check the Arabic Source: http://bit.ly/fBa8De

Assault on reporter of BBC Arabic channel in Yemen

Protest in Dar Saad district - Aden city - Feb13, 2011

Yemen ruling party distributes food to the pro-government demonstrators

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

Yemen ruling party General People Congress GPC members were seen distributing foods to the pro-government demonstrators in Al-Tahreer square in Sana’a. GPC set up tents in al-Tahreer square giving meals to people and pro-government demonstrators inside the tents.The protestors were carrying sticks threatening any anti- government protestor to come to the square of al-Tahreer.

Yemeni police arrested people were taking photos for the people who were scrambling to get food from trucks belonged to GPC. On the other hand, Thousands of demonstrators marched in Taiz province south of Yemen calling Yemeni president to step down. Source: http://bit.ly/ezWj5C

Yemen leader postpones US trip as pressure mounts

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

Yemen's president, under pressure from protests calling for his overthrow, postponed a visit to the United States as the opposition agreed to resume talks with the government.

"President Ali Abdullah Saleh has decided to postpone a visit to the United States... scheduled for late February due to the current developments in the region," an official in his office said, quoted by state news agency Saba.

The two countries would to set a new date, the statement added.

The Yemeni opposition meanwhile agreed to resume talks suspended since October with the government, as pressure rose on the regime in the wake of protests calling for the president's overthrow.

The Common Forum, an alliance of parliamentary opposition groups, is "ready to sign a framework agreement this week... on (resuming) the national dialogue," it said, in a statement received by AFP.

It said the draft deal calls for the formation of a unity government and the inclusion in the dialogue of the secessionist Southern Movement, the Shiite rebels of northern Yemen and opposition members in exile.

Talks would resume from the point at which they were suspended on October 31, said the Common Forum, grouping Al-Islah (Reform), which is Yemen's main Islamist opposition, the Yemeni Socialist Party and other smaller factions.

"We urge the authorities to learn a lesson from what happened in Tunisia and Egypt," where massive revolts by the people forced out their respective leaders, it said.

The opposition warned of a "popular uprising" in Yemen, a country they said was weighed down by "corruption, poverty, unemployment, repression, injustice and tyranny."

Protests similar to those that brought down leaders in Tunisia and Egypt have been held in Yemen since mid-January calling for Saleh to step down.

On Sunday, riot police used batons to disperse a protest by an estimated 2,000 demonstrators in Sanaa, injuring a woman and making 10 arrests, according to witnesses.

Police also used batons in the southern city of Taez to break up a protest in the main square, arresting 120 demonstrators, participants told AFP.

The Common Forum urged Saleh to prove his goodwill by dismissing his family members and relatives holding top posts in institutions such as the Yemeni army, police, government and regional councils.

Under opposition pressure to stand down, Saleh, in power for 32 years, said on February 2 his son would not succeed him.

He also announced a freeze on constitutional amendments that could have enabled him to stay in office for life.

And the president put off a controversial plan to hold an April election without a promised dialogue on reform.

He has appealed for an end to street protests.

But later on Sunday, hundreds took to the streets in Crater, a district of the main southern city of Aden, protesting against dialogue with Saleh's regime and calling for its overthrow, witnesses told AFP.

"No dialogue, no talks," they chanted. "The people want to topple the regime." "Out, out, Ali."

A security official said: "Security services did not stop them but were heavily deployed to prevent riots and vandalism."

Elected to a seven-year term in September 2006, Saleh has urged the opposition to resume dialogue aimed at forging a government of national unity.

The current parliament's term was extended by two years to April under a February 2009 agreement between the ruling General People's Congress and the opposition to allow time for dialogue on political reform.

But the talks have stalled since the government decided to hold a legislative election on April 27 without waiting for the dialogue process to run its course.

And a special committee set up to oversee reform has met only once.

Besides poverty and unemployment in the Arab world's poorest country, Saleh's government is grappling a secessionist movement in the south, rebellion in the north and a regrouping of Al-Qaeda on its soil.

Source: http://yhoo.it/eHOFfO

Awlaki urges support for jailed Yemeni journalist

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

U.S. radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has called for support for a journalist jailed in Yemen after being convicted of helping al Qaeda, according to an audio recording posted on the Internet on Sunday.

"The free-spirited journalist Abdulelah Haidar Shai was imprisoned because he exposed American crimes in Yemen," said the speaker in the recording, who sounded like Awlaki, a frequent propagandist for al Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing.

"Abdulelah was doing his journalistic duty and every journalist ..., his tribe and all Yemenis should carry out their duty to support him," said Awlaki, who is of Yemeni origin and believed to be hiding in southern Yemen. The recording's authenticity could not be independently verified.

Shai, a Yemeni al Qaeda expert, was sentenced to five years in prison in January after being convicted of aiding the global militant group. He has denied the charges.

Yemen is under international pressure to quash the resurgent al Qaeda wing in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, at the same time as it struggles to control southern secessionists and to cement a fragile truce with rebels in the north.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power for 30 years, has faced growing protests in recent weeks from thousands of Yemenis, inspired by uprisings that topped Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Hundreds of Yemeni protesters clashed with police blocking them from marching to the presidential palace in Sanaa on Sunday, witnesses said.

Awlaki drew attention to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables that showed Saleh secretly offered U.S. forces open access to his country to launch strikes against al Qaeda targets.

"The crime of the Yemeni government in collaboration with the Americans in bombing the people of Yemen should not be forgotten, and honest media people should take the banner from Abdulelah and conclude the journey he began," Awlaki said.

In early 2009, Shai interviewed Awlaki, who is wanted dead or alive by Washington. The footage was broadcast by the Arab news television network Al Jazeera.

Yemen has been at the centre of Western security concerns after the al Qaeda branch based there launched failed plots to bomb cargo airliners in October and to destroy a U.S.-bound passenger plane in December 2009.

(Reporting by Firouz Sedarat; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

Source: http://yhoo.it/fx51UN

Political unrest across the Arab world

Analyst: U.S. To Lose In Yemen As In Afghanistan, Iraq

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

US focused on non-actual danger in Yemen

Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute of the Middle East:

The modern idea of US security structures is that it is not Osama bin Laden who is the number one danger but a man from Yemen with his al-Qaeda department. The danger from this man to Saudi Arabia and Bab-el-Mandeb – every ship crossing the Suez Canal sails through Bab-el-Mandeb between Yemen and Somalia – is much bigger than from al-Qaeda groups in Yemen.

The current situation may provide for a division of Yemen into two states - the Shafi south and the Zaidi-style north. Especially now that civil war is about to break out and Saudi Arabian influence in Yemen is minimal.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen is no more than an instrument which President Saleh uses to persuade the US administration that he is their strategic partner in need of financial and military support, especially amid present-day conditions.

In this situation, the US came to realize that old plans, which are absolutely irrelevant today, were focused on a non-actual danger. This means that America will lose here as well, just as it happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.

source: http://bit.ly/i0Rc03

No Pink Slip for Salih: What Yemen’s Protests Do (and Do Not) Mean

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

With cameras and Twitter feeds trained on Tahrir Square in Cairo, a series of large opposition protests have unfolded in an eponymous square in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, as well as other major cities across the country. The protests have been organized and coordinated by a cross-ideological amalgam known as the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP, sometimes also translated as the Common Forum), and have been identifiable by their careful deployment of protest paraphernalia -- sashes, hats, posters, flyers and more -- tinted in gradations of pink. At first glance, these protests seem to have generated substantial concessions from President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih, who, having occupied some form of executive office since 1978, is the longest-serving ruler in the Arab world after Muammar al-Qaddafi. Salih pledged on February 2 to abandon his efforts to amend the constitution so as to be able to run again himself or engineer the succession of his son, Ahmad, to the presidency. Much as these steps might appear to presage far-reaching political change in Yemen, perhaps even a colored proto-revolution, there are good reasons for skepticism.

Nor is it obvious that the rallies in Yemen fit into the media-ready narrative of a latter-day “Arab awakening” dawning in country after country on the heels of the dramatic popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The demands of the political opposition in Yemen align in some ways with those of the pro-democracy protesters elsewhere, but in many more ways they diverge.

Yemen, to be sure, presents a more puzzling picture than Egypt, where a hidebound state lords it over a population that is more homogeneous than those of many other Arab countries. Forged by the unification of North Yemen (of which Salih was president) and avowedly socialist South Yemen in 1990, today’s Yemen remains haunted by regional divisions and the state cannot claim anything like full control over many outlying areas in the mountains and desert. But when the New York Times tells its readers that its staff “won’t try to game Yemen’s politics,” it is not a sign of editorial humility, but rather a kind of willful ignorance of the likely determinants of Yemen’s political future. The political opposition that is mounting the protests in central Sanaa has clear demands that, as in Egypt, are unlikely to be satisfied by Salih’s promises. And, like his fellow autocrats, Salih has many tools at his disposal for staving off the sort of reform that would strip him and his inner circle of power.

Common Grievances

A common thread connecting demonstrations across the Arab world in early 2011 is frustration with aging, bloated, yet brittle regimes that have fed for decades at the trough of US military assistance. These regimes are practiced at serving up so-called reforms that are marketed as “political openings” but have mainly reinforced incumbent power. None of the regimes is able to respond effectively to the pressing development challenges -- unemployment, petty corruption, poverty, dirty, saline drinking water -- confronted by its citizens every day. Contra the prevailing policy logic, opposition activists in Yemen and elsewhere do not see the solution to these problems in stronger states, that is, regimes more capable of mobilizing and monopolizing force. They see the remedy in stronger governments, which can respond to people’s needs because they better represent ordinary citizens. In other words, the protesters intuitively reject the argument long advanced by incumbent regimes and their foreign donors that development must precede democracy, and they champion its converse instead. From Tunis to Cairo to Sanaa, activists are seeking to attain the voice that would make both democracy and development meaningful.

The specific grievances of the political opposition in Sanaa are not new, nor are the groups who have expressed them in January and February 2011. The Yemeni opposition has coalesced for nearly a decade around an alliance of leftist, secular liberal, nationalist and various Islamist trends, the JMP. The programs of the JMP’s constituent elements do not match up perfectly, and so it is difficult at times to know exactly which demands are salient. The leadership of the Yemeni Socialist Party, for example, is divided over whether and to what extent to align with the demands of the Southern Movement (also called al-Harak), the grassroots grouping agitating for greater autonomy for the southern provinces and, increasingly, secession. And Islah, the largest of the Islamist parties in the JMP, is riven by generational and ideological cleavages over, among other issues, the role of women in the party and in Yemen’s larger political sphere. Each of these divisions divides the alliance and the parties within it -- and the regime deftly exploits the gaps.

As in Egypt, the opposition has been systematically undermined by the Salih regime, thanks not least to rapidly stepped-up US military aid, which has expanded the capacities of the security services for surveillance and coercion. While the Yemeni press is far freer than many in the region, including Egypt’s, it is increasingly embattled. The government’s assault on the media has intensified, perhaps not coincidentally, as Yemen’s domestically unpopular strategic relationship with the United States has grown closer in the decade since September 11, 2001.

Because the JMP is an alliance of parties, each with its own partisan press, a small cadre of independent papers have valiantly resisted the state’s encroachment in order to create a kind of “virtual space” for the articulation of common JMP policy priorities and critiques of the regime. It is not uncommon to find members of the Nasserist, Socialist and Islamist trends penning editorials that appear side by side on the pages of these non-partisan publications, holding forth on a shared objective. These papers have come under strain -- as, by extension, has the ability of the JMP to craft and propound a common agenda -- at the hands of increased state surveillance and outright repression, with new techniques for prosecution on spurious charges enforced through an extra-constitutional “special court” for journalists established in May 2009. In January 2010, government forces surrounded the offices of al-Ayyam, an independent daily giving heavy coverage to the southern uprising, before invading the offices, jailing the editor and closing down the paper. Other papers have had their archives and computer servers seized, putting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources at risk. As the New York-based Committee to Project Journalists reports: “Taken together, the government’s long-standing practice of violent repression and its new legalistic tactics are creating the worst climate for press freedom since the country’s unification in 1990.”[1]

The US has registered only weak protests at the establishment of the “special court” and other manifestations of the Salih regime’s war on journalists. Indeed, as this war proceeds, the Obama administration has more than doubled US military aid, from $67 million in 2009 to $150 million in 2010, as part of a broad counter-terrorism program. Embarrassing State Department documents released via Wikileaks show that US aid has been directed to the fight against the regime’s domestic opponents, particularly the Houthi rebels in the north, with the knowledge of CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus and, thus, all the major power centers in Washington. The scope of US aid to Yemen falls far short of the billion-dollar annual contribution to Egypt, but its unpopularity -- and the purposes to which it can be put in suppressing political freedoms -- is a link between the protests in both countries.

Divergent Groups

Beyond the similarities, however, the grievances, ambitions and tactics of the Yemeni opposition differ considerably from those in other states in the region. Indeed, the Yemeni opposition is in fact composed of several groups, some of which are coherent and others only loose formations, and which compete with each other and (importantly) within their own ranks as often as they cooperate.

Most notable in international media coverage are the armed groups. In the northern province of Saada, on the border with Saudi Arabia, the rebellion led by members of the Houthi family has entered into its sixth ceasefire in only seven years, with considerable loss of civilian life caused by the government’s indiscriminate aerial bombardment and attacks on displaced persons camps. In the south, what began in 2007 as a peaceful protest movement calling for a more equitable distribution of state resources and political power was met with such repressive force that some of its members have begun to shoot back. What might have been negotiation points less than a year ago have increasingly begun to look like lines in the sand.[2] And then there is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a franchise of unknown size that has found an attractive location in Yemen’s more remote regions, where the state’s writ is shaky at best. Many analysts, including those at the Congressional Research Service, have pointed out that the Salih regime’s relationship to radical Islamist militants is complicated. Salih has made several formal commitments to Washington that Yemen will be a reliable partner in counter-terrorism operations, but has also maintained close ties to conservative cleric ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindani and his fellows, who encourage vigilante violence and are accused of helping to recruit and indoctrinate militants.

The current round of civil protests, however, is led by none of these groups. The JMP coalition’s efforts to construct itself as a “loyal opposition” are in clear contradistinction to the rhetoric of open revolt elsewhere in Yemen, and also bear little resemblance to the diffuse, bottom-up movement in Egypt. With rows of plastic chairs lined up and microphones provided for some of the gatherings, the JMP’s protests in Sanaa have more closely resembled opposition rallies, with distinguished speakers enumerating demands to cheering, chanting crowds in color-coordinated costume. Even the hue of pink, the “color of love,” was chosen to highlight the civil, warm-hearted nature of the protests. The opposition’s demands, however, are substantive, and display little tenderness for the Salih regime.

The JMP, as an umbrella for Islamist, Socialist, Nasserist and other smaller parties, has been in existence since 2002. It reached the apex of its political power when it fielded a consensus candidate to run against Salih in the 2006 presidential election. While the JMP’s man, Faysal bin Shamlan, won only 23 percent of the vote, he is credited with making Salih work harder for his victory than ever before. On the way to electoral triumph, the president had to promise a number of reforms that he would otherwise have held in reserve. But since 2006 the JMP has been torn apart by internal divisions over ideology and strategy. The cleavages were thrown into sharp relief by the unanticipated rise of al-Harak, whose platform overlaps with the JMP’s, but whose captains have become more vocal and insistent as the regime responded to its demands with force. Some JMP leaders have tried to capitalize on the popularity of al-Harak, but others have feared the costs of being associated with a cause that increasingly speaks of secession. Because most JMP leaders have opted to remain oriented toward Sanaa as a “loyal opposition” formally committed to unity, they have risked losing their standing with key sectors of the population.

This dilemma is particularly acute for Islah, which has its deepest roots in the north, but worked hard in the 1990s and early 2000s to establish a base that is genuinely national. Islah accomplished its expansion, in part, through the parallel activities of the Islah Charitable Society, and in part through its leaders’ reputation for moral probity and commitment to combating corruption. For most of the 1990s, many Yemenis viewed Islah less as an opposition party than as a wing of the ruling General People’s Congress, given its northern origins and its social conservatism. But as the largely southern Yemeni Socialist Party declined in influence following a short civil war in 1994, Islah was less essential to the regime and less able to achieve its goals through collaboration with Salih. It moved steadily toward the other opposition parties, though some within Islah’s leadership have shown somewhat more flexible loyalties, particularly al-Zindani, leader of the party’s most conservative element and a close ally of Salih. As Islah assumed a prominent role in the JMP, however, Zindani’s clout eroded and a cadre of Muslim Brothers with a more progressive bent came to the fore, building alliances with members of other parties on the basis of professional associations and, for many, common experiences as student activists. These more liberal Islamists are the men and women who form the core of the JMP leadership. One of Islah’s younger leaders, Tawakkul Karman, who is also the founder of the NGO Women Journalists Without Chains, became a heroine of the opposition in January, when she was arrested on her way home from a demonstration. Immediately after her release, she returned to rally JMP protesters again.

For its part, the government has oscillated between guarded tolerance and suppression of the protests. It has arrested key activists like Karman, and in a move from the Egyptian regime’s playbook, it has reportedly deployed plainclothes police and hired thugs to harass peaceful protesters, especially women, in an effort to provoke a response that would justify retaliation with brute force. In another echo of Egyptian events, the government has staged counter-protests in support of the regime and called out the armed forces to contain any clash that might just happen to erupt between the regime backers and the JMP. Over the weekend of February 5-6, pro-Salih protesters assembled in Yemen’s Tahrir Square, while JMP protesters shifted their procession a safe distance away to Sanaa University. The opposition protests are thus not spontaneous waves of popular sentiment, as in the early days of the Cairo events, but something like animated conversations with an interlocutor who remains unmoved.

Ornamental Promises

The JMP, even as protests continue, remains preoccupied with the “court politics” of the capital and struggles to articulate a set of demands that can span the ideological stretch of its member parties. This difficulty has meant that each group has abandoned significant objectives, with the corresponding risk that core constituents will be alienated. But there is one basic commitment upon which everyone agrees -- a commitment to increased transparency, accountability, reduced corruption and a bigger voice for Yemenis across the political spectrum. Primary among these demands is the call for genuine electoral reform, particularly the adoption of a system of proportional representation, to blunt the force of the ruling party. While there have been calls for Salih’s ouster in the protests, it is these more mundane (but meaningful) objectives that have been at the heart of the JMP’s carefully (and colorfully) coordinated efforts to mobilize Yemenis for change.

Salih’s February 2 promises -- assayed and abandoned before -- are unlikely to convince anyone. In the months before the 2006 presidential campaign, for example, he vowed not to run, so that Yemen could be governed by “young blood,” and even reiterated this pledge in an interview with the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. But as the election approached, he made an elaborate show of bowing to a popular will that, supposedly, demanded his return to the presidential palace. Few Yemenis doubt that he could repeat this performance when the 2013 contest rolls around. When Salih announced that he would not run again and would not pass the presidency on to his son, he was answering the calls of protests in Cairo against Husni Mubarak and family, but not the pragmatic demands of the opposition in his own country. Outsiders should take the announcement for what it is -- an effort to link Cairo and Sanaa in the minds of Western policymakers, so that they will fear the spread of chaos and endorse the status quo.

In a January 27 report, the Economist Intelligence Unit identified three main scenarios for Yemen’s future, each of them predicated rather optimistically on Salih’s departure from the presidency.[3] First, the report mentioned the possibility of a negotiated transition to parliamentary rule, one that would include electoral reforms favored by the JMP, such as a shift from single-member districts, which favor incumbents and large parties, to proportional representation, which could better accommodate diverse constituencies. Such a scenario could absorb members of the General People’s Congress. And, indeed, several members of the ruling party have distinguished themselves from the category of down-the-line Salih regime backers by building alliances across Yemen’s partisan aisle on issues of import. The report’s authors, however, seemed more convinced by two other scenarios: In one, Yemen fragments along regional lines, leaving a vacuum in which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula can flourish. Warring tribal factions battle themselves and al-Qaeda over discrete portions of the country, with citizens left to the tender mercies of the combatants. This vision is a version of those engendered by a widely discussed New York Times Magazine story that came out in the wake of the failed December 2009 operation of the underwear bomber, the last time Yemen figured so prominently in American headlines.[4] Perhaps this grim outlook is offered to make the remaining option look more attractive: a military coup, with the possibility of secession in the south, but increased stability for the rest of Yemen.

None of these scenarios consider the very real possibility that Salih’s promises are ornamental. Particularly as the headlines fade, he could dig in, refusing to yield to protesters’ longer-term and more substantive demands, and continuing to govern through managed chaos, leveraging the specter of crisis for more foreign aid. With US and Saudi military assistance at an all-time high, Salih’s ability to monitor and suppress the opposition, and then use his large parliamentary majority to further consolidate his power, cannot be dismissed.

Yemen’s Fickle Friends

‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih’s regime is frequently characterized in the Western media as “beleaguered” by a secessionist movement in the south, an armed revolt in the north and the threat of al-Qaeda. It is unclear, though, to what extent aiding such a regime by strengthening its coercive capacity offers a solution to these problems -- or even contributes to them instead. The Houthis in the north and al-Harak in the south are mobilized at least in part against the abusive excesses of the regime. Al-Qaeda exploits the regional dissatisfaction, as well as the outrage that meets the regime’s deployment of force against civilian populations.

To date, the scale of US aid tips heavily in favor of military and intelligence assistance, with over $150 million in military aid in 2010, up from only $5 million in 2006. US development assistance, at about $40 million, was focused from 2003 to 2009 on those regions that were viewed by the US Agency for International Development as “most at risk of generating political instability and providing possible refuge for terrorists.”[5] Of these governorates, only one -- Shabwa -- is in the south, where acute development asymmetries are fueling opposition demands.

US support for Yemen is now also channeled through the newly established Friends of Yemen, a donor consortium organized by Great Britain in January 2010, whose members include the Gulf Cooperation Council and G-8 nations, as well as the United Nations, European Union, Arab League, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The efforts of this organization are primarily geared toward blunting the effects of economic restructuring, with some attention paid to reducing corruption. The focus, however, remains economic, not political, thus reinforcing the conventional wisdom that underdevelopment, not unaccountable governance, is the primary source of instability in Yemen. USAID contends that it has now adopted an assistance strategy designed to respond to “the articulated needs and frustrations of communities in the neediest areas,” but it is clear that both multilateral and bilateral approaches to development in Yemen have ignored the principal demands of the organized opposition. USAID’s Country Strategy for 2010-2012 indicates that there is “considerable agreement” over the drivers of instability, yet it does not list the authoritarian state as one of them.[6] Perhaps diplomatic niceties prohibit such a forthright statement, but in the meantime the US does not seem to be listening to the opposition’s claim that meaningful political reform is the only sure path to more equitable and sustainable development.

Nor does the US appear to have any illusions about the future of political dialogue in Yemen. Reflecting on her surprise visit to Sanaa in January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that “at the end of the day, there has to be a willingness on the part of the government and the people to work together toward a common goal. And I’m not sure that any forum or any kind of meeting can produce that.” Certainly, as long as foreign donors focus on economic restructuring and US-supplied technology allows the regime to monitor and suppress its opponents, there is little reason to believe that President Salih will be inclined to change.

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Endnotes

[1] Mohamed Abdel Dayem, In Yemen, Brutal Repression Cloaked in Law (New York: Committee to Protect Journalists, September 2010).

[2] April Longley-Alley, “Yemen’s Multiple Crises,” Journal of Democracy 21/4 (Winter 2010), pp. 72-86.

[3] Economist Intelligence Unit, “Saleh on the Brink,” January 27, 2011.

[4] Robert Worth, “Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?” New York Times Magazine, July 6, 2010.

[5] US Agency for International Development, 2010-2012 Yemen Country Strategy, p. 1.

[6] Ibid., p. 2.

Source: http://bit.ly/efSFxv