1.
WHO IS BESIEGING WHO?
By Nasser Arrabyee
Al-Ahram (Cairo)
December 17-23, 2009 (posted Dec. 17)
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/977/re73.htm
The leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are assuring Yemen they will provide it with all kinds of support to confront Al-Houthi rebels to preserve the unity, security, and stability of Yemen. They also said the security of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, both of them at war with Iranian-backed Al Houthi Shia rebels, is vital to the security of the GCC countries, according to the statement released at the 30th GCC summit concluded in Kuwait late Tuesday.
This expected support to Yemen and Saudi Arabia comes as the armies of Yemen and Saudi Arabia intensify their assault on rebels, or "infiltrators" as the Saudis call them. They claim the rebels are financed by Iran. Both armies say the defeat of the rebels will end the war. Yemen has been at war with the rebels for more than four months and Saudi Arabia for more than one month.
As the army tightens the noose in Saada, which is blockaded from all directions, Al-Houthi insists it is not the Yemeni army that it is fighting but the combined forces of the Saudi and American armies.
The Saudis say they are now focussing only on clearing their borders from infiltrators and are not making any incursions inside Yemeni territory. However, Al-Houthi rebels allege that on one day alone, 13 December, Saudi fighter jets struck the area of Bani Mueen in Razeh, west of Saada, more than 50 times, killing 70 and injuring more than 100.
The spokesman of the Yemeni army Askar Zuail denied this, saying that it was Yemen warplanes, not the Saudis, that hit Bani Mueen, the stronghold of the rebels.
"American warplanes carried out more than 28 air raids on Razeh, Shada, Dhyah, and Ghamer, from Sunday evening until dawn on Monday. These were very advanced warplanes, dropping huge bombs, and the Americans were monitoring our cars via satellite," said an e-mail sent by Al-Houthi rebels on Monday.
The Yemeni government denied any direct American participation in the war, although it said the American government supports the war against the Al-Houthi armed rebellion.
Commander of U.S. Central Command General David Petraeus said in more than one press statement his country is providing security support to Yemen within the framework of military cooperation provided by Washington to its allies in the region. He emphasized that American ships based in Yemeni waters are there not only for monitoring but to stop the flow of arms to Al-Houthi rebels.
Observers view the conflicting statements of Al-Houthi about the war as an indication that the rebels are on their last legs. Last week, the Yemeni army stormed Saada where about 300 rebels have been using residents as human shields for more than two months.
Dozens from both sides, mainly from the rebel side, were killed and injured in this operation. More than 200 rebels surrendered and about 130 families were moved to safety under the supervision of the local authority in Saada.
About 40 rebels are still barricaded in mosques and a few houses in the northwestern corner of the old city according to a statement by the governor of Saada, Hassan Manaa, on Tuesday.
The rebels outside Saada failed over the last two days to reduce the pressure on their comrades surrounded in the mosques of the old city despite their repeated suicide attacks on the troops positioned in towns around Saada such as Muhdha, Makash and Al-Samaa.
The deaths and surrender of rebels and the fact that others fled Saada to the neighboring province of Al-Jawf in the east lead observers to believe that the war is about to end.
The surrender took place in Harf Sufyan, the most important frontline town in the south of Saada province. Ten rebels who earlier surrendered through the local tribal sheikh, Hamed Mused Kazma, were all from the tribe of Al-Shahwani. They were shown by state-run TV expressing their repentance and expressing their readiness to fight against the rebels.
The local authority in Saada and the army keep calling on Al-Houthi rebels to surrender and return to their houses and families, promising that the government will protect them from any danger.
The rebels who escaped to Al-Jawf were surrounded in a cave by the army and local tribesmen, forcing them to choose between a desperate attempt to escape or to surrender.
To show the tribesmen of Al-Jawf that any cooperation with the fleeing rebels is a red line, the government sent fighter jets to strike Al-Zaher where the rebels were holed up.
The air strikes destroyed the three-storey house of the tribal Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hamtan, in which the fugitive rebels had held meetings. The house was in the village of Al-Saamoom, about 60km east of Harf Sufyan. Many people and tribal sheikhs in this area are cooperating with the rebels, not necessarily for sectarian reasons, but to anger the government, which they accuse of ignoring them. Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hamtan has three sons fighting with Al-Houthi rebels.
The leader of the 50 rebels who escaped to Al-Jawf earlier this month, Mohieddin Al-Ansi, was arrested by tribesmen loyal to the government. Rebel leader Abdel-Malik Al-Houthi vowed to send fighters to open a new front against the Saudi forces in Najran in the north.
The war against Al-Houthi rebels is only one of three big challenges facing Yemen now and making it close to a failed state. The second challenge is the separatist movement in the south. Yemen and US officials claim that Al-Qaeda is exploiting both south and north problems to recruit and to undermine the Yemen government.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, on Tuesday, renewed his call for national dialogue to start on 26 December, which would include all the political, tribal, religious and social forces, to rescue his country from possible collapse. The dialogue will include all 111 members of the parliament, Saleh's appointed advisory council, the top two officials of every political party, 22 religious scholars, the leaders of civil society organizations, 22 tribal chiefs, and secretary-generals of the local councils from all over the country.
2.
YEMEN'S HIDDEN WAR: IS IRAN CAUSING TROUBLE?
By Abigail Hauslohner
Time
December 18, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1947623,00.html
SANA'A -- The Yemeni capital of Sana'a thunders at night with the sound of war planes taking off and heading north, toward a remote conflict on the Saudi border that the Yemenis and Saudis have stealthily managed to keep off-limits to journalists and aid workers. In the lawless frontier zone of Saada governorate, a fierce battle has raged for months between Yemeni troops and rebels belonging to the Houthis, a religious minority. Each side -- Houthis on one, Yemenis and Saudis on the other -- has offered conflicting reports on everything from air strikes to motives, and with Saada a no-go zone, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction.
There are as yet unsubstantiated reports of massive human rights abuses, village bombardments, and foreign involvement. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of refugees are pouring out of the frontlines, making the hidden conflict increasingly impossible to keep out of the international spotlight.
The Houthis says their quest for cultural and religious rights since 2004 intensified in August, when the government responded by razing villages in an assault the Yemenis called "Operation Scorched Earth." Yemen and Saudi Arabia say the Houthis, part of a Shi'ite Muslim sect known as the Zaydis, are receiving their funding, weapons, and training from Iran in a bid to destabilize the region. (See pictures of the hidden war in Yemen.)
Destabilizing is right on one count. Yemen is already reeling under the converging crises of lawlessness, growing poverty, a water crisis, a looming al-Qaeda threat, a southern separatist movement, and oil reserves that are quickly running dry. Indeed, analysts cite this multiplicity of factors as presaging Yemen as a failed state. "I think the major challenge for Yemen is really economic development," Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker Abdullah Al-Qirbi told TIME. "It could be a failed state in some aspects, certainly, if it doesn't get the support it needs."
With the current war raging, Yemen is getting a lot of support (though how much is unclear) from its larger wealthier neighbor, Saudi Arabia, which joined the fight last month. Separately, President Barack Obama recently requested $65 million for Yemen to help battle terrorism and al-Qaeda.
But the conflict up north -- and the resources it's consuming -- may be undermining efforts to deal with Yemen's other troubles. Nor is it certain that Iran is actually involved in the conflict. "There just isn't any evidence," says Gary Sick, a Persian Gulf expert at Columbia University. He says that waving the Iran card is a useful propaganda ploy in the Arab Middle East. "Although they may have had some evidence of Iranian rhetorical support for the Houthis, I think they took advantage of that limited amount of evidence and blew it up into something bigger to, in effect, justify their own actions."
"The Iranians basically were happy to take credit for it because they like to be seen as the protector for Shi'a as well as Muslims all over the world," Sick adds. "[But] it's not at all clear that the Iranians are doing anything more than just being cheerleaders on the side."
Indeed, while Iran has been publicly linked to militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Shi'ite militias in Iraq, its Houthi link is tenuous. Zaydi Shi'ism is distinct from the "Twelver" Shi'ism practiced in Iran, and Houthi demands have centered on rights and resources, something Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnson says is rooted in Houthi feelings of marginalization following the 1962 Yemeni revolution. Observers are also quick to point out that Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh is himself a Zaydi.
Some point more cynically to a Saudi agenda lurking behind it all. The Saudis, Yemen's largest source of annual aid, were suspiciously quick to join the fight, says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen's Political Development Forum. The Saudis are troubled by Yemen's increasing lawlessness, its porous border, and the ability of local villagers to cross at will. "Now because of this war, they will have a chance to make a fence. And more than that, they will have a chance to clear the area on their side, take all of the villages off and make it a free, smooth area that they can control," he says. Indeed, the Saudis are already enforcing a 10 km-deep buffer zone inside the Yemeni border.
But if the war against the Houthis isn't the grand regional proxy war that Yemen and Saudi Arabia are alleging, regional analysts say it could very well become one if the key players keep crying wolf. "One of the things that the Yemeni government has gotten particularly skilled at doing over the past several years is linking their own domestic crises to larger regional and Western concerns," says Johnson, noting that at other times Yemen has attempted to link the Houthis and al-Qaeda, a militant Sunni group that has openly targeted Shi'ites in other contexts, such as Iraq. "I think a large concern now is, given the sniping back and forth between Iran and Saudi Arabia, that Yemen's continual crying of wolf in this might be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that certainly Iran is now supporting the Houthis through their media branch," says Johnson.
Meanwhile, a northern bombardment that may have initially been intended to serve as a warning to other defectors, such as the southern separatists, seems only to have demonstrated the government's weakness, and has done little to end the Houthis' rebellion. "The longer this war goes on, the more vulnerable and the weaker the central government looks," says Christopher Boucek, a Middle East associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The government has such a limited capacity that they can only deal with one problem at a time," says Boucek. "They're not focused on the big picture issues that the United States cares about like counter-terrorism or security or al-Qaeda."
Instead, with Saada in central focus, the Yemeni government is spending its dwindling funds at an alarming rate. Yemen's budget deficit is rising, and the conflict has become increasingly complex and far-reaching, with tribes that had not previously been involved joining the fight on each side.
As for Iran -- the only party that doesn't seem to have any real involvement just yet -- the time may soon be ripe to jump in.
3.
IS YEMEN THE NEXT AFGHANISTAN?
By Andrew Lee Butters
Time
October 5, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1926015,00.html
The cheery in-flight magazine of Yemenia, the national airline of Yemen, still runs articles encouraging adventurous tourists to visit the coffee-growing region in the country's north, its terraced hilltop villages a vision of Old Arabia, and the fabled eastern valleys that were once home to the Queen of Sheba. But anyone trying to get off the beaten track in Yemen these days may find a bit too much adventure. About two-thirds of the country is out of government control and in the hands of either separatist groups or local tribes, some of which have a habit of kidnapping foreign tourists to use as bargaining chips in disputes with the central government. Such hostages were rarely harmed until this June, when nine foreigners were kidnapped -- including two German women and a South Korean woman whose mutilated bodies were later discovered by shepherds. After the attack, the government effectively stopped granting permission to foreigners -- including journalists -- to travel anywhere but the capital, Sana'a, and the coastal region around the port city of Aden.
In the past month, the government, which is Sunni-dominated, has stepped up its military offensive against Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis, whom officials blame for the killings. It's a continuation of a war that began in 2004, when the government killed a Houthi leader, raising fears among Yemeni followers of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam that they were being targeted for eradication by the government and Sunni extremists. So far, thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced by the fighting, mostly in the northern province of Saada. The government has used aerial bombardment and artillery to try to smash the Houthis. The alleged use of collective punishment and blockades of aid to force locals to turn in rebel fighters have prompted some agencies, such as UNICEF, to compare the campaign to the government of Sudan's actions in Darfur.
Western diplomats in Sana'a, however, suspect that the real culprits behind this year's attacks on foreigners come from the growing band of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Under pressure in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, al-Qaeda is turning the lawless mountain areas of Yemen into a new staging area. U.S. officials and terrorism experts don't think Yemen is close to becoming a failed state like Somalia -- just across the Red Sea. But there are warning signs that things could get worse: the Houthi rebellion, secessionists in the south, Somali pirates menacing the coast, an economy that is overreliant on declining oil production, and a looming water crisis.
HELPING HANDS AND BLIND EYES
Stretched around the Southern heel of the Arabian Peninsula and home to 23.8 million people -- compared with 28.7 million in Saudi Arabia -- Yemen, which came into being when North and South Yemen merged in 1990, is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. Long a source of jihadis, the region sent hundreds of fighters to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and, to judge by the number of captured, killed, or identified insurgents in Iraq, continues to be one of the biggest suppliers of fighters to regional conflicts. It's common knowledge in the tearooms of Sana'a and in Western embassies that the government of northern Yemen used jihadis to help defeat the south in the civil war that ended in 1994. But the symbiotic relationship between the government and al-Qaeda shifted after 9/11 and the American invasion of Iraq, when the Yemeni government worried that it too might be on the receiving end of U.S. military action. Sana'a helped the U.S. with the assassination of a leader of al-Qaeda in 2002, by missile attack from a Predator drone, even as it turned a blind eye to other extremists as long as they didn't cause trouble.
That accommodation has begun to fray as al-Qaeda has stepped up its targeting of foreign interests in Yemen, most notably through a foiled attempt to storm the U.S. embassy in September 2008. Early this year, the head of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Naser al-Wahishi, announced the merger between his organization and al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a move that caused the U.S. director of national intelligence to note that Yemen was "re-emerging as a jihadist battleground and potential regional base of operations for al-Qaeda." With a base in Yemen, al-Qaeda could launch attacks on the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal, as well as stage operations against Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. is worried that Yemen isn't taking the threat seriously enough. In July, General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, visited the country to encourage President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be more aggressive. "The view from Sana'a doesn't match the view from Washington," says Gregory Johnsen, a U.S. expert on Yemen. "The Yemeni government is much more concerned with fighting the Houthis in Saada and with the secessionists in the south. Al-Qaeda ranks a distant third. The government doesn't see it as a Yemeni problem. [It sees it as] a foreign problem."
It doesn't help that several high-level al-Qaeda operatives -- including al-Wahishi -- have mysteriously escaped from Yemeni prisons in the past, or that former inmates of the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo have resurfaced as active operatives in Yemen. But Johnsen thinks the U.S. is too focused on a military solution. "Obviously you have to eliminate key fighters, but the U.S. has done that before," he says. "Unless you address the underlying issues -- especially poverty -- you'll just be fighting a different incarnation of al-Qaeda every few years."
Fighting poverty in Yemen is no easy task. Education levels are abysmal, and the country is awash in guns. It also struggles with a severe water shortage, in large part because of the national addiction to khat, a shrub whose young leaves contain a compound with effects similar to those of amphetamines. The top estimate is that no less than 90% of men in Yemen and 25% of women chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as it slowly breaks down and enters the bloodstream. Astonishingly, most of the country's arable land is devoted to the plant, which accounts for approximately a third of the country's water usage. And Yemen has very little water to begin with; almost all of it comes from underground aquifers filled thousands of years ago and replenished only very slowly. Experts predict that Sana'a, a city of almost 2 million, could run dry in as few as 10 years. The social upheaval from such an environmental catastrophe and the refugees it could produce might create an even more perfect breeding ground for al-Qaeda. "I tell [the U.N. refugee agency] that they should start buying tents" for drought-displaced families, says Michael Klingler, a hydrologist and the local director of GTZ, the German aid agency.
Neither the Yemeni government nor the U.S. has any plan to help the country go cold turkey off khat. And the public is inclined to complacency about the failings of the government. "You sit up discussing all your problems and think you've solved everything, but in fact you haven't done anything in the past four hours because you've just been chewing khat, and all your problems actually got worse," says Adel al-Shojaa, a professor of political science at Sana'a University and the head of an organization opposed to the use of the narcotic. "All the decisions you've made are bad because you made them while on khat." Unfortunately, there's one group that could solve Yemen's khat problem. The angry puritans of al-Qaeda don't touch the stuff.
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