Armies of Liberation

This is an article from Rolling Stone magazine about a Yemeni jihaddi, and it traces his life story from Yemen to Afghansitan to Kosovo and Britian back to Yemen. I have to read the article again, but this was interesting:

By this time, however, the nature of the insurgency had changed. Al-Zarqawi had succeeded, for the moment, in taking over the homegrown resistance. Many of Saddam’s former secret police and Republican Guard were now integrated into cells with jihadists like Khalid. The leadership of Al Qaeda had financial resources and strategic expertise that the Iraqis lacked, and the foreign fighters were more willing to die than the local Sunnis — and more willing to kill civilians.

Disturbed by the killings, Khalid began to rethink the role of jihad in his life. Would his faith really justify killing his British neighbors in their own country? Would he ever be able to live a normal life? Hearing about Yemenis he knew who had disappeared into the gulag at Guantanamo, he feared he could end up in prison for life, a fate he considered worse than death.

The doubts intensified after he returned home to Yemen and was arrested earlier this year. “Enough is enough,” his father implored. “It’s time to settle down and stop this stuff.” After Khalid was released from prison, he and a group of other Afghan Arabs — the blanket term for those who fought or trained in Afghanistan — were summoned to a meeting with Ali Abdullah Salih, the president of Yemen, who was trying to contain the jihadists. In private, Salih called them “my sons” and said he had been pressured by the Bush administration to crack down on them. He also did something seldom acknowledged in the war on terror: He offered to pay them off to stop fighting.

“We will help you get jobs, get married,” Salih told the men. “Write down your name and what you want.”

Amnesty International greatly deplores the execution of Fuad ‘Ali Mohsen al-Shahari, who was executed by firing squad in Taiz this morning. A lawyer and former member of the opposition Socialist Party, he had been on death row for over nine years. He was sentenced to death for murder in 1996 at the end of a grossly unfair trial.

The execution was carried out despite many appeals by Amnesty International and others, including the European Union, and Yemen’s own Human Rights Ministry, one of the country’s leading judges and Yemeni human rights groups.

Fuad al-Shahari was sentenced to death in November 1996 when he was convicted of the murder of Captain Mohammed al-’Ameri, a security official and member of the ruling General People’s Congress Party, during a gun battle earlier that year. After his arrest, Fuad al-Shahari was held incommunicado for one month during which, he alleged, he was tortured and forced to confess to the killing, which he denied committing. This “confession” – four different versions were said to have been included in the charge sheets – reportedly formed the basis for his conviction. The court failed to investigate his allegations of torture and prospective defence witnesses were said to have been deterred from appearing to give evidence by the presence of armed men in the court.

Despite this, the Court of Appeal upheld the death sentence in May 1999. A further appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court in March 2004, though by the Commercial Division not by the Criminal Division of the court that would normally consider such cases. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh ratified the death sentence on 6 September 2005 after the Attorney General’s office reported that it had reviewed the case on the President’s instructions but found no procedural errors.

This morning, two hours before he was executed, lawyers acting for Fuad al-Shahari sought to obtain a court injunction to prevent his execution, in accordance with Article 529 of Yemen’s Penal Code. The Code provides that in such cases, execution should be deferred pending the court’s consideration of the defence petition, but in this case the execution proceeded as planned.

Fuad al-Shahari’s involvement in the largely southerner-dominated Socialist Party, which fought and lost a bitter civil war in 1994 against the northern-based General People’s Congress, together with the unfair nature of his trial, has long given rise to concerns that the case against him may have been politically-motivated or influenced by tribal factors.

Confession under torture? Defense witneses deterred? Appeal denied? When the country’s own HR minister objects, you know something is up.

Summary from IFEX, a very good organization which documents the struggle for and the repression of freedom of expression all countries.

IFEX members are raising the alarm over a worsening clampdown on Yemen’s press, where several journalists have been violently attacked, opposition newspapers closed and editors prosecuted for investigating corruption or other sensitive issues affecting senior officials.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says there have been four violent attacks on journalists in the past five months, including the stabbing of freelance journalist Nabil Subaie on 12 November 2005 in the capital, Sanaa.

Subaie regularly writes for the opposition newspapers “Al-Thawri”, “Al-Shoura”, “Al-Nida’a”, and “Al-Tajammu” and recently criticized President Ali Abdullah Saleh for appointing several family members to key government positions.

On 4 November, Mujeeb Suwailih of the pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya and Najib al-Sharabi of the Saudi Arabian satellite channel Al-Ekhbariya were attacked by Yemeni security officers while covering a strike by textile factory workers in Sanaa. Suwailih suffered internal bleeding, three broken ribs and severe bruising on his legs.

Other journalists attacked included Jamal Amer, editor of the weekly “Al-Wasat”, and Haji al-Jehafi, editor of the weekly “Al-Nahar.”

CPJ says none of the assaults have been properly investigated by Yemeni authorities. Two of the attacks have been linked to security officials.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) says two newspapers and four journalists have also been banned in the past 10 days, including opposition newspaper “Al-Tajammu”.

On 27 November, a court ordered the publication suspended for “sectarianism” and “attacking Islam’s image” in a September 2004 article likening Yemen’s current political situation to the political turmoil in 1968. Editor Abdul Rahman Abdallah and reporter Abdul Rahma Saeed, who wrote the article, were each fined the equivalent of US$260 and barred from being published for a year.

Meanwhile, a new media law about to be passed by the government could signal an end to Yemen’s free press, warns ARTICLE 19. The group says the proposed Press and Publications Law contains provisions that will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression, including restrictions on the content of what may be published, and mandatory licences for print media.

Visit:

- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/protests/05ltrs/Yemen16nov05pl.html
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15713
- ARTICLE 19 Analysis of Proposed Press Law: http://tinyurl.com/dje6y
- Freedom House Report: http://tinyurl.com/d2eow
- IPI: http://www.freemedia.at/Protests2005/pr_Yemen03.11.05.htm
- Drug Smuggling and the Yemeni President: http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2162.cfm
- Has the President Changed His Mind on Reform?

http://www.cpj.org/op_ed/Campagna10mar05.html

ADNKI:

After months of ceasefire, clashes have broken out again between Shiite rebels loyal to the late radical cleric and former MP Hussein al-Houthi and government security forces in the northern Yemeni province of Saada. Eight policemen died in the fighting, US-backed Radio Sawa reports….

However, the fighting began again on Monday when, after several months of hiding in the mountains on the border with Saudi Arabia, rebel fighters gathered in the market of the village of al-Khafti and shouted anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans. The security forces then surrounded the village and a gunfight broke out, forcing the militants to flee.

Police have now significantly stepped up security at roadblocks and surrounded the province in search of those who killed the eight officers. The outbreak of violence comes after several sheikhs in the area went to the police in the last few days, asking them to arrest rebel militants who had been in al-Khafti for some time.

Paul Garwood again:

But many complain that Yemeni authorities are not committed to combatting qat because the crop is such a moneymaker for senior officials and influential tribal leaders.

“Yemenis always avoid talking about it, because behind it is a big group of people running qat businesses and making millions,” said Dr. Hashim el-Zain, country director for the U.N.’s World Health Organization.

So far, there is little progress….

The plant is grown and used legally in Yemen, where its production is a major source of employment and income – particularly for powerful tribes with vast tracts of land.

For the benefit of Yassen who has been coming around and harassing me for months and apparently hasn’t figured this out yet.

IN terms of the format here and at most other blogs from the US, and I think internationally, in general,

If you see something indented in a box like this, it means I’m quoting someone else. Anything in a box is a quote from another person, and the symbol is called a block-quote.

If you see some words red, like this, it is the hyperlink to take you directly to the source of the quote.

From the Carnegie Endowment:

Even after the setback at the Forum for the Future in Bahrain, US officials were muted in their criticism of the rulers they finance. For the sake of stability in the region, the US is willing to pursue a dichotomous policy. It keeps on defining democratisation as its priority but refuses to condemn those that obstruct its democratisation agenda, namely the Muslim potentates Washington trusts with ensuring stability.

The US government repeatedly makes the mistake of defining as “moderate” those authoritarian Muslim rulers who fulfill America’s foreign policy goals. These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’ s longer term direction. Authoritarian governments in the Muslim world do not want democracy as that would amount to the potentates giving up their power. It is the democratic movements opposed to governments in the Muslim world who are likely to be the real engines of social and political change in the Middle East and South Asia.

American officials must recognise the contradiction in their simultaneous support for democracy and dictatorial Muslim regimes. For example, Mali is the only Muslim country described by Freedom House as “free” based on its adherence to all criteria for freedom, democracy and respect for human rights. But Mali is not a major recipient of western aid whereas Egypt and Pakistan , characterised by Freedom House as “not free” or “partly free”, are.

While the governments drag their feet on reform, ordinary Muslims continue to take brave steps to prove that despite all odds civil society in the Muslim world has both vision and the potential to initiate real change.

Read the Rest.

No I haven’t been bought. This is the title of an op-ed in NewsYemen by Nabil al-Soufi, who from what I can tell is an independent thinker. And he makes the (valid) point that President Saleh did many important things during his rule. A primary achievement was to establish both the mechanics of democracy (although they are not functional now) and to encourage the broad based consensus for democracy among the Yemeni people.

Further, and I know this first hand, Yemen’s press was and perhaps still is the freest in the Middle East, providing a political space unavailable in other neighboring countries. The brutal and repressive atacks on Yemeni journalists now is an attempt to shrink that sphere of dialog.

The political party system is another positive legacy of the Saleh era, although the ability of some parties to consistently represent and articulate the concerns of the broader membership and society at large is hampered by concerns of self-interest and, in some cases, self-preservation. al-Soufi aptly describes the narrow scope and agenda of some of the parties:

Another achievement of President Saleh was without doubt, allowing the formation of political parties.

Nevertheless, partisanship remains an evil in our country because it retains a culture of marginalization of others. All parties fiercely defend their entities, their rights and their alliances only. Furthermore, political parties in Yemen have sadly not yet developed a culture or policy of service to others.

Coming back to our subject, Saleh, the President, was extremely liberal and open-minded in dealing with the idea of forming and managing political parties. The political community in Yemen also seemed ready to accept a reality with new political parties and demonstrated a unique ability in establishing legitimacy for political parties and their objectives.

Hence, there were very few obstacles that hindered change towards a multi-party system jam-packed with partisanship. This had indeed facilitated Saleh’s mission.

Another achievement of Saleh is unity, according to al-Soufi. Some scholars have described the policy of the central government toward the South not as a democratic partnership but rather as “annexationist” (internal colonialism).

al-Soufi says: Under Saleh’s rule, unity was not established on clashing ideologies, even if those ideologies had a unionist vision. Saleh was able to build a united country based on respect of the other side. Without Saleh’s vision of mutual respect, unity would not have been established unless one side wrecked the other. Again the vision of a government policy of mutual respect, like the visions of a policy of democracy and a free press, is a noble one that has yet to be translated into action by the regime.

The decade-long deployment of these concepts (democracy, a free press, multi party system, and unity) if only on an ideological level without their authentic or maximal physcial embodiment is what is driving the tide of rising expectations in Yemen and the popular demand for real reform. So for this Saleh deserves credit.

I’m glad this al-Soufi wrote this article because he is rational and unbiased and I can listen to him without twitching. He makes a valid point and provides both the broad context and a specific baseline to the turmultuous political scene in Yemen. So read the whole thing. Its a good article that covers more ground than what is summarized here.