Armies of Liberation

Yemen Online is “associated with” al Iryani as we know, so here he is as McBeth, really:

The True Picture of GPC and JMP negotiations and the role Dr. Al-Iryani played. YemenOnline exclusive. – Negotiations between the General People’s Congress GPC and the Joint meeting Parties JMP has been conducted for quite sometime while the political street awaited a solution.

YemenOnline exclusively reports what was going on behind the scenes regarding Yemen democratic experience.

The picture:

1) During the meeting of the General Committee of the General People’s Congress, Dr. Al-Iryani shows his objection, saying” Democracy is not Solo, and the International Community will not acknowledge elections carried out without the participation of the opposition parties.” (Read on …)

Thats funny, even some of the jihaddis can’t wrap their heads around al Qaeda and Iran. (Also very funny was the reaction at Muslm.net and Hanein when someone swapped out some beheading photos with bikini girls: “Raise the supervisors! I have pictures of prostitutes in the Muslim !!!!!!!” A gruesome photo spread of sawing off a human head is good to look at, but outrage and hysteria ensued at a picture of a female.They concluded they were being attacked by Zionists. After a couple of hours of lamenting and frantically beseeching for the moderator, both threads were deleted.) Anyway, a more traditional analysis of the forum from Jamestown:

A discussion in jihadi internet forums triggered by a posting entitled “Is there a secret cooperation between Iran and al-Qaeda?” raised suspicions over possible clandestine connections between Shiite Iran and al-Qaeda, the self-declared enemy of Shi’ism (muslm.net, February 18, 2008). (Read on …)

Awww, the feds made him cry and CAIR is there with tissues.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)

Niazi is an Afghan native and a naturalized U.S. citizen. Authorities allege his sister, Hafiza, is married to Amin al-Haq, identified in court papers as a high-ranking al-Qaida member. Prosecutors say al-Haq was believed to have been bin Laden’s bodyguard around and after Sept. 11, 2001.

Al-Haq also is suspected of working with Younis Khalis, who founded the terrorist organization Hezb-e-Islami, which fights against international and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Khalis assisted in founding al-Qaida and helped bin Laden leave Sudan in 1996, Eliot said…Niazi told the informant it was his “duty to engage in violent jihad” and was preparing to send the informant to terrorist training camps in Yemen or Pakistan, Ropel said.

The senior figures never go to jail (or stay in jail anyway), just these fringe players. Not to understate the threat of lunatics with ammo, but the threat wont be diminished until the system is unraveled from the top.

SANAA (AFP) — A Yemeni security court on Tuesday sentenced three members of an alleged Al-Qaeda cell to seven years each in jail on charges of plotting attacks and possessing explosives.

The fourth defendant, a 15-year-old, was handed a two-year prison sentence.
(Read on …)

fractures in the house of Saleh, al Sahwa:

Sahwa Net – The Joint Meeting Parties has denounced what labeled abuses and infringements practiced by the Yemeni official media against other parties , indicting that the authorities intervene on other party affairs and promote their divisions.

JMP expressed its sympathy with The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party which was subject to defamation campaign , calling all other political forces to strongly condemn abuses and smears practiced against it .

Although the Predator strategy worked well in Pakistan, no Ali Saleh is not going to let the US pick off al Qaeda leaders. It was worth a try, but this is the same country that rejected Spanish forensic assistance after the Marib bombing. Saleh must have the fastest DNA lab in the world considering how quickly that bomber was positively ID’d (two hours?) although remains were “strewn all over” according to officials. It must be frustrating for the US upper eschelon to know where they are and not be able to go after them. (Read on …)

The Economist has a good article. There’s a nuance that hasn’t come to light yet and thats the unleashing of the regime loyal jihaddists in various locations around the country but we’ll get to it eventually.

With its rough terrain, weak central state and gun-slinging tribal culture, Yemen may prove a fairly secure redoubt for al-Qaeda. The group has suffered sharp setbacks in such places as Iraq, Lebanon and especially Saudi Arabia, where it has not mounted a serious attack since 2006. The relative quiet in Yemen, which some critics of its government ascribe to a secret amnesty whereby Sunni jihadists backed the state against a smouldering Shia insurrection in the country’s north, has been eroding. Waves of arrests, prompted partly by Western and Saudi pressure, have provoked an escalation of al-Qaeda attacks that culminated in a double car-bombing of America’s embassy in Sana’a last September; the attack failed to penetrate the fortified compound but left 16 people dead.

Though a Western diplomat in Sana’a describes al-Qaeda’s threat there as “very severe” and the government’s efforts to thwart it as merely “episodic”, it is Saudi Arabia, rather than Yemen itself, that is the group’s main target. The fact that al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch has been forced to regroup elsewhere, under Yemeni leadership, may be a sign of weakness rather than strength. As for Yemen, even if the danger of a few hundred armed jihadists is real, locals may well care more about other national plagues: the frightening scale of corruption, poverty, malnutrition, water depletion, Yemen’s plunging oil revenues, its ugly, four-year-old war in the north, simmering separatist sentiment in the south, constant tribal unrest and vicious power struggles among the ruling elite.

Another episode, Yemen gets notice an al Qaeda suspect is home and picks him up.

Yemen arrests al-Qaeda SuspectSANA’A, Feb. 26 (Saba) -Three people including an Al-Qaeda suspect have been arrested in Sana’a. (Read on …)

Lets see what happens. The odds are 87% (96%?) in the favor of the Yemeni government going the smoke and mirrors route, like with the governors “elections”. However, even grudging reforms are still reforms. The JMP has a lot of work to do internally.

Yemen Online

Yemen: Provisions of the agreement between GPC and JMP.
YemenOnline. Feb 25 – After several dialogues that the President called for between representatives of the General People’s Congress GPC and the Joint Meeting Parties JMP represented in the Council, and given the requirements of the national interest in carrying out free, fair and secure elections under a favorable political environment in which all political spectrums participate, all of the political parties represented in the Parliament hereinafter undersigned – the General People’s Congress, Islah Party, the Yemeni Socialist Party, the Unionist Nasserite People Party and the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party – request from the Parliament Presidency to take necessary constitutional procedures to amend Article 65 of the Constitution related to the Parliament duration in accordance with the law, allowing the extension period of the present Parliament for two years due to the lack of sufficient time for implementing the following reforms:

Firstly, parties, political organizations and civil society organizations should be given the opportunity to carry out the constitutional amendments necessary for the development of the political and electoral systems, including the Quota.

Secondly, the political parties represented in the Parliament should be enabled to complete the discussion of topics that have not been agreed upon during the preparation of amendments to the electoral law and integrating what was agreed upon at the heart of law.

Thirdly, the Higher Committee of Elections and Referendum be reconstructed as provided by law.