Armies of Liberation

WaTi

The Navy is warning ships sailing in waters near Yemen that al Qaeda is planning seaborne attacks similar to the 2000 suicide boat bombing of the USS Cole. A warning notice posted on the Web site of the Office of Naval Intelligence and dated March 10 stated that the alert was issued to promote security for shipping companies and other vessels transiting the piracy-plagued region.

“Information suggests that al Qaeda remains interested in maritime attacks in the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait, Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden along the coast of Yemen,” the special advisory notice stated.

Yemen Observer: US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James R Clapper has met president Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana’a to discussed the joint cooperation between the United States and Yemen.

Naval Intelligence warns al Qaeda remains interested in attacking ships in the bab al Mendab

Guardian: Saudi security services have arrested more than 100 militants believed to be linked to al-Qaida, the country’s Interior Ministry said today.

The suspects include 47 Saudi nationals, 51 Yemenis, a Somali, an Eritrean and a Bangladeshi, a ministry statement said.

The arrests of the suspects – accused of planning attacks on oil plants and other infrastructure – were carried out over five months.

Many of those detained had come to Saudi Arabia on visas to visit holy sites or by sneaking across its borders. The ministry alleges that they wanted to join up and organise attacks with al-Qaida.

Most of those held were arrested in the southern province of Jazan, near the border with Yemen, according to Saudi media reports.

Explosives belts, apparently intended for use in suicide attacks, were also reported to have been seized.

One of those being held is a Yemeni national described by security officials as a prominent member of al-Qaida, according to Reuters.

Separately, the authorities arrested 12 people from two al-Qaida cells originating across the border in Yemen, where a branch of the terrorist network has established a significant base of operations over the past year.

The two cells were also in the preliminary stages of planning attacks on oil and security facilities in Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing Eastern Province, home to the world’s biggest oil refinery.

“The 12 in the two cells were suicide bombers,” security affairs spokesman Mansour al-Turki said. “We have compelling evidence against all of those arrested, that they were plotting terrorist attacks inside the kingdom.”

One India Fox News quoted Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour Al-Turki as saying that the arrest of the alleged plotters not only had prevented the attacks, but broken up a network of Al Qaeda-affiliated radicals that included two suicide bombing cells.

“They were ready but waiting for an order which fortunately didn’t come,” he said of the militants.

While Al-Turki declined to identify which facilities the suspects were allegedly targeting, he said one of the suspects, a Saudi national, was employed by a private Saudi industrial security company responsible for protecting oil sites and other critical infrastructure.

“As an employee, he had access to all of those sites and to current plans for protecting them,” he said.

He did not dispute news reports indicating that the plotters had been exchanging e-mails with a man in Yemen believed to be a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.ccording to reports, members of the two suicide cells had been exchanging coded e-mails about the planned strikes with a man in Yemen whom the accounts called “Abu Hajer.”

One Saudi official said “Abu Hajer” is believed to be a nom de guerre for Said Al Shihri, a Saudi leader of AQAP.

He was released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in December 2007 after being held there for six years, and he was taken to a Saudi rehabilitation center from which he disappeared. (ANI)

could be anything… Later reports say they are French. Random Dhamar factoids:Yahay Al-Amri, the former Governor of Sa’ada, described as a “pro-Salafi active advocate” is Governor of Dhamar (a predominantly Zeidi stronghold and learning center). Complaints have been reported by residents there of forced takeovers of Zeidi Mosques by Salafi preachers (as occurred in Sa’ada). Also the second largest Dar al-Hadith Institute is in Maber, Dhamar headed by Sheik Mohammed al-Imam al-Reimi, a former student of Sheik al-Wadi. Armed guards protect the institute which has a capacity of 1500-2000 students.

26 September Net: Police in Yemen’s central Dhamar province have arrested two Europeans while training in marksmanship. Two rifles were seized with the foreigners who were arrested at Naqil al-Mashana in Jahran district, the Interior Ministry reported on Sunday. They were both 24 years old and one with an Arab name. An investigation is underway. saba

Yemen Post: Yemen has said that it needs $ 44 billion to implement its fourth five-year economic and social development plan for 2011-2015 and urged donors to release their pledges made during the 2006 donor conference in London. (Read on …)

I would think AQIY would haven taken credit as they do for their other failed operations especially after the Nigerian.

Ethioguardinan: British intelligence agents have reopened their investigation into the mysterious crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet last February after a terror suspect taken into custody in Saudi Arabia confessed it was bombed, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. The information came after the mass arrest of more than 100 al-Qaida terror suspects in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). (Read on …)

The National:

The Yemeni state security court in the capital sentenced Hussein Muthana al Akil, a professor at Aden University, to three years in prison for supporting the growing secessionist movement. Fadi Hasan Ba’om, the son of a senior leader in the movement, was given five years for calling for the separation of southern Yemen, instigating civil disorder and violent acts and inciting sectarian division and hatred among the Yemeni people.

The sentences were the latest setback for the southern movement, which is facing increasing pressure from the embattled Yemeni government in Sana’a.

Judge Ridhwan al Namir said al Akil was guilty of publishing “false information and inciting an armed disobedience and committing crimes aimed at harming national unity as well as abusing the president of the republic”. The court said al Akil published articles in which he wrote that “the northern occupation forces are looting the oil of the south”. (Read on …)

HRW urges Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Yemen, quite a good suggestion. The following from Relief Web by Christoph Wilcke, a senior Middle East and North Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Abu Dhabi is the host today for the inaugural gathering of Friends of Yemen, a group established in January at an international meeting of concerned states in London. This members, consisting of Gulf and key Western states in addition to representatives of intergovernmental institutions,need to address Yemen’s human rights problems honestly if they want to assist its people and address the threats emanating from that troubled Arabian country. (Read on …)

In Yemen, al Qaeda’s training camp in the Abu Jabara valley is no secret. It is in an old military camp between Sa’ada and al Jawf provinces, near the Saudi border, and it houses hundreds of Yemeni and foreign al Qaeda loyalists.

Acting as mercenaries for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, al Qaeda operatives fought in the Sa’ada War against the Houthi rebels. As a result, hundreds of jihaddists gained battlefield experience during the five years of brutal war. In an interview with Jane Novak, Yemeni politician Hassan Zaid, recommended the terrorists in Abu Jabara be disarmed now that the war has ended.

Corrupt al Qaeda

Despite their high flown rhetoric, Quoranic citations and photo-shopped internet magazine, al Qaeda in Yemen is just as corrupt as the Saleh regime itself. The enmeshment of al Qaeda with Yemen’s subverted military and intelligence services is a product of long standing relationships that stretch from the caves of Afghanistan to the presidential palace in Sana’a.

The sixth round of the Sa’ada War ended in February when President Saleh declared a ceasefire. Yemen’s ability to construct a durable peace is doubtful. Disengagement is moving slowly. A frank assessment of the underlying issues of exclusion, religious pluralism, development and equality never occurred.

The rebels are required to turn in their weapons as one condition of the cease fire. Opposition politician Hassan Zaid said the terrorists in the Abu Jabara al Qaeda camp should be disarmed as well. “This group sours the atmosphere of peace,” Mr. Zaid noted to al Tagheer.

Al Qaeda with Official Passports

The rebels are Zaidis, a Shiite offshoot, and claim religious discrimination by the state. Mr. Zaid leads the Zaidi oriented al Haqq opposition party and previously headed the Joint Meeting Parties, Yemen’s opposition coalition. He disputed the notion that he was the rebels “spiritual leader” as regime propaganda to the Yemen Post.

In my interview, Mr. Zaid confirmed that the al Qaeda fighters in Abu Jabara participated in the war against the Houthi rebels. “Our brothers said there are around 500-800 (al Qaeda) fighters training there under General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar’s command,” he said.

A powerful military commander, General al Ahmar is President Saleh’s half brother and, as commander of the North West region, led the war against the rebels. Al Ahmar recruited fighters for Osama bin Laden during the Afghan jihad in the 1980’s and is reputed to facilitate several al Qaeda groups in Yemen.

“They are well armed and holding authorized (official) ID which enables them to move between Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Zaid said. “They joined the government to fight the rebels. They are well supported and financed by (sources within) Saudi Arabia, and they are better-off, richer, than other Qaeda members in Yemen.”

Foreign al Qaeda in Northern Yemen

The al Qaeda group in Sa’ada includes foreign fighters, but the presence of westerners is unclear. In March 2009, the southern weekly Attagammua reported, “Local sources in Saada confirmed that members of various Arab nationalities as well as citizens from different provinces” were in Abu Jubara. The papers sources noted “the striking emergence of Salafist groups in the city of Saada, and the effort to build a center for Yemeni al-Qaeda in Yemen.”

The independent Yemen Times reported foreign fighters in Sa’ada the same month: “Thousands of Jihadist groups, or Salafia – including Yemenis and foreigners from neighboring Arab and non-Arab countries (were) gathering against the Houthis in coordination with the army under the management of military centers and sheikhs…”

In June 2009, al Eshteraki, mouthpiece of the Yemeni Socialists Party (YSP), said that large numbers of al-Qaeda operatives and other jihadist organizations in the Abu Jabara camp had gathered to meet “the Shiite tide,” represented by the Houthi rebels.

“It was originally an official camp of the armed forces of Yemen that was abandoned,” al Eshteraki reported, noting the camp is under the stewardship of Afghan Arabs inducted into the Yemeni military after they fought for President Saleh in the 1994 civil war. Usama bin Laden supplied fighters and arms to President Saleh’s jihaddist forces as they battled southern socialists in the 1994 civil war, the New York Times reported.

In December 2009, Attagammua again reported that al Qaeda terrorists who returned to Yemen after fighting American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were in Sa’ada, fighting for the Yemen state.

State Support

The sixth round of the Sa’ada War broke out in August. In October, with the war raging, the Houthi rebels’ website, al Menpar, published an article referencing the Abu Jabara camp that alleged a high level al Qaeda leader had sold al Qaeda’s services to the Yemeni state.

“They agreed that the government will provide them with light weapons and the Al Qaida fighters will participate in the war against the rebels. Omar Obadah and his followers who just came back from Saudi Arabia (had) received some training in Afghanistan.”

According to al Menpar, some current al Qaeda leaders in Sa’ada were previously imprisoned in Saudi Arabia and others had escaped in the infamous 2006 al Qaeda jailbreak in Yemen.

“Many sources affirm that this coalition is beneficial to both parties, the Yemeni government, and al Qaeda leaders, and the Saudi’s as well. The Saudi embraced and supported (the camp) because they consider the Houthi rebels in the north as infidels from their perspective,” the article concluded.

In January 2010, Saada Online found a similar arrangement between al Qaeda and the state. The al Qaeda camp in Abu Jabara valley is funded by Saudi sources, the investigation found. After receiving arms and ammunition from the government, the al Qaeda mercenaries “attacked the rebels from behind” the Saudi border. The al Qaeda group coordinates through intermediaries at General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar’s office, the site said, noting some al Qaeda operatives were integrated directly into the military, and the group has freedom of movement across the Saudi/Yemeni border at the al Baqea crossing.

The sixth Sa’ada War took a heavy toll. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are internal refugees. Months of extensive bombing by Yemeni and Saudi air forces targeted markets, mosques, hospitals and refugees. Over 9000 structures were damaged. The Abu Jabara camp was not. It is thought that six western hostages kidnapped in June 2009, a German family and a British engineer, may be located in Abu Jabara. The external focus of al Qaeda in Yemen is a logical outcome of its merger with Yemeni state institutions.

Sana’a, Yemen – A Yemeni state security court on Sunday convicted a former ambassador to Mauritania to five years in jail for his support to secessionist groups in the south of the Arab country.

Presiding Judge Muhssien Alwan said the defendant, Qassim Askar Jubran, was found guilty of “inciting an armed disobedience and committing crimes aimed at harming national unity.”

Jubran, who appeared behind bars at the courtroom for the verdict session, said he would not appeal against the ruling saying: “basically, there is no justice.” (Read on …)

UN re-opening office in Sa’ada City.

Reuters: “Now the situation is better we are just planning to send the staff back again as soon as next week,” he said, adding that life is back to normal in Saada city. The office houses various U.N. relief agencies.

Humanitarian access is needed to other areas in Saada as well as al-Jawf and Amran governorates, where continued insecurity and land mines have hampered or delayed aid distribution, a U.N. statement said Friday.

“Security is the same as it was before the war … Outside Saada city we still don’t know because we have not been there.”

And a damned fine idea it is. ( For Nuba’s 2008 interview with me, click here.) The following is the google translated version of General Nuba’s statement today, original Arabic follows:

Gentlemen / presidents, kings, princes and leaders of the Arab nation distinguished

Peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings be upon you,,,

You are holding the Arab Summit Conference on the land of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya sister, our people (the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen) on the basis of religion and brotherhood and neighborliness and self-determination of peoples looking forward to your August Assembly and commented on by great hopes, to support him than Gore in the throes of the comprehensive blockade imposed by the Yemeni occupying forces since the war of aggression in 1994 and fully extend its influence by force of arms in the south and its people, who reached the highest levels these days of tight security during the closure of large areas and cutting off communications and barriers launched many military campaigns that led to the killing and displacement of innocent people and the destruction of of houses, mass arrests and use of artillery and missile and air strikes on villages and towns in different regions of the occupied south .. Therefore we appeal to your August Assembly to accelerate the formation of a fact-finding commission in the south for the crimes of the occupation forces against our unarmed people. (Read on …)

Twenty people were wounded today when police opened fire on a funeral march in the restive town of Dhalie. Local reports indicated one person later died. The crowds had gathered to honor two victims killed when police broke up a anti-government protest on March 11.

Yemen launched a broad assault on its southern region earlier this month with ground troops and tanks following a US declaration that unrest in the south was a Yemeni internal affair.

In an escalating cycle of state violence, demonstrations against the siege were met with live fire, water cannons, tear gas and arrests. Cell phone communications were cut on the orders of the Ministry of Information which also ordered the seizure of al Jazeera and al Arabyia broadcast equipment.

Two protesters died earlier in the week after being shot by police during a protest in Dhalie on Thursday. Another 50 prisoners have been on a hunger strike since March 10. The men have been imprisoned for three years without a trial, News Yemen reported.

On March 24, a southern oppositionist was sentenced to ten years for “spreading hatred against unity.” Ahmed Ba-Muallim, a former Member of Parliament was arrested April 15, 2009. Ba-Muallim said he would not appeal because both the court and its verdict are illegitimate. There are hundreds of political prisoners jailed in Yemen.

In an ominous note, Yemeni state media reported that al Qaeda operatives are sheltering in mountains of Dhalie and Radfan, centers of the swelling independence movement in restive south Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh regularly conflates his domestic opposition with al Qaeda. Analysts have raised concerns that Yemen will launch air strikes under the guise of counter-terrorism that instead target dissidents and oppositionists.

A Human Rights Watch statement urged the US and Yemen to “take all feasible precautions to ensure that counter terrorism operations do not harm the very people they aim to protect.” Human Rights Watch is particularly concerned about the potential for manipulation of intelligence because of Yemen’s inconsistent approach to confronting al Qaeda in the past and its history of resorting to repressive measures to quell political dissent. In December, an air strike targeting al Qaeda killed 42 civilians.

The protests were begun in 2007 by forcibly retired military officers seeking overdue pension compensation equivalent to their northern counterparts. The state offered to make some payments if the officers pledged to refrain from political activity. The offer was rejected.

General Nasser al Nuba, head of the Military Retire Coalition, today called for an investigation into the state’s war crimes.

Peaceful protests turned bloody when police repeatedly used live fire against the demonstrators, killing dozens. Demonstrations marred by police violence and arbitrary arrests triggered new protests. Other tactics include targeted assassinations and denial of medical services.

The Southern independence movement is a popular movement with the active support of 70% of southerners, a recent poll found. Leadership is fragmented and often quarrelsome, reflecting unresolved power struggles dating back decades.

The southern narrative is based on the premise that after 1994’s civil war, unity was imposed by force and the south was plundered by northerners. Resentment simmered for a decade as discriminatory state practices excluded southerners from employment, scholarships and development. Yemen’s oil wealth, based in the south, was looted and overt land theft by military officers and state officials left southerners with no recourse to justice.

The Saleh regime has termed southerners apostates for a decade. Usama Bin Laden armed and funded Afghan Arabs fighting for Saleh 1994’s civil war between north and south.

Nasser Arrabyee MARGARET WARNER: As you know, there is great concern about the degree of corruption here. And that’s one reason why the aid that was agreed to several years ago by the international community, most of it never came here.

What are you doing about that perception and, at least in the view of most international observers, the reality that a lot of money that is given here in assistance is not spent for the purposes it was intended, and does go to benefit the private interests of people in the government and inner circle?

ALI ABDULLAH SALEH (through translator): These are mere lies. This information are baseless, and it is not true. It’s within the framework of a campaign of lies against Yemen, unfair campaign against Yemen, against the security and the stability and democracy of Yemen.

Also funny: Yemen Post headline, Oil Minister Does Not Believe in Oil Depletion Rumors

As the state of Yemen unravels, al Sahwa reports that the villagers of al Jasheen are still displaced and unable to receive redress for the crimes committed by Sheik Mohammed Mansour (the President’s poet!), “Members of Parliament were twice prevented form visiting Al-Jaashin to investigate the violations committed by the sheikh against his subjects. The report said that the refugees included 45 students, 33 women, 33 children who are available in a refugee camp in the capital, Sana’a, indicating that Mansour’s militia looted their cows, ships, gold, equipments and all home furnishing.”

In lieu of comment, and considering nothing has changed in three years, I think I will just republish a section of the article I wrote on al Jasheen in 2007 as follows:

The elite among President Saleh’s northern tribesmen have supplanted the jurisdiction of the state. Since Yemen’s 1994 civil war, power has become consolidated in a network of influential individuals who largely operate above the law. Weak central government is counterbalanced by strong tribal authority, resulting in a nearly feudal substructure. The glue that stabilizes this political system is entrenched governmental corruption and patronage.

Many tribal elite are also government leaders, reinforcing patriarchal norms and discriminatory practices. Tribal figures including the president’s relatives dominate Yemen’s key military and security positions. Governmental employment is widely politicized. Some economic enterprises are monopolies. Favoritism in governmental procurements allows the ruling party to undermine the political system through patronage. Land theft by influential persons is systematic, endemic and destabilizing, especially in the former south.

Yemeni citizens are often subject to a tribal sheik whose authority outweighs state institutions. Tribal leadership varies from village to village, and some sheiks are quite altruistic. Generally sheiks provide residents with security and mechanisms of conflict resolution. An influential sheik can procure governmental funding for development and infrastructure projects including roads, schools and electricity. However, these benefits come with a price tag that can include arbitrary punishment. In one case, a sheik involved in a land dispute brutally tortured a worker who built a wall. Another dramatic example is found in Ibb governorate, in the village of Al-Ja’ashen.

Operating the village as a state within a state, the sheik’s authority is paramount in al-Ja’ashen. In a letter to Mareb Press, residents reported that they were required to “follow his orders without discussion or debate.” Citizens who had dared to challenge the sheik’s authority or criticize his practices were summarily jailed in the sheik’s private prison. The sheik charged a 10% harvest tax in excess of the state taxes, the villagers said. In lieu of payment, he sometimes collected farm animals and gas cylinders.

In January, residents unable to pay the tax were expelled from the village. About 400 Yemeni citizens including women and children were forced from their homes into a field and makeshift tents. The Sheik alleged the entire story was fabricated by the opposition. However, HOOD (a prominent Yemeni NGO) noted the sheikh used government vehicles and troops to expel the citizens. (Read on …)

They are both in extremely poor health. They were probably released because they were both on hunger strikes and half dead. Al Maqaleh was tortured since his detention in September. No charges were ever filed against either. The two Bashraheel sons to be released March 27. Several editors remain in jail along with thousands of political prisoners.

News Yemen: Authorities have released editor-in-chief of the Aden-based Al-Ayyam daily, Hisham Bashrahil, and editor of aleshteraki news website, Mohammad al-Maqaleh, for “health reasons”….Bashrahil was detained last January 6 for charges of “supporting anti-government protests in south and harming the unity.” Al-Maqaleh was arrested in late September 2009 over “encouraging Houthi rebels in northern Sa’ada to fight against the army.”

Al Ayyam reported the news of the southern protests, and al Maqaleh reported on a September airstrike on refugees in Sa’ada that killed 87.

For the document in Arabic, see al Tagheer. The National Dialog Committee is comprised of the JMP, independents, some GPC members and social figures including political, tribal and businessmen. It is headed by Mr. Mohammed Salem Basandwah, an adviser to the president, and Sheik Hameed Al-Ahmer is its Secretary General. The group is a mechanism dedicated to building a national consensus on the issues facing Yemen and implementing solutions through peaceful means.

Republic of Yemen

Preparatory Committee for National Dialogue

General Secretariat

Summary: Vision for National Salvation

Sana’a 2010

In the name of Allah, the most Merciful the Most Compassionate
“Why were there not, among the generations before you, persons possessed of balanced good sense, prohibiting (men) from mischief in the earth – except a few among them whom We saved (from harm)? But the wrong-doers pursued the enjoyment of the good things of life which were given them, and persisted in sin (116). Nor would thy Lord be the One to destroy communities for a single wrong- doing, if its members were likely to mend” (117). Surat Hud

Introduction:

On Monday Ramadhan 17th 1429 Hijria, corresponding to 07.09.2009, the Preparatory Committee for National Dialogue (“PCND”) formed of political and social forces, parties, organizations and individuals, businessmen, scholars, intellectuals, opinion leaders, women and youth leaders presented to the Yemeni people of all its political and social categories, classes, forces and components this national dialogue vision. The directions and contents of this vision were formulated by the National Consultation Forum (NCF). The PCND, through serious and responsible discussions and deliberations ultimately concluded that the last opportunity for all Yemenis to confront the nationwide crisis is the mobilization of all national efforts and energies so we all represent a leverage for peaceful change and national salivation that relieves the country from the hands of despotism and corruption. The country should be rescued from this sophisticated cyclone of the crisis. Dire consequences should be avoided with the aim of having a safe and stable country where the dignity of Yemeni people, their rights and freedoms are preserved, and where respect for the principles and goals of the Yemeni revolution is restored and for the noble democratic choices of the Yemeni people agreed upon on 22nd of May 1990 as irrevocable choices.

The following is a summary of this proposed vision containing its key elements.

First:

Objective Diagnosis of the Current Crisis

Roots of the Crisis:

Despotic and autocratic clan or race based regimes that fostered central un-institutional power as a mean to justify and cover up its clan or race based monopoly of power, authority and resources. This is the true impasse and crisis that wasted the right of people in power and the right of country in its human and material resources and, thus, deepening retardation and waste.

Since 1930s, Yemenis were struggling and making substantial sacrifices with enormous number of martyrs to face and resolve this dilemma and abolishing its painful reflections by working to establish a national state as a frame for all Yemenis on the basis of equal citizenship, rule of law and a decentralized system representing the wishes of different groups and forces in the nation.

This continued until the morning of the 22nd of May 1990 when a peaceful unification was realized with all associated national and democratic contents, creating a favorable environment for resolving the historical crisis and opening horizons for the future through:

1. Ending the situation of geographic and social separation that affected the social and national identify of the Yemeni people and, thus, ensuring the direction of national resources to achieve envisaged social development and prosperity.
2. Eliminating all forms of factional discrimination, arrogance tendencies, autocracy and seizure of resources, which, under fragmentation and division, grew and dominated on other forms of consultative democratic regime dreamed of by Yemenis.
3. Opening doors for ousting all forms of autocratic rule, despotism and tyranny and establishing an institutionalized nation-state resting on the principles of equal citizenship and the rule of law as means to overcome the state of retardation and to catch up with the time, strengthen independence and national sovereignty.
4. The peaceful nature of the Yemeni unification represented a fresh start for new Yemeni history repudiating the use of violence for political purposes or in national struggle. Therefore, unity was correlated with political and partisan pluralism, the exchange of power through free and fair elections as inevitable conditions for enhancing the building of modern national state, which would not be built under the state of violence, fragmentation and conflicts over power, resources and decisions.

It is very unfortunate that events followed a different direction. A crisis broke out by the end of 1993 and a civil war erupted in the summer of 1994. In the wake of that war, the rulers pounced against the concepts of the national partnership and the nascent democratic project based on political and partisan pluralism and, hence, obstructed all horizons of hope that were open before Yemenis on 22nd of May 1990.

Second:

Key Manifestations of the Crisis (Read on …)

WaPo: HVT in Pakistan was Hussein al Yemeni

The comments came as a senior U.S. intelligence official revealed new details of a March 8 killing of a top al-Qaeda commander in the militant stronghold of Miram Shah in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s autonomous tribal region. The al-Qaeda official died in what local news reports described as a missile strike by a unmanned aerial vehicle. The CIA formally declines to acknowledge U.S. participation in such attacks inside Pakistani territory. Hussein al-Yemeni, the man killed in the attack, was identified by an intelligence official as among al-Qaeda’s top 20 leaders and a participant in the planning for a Dec. 30 suicide bombing at a CIA base in the province of Khost in eastern Afghanistan.

A good pdf round-up from ICT’s Internet Monitoring Group notes the recent issue of Sada al Malehem contains an article by Qasim Al-Rimi, “who was declared killed in the attacks by the Yemen Army, has published an article in the twelfth issue of the organization’s magazine,“Sada Al-Malahim”, where he threatens to attack the US, as it attacked the homes of the Yemeni people.34 It should be noted, that previous threats made by AQAP, were directed in a more general manner against US targets abroad and this could be the first direct publicly made threat against the US mainland.”

Also al Libbi authorizes the jihaddis to murder Yemeni soldiers but urges them to remain focused on bringing the battle to US soil. (Read on …)

- Urges American Muslims to commit jihad against the US
- Says the US is withholding the Nidal Hassan emails because the US is trying to convince the American public that it was an individual act
- US officials confirm Mobley left to US to seek out Awlaki and found him

London, England (CNN) — American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is calling for jihad against America, claiming “America is evil” in a new audio message obtained exclusively by CNN.

“With the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim,” he says in the recording that runs more than 12 minutes.

Al-Awlaki is believed to be hiding out in hills of southern Yemen with the protection of his very powerful family tribe.

CNN could not authenticate the recording as being by al-Awlaki, but sources have told CNN that they believe the voice on the recording is him and that the recording is genuine. (Read on …)

We’re all overdue for a feel-good story from Yemen and this might do it:

Flatbush retailer sees customers having fun, winning; buys himself a $3,000,000 Money winner
Yemen-born Abdo Ashariki has owned the Cortelyou Deli & Grocery on Cortelyou Rd. in Brooklyn for three years. The father of 10 children who range in age from 4 to 39 said he liked to watch his customers scratch and win prizes on the New York Lottery tickets he sold to them. “But why,” he asked, “should they have all the fun?” That’s why Ashariki said he usually bought one or two tickets for himself each day, a habit that paid off handsomely on February 20, 2010 when Ashariki purchased a $10 Money ticket that turned out to be a $3,000,000 winner. (Read on …)

Lets just hope the Saleh regime has the good sense to do the same, and not- as happened numerous times previously- announce the prisoners’ release repeatedly while keeping them in jail.

SANAA — Shiite rebels in north Yemen freed on Tuesday the 178 prisoners they were holding, a mediator announced, and said they were complying with a ceasefire that ended six months of fighting on February 12. (Read on …)