Armies of Liberation

One of the opposition leaders asked if Majawar was the Prime Minister of the government or the GPC, but the two are so well blended there’s little difference anymore. This speech took place at the government induced rally, where civil servants and students were forced to attend or face punitive actions.

WaPo SANAA (Reuters) – The Yemeni government accused the country’s opposition party of allying with armed elements fighting the state in the north and south, reducing prospects for national dialogue in a fractious country.

Separately, the government put 18 southern separatists on trial on Sunday on charges of incitement and threatening national unity, a move that could further increase tensions a day after four others were sentenced to jail terms of 10 years.

“Those who call themselves the opposition … have entered into suspicious alliances with groups outside of the system, the law and the constitution,” Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Megawar told a pro-government rally on Saturday.

“Your cheers are a condemnation of those who take up arms in the southern provinces,” he told the protesters, making a similar reference to northern Shi’ite rebels….

Will this cause consternation among Awlaki’s English language devotees? Stay tuned for next week’s episode of Anwar and the Pussycats. The vid at least puts an end to the speculation as to whether Anwar is an official and operational member of AQIY, although that was pretty clear in 2007.

Meanwhile its interesting that Awlaki is trying to blame violence against Muslims on some super secret western plot, when the al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen take credit for it themselves, and his boy toy al Wahishi gave a whole dissertation on why it is legitimate for them to murder Muslims who happen to be standing near a Western visitor in Yemen. Update at Jarret Brachman: Forum Members Debate Awlaki Contradictions

The Indian: Anwar al-Awlaqi claimed to have trained UK-educated Nigerian Islamist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who attempted to blow up a jet bound for Detroit Dec 25, 2009. He also said he was “proud” to have trained radical Islamist Nidal Hassan, a US-born doctor of Palestinian descent who shot dead 13 people and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November last year.

“I am proud to have been their teacher,” al-Awlaqi, who has dual Yemeni-US citizenship and was an imam of mosques in San Diego and Virginia, said in a video aired by Al-Jazeera channel.

(CNN) An– An American-born Muslim cleric has appeared in a video released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for the first time.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda recruiter and supporter based in Yemen, is on the United States’ list of al Qaeda leaders targeted for capture or assassination. He has appeared in other videos but has never before been featured in an official video by AQAP. (Read on …)

Time after time, after time after time, Saleh makes promises and fails to deliver. The Bahsraheel sons are still in jail after last week’s announcement of their impending release and 30 prisoners in Hadramout are on a hunger strike to force the president to live up to his word that political prisoners in the governorate would be released. The strikes by a variety of unions are related to the failure of the state to implement the 2005 Wages Strategy that was devised following the fuel riots.

Yemen Times SANAA, April 20 (Xinhua) — Up to 30 Yemeni political prisoners arrested over anti-unity counts went on an open hunger strike, protesting not being released, security officials said Sunday.

The prisoners began an open hunger strike on Saturday to press local authorities to free them upon a pardon granted by the country’s president early this month, according to a statement signed by the relatives of the detainees. (Read on …)

The donated tents are being diverted into the black market for smugglers to use as tarps on their shipments while thousand in an unofficial refugee camp are near death from starvation and disease.

HOOD: After preventing a Qatari aids :Five thousand displaced persons face death in Haradh,

Translated by:Nisreen Shadad

More than five thousand displaced persons (IDPs) face death in al-Qufl camp; unofficial camp, as a result of the lack of humanitarian aids.

The number of the IDPs is increasing and so their pitiful situation worsens. The Heavy rains affected IDPS’ health because of the contaminated and stagnant water, which is infectious diseases.

Moreover, the high temperature and living in a terbal (a type of tent or cover made of plastic) let their lives unbearable.

“The Local Council prevented a Qatari aid to provide them with tents,” said one the HOOD authentic sources. “There are a big number of international aids, that are smuggled to the black-market and used to cover the traders’ goods,” the sources added.

The IDPs demanded the humanitarian organizations to rescue their lives, otherwise they will die out of hunger
(Read on …)

Update: Saudi Ambassador, four were kidnapped by a tribe not the Houthis and released, Yemen Post

There is just so much of the Yemeni regime’s propaganda coming out of Reuters lately. I wonder how much it costs to buy a wire service. In this case, the Saudi government says it has no knowledge of a Saudi citizen kidnapped by the Houthi rebels as Reuters earlier reported. Saudi Gazette

SANA’A – A Saudi diplomatic source at the Kingdom’s embassy in Yemen said that he has no information about reports that Saudi citizens were kidnapped and then released by Houthi rebels near Amran Province 30 km north of the Yemeni capital.

The source emphasized that the embassy has been following up these reports with the responsible authorities at the Yemeni Ministry of Interior in an attempt to verify them.

This is such a bizarre story, not readily believable. The Houthi rebels intercepted communications from al Qaeda in Yemen to an anti-Hamas Salafi group in Gaza and they sent it to Haaretz. Al Qaeda in Yemen is planning to send Somalis from Yemen to Gaza for attacks and also to attack Jews in Yemen and launch a rocket from Saudi Arabia on a nuclear reactor in Israel. The Houthis, in sending the letters, are trying to demonstrate the difference between their ideology and al Qaeda’s in a bid to elicit US support for their cause, which they say is an end to discrimination by the Yemeni government.

Haaretz

The Yemen-based arm of Al-Qaida is examining the possibility of infiltrating terrorists into Israel disguised as Somali refugees crossing the border from Egypt or even as new immigrants from Ethiopia.

Shi’ite rebels yesterday sent another letter to Haaretz, the latest of several, in which they quote from a letter sent by Al-Qaida to members of a Salafist group in the Gaza Strip that is opposed to Hamas. (Read on …)

A good listing by RSF of the journalists in jail and on trial, calls for international intervention:

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns a sharp decline in the press freedom situation since the start of the second half of 2009. “What is happening in Yemen now is very serious,” the organisation said. “The situation of the media is getting worse by the day, with one prosecution after another. The international community must intercede as a matter of urgency.”
(Read on …)

No injuries except to the bomber. Some reports said it was a suicide bomber but the Brits say small bomb. The state news agency SABA says the device was a suicide vest and the bombers head was found three houses away. News Yemen identifies the attacker as 22 year old Othman Ali al-Selwi, who was trained in Mareb province. The attack on a convoy is not the first. In March 2009, al Qaeda attacked the motorcade of South Korean officials who were in Sana’a to investigate a lethal suicide attack on South Koran tourists days earlier.

(CNN) — The British ambassador to Yemen survived an attack on his convoy in the capital, Sanaa, Monday morning, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said.

“There was [a] small explosion beside the British Ambassador’s car. He was unhurt. No other Embassy staff or British Nationals were injured,” a statement said. Initial reports said two Yemenis — a man and a woman — were injured in the attack and taken to a nearby hospital. The convoy carrying Tim Torlot, 52, was near Berlin park and a short distance from the British embassy at the time of the blast.

Nearly related: The Debka spin is Saleh used US counter-terror funds to bribe al Qaeda to leave for Somalia: Failing to eradicate the al Qaeda presence by force, Salah summoned the tribal chiefs harboring al Qaeda centers and through them offered to pay the Islamists to leave the country. The bribe of an estimated $15-20 million was accepted and on April 7, 12 al Qaeda leaders, presenting themselves to the Somali Al-Shebab Islamist rebels as emissaries of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), turned up in Somalia to scout suitable areas under rebel control for new bases, their pockets well lined with US dollars to pay for their lease.

Its like a pro-government rally in North Korea or Cuba but the adoring crowds are less synchronized and color coordinated. Yemen Post

Thousands of Yemeni people, students and state employees gathered on Saturday at the Al-Thawra Stadium for the carnival called and organized by the General People’s Congress, the ruling party, the National Coalition Parties and civil society organizations within the celebrities on the 20th anniversary of unification. (Read on …)

AFP SANAA — A Yemeni court sentenced four southern separatists activist to 10 years in prison on Saturday for “harming national unity,” Saba state news agency said.

Abdullah Rajeh al-Yahari, Salem Ali al-Habshi, Nasser Mahfuz Baqazquz and Nasser Abdullah Bamithqal were convicted by a criminal court in Hadramut of “committing criminal acts aimed at harming national unity,” it said.

The list of charges included “violating the constitution, instigating armed rebellion, mobilising people to disobey constitutional authorities and the laws and spreading false information aimed at jeopardising peace and security.” The same court jailed Khalid Khamees Batalila to one year, followed by a year under surveillance, after convicting him of “chanting slogans that called for disobedience,” Saba said.

السلام مع الكرامه في اليمن . هل يمكن ايقاف دوامه الحرب ؟

ان جميع حروب صعدة الستة في اليمن هي نسخة من صورة واحدة ، باستثناء ان عدد القنابل اصبح أكبر و الأطفال اصبحوا اكثر معاناة والسجون أكثر ازدحاما. لقد منعت الحكومة اليمنية الغذاء والدواء والمساعدات الدولية للمدنيين في محافظة صعدة شمال البلاد كأسلوب للحرب منذ حرب عام 2004 اما القصف العشوائي للحكومة في حربها الثانية عام 2005 فقد شرد اكثر من 50،000 من المدنيين. وبحلول نهاية الحرب الخامسة فقد شردت 120،000 لاجئ. اما الحرب السادسة التي بدأت في آب / أغسطس 2009 فان القصف اليمني السعودي المشترك هدم أكثر من 9000 مبنى بينها المساجد والمدارس ، وقرى بأكملها مع وقف اطلاق النار في شباط / فبراير 2010 ، كان عدد اللاجئين الداخليين قد وصل الى ربع مليون نسمة. وقد دعت هيومن رايتس ووتش الى اجراء تحقيق في احتمالت جرائم الحرب.

افرج الحوثيون في شباط / فبراير عن 178 مدني وعسكري كانوا محتجزين لديهم ، واعادو عدد من جثث الجنود السعوديين ايضا. و أعلنت اليمن بالإفراج عن 161 من المعتقلين الحوثيين لكن المنظمة اليمنية للدفاع عن الحقوق والحريات (هود) : قالت بانها تم أطلاق سراح 32 معتقلا فقط من أصل 2,000
(Read on …)

I think President Saleh is hallucinating and US and European policy makers are in their own pipe dreams. Attariq publishes in the state run 14 October’s building. When al Hubaishi enters the 14 October building, he has some drummers and musicians precede him like he’s a king, seriously. And the two Bashraheel sons are still in jail.

SANA’A, Yemen: Soldiers stormed the building of 14 October, a national media company based in Al-Ma’ala, in the southern province of Aden, on the evening of 21 April in order to seize the latest issue of Al-Tariq, a daily newspaper it publishes. The building remained surrounded until yesterday morning. (Read on …)

In 2006, I wrote an article ( A Day in the Life of a Failing State) about a chickenpox outbreak in a remote village and how devastating it can be. There was some progress since (after one of the Dar al Hadeth Sheiks reversed his position that vaccines are a Zionist plot), but in Sa’ada, there are tens of thousands of children who were born since 2004 that have never seen a doctor. The following from IRIN

SANAA, 19 April 2010 (IRIN) – A 12-day measles and child polio vaccination campaign began on 17 April in parts of the troubled northern Yemeni governorate of Saada, targeting over 209,000 children, health officials say.

All under fives in seven of the governorate’s 15 districts will be vaccinated against both measles and polio. Those aged 5-15 will be vaccinated against measles, Hinbush Hussein Hinbush, head of the Public Health and Population Office (PHPO) in Saada, told IRIN.
(Read on …)

All of a sudden Nabi is al Qaeda again. Last year, he was leading a group of jihaddists for the state during the battle in Ja’ar. In the years before, state officials insisted he was a peaceful farmer and then that they captured him after a five year chase. In 2004, they reported al Nabi dead to the US. In 2005 (after Saleh visited Bush) Nabi was jailed and in an interview said that they were only jailed when the regime needed to use them as mercenaries against opposition of some sort or another.

AFP SANAA — Yemeni authorities arrested three alleged Al-Qaeda members accused of killing two policemen and blowing up an official’s vehicle in the southern province of Abyan, the defence ministry said Wednesday.

The three men, identified as Mujib Hafsah, Mohammed al-Bakawi and Mohammed Ismail, were arrested in the southern province of Aden on Sunday, the ministry’s news website 26sep.net said, citing a security source.

They are accused of blowing up the car of a local government official on April 19, while Bakawi and Ismail are also suspected of killing two policemen, the website said.

“During interrogations, the suspects admitted that they were appointed by Khaled Abdulnabi, a member of Al-Qaeda in Abyan province,” it said.

Abdulnabi was a leading member of the Aden-Abyan Islamic army, an armed group which was active in the south before it went into oblivion a few years ago.

They want a UN supervised referendum on unity. Thats about the only thing they agree on. They have done little to create a standardized representative mechanism throughout the South or even in the hot spots of Lahj and Dhalie. Its a rather comprehensive poll of southern leaders, but I think Nuba is missing and also that guy in the mountains, Shatour. There are also regular southern citizens who want a just system not necessarily separation.

Survey made by Aden News Agency: Southern Movement leaders refuse dialogues with Sana’a except under supervision of UN, and independence

Provinces / Aden News Agency / Exclusive / 22-04-2010

Leaders in the Southern Movement revived their absolute refusal to make any dialogues with the Yemeni government, except under an international supervision, and to discuss what they call it “disassembling the unification and leaving the land of the south”.

Leaders in the Southern Movement said through different talks to “Aden News Agency”, that they refuse any call of dialogue aims to exhaust time, and does not have international guarantees, indicating that any dialogue will be refused, except when the regime of the Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh confess that it occupied the south, and that it represents an occupation force. (Read on …)

The Yemeni military has bombed mosques and engaged in other acts of irreverence. In this case, police wanted to shoot protesters from the roof.

Sahwa Net – Three people were injured on Thursday during confrontations between security forces and precipitants of a funeral possession of a person who was killed by security men during prior protests.

Meanwhile, security forces arrested a mosque Imam Adel al-Jaadi as he refused to allow soldiers to up on the roof of the mosque and shoot fire on protestors. Al-Jaadi explained in a statement to Sahwa Net that the mosque was boycotted (surrounded?) by soldiers who centered on the mosque ground, so the women could not perform prayers inside the mosque.

No surprise there. Update: When I wrote the last article, I wasn’t sure of the break down between the rebels and the arbitrarily arrested, but if we take Abdelmalik’s figure of 1000 rebels in jail and Hassan Zaids figure of 1000 innocent civilians plus 500 disappeared, we come up something around HOOD’s figure of 2000 imprisoned in relation to the war.

Yemen rebel group asks government to free 1,000 detained members, Earth Times

Sana’a, Yemen – A Shiite rebel group that fought the national army in northern Yemen for more than five years called upon the government Friday to free around 1,000 members of the group captured during the conflict that ended in February. (Read on …)

Quite a logical manifesto by one of Yemen’s leading female activists

Marriage of the Small Girls, and the Absence of Religious Renewal and Reform

By / Tawakkol Abdul Salam Karman*

In our jurisprudence heritage there is a wide place for harmony and compatibility with the claims of banning the marriage of small girls and determining the age of eighteen as a minimum for marriage for girls, and this is exactly what is deemed by the Maliki school.. It is exactly what was transformed by Ibn Abbas, whom he said 23 years old, and 25 said by others, and who knows maybe there is space for what is higher.

In light of the broad claims by engaging the need to complete the process of religious reform and renewal, it is painful that we find that the horizon is narrower than the eye of a needle; since it was supposed to accomplish many of jurisprudence that achieve urgent requirements of the times .. and provide evidence that Islam is valid for all times and places. They are glued deep in the heritage and are looking for fatwas that are closer to the shackles and handcuffs which ,in the best situations, are no longer valid since hundreds of years.

The following day to the protest of Aleeman University in front of the Yemeni parliament opposed to enact a law forbids marriage of small girls, it was quoted by the news that ((a handicapped girl had been raped by several persons)), unless they will not hear in the future that there is a similar demonstration will emerge to claim the application of the punishments of God in the perpetrators, so I will claim from now, that the law of God has nothing to do with all this drivel, and what is required is a show of force and political presence, which is closer to the bad exploitation of religion for instantaneous political purposes.

* Anomaly and the psychological deviation (Read on …)

That’s big. The Parliamentary elections are scheduled for next year, and the ruling party and the JMP have been at an impasse on the reforms. The terms of the agreement are still unknown, even to their memberships. The opposition had held its first round of demonstrations in Sana’a and other cities recently.

Nationally, the Sa’ada war is over for now, and the Houthis are in discussions with the National Dialog Committee. Saleh was in Egypt talking to the “moderate” southerners and Fadhli had already reached an individual truce with the authorities. The main organized outlier is still the pro-independence southerners.

Ruling Party, Opposition Sign Deal for February Agreement

The General People’s Congress, the ruling party, the Joint Meeting Parties JMP, an opposition coalition in Yemen, have signed an amended minute on the February Agreement 2009 on the upcoming parliamentary elections, the News Yemen citing sources at the JMP reported on Thursday.

The deal was signed at the house of political advisor for President Saleh Abdul Karim Al-Eryani, the sources which gave no details were quoted as saying.

The two sides signed in February 2009 an agreement under which the parliamentary election was delayed until 2010 to have enough time to implement electoral reforms.

But later, disagreements over and commitment to the deal emerged with the two trading accusations of violating it. Wednesday’s minute comes as a good sign amid alarming political stalemate and deteriorating economy and security situations.

That would be very good.

France24: AFP – Yemeni authorities have reached agreement with management of the banned Al-Ayyam daily to free three detained staff members, the newspaper’s director told AFP on Wednesday.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh met with Al-Ayyam staff members Tuesday and promised to ensure the trio would be freed, said the director, Bashraheel Hisham Bashraheel.

He named the three as Hani Hisham Bashraheel, Mohammed Hisham Bashraheel and Arhab Hassan Yassin. (Read on …)