Armies of Liberation

Its very dangerous for a US ambassador or any western diplomat to be driving around Yemen. At the same time, the embassy can become an echo chamber when its primary input is from overt and covert Saleh loyalists who distort reality.

Ambassador Feierstein meets the people of Amran

US Embassy press release October 26, 2010

On October 26, U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein visited Amran City to discuss with government officials, journalists, teachers and youth how the United States can assist the people of Amran in overcoming the development challenges in their province.

Ambassador Feierstein met with Governor Kahlan Mujahed Abu Shawarib, visited a primary school supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development, took a walking tour of the beautiful and historic old city of Amran, spoke with students at Amran University, visited a cement factory, and conducted a roundtable with local journalists. During these meetings, he reiterated the support of the United States for the Yemeni government and people’s efforts to improve the quality of education and health services and to address security issues in Yemen.

The visit underscored the long and productive partnership between the United States and the people of Amran.

Local authorities do nothing, again. Lets hope its not screw worm again because that’s communicable.

al Tagheer: He appealed to the people of the Beni Department Bakary Jabal Habashi in Taiz governorate and the Ministry of Agriculture and the local authority to maintain the speed of intervention to curb the epidemic of strange cause the deaths of dozens of cattle a few days ago. (Read on …)

White House.gov By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, pursuant to section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA), title IV of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110 457), I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA.

(Read on …)

Yemen Post: A leader in the southern movement, Mohsin Al-Twairah, narrowly escaped an apparent assassination attempt in the southern of Yemen on Saturday after a hidden “sticky” bomb exploded underneath their parked, Toyota, villagers told the Yemen Post.

The car exploded in a pillar of flame and was destroyed. No one was injured in the attack.

I received a call just three minutes before it exploded, and the bomb may have been triggered by remote control,” Villagers cited Al-Twairah as saying.

The explosion happened just after 1: am Saturday in the car park close to a residential area of Jabal Al-Raidah of Halmeen district in Lahj province, the sources said.

Its just a happy story. The inability to procure funds for a dowry is one of the many social stressors young Yemenis face.

Saudi crown prince funds 3,200 marriages
October 22, 2010

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has funded the marriage of 3,200 Yemeni orphans, described by local officials as the largest mass wedding in the region, Saudi newspapers reported on Friday.

The couples tied the knot after getting the nod from Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, who is also Saudi Arabia’s deputy premier and defence minister.

The wedding, which was staged in Sanaa on Thursday is “a unique and unprecedented marriage even in the Middle East,” said Hameed Zaid, head of the Yemeni Orphans Charity Establishment, which organised the wedding.

On October 18, Saudi Arabia confirmed that they issued a warning to French authorities about an impending attack by the Yemeni al Qaeda branch. The alert was issued following the surrender of Saudi AQAP operative Jabir al Fayfi from Yemen. The irony of bin Laden defending woman’s rights is mind boggling.

CNN: A man purporting to be Osama Bin Laden warned France to get its troops out of Afghanistan and not to oppress Muslims at home in a tape broadcast by the Al-Jazeera network Wednesday.

“If you want to oppress us and thought that it was your right to ban the free women to wear the burqa, isn’t it our right to expel your occupying forces, your men from our lands?” the speaker demands, in reference to recently passed French legislation barring women from covering their faces in public. (Read on …)

This article from Al Masdar identifies them all as PSO, and there are many groups with a motive to purge the PSO.

The Canadian Press – ONLINE EDITION Yemen: Suspected al-Qaida gunmen kill intelligence officer, latest in assassination campaign. By: Ahmed Al-Haj, The Associated Press

SAN’A, Yemen – Suspected al-Qaida gunmen killed a senior intelligence officer in an eastern Yemeni province on Friday, apparently the latest in a campaign of assassinations by the militant group, security officials said.
(Read on …)

Its Naba News, so its hard to say, but its the third report in the last months. And who knows if they stay in Somalia or move on.

According to sources familiar with the “news News” that the information received by the security forces during the past two days revealed the flight of a group of al Qaeda in Yemen towards the African coast, after coordination with elements of the “youth movement” Somali, weighted by their move to Somalia. (Read on …)

Yemeni-Syrian committee discusses marine navigation company
[21/October/2010] DAMASCUS, Oct. 21 (Saba) – The Yemeni-Syrian Follow-up Committee discussed on Thursday the possibility to sep up a joint marine navigation company and direct marine line between the two countries ports.

The committee was co-chaired by Yemen Minister of Transport Khalid al-Wazir and the Syrian Minister of Transport Yarub Suleiman.

Al-Wazir affirmed that holding these talks comes as an implementation of directives of the Yemeni-Syrian High Committee, noting that this company will represent a big leap in the national economy contributing to economic cooperation between the two countries.

For his part, the Syrian minister pointed out to concern of Yemen to upgrade the bilateral relations.

The meeting also dealt with the related issues of transport to boost the level of commercial exchange between the two countries.

The economic crisis hits across the board.

al Masdar: As explained Hattar in response to a question by Deputy Abdul Malik Algosos on the reduction of bonuses allocated to the preachers from 10 thousand to 5 thousand riyals per month, he explained that the global financial crisis prevented the government’s ability to adopt the ten thousand riyals 6000 preacher in the various governorates of the republic, where distributed the same amount, which was based in the year 2008 of $ 720 million riyals by 5 thousand riyals for each speaker.
وتمنى الهتار على مجلس النواب الوقوف مع وزارته في الحصول الاعتمادات المطلوبة لصرف إعاشة 27 ألف جامع. Hattar and wished the House to stand with his ministry to get the appropriations required for the disbursement of subsistence 27 thousand inclusive.
من جانبه اعتبر النائب القصوص في تعقيبه على وزير الأوقاف أنه من المعيب استقطاع إعاشة خطباء المساجد وهي مسماة بإعاشة رئيس الجمهورية والتي جاءت أثناء الانتخابات الرئاسية 2006م ، مشيرا إلى أن خطباء في المحافظات الجنوبية ليس لهم سببا للعيش سوى هذه المخصصات. For his part, MP Algosos in commenting on the Minister of Awqaf and it is shameful deducting subsistence preachers Biashp is named President of the Republic, which came during the presidential election in 2006, pointing out that the preachers in the southern provinces have no reason to live apart from these provisions.

Their new plan– to bore us all to death, although the jihaddi paparazzi always gets pretty excited. Adam Gadhan’s 46 minutes snoozer of a video was released yesterday. Today its Anwar, al Qaeda’s Paris Hilton. Last week it was Inspire. Then there was Qasim al Reimi’s audio, rebranding AQAP as a 12,000 man Aden Abyan Islamic Army, which I assure you exists only in his qat addled head. At least now we know what they are scared of–the Mardin Declaration: The scholars meeting in Mardin issued what they dubbed as “The New Mardin Declaration” in which they declared the fatwa of Ibn Taymiyyah unsuitable for our times and should not be used by “extremists to justify violence”. Those are educated Islamic scholars and trained recognized clerics. Adam Gadhan and Anwar Awlaki are neither clerics nor scholars, just megalomaniac psychotic weasels.

Update: One and a half minutes? Not produced by al Malahim? hmmmm…. Where’s your webmaster Anwar? Xinhuanet: “The responsibility lying on the shoulder of the Muslim nation is heavy. The nation needs to be guided under dark circumstances in which the Muslims are exposed to fateful dangers,” Awlaki said in a message criticizing what he dubbed “the Yemeni corrupt religious scholars who are run by the government or political opposition parties.” The one and a half minutes video was not produced by Al-Malahim Foundation, the official media arm of the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

CNN Yemeni-American cleric and militant Anwar al-Awlaki appeared in a new video message Saturday, saying that Islam is in “severe need for guidance in these dark situations” and that the religion is “exposed to fateful dangers.”

In the limited portion of the video that was immediately available to CNN, al-Awlaki called on Muslim scholars to help address the situation.

Yemen deployed 30,000 troops to south Yemen in advance of the Gulf 20, scheduled for Nov. 22-Dec. 4 in Aden and Abyan. Since May, al-Qaida has been blamed for the deaths of more than 55 officers, mostly in the PSO and exclusively in the south. Southerners see the military build-up as an effort to quell the independence movement in advance of the Parliamentary elections schedule for early next year.

Hat tip: Small Wars Journal

Also Chatham House has another excellent report Yemen and Somalia: Terrorism, Shadow Networks and the Limitations of State-building.

SABA: Nearly half of the 26,246 children aged 6-59 months screened in five western districts of Saada in July 2010 were found to be suffering from global acute malnutrition; in one area, the proportion was as high as three out of four children. Overall, 17 per cent of the children screened suffer from severe acute malnutrition and 28 per cent from moderate acute malnutrition.

“Malnutrition is the main underlying cause of death for young children in Yemen, and therefore this grim situation could spell disaster for the children of Saada,” said Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF Representative in Yemen. “As winter approaches, thousands of children are at serious risk if we are not able to act immediately.” (Read on …)

Just in time for the investment conference on oil, gas and minerals. Other estimates are that Yemen’s oil reserves will be depleted in under 10 years. The attempted renegotiation of the LNG contracts, five years later, isn’t going to generate much confidence. While that discussion centers on the sale price to South Korea, the only price parliament knows, the fact that TOTAL sold a third of the gas as similarly low prices to its subsidiary TOTAL Gas is still under the radar.

Yemen Observer The chairman of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Authority, Engineer Nasr Ali al-Humaidi, said that studies by the authority revealed that the total oil reserves in the productive blocks reach to around 11.9 billion barrels. (Read on …)

Saudi authorities had no information about him before his arrest and haven’t been notified of his arrest.

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – The Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry informed Asharq Al-Awsat yesterday that it had not received any information from Yemen implicating Yemeni national Saleh al-Rimi of involvement with the Al Qaeda organization. (Read on …)

News Yemen: The air forces have carried out new raids on suspected al-Qaeda sites in Thaobah in Modiya of the southern province of Abyan on Tuesday.

Local source told News Yemen that at least four missiles were fired at the area and led to the demolition of a number of houses. The strikes did not result in casualties, said the source. Thaobah is a mountainous area, 20 km from the city of Lawdar.

Journalist Ahmed al-Qane, in Thaobah, told News Yemen that the targeted elements have suddenly gathered in the area after they were expelled earlier by sheikhs and social figures to Al-Majala. The government increased campaign against suspected al-Qaeda militants in Abyan after militants ambushed and killed a security official, brother of Abyan’s governor and tried to assassinate the governor himself.

al Motamar: He added that confrontations by security forces and a number of al-Qaeda elements resulted in killing more than 6 of them in the past days and the capture of the main wanted the terrorist Hani al-Thurayah and found in his possession dangerous documents for al-Qaeda revealing plots on targeting security personalities in Abyan province.

There indications that there is some plot afoot to assassinate President Saleh and his son, Ahmed. This would explain Saleh’s renewed interest in bombing al Qaeda. US officials notified Saleh in the summer of 2009 that there was some intel about AQAP plans to target the top of the regime. The only way the assassination of Saleh would benefit AQAP is if the replacement is even more amenable to them, for example General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, who is Ahmed’s rival to the throne and who would enable the further entrenchment of an al Qaeda state. The charges against Abdulelah the journalist are entirely unsubstantiated, and include being part of this plot to assassinate Saleh and Ahmed, which may indicate that the plot, if it exists, is coming out of al Wahishi’s faction.

Sahwa Net – Journalist Abdul-Elah Haidar who was arrested by the Yemeni authorities on August is to be referred to the Specialized Penal Court on Wednesday. The lawyer of Haidar, Abdul-Rahman Barman, said Hiadar was accused of provocation for the killing of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his son, Ahmed, and belonging to an armed sabotage gang of al-Qaeda.

CNN, 12/09: “Solid intelligence” from U.S. and Yemen services finally persuaded Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh last summer to accept increased help in fighting al Qaeda in his country, a senior U.S. official told CNN.
After years of pressure from the United States to crack down on al Qaeda in Yemen, Saleh was persuaded to accept help after he was presented with intelligence that al Qaeda “was targeting inner-circle Yemeni leaders,” and that there was a growing number of terrorist training camps in Yemen, the official said.

The Saudi view of the al Fayfi surrender. Earlier reporting here including the alert on France. The murderer of the French engineer was a fan of Anwar Awlaki.

JEDDAH: The Ministry of Interior is expected to release details soon of a Saudi on its 2009 list of persons wanted in connection with security issues who has expressed the wish to return from Afghanistan, sources have told Okaz/Saudi Gazette.
The move would reduce the list to 70, following the ministry statement Friday announcing the return of Jabir Bin Jibran Ali Al-Faifi from Yemen.
A Yemeni official told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that security authorities in the Lawdar area of the Abyan province in south Yemen took Al-Faifi into custody on Sep. 9 after he had informed them of his whereabouts with other members of the so-called Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and his desire to hand himself in.
The official said that a second member of the organization, Jalal Al-Saidi, handed himself in at the same time in Lawdar, and that the two events happened during a two-week long Yemeni security forces campaign in Ramadan in pursuit of Al-Qaeda members who managed to flee. (Read on …)

New estimates today are 300 more families are displaced from this latest round of fighting, about 3000 people, as always mostly women, children and the elderly. Its hard to say that the fighters arriving for the battle are all currently al Qaeda, but they may be by the time its over. The resumption of air strikes against mountainous hideouts may be effective, but they are counter-productive in residential areas.

WT: Security sources said the Yemen Air Force has renewed operations against Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). They said the Air Force has employed the MiG-29 fighter-jet and helicopters to attack Al Qaida strongholds in southern Yemen. “The Air Force has been assisted by Western trainers to identify and track terrorist targets,” a security source said. On Oct. 16-17, MiG-29 aircraft struck suspected AQAP strongholds in the mountains near Lawder, reportedly killing five operatives. The sources said more than 100 Al Qaida fighters were believed to have fled Lawder for the mountains of the Abyan province.

Army Retiree Killed, Civilians Injured as Planes Strike Al-Qaeda Positions in Abyan

Yemen Post Staff: An army retiree was killed and two women and a child were injured when planes struck a village in Modya district, Abyan, where the army is fighting and hunting murderous Al-Qaeda militants, the Alsahwa website reported on Sunday.

Five homes were destroyed, livestock were killed and many families fled Thauba village heading to nearby areas, it said.

In what seems a retaliatory attack against the escalating large-scale operations against its members, Al-Qaeda attacked today a military vehicle in the Thra Mountain in the district, but the fate of its crew was nuclear. The vehicle, carrying food supplies for the forces, was completely destroyed. (Read on …)