Armies of Liberation

Convicted USS Cole bomber, Fahd al Quso, who is on the FBIs MWT list as well as the UNs 1267 listing, dispels reports of his death with an interview with a Yemeni journalist, Arafat Mudabish, for Asharq al-Awsat in Yemen’s Shabwa province. Al Quso was previously reported killed in Pakistan in September 2010. Al Quso, wearing the brown scarf, expressed surprise at reports of his death, noting he is better off in Yemen than Pakistan. A write up here at Nasher News:

He was surprised by “rumors” of his death, and also surprised by the reports of its presence in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. He added “On the contrary I was in Yemen better under crisis situations with the Yemeni government.”

Al Quso did not deny or confirm the existence of the camps of Al Qaeda in the mountains of Shabwa which is protected by the tribes there, but he said that the shelling of his ranch in the area in December of last year, killing five people and destroying farm. (ed-This is was a US air strike, per Wikileaks.)

He criticized the Yemeni government Bowl, and said that it inflated the size of an al Qaeda presence in Yemen in order to “justify the killing of innocent people in the bombing, which occurs in some areas.”

Fahd al Quo stressed that he had received offers from the Yemeni government which invited him to surrender himself in exchange for guarantees and promises did not talk about details.

Asharq Alawasat article below:
(Read on …)

Relief Web< Yemen – Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #1, Fiscal Year (FY) 2011

Source: United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Date: 15 Dec 2010

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

- In early November, a USAID/OFDA Regional Advisor (RA) visited Sana'a, Yemen, to review the humanitarian situation and response in northern Yemen. During the visit, the RA met with USAID/Yemen staff and other U.S. Government (USG) officials, and representatives from U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the Government of Yemen (RoYG). (Read on …)

Feds bust suspected Yemeni terror ring in N.C.
Convenience stores, mosque raided in alleged al-Qaida finance scheme
Posted: December 15, 2010
11:06 am Eastern WorldNetDaily

Federal agents have raided several convenience stores and a mosque in tiny Henderson, N.C., while arresting at least two Muslim men in connection with the raid.

Authorities suspect the stores were operating a so-called hawala money-transfer network supporting terrorist activities in Yemen, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, WND has learned. (Read on …)

Yemen Post: In an interview with Al-Jazeera this week, I was asked if the Yemeni people were shocked by the WikiLeaks reports. I said that most of what was revealed was expected, and the Yemeni people already know that its government does not have a national agenda. Those nations that do not have agendas are forced to follow others agendas. That is the policy of life. (Read on …)

Yemen Post: At least 12 Houthi followers were killed, and 15 others wounded in an exchange of gunfire that erupted between Houthi followers and tribesmen in Sa’ada Province. (Read on …)

I think every detail of the 2006 and 2009 agreements between the JMP and GPC has been violated.

Yemen Post The ruling party voted the new controversial election law amid the refusal of other parliamentary blocs to the vote, in a move that was described as a coup against all agreements between the General People’s Congress and the opposition topped by February 2009 deal. (Read on …)

The al Qaeda-centric analysis focused on threat assessment rightfully bemoans the probable impact of Wikileaks on AQAP’s media arms. Wikileaks will be exploited by al Qaeda media moguls, including the pseudo cleric Anwar al Awlaki and the ever obnoxious Samir Khan. They might even mention it in the Arabic mag. But Wikileaks is also bolstering AQAP’s counter-weights.

The Houthis, southerners, HR activists, tribesmen and the rest of Yemen are also finding the documents support their worldviews, which in many cases contain overlapping premises. In the Yemeni equilibrium, the documents strengthen many narratives, not just al Qaeda’s, but only to the extent that the information is being incorporated. (For more read, my paper Comparative Counter-insurgency in Yemen at the GLORIA center.)

Still its all old news. The Yemeni intelligence’s attempt to assassinate General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar by giving Saudi fighter jets false coordinates is not even slightly shocking to the average farmer. Yemen is the land of conspiracy theories because Yemen is the land of conspiracies. To follow is an excerpt of an insightful, as usual, Yemen Times editorial which puts the impact of the documents in context:

Wikileaks and public opinion, Nadia Al-Sakkaf: In countries like Yemen, it’s hard to say a ‘public opinion’ really exists. Most of the people are unaware of politics because they either illiterate or tucked away in rural areas with no access to independent news. Even for those who are aware, they are indifferent because they are not interested.

Moreover, the Yemeni nation’s memory is very short and the country as a whole lacks vision. This means that people do not look into the past to make decisions about the present and future. This is probably due to lack of education and awareness but mostly because a sense of ownership does not really exist.

Most Yemenis do not think they have a say or a responsibility towards their country. They do not take ownership of the situation of Yemen today and their role in making things better.

This is why even a hundred Wikileaks will not make a difference for Yemen. It will only confirm what we already know and have done nothing about.

This is also why the Yemeni government did not think much before responding with, “the information is both un-true and a misinterpretation of what really happened and that Yemen does not care about what is being said or published.”

What really matters is creating a strong public opinion in Yemen and making sure that this is a representative of the people and that it has value. Without this, nothing anyone can do or say will make any difference.

For another good view of Wiki/Yemen, see the YT’s Is Yemen’s Cable a Breaking Point?

In 2005 it was about a third of all spending was allocated to the military, its a massive swamp of corruption.

Yemen Observer: A recent official report revealed that about 40 percent of the Yemeni budget is spent on fighting terrorism. The terrorist operations have also caused losses in the tourism sector that amounted to one billion dollars, while these operations have negatively impacted development, poverty, and unemployment alleviation due to the allocation of large amounts to of fund to fight terrorism from an already meager budget. (Read on …)

Women Journalists Without Chains also tallies HR violations against journalists by perpetrator, finding the National Security at the top of the list.

Yemen security services ranked first as human rights violators
9/12/2010 – Sahwa Net: National Forum of Human Rights has said that human rights violations sharply increased in last month, November, pointing out that Security services were at the top of the human rights violators list after al-Qaeda organization and other armed groups. (Read on …)

I really should start making bets for money. Al Alimi was summoned to Parliament earlier in the week to discuss the revelation that he joked about lying to Parliament. (At the time of the December airstrike, the JMP opposition parties withdrew but the uber-majority GPC dutifully pretended to believe the lie.) Al Alimi rescheduled for today, Saturday, and was again a no-show. Yemen’s rubber stamp parliament, dominated by President Saleh’s ruling GPC, doesn’t have the capacity to hold al Alimi or any of the ministers to account.

The last time he was summoned I believe was after the second al Qaeda attack on the South Koreans in 2008. A pedestrian suicide bomber bounced off the convoy of SK officials in Yemen to investigate the earlier suicide attack that killed three SK tourists in Hadramout. It was apparent that AQAP had information on the route of the convoy in advance. When he finally showed up, al Alimi admitted that the security services are infiltrated by al Qaeda, but he diagnosed it as low level and a function of corruption. Then he denied saying it. And in case you are interested, the headline coming out of the Human Rights conference was, “Alimi calls for civil society organizations to expose human rights violations and document them.” (Read on …)

ADEN, Yemen — A court in Yemen’s Hadramaut province set up for security cases on Saturday sentenced 12 alleged Al-Qaeda members to between four and seven years in jail, a judicial official said. (Read on …)

The following article is a guest post by Fathia Mohamed Absie*

It seems as though, every month if not every other week, there is a terror plot that gets disrupted somewhere in the U.S. These plots are in most cases carried out by some so called Muslim jihadist. Every time I hear news of something bad happening somewhere in the U.S, my heart skips a beat and I start to pray that it is not a Muslim person at the helm of it.

The Corvallis, Oregon plot have shocked me even further because the young man who attempted to carry out the crime is from my home land, Somalia. Like me, Mohamed Osman Mohamud is a naturalized American citizen who came to this country as a baby. After listening to stories of friends of the family, I thought the kid was almost born here. He is from a middle class family. His father is an engineer and his mother a stay at home mother who was never absent from his life. Young Osman had everything going for him, a smart young man who was a college student at OSU with a bright future. He had the potential to become anything he set his mind on unlike the many young Somalis that are stuck in Somalia trying to survive flying bullets or those who have no choice but to live in an overcrowded refugee camps with no foreseeable bright future.
(Read on …)

Maybe he’s in Aden at his mum’s house building a bomb in the kitchen, (just random speculation). Fahd was convicted in the USS Cole bombing and granted early release in 2007.

Yemen Observer: Al-Quso is believed to be hiding in the al-Said district of Shabwa, close to the Abyan province border according to Major Mansoor Hadi, security director of the Mayfa district of Shabwa. However, the major was unsure if this location was accurate.

Ahmed Salim abdul Salam, one of ‘Al al-Abdullah bin Dahah Sheikhs in Wadi Rafadh, al-Quso’s hometown, was unaware of his whereabouts.

“He’s not here. They released news about his death and we’re not sure whether he is alive or dead,” said the Sheikh. He also stated that al-Quso, along with Qasim al-Raymi, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and Said al-Shihri lived in Wadi Rafadh for a period of time following al-Quso’s release in 2007.

“American drones flew over us yesterday and earlier today,” said the Sheikh when asked if he believed that US forces were actively engaged in searching for al-Quso.

Break my heart. He was supposed to be dead in Pakistan. What was that all about?

Why would people protest the imposition of the death penalty when five people were killed in the bombing? Generally the prevailing sentiment is that it is a politicized, unjust verdict:

1- Previously the Governor of Aden, Adnan al Jifri, held a news conference during which he accused the Director of Aden Security, General Abdullah Abdo Kiran, of being behind the bombing. The two are in competition for the title King of Graft. Then the head of Aden Security retaliated by organizing a protest against the governor.
2- Allegations of torture to gain a confession, as usual
3- Irregular trial proceedings, as usual

Update: News Yemen reports that southern gunmen kidnapped five soldiers and an officer in Dhalie and two others in Lahj. Unfortunately kidnapping is a time honored and ofter effective tactic to press demands on the government. The southern movement: still not ready for prime time. There’s much more modern and effective methods they could have used to counter and discredit the verdict. Update 2: HOOD condemns everything: the bombing, the unfair verdict, the suppression of the protests and the kidnappings. Dittos.

Death sentence against Aden sporting club bomber By Nasser Arrabyee/11/12/2010:
A Yemeni young man was sentenced to death on Saturday after being convicted of bombing a football club in the southern city of Aden where five people were killed and 17 others injured last October. (Read on …)

For more on the al Ghadeer arrests in Amran, click here. Mr. Baoum, leader of one of the southern independence factions was arrested early in November. More at Aden News Agency.

News Yemen: Political sources said Friday that presidential directives issued to release the leading figure in the Southern Movement, Hassan Baom, his son and his colleagues. Sources also said that 22 supporters of Houthis, arrested on the al-Ghadir Day in Amran, have been released.

Al-Haq party welcomed the releases of detainees and called on the government to release all detainees and make real peace in Sa’ada. It also called on political parties and human rights organizations to play a role over the detention of innocent people without any legal justification for more than five years.

via Evan Kohlmann: A senior Yemeni Al-Qaida commander, Abu Abdelrahman al-Qahtani, has reportedly been killed in a U.S. airstrike on the Pak-Afghan border. Abu Abdelrahman al-Qahtani has been linked to Camp Chapman bomber Humam al-Balawi (aka Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani). Al-Qahtani was also closely tied to 2 Yemeni Al-Qaida bombmakers, “Ghazwan al-Yemeni” and “Abu Dujanah as-Sanaani”, killed in the past year. Even from the frontline in AFPAK, al-Qahtani was a regular contributor to the now-defunct “Al-Fallujah” jihadi social networking web forum. According to a published biography, Abu Abdelrahman al-Qahtani “was 45 years of age, half of which he spent in the fields of jihad.

On the 5th it was reported that a Yemeni al Shabab senior commander, named Rajah Abu Khalid was killed following a battle in Mogadishu, Somalia.

a) thats what they said about Fahd al Quso, killed in Pakistan
b) better odds of getting them outside Yemen than in?
c) Yemenis increasingly moving into leadership positions, consolidating the reach of AQAP?
d) not to be confused with the dead/undead Naif al Qatani, a Saudi financier
(Read on …)

International lawyer Adel Al Dhahab diagnosed the central obstacle to reform in Yemen: so many are guilty of serious legal infractions. There is no latitude for reform when the establishment of the rule of law would penalize those who are required to implement it. The structural component that has been missing from all proposed solutions to Yemen’s crises is a general amnesty.

Mr. Al Dhahab is a Yemeni practicing law in Canada with vast experience in civil activism, international law, the intricacies of Yemen’s political affairs and the social and tribal dynamics in Yemen.

Al Dhahab explained in a recent paper, The Missing Step, “What Yemen needs is an amnesty that will pardon all offenders across the board, whether political crime or corruption or tribal offenses. It requires selecting a cut-off date where selected crimes that occurred prior are nullified and crimes that happen after are prosecuted. “

Amnesty is a mechanism endorsed by the UN in exceptional circumstances. It was implemented in Algeria in 2006 and Iraq in February 2008. The concept of amnesty also has a strong basis in Islamic law, a prerequisite in the conservative country. (Read on …)

When will they change the UN and US ambassadors, both Saleh’s brother-in-laws from various of his four wives who have been ensconced for ages and ages?

LONDON, Dec.09 (Saba) – Queen Elizabeth II received at her Buckingham Palace in London credentials of the new Yemeni ambassador to the United Kingdom Abdullah Ali Al-Redhi.

The ambassador conveyed greetings of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his wishes for the queen, her family and people of the United Kingdom all success and progress…For her part, Queen Elizabeth II hailed the bilateral relations between the friendly countries and the level which has been achieved ,welcoming and hoping him all success in his tenure.

I’m on my fourth ambassador already, and I was also surprised by the new US ambassador’s trip to Amran and the meeting with Islah. The embassy’s immediate and forceful response to the Houthis’ accusation is also new and was well recieved. (Yemen is a country with a centuries long tradition of antagonistic and often humorous public poetry between opposing groups, and the tribe with the better poem scores points in the overall battle for public opinion. That tradition has continued in the colorful Yemeni press.) The following article discusses Ambassador Feierstein’s “courageous approach” to the sensitive issues in Yemen, in that he acknowledged their existence to civil society and publicly recognizes the various actors in the internal affairs of Yemen.

Fire Stein and diplomatic spaces shortcut الاثنين, 01-نوفمبر-2010 Monday, 2001 – November -2010
( الوطن ) – عزيز محمد – (Home) – Mohammed Aziz -

خلافاًَ لسلفه ستيفن سيش أظهر سفير واشنطن الجديد في اليمن جيرالد فاير ستاين وجهاً جديداً للدبلوماسية الأمريكية التي ظلت تتعامل مع ملف اليمن السياسي عن طريق طرف ثالث تمثل بمجموعة الاتحاد الأوروبي والمؤسسات المعنية بالشأن الديمقراطي كالمعهد الديمقراطي وغيره في حين كانت الوفود القادمة من واشنطن هي المعنية بالجانب الامني. Unlike his predecessor Stephen Seche, Gerald Fire Stein, Washington’s new ambassador in Yemen, showed the new face of American diplomacy, (Read on …)

My interview with the Aden News Agency

Jane Novak… a name that has become coupled with Yemen, not Yemen that is known as it is known by those who doesn’t know it, but Yemen as it known by its people, with all its sorrows and economical, political and humanitarian setbacks, that are recognized by Jane Novak from a distance, from the United States, her country. The human rights, political and media activist, Jane Novak, has devoted herself for Yemen and its several issues, and whom the distance couldn’t separate her from Yemen’s issues, but she has recognized them at first hand, whether traditionally or through the modern technology.

Jane Novak is known for her severe defense for the human rights in Yemen and the freedom of the press and word, besides giving a number of initiatives that may extract Yemen from its political crises. She is also known for her unhurried reading of the reality of Yemen, and refraining from reading one-media propaganda, while she wrote tens of articles about Yemen and its issues accurately and objectively on famous websites like World Press, Arab American News, in addition to her well-known website the Armies of Liberation, this empathy gained her the sympathy of many of the Southern Case supporters in the south, and Sa’ada Case in the north.

The Aden News Agency has conducted an exclusive interview with the writer Jane Novak, we hope that it would cast some light on the fact of the different and recent issues of Yemen.

* You were attacked by official Yemeni media, are you afraid of visiting Yemen?

- The Yemeni government treats me as if I am a Yemeni journalist. They blocked my website for years, introduced false testimony about me in court and slandered me in the newspapers. We know what happens to Yemeni journalists, they get arrested, kidnapped and imprisoned and suffer other penalties for their work. The Yemeni government has no ethics or humanitarian limitations regarding its own citizens. The reason for the targeting of Yemeni journalists is that the truth is so dangerous to the regime. The Yemeni government spends a lot of energy creating propaganda and false realities for the Yemeni citizens and the international community.

* Do not you think that there is a contradiction between the concept of “democracy” and the United States’ support for the regime of President Saleh that is in power in since 1978? (Read on …)