Armies of Liberation

It would be funny if there wasn’t so much slaughter also involved. No one who knows Saleh expected he would go to Saudi Arabia and sign and resign peacefully. He’s just buying time at the citizenry’s expense. State security forces stormed the protesters main square in Aden with armored vehicles, tanks and artillery, four killed, tents burnt, buildings destroyed. How can the international community offer immunity for legions of blood and decades of blood while the madman is still killing? A statement by CCYRC is below.

CNN: Yemen deal in limbo as mediator abruptly leaves presidential meeting

The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council abruptly left a meeting Saturday with Yemen’s president, departing Sanaa without comment and leaving a hard-fought political deal aimed at ending months of turmoil on the verge of collapse, said a senior Yemeni ruling party official.

Abdullatif Al-Zayani, the secretary-general of the six-nation coalition that helped broker the accord, arrived in the Yemeni capital earlier in the day. But his talks with President Ali Abdullah Saleh were cut short, and he appeared visibly angry as he passed reporters and refused to answer questions en route to his plane. (Read on …)

Are they out of their cotton-picking minds? On a practical level, there is no valid voter registry, so how could there be a presidential election within two months? It appears the US is trying to retain as much of the existing structure as possible. Saleh has to be blackmailing the US, there’s no other explanation. On an overt level, immunity for Saleh is also immunity for the US and Saudi Arabia. What the US and international community should be pushing for is a representative structure among the protesters instead of making repeated deliberate efforts to exclude them. This cringe inducing, obnoxious statement is blaming the protesters for their own deaths. The US is urging the protesters to welcome the foundation of a new tyranny. The GCC proposal (yesterday it was a deal, tomorrow it will be suggestion) has had the effect of divorcing the protesters and the public from the dysfunctional political structure and corrupted opposition parties, which is good. And in the end, the GPC is going to reject Saleh’s resignation, just like they rejected his proposal not to run again in 2006 and 1999.

http://yemen.usembassy.gov/ues.html,
PRESS RELEASES, US Embassy Statement on April 27 Events

The U.S. Embassy is distressed by the violence, April 27, that killed and injured hundreds of Yemeni citizens. It is especially disturbing that the violence took place on the eve of signing an historic agreement between the Government and the Joint Meeting Parties that will achieve through peaceful, democratic, and Constitutional means a transition of authority leading to new Presidential elections in July 2011.

The Embassy urges Yemeni citizens to demonstrate their commitment to this peaceful transition by avoiding all provocative demonstrations, marches, and speeches in the coming days and to welcome this opportunity to lay the foundation of a strong, peaceful, prosperous Yemen for the future. We also urge government security forces to refrain from using violence against demonstrators.

From the Carnegie Endowment, an excellent piece by Nadia al Saqqaf, Editor of the Yemen Times. Worth a full read but here’s a piece:

Youth Excluded from Gulf Initiatives

Although the youth were the ones to start Yemen’s revolution, they have been absent from high-level talks in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to address the crisis. Politicians on both sides say that this is because the youth are divided and do not have a unified leadership to invite. Indeed, today there are some 72 activist groups represented in Change Square, many of which are active online, particularly on Facebook. There are attempts to merge them into larger groups, but these efforts are taking longer than anticipated.

The problem for Yemen’s youth is that they had never exercised democracy in any true organizational sense before now. Except for a few activists, who are still divided among themselves on ideological and intellectual levels, the rest of the revolution’s youth have no idea how to organize themselves or how to draft a political program. Thus they remain easy prey for experienced politicians, whether they are pro-regime or opposition.

Saleh was never going to honor the GCC plan anyway, and his balking at leaving the country is reasonable (there very well could be a coup) and another tactic to encourage yet more concessions and reset the clock.

CNN: Yemen’s president says he won’t leave the country to sign a hard-fought political deal because he fears his departure could spark a coup, a senior ruling party official told CNN on Saturday.

The stance threatens to collapse an agreement brokered by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to end the violent political standoff across Yemen, still reeling this week from one of the deadliest days in months of protests that have pitted demonstrators against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. (Read on …)

The voter rolls were disqualified a few months ago.

The official opposition is willing to provide immunity to Saleh and his gang, and give him a month to tie up loose ends. Most protesters continue to demand that Saleh leave immediately, while others think Sharia will solve everything, reports Nasser Arrabyee

Ahram: Yemen’s official opposition and President Ali Abdullah Saleh have agreed on a US-backed, Saudi-led, Gulf Cooperation Council plan to see Saleh step down in one month from signing. Wednesday was the date set by the GCC officials for the Yemeni conflicting parties to sign the plan in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Sources from both sides confirmed to Al-Ahram Weekly on Tuesday they would sign the agreement in Riyadh on Wednesday or Saturday at the latest. Earlier in the week, the Islamist-led opposition coalition, which includes socialists and Nasserites (Arab Nationalists), had refused to form a unity government with the ruling party before Saleh steps down, as called for in the plan. American Ambassador to Yemen Gerlad Feierstein convinced the opposition to agree on the plan as a whole. (Read on …)

US Hueys over Yemen
By Nick Turse
Asia Times In recent weeks, Yemeni protesters calling for an immediate end to the 32-year reign of United States-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh have been met with increasing violence at the hands of state security forces. A recent pledge by Saleh to step down, one of many that has not met demonstrators’ demands, has yet to halt the protests or violence by the troops backing his regime. (Read on …)

Security forces were firing straight into the crowd again, and the 100 injured are suffering from gunshots not tear gas. The YP also reports “85 antigovernment protesters were kidnapped by the republican guards and the central security forces.”

Yemen Post: At least twelve anti government protesters were killed and over a hundred injured when the security forces intercepted and attacked a massive demonstration calling for an immediate ouster of the regime in the Yemeni capital Sana’a on Wednesday.

“We don’t have enough medicine to treat the over one hundred shot by the government. We call on the international community to give us medicine to save those the government shot from dying,” said Dr. Naneeb Ghanem, a senior medical staff member at Sanaa change square.

He added, “the language of bullets and killing is what this regime wants to spread. It’s a massacre against humanity and human rights. Eleven have been killed and the number is expected to rise.”

The death toll was expected to rise from the attack on the hundreds of thousands of the protesters at the TV and Radio Corporation area, medical sources said.

The security forces are continuing heavy fire after they had failed to stop the demonstrators, who are chanting slogans demanding the resignation of President Saleh and condemning the deadly crackdown on the people seeking change, said Iyad Muhammad, a protester.

Two Killed in Anti government Protesters Yemen Post

At least two anti government protesters were killed and several others wounded in two separate clashes with security forces in Ibb and Al-Baitha provinces.

One was shot dead in Ibb province and 30 others wounded, seven of them by live bullets and the others by stones and batons, in clashes between anti-Saleh protesters demanding the fall of embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime and security forces in plain clothes.

The second protester was killed in the southern province of Al-Baitha where tens of thousands of anti-Saleh protesters marched on Monday demanding an end to Saleh’s regime.

Medical and eyewitnesses in the southern province of Taiz said that 250 anti-government protesters were treated for inhaling tear gas and 50 were wounded by live bullets and stones when security forces tried to disperse protesters taking to the streets demanding immediate ouster for President Saleh.

President Saleh’s regime has been facing nationwide protests in 15 of Yemen’s province since the beginning of February.

More than 130 demonstrators have been killed in clashes with the security forces since late January.