Armies of Liberation

yeah yeah Im not supposed to be here but anyway:

Taiz, tanks have been shelling residential areas for some time:

Qaa, Sanaa, another repetitive tactic, stealing the dead: NYR: “Saleh’s thugs drag a killed protester in a barbaric way and kidnap his body in todays attack on the peaceful march in Qaa”

As long as I’m logged on, which wont be for long: State violence and collective punishment is ongoing and spiked in Sana’a City, Taiz (8 killed), Hodeidah ( six wounded), Arhab, suburban Sana’a, ( (7 dead) and other governorates in Yemen since UN SC res 2014, Saleh is spewing new/same old BS like a ceasefire, as child health indicators are way down and “Yemen is on the verge of a true, deep humanitarian disaster,” Geert Cappelaere, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Yemen, told journalists in Geneva on 24 October.

CNN: At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured Tuesday in clashes between Yemeni government security forces in the country’s capital and the province of Taiz, medical officials reported.

Two died when security forces opened fire on thousands of anti-government protesters in Sanaa, the medical officials said.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Qubati, a medic at a field hospital there, said “security forces were shooting at protesters immediately after the protests started in Sanaa.” Eleven of the injured were in critical condition, he added.
(Read on …)

My article on the Tawakkol/Nobel/ Muslim Brotherhood controversy is here, click. It says Islah founder al Zindani openly advocates jihadist violence, but he’s Saleh’s buddy, not Tawakkol’s. Furthermore the protesters reject the ineffectual opposition parties entirely and advocate a parliamentary system that will reinforce political diversity and empower small parties, minorities and independents. (The US backed GCC plan will empower the radicals, Islah and the status quo; one reason the protesters reject it entirely.)

This is a current interview and video of Tawakkol at Democracy Now and her statement with Ban Ki Moon is here

I am astonished that so many conservative commentators jumping in with both feet, meme of the day. Two of the most informed and rational are linked in my article, but there’s a dozen others going off who never covered the blood bath in Yemen or Saleh’s relationship with AQAP and are now obsessed with trashing Tawakkol as a radical solely because she belongs to the Islah party. Then logically all the Democrats should resign their party because of Bill Ayers (among other reasons).

Some analysis is based on Wikipedia depth understanding of Yemen. One theme was, Why doesn’t she join/create another party? Its Yemen. Tawakkol couldn’t get a license to text message news or establish a news paper for two years. No non-Saleh loyalist can create a new party. When I say the JMP is “diverse,” I mean Islamist oriented Islah joined with the secular YSP, socialist remnants of the ruling party of the former southern state, the PDRY, to form the JMP. The reason Islah itself is diverse is that the southerners’ YSP is the only other opposition party that has any seats in Parliament, due to the hegemony of the ruling GPC. Options to oppose Saleh from within the political system are limited to Islah or the socialists, and both have long been compromised and not fully within the opposition.

But overall, how Tawakkol feels about homosexuals (now that we know what she thinks about Jews) is much less relevant than the fact that Saleh is inserting National Security operatives (and paying al Qaeda) to create chaos in Abyan and the fact that he regularly releases AQAP operatives in a quid pro quo arrangement. Saleh asked for and got a fatwa against protesting. He plays the religion card internally and the terrorism card externally. The threat to US national security is not Tawakkol Karman.

Defector Ali Mohsen is very well deserving of scrutiny in this regard, as are US sweethearts, Saleh’s relatives, security force commanders and CT partners, the Four Thugs. Tawakkol Karman is a democracy activist representative of thousands of other democracy ideologues in Yemen. The backlash against her is more about the politicized Nobel Committee.

Updates: Rusty gets it, see The Arab World, It ain’t Switzerland

The same principle holds in Yemen where a woman with ties to Islamists won the Nobel Peace prize. I don’t give the Nobel Prize much credence as anything more than what Norwegian politicians think, but the reaction about Tawakkol Karman sharing in the prize has been, well, kinda stupid.

This isn’t the choice between a pro-American dictator and Lockean liberals, it’s the choice between a Pakistani like “ally” which pays lip service to the GWOT but who had deep ties to al Qaeda and Saudi style Islamists and those that oppose him. That the opposition is made up of other Islamists is just part of the game you play in the Arab world. It’s also made up of socialists, Baathists, and whatever other insane and discredited ideology still lingering in the region.

Yes, exactly, there are actually Nasserites. All the parties are left over from before 1990’s unity and have a stale ideologies. They don’t really function as parties in that they are top down organizations that don’t ask their members for input or have real transitions of power or transparency themselves.

There are plans in work for a democratic party, but Saleh has to go before it can be founded.

Below is a write up from MEMRI that notes Tawakkol is of a liberal mindset. The MEMRI article says she renounced her Islah membership in favor of the democratic demands of the revolution. Like my article, it highlights her activism in favor of journalists, villagers and women’s rights. It also says that she advocates safeguarding against extremists stealing the revolution by advancing a pluralist model of a transitional government.

There’s a couple of good citations including, “Her preference of liberal over Islamist views was also reflected in her call, during an interview, for equality between Muslim Yemenis and religious minorities such as the Jews, which would include the right to run for president.[13]”

“During the protests against President Saleh, Karman stood out as an independent leader representing no partisan position. Thus, for example, she refused to negotiate with the regime, though her party did negotiate with it.”

There are a few minor factual errors in the MEMRI article including, Tawakkol is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, whether or not they claim her. She is not and never was a member of Parliament. (She was elected to the ruling council of Islah because she is so popular, to the dismay of the hard liners in the party.) The name of her NGO, Women Journalists without Borders was stolen by a regime clone in 2006, the correct name for her NGO is Women Journalists without Chains.

Tawakkul Karman, one of the three women awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year, is a leader of the Yemeni protest movement who advocates nonviolent struggle for regime change in her country. A 32-year-old mother of three, she was born to a rural family in Taiz province. Her father, ‘Abd Al-Salam Khaled Karman, is a politician and lawyer, and her sister, Safa Karman, is a news editor for Al-Jazeera TV.[1]
After the family moved to San’a, she earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Science and Technology there, followed by a master’s in political science and a certificate in general education from Sana’a University. She also studied investigative journalism in the U.S.

Karman is active in trade unions, human rights organizations and media institutions in Yemen and outside it. She is a member of the Yemeni parliament on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood party, Al-Islah, and of the Youth Revolution Council. She is also the chair of Journalists without Borders in Yemen, and a prominent advocate of free press, women’s rights and human rights in her country. (Read on …)

Everyone seems to forget Saleh ignored two UN SC resolutions in 1994 (924 and 931) calling for an immediate ceasefire while he was shelling Aden, and he got away with it.

RFE: The United States has followed a UN condemnation of violence in Yemen with its own call for a transfer of power to begin “immediately” in the restive republic.

The UN Security Council on October 21 approved a resolution condemning the violence in Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh has resisted persistent protests and armed insurrection, and urged Saleh to step down without further delay. (Read on …)

It also could be state retribution for the massive pro-independence demonstration in Aden on Oct 14. 9/20 Update: or the whole thing is regime propaganda…

Yemen Post: Thursday evening, residents in Aden reported heavy shelling in the Crater area, saying that the explosions were so numerous and violent that they had to take cover into basements and nearby buildings….In other parts of the city gun-battles are raging between men in civilian clothes and regular Adeni residents.

With so much confusion and contradictory statements, it is really difficult to establish a clear picture. Some anti-regime protesters are claiming that the government is attacking the Revolution, while others are claiming that al-Qaeda elements are trying to take control over Aden as the town is strategically of great importance.

Continuing

AM Australia: Fears al Qaeda is behind attacks on Port of Aden, Saturday, October 22, 2011 08:03:00

(Read on …)

The protesters want a transitional council leading to a parliamentary system. The UN is backing the GCC plan which contains an immunity clause for Saleh and his cronies and re-entrenches the regime in under three months. Its astounding. With the ambiguity of neither endorsing or explicitly rejecting the immunity clause, and neither backing Saleh or calling for his departure, its a meaningless, toothless statement. And not only did Saleh renege on the GCC deal four times already, he ignored two UN SC resolutions in 1994. Speaking of which, the southerners are going to be so utterly disappointed that they were entirely overlooked as well.

CBS: The resolution was the first adopted by the U.N.’s most powerful body since the Arab Spring uprising in Yemen began eight months ago. It was clearly aimed at stepping up international pressure on Saleh, who was president of North Yemen from 1978 until 1990 when he became the first president of a unified Yemen….Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director for Human Rights Watch, said the organization welcomed “the long overdue condemnation of Yemeni government abuses,” but believed the council should have distanced itself from the council’s impunity deal.

“By signaling that there would be no consequence for the killing of Yemenis, the immunity deal has contributed to prolonging the bloodshed,” he said.

The White House said in a statement that the deal sends “a united and unambiguous signal to President Saleh that he must respond to the aspirations of the Yemeni people by transferring power immediately.”

The resolution calls for Saleh, or those authorized to act on his behalf, to immediately sign the Gulf Cooperation Council deal “to achieve a peaceful political transition of power … without further delay.”

Although the deal would give Saleh immunity, the resolution also underlines the need for an independent investigation into alleged human rights abuses “with a view to avoiding impunity.” — Unlike the resolution on Syria that was vetoed by Russia and China on Oct. 4, the Yemen resolution makes no mention of sanctions or any other measures.

With fighting intensifying, there are concerns that a civil war would significantly hurt efforts by the United States and Saudi Arabia to fight Yemen’s dangerous al Qaeda branch, and could turn the mountainous nation into a global haven for militants a short distance away from the vast oil fields of the Gulf and the key shipping lanes in the Arabian and Red seas.

Text below:

Security Council Condemns Human Rights Violations by Yemeni Authorities Abuses by ‘Other Actors’, after Months of Political Strife

Resolution 2014 (2011), Adopted Unanimously, Calls for End to Violence,

Acceptance of Gulf Cooperation Council Peace Plan, with Orderly Transfer of Power

Strongly condemning what it called human rights violations by authorities, and abuses by other actors, in Yemen following months of political strife, the Security Council this afternoon demanded that all sides immediately reject violence, and called on them to commit to a peaceful transition of power based on proposals by the major regional organization of the Arabian Gulf. (Read on …)

The Yemeni-American teenager is widely perceived in Yemen as an innocent, and therefore his death in a US drone strike is causing mass outrage on a level much, much greater than that of his father. There is a birth certificate showing he was 16 at the time of his death, and many photos have been posted. Like the December 2009 strikes, its the civilian casualties of US drone strikes that provoke mass public outrage. Yemeni would have liked to see some evidence on Awlaki or better yet, to bring him to trial. But killing his teen-age son, or any innocent teen, is way over the top of acceptable counter-terror collateral damage, Yemenis say.

Yemen Post According to the al-Awlaki family back in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, Abdul rahman al-Awlaki, the cleric’s son would have run away from home after news of his father’s death in a desperate bid to find him. The 17 year-old was killed subsequently in an American air raid this Friday. Outraged, his family is now speaking out against what they call a murder.

The family’s statements to the WaPo is here. His family says he ran away from home and was having a picnic when the drone hit. However what he was doing with known terrorist Ibrahim al Banaa and Fahd al Quso’s brother is unknown and not raised in the article.

Related: I posted this below but it belongs in a drone-related post: Marib Press Tribes in Marib issued a statement saying Sheikh Saleh al Taaman was killed in the air rad with Ibrahim al Banaa but not reported killed by the regime. The Sheikh was connected to the state’s security policy and paid by Ghalib al Qamish (PSO) 100K YR/month; tribesmen accuse the regime of the manipulating the terror file and US CT ops to retain power. They say the Sheikh was not listed among the dead and that’s reason to ignore the regime’s fatality lists.

uh, yeah. Then Yemen needs a transitional council to guide the way to a parliamentary system, not a new strongman, as the very sophisticated Yemeni protesters have been calling for from day one, to the anguish of the naive and disorganized international community.

Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Rupert Colville, Location: Geneva, Subject: Yemen

We condemn in the strongest terms the reported killing of a number of largely peaceful protestors in Sana’a and Taiz as a result of the indiscriminate use of force by Yemeni security forces since Saturday (15 October). Hundreds were reportedly injured by this disproportionate use of force against unarmed protestors.

We are extremely concerned that security forces continue to use excessive force in a climate of complete impunity for crimes resulting in heavy loss of life and injury, despite repeated pledges by the Government to the contrary. We reiterate our call for an international, independent, transparent investigation, for accountability and for justice. Those responsible for the hundreds of killings since the protest movement began in Yemen more than 8 months ago must be prosecuted, regardless of rank or title. (Read on …)