Armies of Liberation

UN re-opening office in Sa’ada City.

Reuters: “Now the situation is better we are just planning to send the staff back again as soon as next week,” he said, adding that life is back to normal in Saada city. The office houses various U.N. relief agencies.

Humanitarian access is needed to other areas in Saada as well as al-Jawf and Amran governorates, where continued insecurity and land mines have hampered or delayed aid distribution, a U.N. statement said Friday.

“Security is the same as it was before the war … Outside Saada city we still don’t know because we have not been there.”

AP and the wires picked up the story as well. Good.

***Media Advisory***
Yemen: Investigate Aerial Bomb Attacks
Many Children, Women, Elderly Reported Killed

(New York, September 16, 2009) – At least 87 persons, the majority women, children, and the elderly, were killed in aerial bombings in northern Yemen today, a witness to the attack and others reported. Human Rights Watch called on the Yemeni government to promptly and impartially investigate responsibility for any attacks on civilians, and urged all parties to the armed conflict in the region to respect the prohibition under international law against targeting civilians.

The attacks were in ‘Adi, east of the town of Harf Sufyan, in ‘Amran governorate. In mid-August, a sixth round of heavy fighting erupted in northern Yemen between government forces and Huthi rebels, and it has continued since then.

A witness to the attack reached via a Yemeni human rights organization, the Dialogue Foundation, said that Yemeni military planes conducted four raids this morning and, without warning, bombed a group of displaced persons sheltering in an open area near a school. (Read on …)

Are living in a court yard. At least the aid orgs can reach them; there’s tens of thousands others with no water, food or medicine.

Child Refugees in Amran

Sa'ada refugee in Amran lives in courtyard

Photos from an ICRC press release. Meanwhile the UN hasn’t gotten any of the 5 mil they need and the fighting rages around trapped civilians:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that heavy fighting between Al Houthi forces and Government troops in and around Sa’ada city continues with “utter disregard” for the safety of the civilian population. (Read on …)

Its like the same day, over and over, again and again. During the last war, Saleh released several terrorists from jail on the condition that they go to fight in Sa’ada against the Houthi (Zaidi) rebels, but some ran away instead. Among the most repetitive reports since 2005 regarding the Sa’ada War and al Qaeda were those of experienced terrorists training the tribal militias for the state. Some foreign al-Qaeda always managed to show up for the prior Sa’ada wars to fight for President Saleh. Mercenaries is a more apt term. This time they started congregating before the war even broke out. Saleh whistled for his dogs apparently.

The article mentions the discovery of the terror training camp in Sa’ada during the international search for the missing foreign medical workers in June, but omits that the al Qaeda camp was actually an “abandoned military facility.” The surprising thing was that they discovered only one. If you want to find terrorists training in Yemen, start looking by at the military camps. Multi-tasking we can call it, perhaps sub-letting.

The unanswered question remains, what is the quid pro quo? Beyond the obvious transit of jihaddis of all nationalities from Yemen to Iraq, the money laundering, criminal facilitiation, prison escapes and the free flow of black market goods and services to Somalia and the Gulf, what else is al Qaeda getting for battling Saleh’s enemies?

While low level corruption and incremental deal making accounts for a good part of the subversion, there’s more going on in the upper eschelon than General Ali Mohsen’s extremist office manager Ashkar issuing fatwas against the rebels (and foreign medical workers), more than someone leaking the route for the South Korean diplomats. Terrorism as policy, Yemen gets get away with it time and time again.

On a less controversial note and previously discussed in context of the southern protests, the internationalization of any conflict in Yemen under the banner of jihad poses the serious threat of drawing foreign fighters, considering the Yemeni environment is so hospitable. However the Yemeni government is the one defining the conflict(s) in terms of apostasy and providing the hospitable environment. And in this war, this time, everything is bigger.

The following is a current report from the Socialist Party’s mouthpiece Aleshteraki, google translated:

Reports of Salafi on the battlefield, Friday, August 28th – August 2009 كشفت تقارير صحافية عن مشاركة فعلية لمسلحين متشددين ينتمون إلى “السلفية الجهادية” في الحرب التي تشنها القوات الحكومية والمسلحين القبائل ضد جماعة الحوثي في صعدة وحرف سفيان فيما يعرف بالحرب السادسة على صعدة التي انفجرت في العاشر من الشهر الجاري ولا تزال مرشحة للاتساع الجغرافي والاجتماعي بصورة غير مسبوقة Press reports disclosed on the active participation of armed militants belonging to the “Salafist jihadi” in the war by government forces and armed tribesmen against the Houthi in Saada, Harf Sufian known as the sixth Sa’ada war that exploded on the tenth of this month is still a candidate for the geographical and social expansion in non – unprecedented….

وكانت تقارير صحافية قد تحدثت قبل اندلاع الحرب الأخيرة عن مجاميع أصولية ومليشيات حزبية تتجمع في محافظة الجوف بكامل أسلحتها المتوسطة والثقيلة على اثر خلاف دام بين مواليين للجماعة الحوثي وآخرين ينتمون إلى حزب التجمع اليمني للإصلاح في المنطقة حول إمامة مسجد آل الوزير في مديرية الزاهر خلف عدد من القتلى والجرحى قبل تدخل وساطة قبلية لإجراء صلح هش بين الطرفي ما لبث أن تجدد تحت عنوان مواجهة تمدد الحوثي إلى الجوفي ولكن هذه المرة باسم قبائل دهم Press reports had talked before the outbreak of the recent war on the fundamentalist groups and militias party gathering in al-Jawf province full of medium and heavy weapons following a long dispute between the pro-Houthi’s group and others belonging to the Yemeni Grouping for Reform in the area around the mosque imam Al minister in the Department of bright behind a number of dead and wounded before the intervention of tribal mediation for a fragile reconciliation between the terminal’s just to renew under the heading face Houthi to extend the underground, but this time on behalf of Dahm…

يشار الى ان النسيج الاجتماعي والمذهبي في صعدة والجوف قد ظل حائلا دون اختراق القاعدة لهذه المحافظات الحدودية والمتداخلة اجتماعيا مع قبائل واسر سعودية tفي امارة نجران ومحيطها It is said that the social fabric and sectarian in Sa’ada, Al-Jouf has remained a barrier to penetrate al-Qaeda for these border provinces and overlapping with social tribes and the families of Saudi Arabia in the Emirate of Najran t and its surroundings

وكان حادث اختطاف وقتل اجانب يعملون في المستشفى الجمهوري بصعدة قد كشف وجود معسكر للمجاهدين في منطقة وائلة التابعة لمحافظة صعدة والمحاددة للسعودية The abduction and killing of foreigners working in the Republican Hospital in Saada has revealed the existence of the camp of the Mujahideen in the region and your gods of the province of Saada and Mahaddp to Saudi Arabia (Read on …)

From the gov’t website, SABA, confirmation of tribal paramilitaries fighting on behalf of the state (again) in the Sa’ada War. What kind of rules of engagement exist for these non-military combatants? Is there any attempt at command and control, or are they free to wander around and engage in firefights at will? The “pro-government people” are also authorized to make arrests, according to SABA. Another SABA report in Arabic report has 50 cars arriving in Sa’ada with fruit, water and food for the army. (Meanwhile thousands of women and children who fled the bombing are spread along the roads with nothing.)

Undoubtedly, both sides are using child soldiers.

The bombing is publicly acknowledged this time, but it was a tactic used extensively in prior rounds of the war, with the same consequences- civilian casualties and mass displacement. When the regime spent one billion on new weapons from Russia in March, following a major upgrade on Yemen’s fleet of Mig29’s in October 08, it was pretty apparent that the next war would be an air war.

Lastly, the UN said tens of thousands of refugees are in remote regions inacessable by air. Why not helicopters? Yemen has choppers. But the Yemeni govt is continuing to block international organizations from humanitarian access even to refugees who are reachable. And although the rebels agreed in theory to a truce during Ramadan, the military offensive continues. (ah a link at the Yemen Observer: The government refused on Thursday an initiative by some of the rebel leaders’ relatives to put an end to the war.

SABA: Yemen’s Air Forces have landed painful blows on the elements of a rebel group in several districts of the northern Yemeni province of Saada.

Security sources said on Saturday that groups of the al-Houthi rebels have been encircled and besieged in a number of the districts of Saada and Harf Sufyan area of the neighboring province of Amran….

At the same time, the Air Force landed painful blows on a number of strongholds belonging to the al-Houthi rebels in the areas of Matrah and Naq’ah.

Meanwhile, pro-government people in Saada, Amran and Jawf provinces have been fighting the al-Houthi rebels in some areas of those governorates in order to pursue, arrest and hand them over to the concerned bodies of the government.

The sources affirmed that the rebel group has attacked a health center aiming to kidnap health staff and medical supplies as well as they bombed some buildings of citizens in al-Qabel village of al-Mahadher district in Saada.

On the other hand, 28 rebels of the al-Houthi group were arrested by citizens after escaping from the confrontations with the armed forces in Harf Sufyan area.

Yemen Post:

Eighteen people were killed in clashes between two tribes in Amran governorate, northern Yemen, in the two days past.
Local sources in Amran said that the clashes were renewed lately between Harf Sufian and Al-Osaimat tribes after the failure of a number of local mediation efforts to put an end to the clashes.
Over 74 people, including women and children, have been killed in the conflict which remains ongoing using various weapons.
The conflict between Harf Sufian and Al-Osaimat tribes has erupted since November 2008, according to local sheikhs.
The tribes belong to powerful rival tribal coalitions, the Bakil and the Hashid.The conflict has its roots in the early 20th century with disagreements over land known as al-Sawad, bordering al-Osaimat and Harf Sufian areas.