Armies of Liberation

Bios below. Hadi’s not a “southerner” in that he defected to Saleh in 1986 and fought against the south in 1994. Hopefully he will rise to the occasion, sometimes people do that. We’ll have to see. Its going to be lovely though to see Saleh out of office after all these years.

SANA’A — Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi used to be known as a silent man who never objected to, let alone disobeyed, any of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s orders.

This manner of managing the country resulted in the peaceful youth revolution, which began in February of 2011 and which led to Hadi becoming Yemen’s new president.

Hadi departed from the south with Ali Naser Mohamed after the January 1986 war between leaders of the Aden’s Socialist Party. He and Mohamed left for Sana’a after they suffered defeat in Aden.

In the 1994 war, Hadi sided with Saleh against the secession movement which surfaced in the same year and which, by year’s end, was aligned with Saleh. During the outgoing president’s 33-year rule, Hadi received the respect of all parties, due largely to a perception that he kept his hands clean of political and moral corruption.
(Read on …)

By National Yemen

He was born in 1935 in the city of Aden in south Yemen. He finished high school in Aden and then worked as an importer and exporter of dried fish to Sri Lanka. (Read on …)

Luxury Condo, For Saleh or Rent

WHY IS YEMEN’S PRESIDENTIAL FAMILY LOADED UP WITH MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN
D.C. REAL ESTATE?

BY KEN SILVERSTEIN | OCTOBER 18, 2011

Shortly after being named one of the three winners of the Nobel Peace
Prize this month, Yemeni activist Tawakkul Karman said that if embattled
President Ali Abdullah Saleh is driven from power, investigators should
immediately begin searching for assets held abroad by members of his
government. The money “plundered” by the regime, she said, should be
“brought back to the Yemeni people,” according to an account on an
opposition website. (Read on …)

Yahya Saleh while saying an entirely different thing in Arabic tells Reuters the ruling family is entirely committed to peace: AlertNet:

* Says cash for training and equipment cut, intelligence aid same,

* Says civil war unlikely despite “revolution of children and thieves”

* Calls potential U.N. resolution on transfer plan foreign interference

By Erika Solomon

SANAA, Oct 5 (Reuters) – The United States and other Western donors have cut counter-terrorism aid to Yemen’s army during eight months of mass protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his nephew and leader of a key paramilitary unit said on Wednesday, in effect supporting anti-Saleh groups. (Read on …)

Mil to mil cooperation going forward is fine, necessary and productive as long as it does not include Saleh’s son Ahmed (Republican Guard) , or three nephews Yahya (Central Security), Tariq (Presidential Guards) and Ammar (National Security) or his half brother Mohammed Saleh Ammar (head of the Air Force). Everything after that is smooth sailing.

NYT

A senior American official made it clear on Saturday that Mr. Saleh’s immediate departure remained a goal of American policy, and that Yemen’s government was under no “significant illusion” that the United States had changed its position.

“Sustaining military to military cooperation is in our best interest,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We don’t want to undermine that cooperation.”

A Yemeni government spokesman, however, said Mr. Saleh deserved credit for helping the Americans.

“After this big victory in catching Awlaki, the White House calls on the president to leave power immediately?” Deputy Information Minister Abdu al-Janadi said to Reuters. “The Americans don’t even respect those who cooperate with them.”

The spokesman for Yemen’s opposition coalition, Mohammed Qahtan, rejected the idea that Mr. Awlaki’s killing cast the government in a favorable light. Instead, it shows “the regime’s failure and weakness to perform its duty to arrest and try Awlaki in accordance with the Constitution,” Mr. Qahtan said. “And it’s that that forced America to go after him using their own means.”

Strong rumors in Yemen that Saleh is dead after video testimony surfaces from a purported witness from the palace. The following is a bio of Hadi that omits the fact that he was a member of the central committee for YSP Yemeni Socialist Party during the 1980’s in the PDRY. Also during the 1986 civil war, he attacked Radfan and other places causing many civilian deaths.

Yemen Times: Abd Raboo Mansour Hadi, the vice president of Yemen has taken over as presidential responsibilities in Yemen after Saleh left Sana’a to Saudi Arabia on Saturday night for medical treatment, Yemen’s Abdo Al-Janadi, deputy minister of information stated yesterday night. (Read on …)

General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar: the Avis of Yemen

YP: BY DIONNE SEARCEY- Wall Street Journal (For the Yemen Post)
New documents have emerged relating to possible bribery in Yemen by global oil-services giant Schlumberger.
Internal company documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that Schlumberger employees raised concerns in 2008 about payments for cars the company rented from Yemeni government officials at above-market rates—including $6,000 a month for a Toyota Camry and two Toyota Corollas. Employees also cited a contract with customs broker Dhakwan Management Petroleum Co., whose chairman had ties to Yemen’s president. (Read on …)

Shamari is another one of those ambassadors that never change, like Saleh’s two brother-in-laws, the Yemeni Amb to the US and the UN. The interview at Marib Press. Al Shamiri wrote about the earlier wars entitled, “One Thousand Hours of War.” It was referenced by the Yemen Post: (Read on …)

Jamestown: In January 2009, Nasir al- Wuhayshi (a.k.a Abu Basir) appeared on a video to announce the merger between al-Qaeda branches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen under his command. The new organization was given the name Qaedat al-Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Wuhayshi was surrounded by three leaders of AQAP, his fellow Yemeni Qasim al-Rimi, who was reportedly killed in an airstrike in January (Yemen Observer, January 16) and the Saudis Said al-Shihri and Mohammed al-Ofi. Each of the four men made a statement about the evolution of their group (Al-Jazeera, January 29, 2009). [1] The leadership of AQAP made it clear that, in addition to targeting the near enemy in Sana’a and Riyadh, it would target Western interests and ultimately the West itself. But before the end of the year, the organization went even further, conducting the most serious terrorist operation to affect the American homeland since 9/11. (Read on …)

Update: Malek Samulski is in South Africa or was a few years ago anyway.

Original: Its the continuation of an old story. New developments from The Australian: an Australian terror suspect had his 2004 attempted travel to Yemen arranged by Masek Samulski, one of the eight westerners, including the Ayyoub boys, arrested and then released (despite their confessions) in 2006 on charges of trafficking weapons to Somalia. The 2006 arrests were triggered by Awlaki’s arrest a few months earlier according to news reports at the time.

(See 3/1/08, appeal upholds sentence , or 11/03/06 arrests hinder counter-terror op or maybe this one is the most complete: 12/14/06 Terror arrests: from the American to al Sakhi to the Australians who go free.)

COUNTER-TERRORISM agencies are increasingly concerned about deepening links between a group of Australians under surveillance because of their connections with the Sydney terror cell and Islamic militants in Yemen, widely regarded as “the new Afghanistan” for al-Qa’ida.

Security agencies are monitoring the movements of at least 20 Australians who have travelled to Yemen in recent years, including friends and family of the nine men recently convicted and sentenced to up to 28 years in prison for preparing for a terrorist act in Sydney. (Read on …)

dtd 3/3/10

NYT: IT is not often that you see an old comrade in arms of Osama bin Laden hoisting the American flag outside his home.

Yet there on the videotape was Tareq al-Fadhli, the hero of jihadist campaigns in Afghanistan and South Yemen, raising Old Glory in the courtyard of his house, not far from here, earlier this month. As the tape continues, Mr. Fadhli can be seen standing solemnly at attention, dressed in a khaki shirt and a cloth headdress, as “The Star-Spangled Banner” blasts from a sound system nearby. (Read on …)

Yemeni President Saleh’s conduct of the Sa’ada War rises to the level of war crimes. There are massive and flagrant violations of human rights in the south. But Saleh also has a trail of bodies behind him that’s rather extensive. The list of the assassinations of political opposition, news men, and rivals is almost too long to be documented. This following article gives a glimpse into Field Marshal Saleh’s history and rise to power.

Saleh’s Bloody Background RCW
Apart from Muammar Qadhafi of Libya, Saleh is the Middle East’s longest-serving leader. Now a field marshal by rank, he first came to prominence in 1977 as a thirty-one-year-old major during political turmoil in what was then North Yemen (which united with South Yemen in 1990.) The country’s military leader at the time, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, was assassinated, as was his brother, by unidentified gunmen who riddled their bodies with bullets. An Arab newspaper described it at the time as a well-planned coup, naming Saleh as a conspirator along with his mentor, Lt. Col. Ahmed al-Ghashmi, the deputy commander-in-chief of the army who became North Yemen’s new leader. Al-Ghashmi himself survived an assassination attempt five days after taking power but was subsequently killed in June 1978 when the briefcase of a special envoy from South Yemen exploded in his office. A month later, Saleh was voted into office by the quasi-parliament as president and commander-in-chief; he survived yet another assassination attempt only months later. (Read on …)

Its not just Saleh with the long standing ties…

AFP: Yemen’s government has gone on the offensive against Al-Qaeda, sending the network into hiding, the country’s national security director Ali Anisi said.

Anisi, who also heads President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s office (ed- since 1982), was speaking after authorities announced the killing of Abdullah Mehdar, an Al-Qaeda chief in eastern Yemen. (Read on …)

Wow a really good article on the Sa’ada War, Saleh’s relatives commanding security forces and Ali Mohsen al Ahmar’s conduct of the Sa’ada War. It lays the facts out for the obvious conclusion about why the war just won’t end.

Globe and Mail: There have been tens of thousands of casualties and about 100,000 people in Yemen’s northwest triangle are now under siege – trapped by a combined force of the Yemeni regular army on one side, the Republican Guard on another, and Saudi military forces along the border between the two countries.

“They’re trying to starve them out,” said Abdel-Ghani Iryani, a development consultant and political analyst, who says he still can’t figure out what the war against the Huthi is all about. (Read on …)

That’s sad. Bin Shamlan contested the presidental election and ran against President Saleh in 2006. He garnered just under 25% of the votes, according to official figures. Although the election was deemed free and fair by the international community, likely looking to avoid instability. It was orderly but rigged, and was nothing that would have been acceptable in a democratic country. It was the subsequent disillusionment in the political process that was one trigger for the southern unrest that began as the protest movement in May 2007 but actually harkened back a decade.

Mr. Bin Shamlan’s death comes almost a year to the day of the passing of Sheik Abdullah al Ahmar. Full report at Al Masdar Online.

All militants are not jihaddis, and all jihaddis are not al Qaeda. In fact, most Yemeni jihaddis (and there’s thousands) are not al Qaeda in the strict sense of the term. In southern Yemen, the minute al Fadhli joined the Southerners, all his militants and jihaddists became “freedom fighters.” It was pretty funny considering the Southern spokesmen labeled them as terrorists before. My issue is the core values of the Southern Movement. Is it still the secularist, egalitarian, democratic movement it once espoused to be? Are women equal in southern Yemen or have they been thrown under the bus in order to appease the jihaddists? If the Southerners win at all costs, do they still win? Can anyone join the Southern Movement or only those who agree with its principles? And/or does it have principles anymore?

Jamestown

Earlier this year Tariq al-Fadhli, the prominent jihadist leader from South Yemen, broke his 15 year alliance with the Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Al-Fadhli, who was a member of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen movement in Afghanistan, is often described as the founder of the jihadi movement in Yemen. His break with the government was reported in the mainstream Arab and Yemeni media but was also noted on pro-jihadist websites (Alflojaweb.com, April 18). Al-Fadhli’s new position provided momentum to the Southern Movement (SM) and its struggle for secession and he soon became a leading figure in the alliance. (Read on …)

Hamid al Ahmar in an interview on al Jazeera made several interesting statements including that the president is guarded by 60 thousand army personnel in Sanaa, He also disclosed the name of the arms dealer (Yousef Al-Magani) that bought arms for Houthi rebels in the 4th war from Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, head of the republican guard, in a conspiracy to eliminate Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmer. Hamid also dared the president to visit Abyan or Sadaa or stay for 2 months in Aden to prove that he is still the president of the country. Publicly exposing Prince Ahmed this way gives Ali Mohsen the legitimacy to move against him without instigating a vendetta from within their tribe.

While it may seem at first glance an absurd proposition, waging a war to weaken the general running it, it provides a logical explanation for many occurences over the last five years, including why the war never seems to be won. It was Ali Mohsen’s newspaper that disclosed the Chinese shipload of weapons for the rebels that was imported by the defense ministry. One should never underestimate the level of duplicity that the Sana’a regime is capable of, or its excellence at propaganda. President Saleh IS the King of Spin.

Yemen Herald:
SANAA, 07 Nov – Tribal leader and business tycoon, Sheik Hamid Abdullah al-Ahmar late Friday accused the Republican Guards of supporting the Shiite rebels in previous wars. He said “the Yemeni army is no longer capable of ending the war in north Yemen militarily because it lost trust in the political leadership in Yemen which plays around with peoples’ lives.” Al-Ahmar who was speaking to the Doha-based al-Jazeera satellite TV channel said “the Republican Guards headed by the President’s son supported the Shiite rebels in north Yemen in order to hit the First Artillery military division led by Brigadier General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar and hence get rid of him,” adding “a rebel leader is a friend of the President’s son, Ahmad Ali Abdullah Saleh.” Ali Mohsen is President Saleh’s half brother and al-Ahmar talked about “internal conflict between the various wings inside the army about the war in Sadaa,” and called on President Saleh to visit Abyan or Sadaa “in order to prove to us that he is still the President of all of Yemen,” adding “the President no longer has a state to rule.” “The state no longer exists except in the Presidential Palace and in the capital, Sanaa which is protected by 60 thousand troops,” Al-Ahmar said, adding “dialogue is the only hope to bring Yemen out of this situation,” stressing “dialogue with everyone is still possible to resolve the current crisis in Yemen.” He accused President Saleh of “wanting to turn the country into a monarchy through his pursuit to install his son in power,” and renewed his call for the President to step down, stressing “changing the head is the door to reforming the situations in Yemen.” “If President Saleh wants the people to stand by him against monarchism, then he should first get rid of his monarchy and if he wants people to stand by him to protect the nation’s unity, then he has to prove his patriotism by lifting injustice,” he said, and criticized the management of the war in north Yemen saying “the way this war is run has humiliated the army and caused it to lose its fighting moral.”

Yes Saleh’s nephew is the de facto head of the National Security. The Yemeni government switched the authority for handling the airports from the PSO to the National Security in 2006 after the planeloads of jihaddis flying out on Yemenia got a bit embarrassing. The National Security in its new role cracked down hard- on opposition politicians, journalists and activists attempting to fly out of Sana’a.

al Sahwa
Yemeni parliament has approved to summon the deputy chief of the National Security Organization Ammar Mohammad Abdullah Saleh, nephew of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, on grounds of violations oppositionists face in the Sana’a International Airport.

Parliamentarians stressed the importance of summoning Ammar considering him the de facto official of the security organization.

The demands of summoning came following the complaints raised by the representative Abdul-Salam Zabia last week as he was interrupted at the airport and prevented from travel by security organization.

Zabia said he was prevented from traveling abroad and he was investigated and threatened by pointing weapon at him.

Abdul-Razaq al-Hajri, MP, considered what happened to his colleague as a dangerous indication of violations Yemenis face in the airport.

It is worth noticing MPs, politicians, journalists and activists are always interrupted and prevented from travel by the National Security Organization.

One school of thought holds that the inexplicable duration of the Sa’ada War is, in part, a mechanism to weaken Ali Mohsen (dubbed by some as Chemical Ali) who was too strong for a frontal assualt by Saleh, and in turn pave the way for Prince Ahmed. The 26 Septemper (sic) really flipped out at the paper that originally published the analysis below.

Yemen Tribune SANAA, 09 Oct — The independent weekly newspaper, Almasder Thursday published an article written by Hussein al-Laswas on the relations between President Saleh and his half brother, General Ali Muhsen. “It was Ali Muhsen who assisted Saleh to come to power when he besieged the capital back in the seventies and hence furnished the way for Saleh’s coup d’état to succeed … Ali Muhsen who was once Yemen’s most powerful general was capable of toppling Saleh after the civil war of 1994 when his popularity among the soldiers, the Islamists and the Saudis was at its top, but he remained loyal to Saleh. Trust between the two has waned after Ali Muhsen failed in the fifth round of war with the Huthis and Saleh opted to remove him from the sixth round of war … both men have palaces and huge bank accounts and both see Yemen as their own personal property … Saleh has been trying to liberate the capital from the grip of Muhsen’s battalions and when the sixth round of war with the Shiite rebels erupted, Saleh and his son, Ahmad found a historical opportunity to make the change and spread the control of the republican guards over Sanaa. (Read on …)

because he’s destroying Yemen… Hamid has a reasonable plan, the VP steps in until early elections, but the issue of the electoral reform is still unresolved. But Hamid is right that the continuation of Saleh’s dictatorship is a failed strategy and progress requires some change, if not an administrative purge.

Hameed Al-Ahmar (the Son of Abdullah Al-Ahmar), who is a member of the Yemen Parliament as well as of the Islah party, gave an interview on 05/08/09 with Al-Jazeera.
He openly and honestly spoke of the condition and events in Yemen, and pointed the blame directly to the Yemeni president Ali Saleh for the country’s failure.
He also gave a direct message to the president to step down from the Presidency and and hand it over to his vice president Al-Ariani, while carrying out immediate elections for a new president.
He also accused the Yemeni President of defying the constitution by giving all the governmental and military posts to his sons and relatives, and not giving the Southerners a chance, thus accusing the president of being a traitor.Hameed condemned what is happening in the South of Yemen and what is being done to the Southerners from oppression and ill-treatment.
Hameed spoke very boldly about the situation, and when asked by the t.v presenter whether or not he was going to return to Yemen, he replied with a bold “Yes”! Explaining that his tribe is going to protect him, and will not let anything happen to him.

Reported: Rasha Rashed

His tribe is also Saleh’s tribe.

Update: Abdelmalik al Houthi is taking it as a Saleh-enduced call to dialog and responding with a bit of bluster.

Update: Al Sahwa has a write up:

Sahwa Net – Yemen’s opposition senior leader and Member of Parliament Hamid al-Ahmer has urged Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, hand over power to his vice-president Abdu Rabo Mansour Hadi and set an appointment to elect a new president.

(Read on …)