Armies of Liberation

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, former DIA analyst in the Able Danger data mining operation, says in a current interview that Anwar Al Awlaki was a US double or triple agent before 9/11.

That may account for the US closing its investigation of Anwar’s connections to the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman in 1999. Once Awlaki’s many ties to the 9/11 highjackers became clear, a JTTF San Diego investigation was reopened. But in 2002, US Attorney Gaouette rescinded an arrest warrant against Anwar for passport fraud, a day before he re-entered the US.

Anwar as a double agent for and a triple agent against the US might explain the utter communication breakdown between JTTF’s DC and San Diego offices on Awlaki’s email correspondence with the soon to be jihaddist murderer Nidal Hassan.

It might also explain why Awlaki was never charged with anything–not incitement, not conspiracy to murder, even after the Nigerian Abdumutallab said he met with Awlaki regarding the Dec 2009 airplane bombing plot hatched in Yemen. On the other hand, it could all be a string of incompetence and bad luck. I don’t know which would be worse.

News Rescue “In video, Lt.Col. Anthony Shaffer describes how Anwar al-Awlaki Was a triple agent, and an FBI Asset Before 9/11 on infowars. Anthony Shaffer is a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who gained fame for his claims about mishandled intelligence before the September 11 attacks and for the censoring of his book, Operation Dark Heart.

Shaffer and the Able Danger team also uncovered intelligence of an impending al Qaeda terror plot in the Gulf of Aden in the weeks immediately prior to the bombing of the USS Cole on Oct 12, 2000 in Yemen. Able Danger tried strenuously to issue a warning that, like DIA analyst Kye Fallis’ was thwarted.

Despite the NSA’s constant and years long monitoring of the Yemen hub and the CIA’s surveillance of the 2000 Malaysia meeting where both the Cole attack and 9/11 were planned, no intelligence warning on the Cole bombing was generated or forwarded from those agencies either. (The CIA later withheld info on the Malaysia meeting from the FBI as it was investigating the Cole, leaving connections to the impending 9/11 attack unexplored.)

Lt. Shaffer was black balled by DIA after he went public with the 9/11 Commission’s failure to include his testimony regarding the presence of Atta in the US. Commander Lippold was essentially forced to retire by DOD. Fallis quit DIA on the day of the Cole bombing.

The Malaysia meeting was attended by current AQAP leader Fahd al Quso and top AQ operatives from several nations. As I’ve been saying for nearly a decade, al Quso’s unique threat level comes from his operational experience (blowing up a warship) coupled with his international connections and credibility.

Al Quso was indicted on over 50 counts of terrorism in NY’s Southern District in 2003 following his 2002 escape from Aden jail. The Sanaa regime secretly released al Quso in May 2007 despite a ten year sentence handed down after his 2004 “recapture,” the Washington Post reported. Al Quso finally made it to the MWT list in Nov 2009 and was designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US State Department in Dec 2010.

The US began its drone campaign in Yemen with strikes in Dec 2009, where Awlaki and other AQAP leaders were supposedly meeting at Fahd al Quso’s farm. Al Quso gave several media interviews recently, noting how lovely things are in the AQ occupied towns in Yemen, when they are not crucifying spies, beheading soldiers, looting banks and dehanding teen-agers. Yesterday, AG Holder, the bastion of flex-fit jurisprudence, gave the Obama administration’s rationale for targeting US citizens with drones.

Update: Gah! Must be something in the air. Fox: Mueller grilled on FBI’s release of al-Awlaki in 2002 (3/7/12)

The warrant was pulled by a judge in Colorado, after the cleric entered the U.S. A U.S. attorney in Colorado who oversaw the warrant and the Justice Department claimed the cleric’s earlier lies to the Social Security Administration, the basis of the charge, had been corrected. But new documents obtained by Fox News through the Freedom of Information Act show otherwise.

After al-Awlaki re-entered the U.S. in the fall of 2002 with the FBI’s help, the cleric then appeared in a high-profile investigation, in which Agent Ammerman was a lead investigator. The FBI has not made the agent available to Fox News to interview, nor has the Department of Justice made the U.S. attorney on the case available. Former FBI agents say Ammerman would have needed permission from higher up in the bureau to let al-Awlaki go.

The House Homeland Security Committee launched an official investigation into the cleric and his 9/11 connections last year, but sources tell Fox News that committee staffers have been frustrated by the FBI’s resistance to providing documents and witnesses, citing “ongoing investigations.”

Wolf urged the FBI director to brief other lawmakers, including the head of the house intelligence committee, so that a similar scenario “never happens again.”

Fox News confirmed that the October 2002 incident and the arrest warrant for al-Awlaki was never disclosed to the 9/11 Commission or to Congress.

Former FBI agents, familiar with al-Awlaki’s re-entry in October 2002, say only two scenarios seem to explain what happened. The FBI was tracking the cleric for intelligence or the FBI was working with the cleric and saw him as a “friendly contact.”

Where is the actual budget break down posted? These numbers are meaningless. The new law of the land in Yemen (the GCC document) guarantees fiscal transparency, and anti-corruption measures are one important demand of the people. Normally there is an end of the year supplemental that increases spending by about 25%.

Bloomberg: Yemen’s government plans to spend 2,111 billion rials ($9.8 billion) this year, according to draft budget plans reported by state-run news agency Saba. The draft expenditure, which requires the approval of parliament in Sana’a, represents a 17 percent increase over the 2011 budget that was approved Dec. 5, 2010. Yemen has been using last year’s budget for the first quarter of this year as unrest forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh from office last month and repeated clashes undermined business activity.

Government recognizes the state budget for fiscal year 2012 by 2 trillion and 672 billion and 740 million rials
[06 / March / 2012]

Sana’a (Saba) -

Council of Ministers approved in its weekly meeting today, chaired by Council President Brother Mohammed Salem Basendwah the draft state budget for fiscal year 2012, and projects of independent and attached budgets and special funds budgets and the economic sector and laws linked to .. And the allocation to the House of Representatives to complete the necessary constitutional procedures.

The Council instructed the Minister of Legal Affairs and Minister of State for the House of Representatives and the Shura Council in coordination with the Minister of Finance to follow up those actions.

The estimated resources of the state budget at both central and local levels for the current year 2012, the amount of two trillion and 111 billion and 129 000 453 thousand, from various sources or resource for linking resources to the last year of $ trillion and 519 billion and 589 thousand, and an increase of 9.38 percent.

The estimated use for 2012, the amount of two trillion and 672 billion and 740 000 773 thousand, distributed at the gates of various budget, compared to connect to the year 2011 of $ trillion and 835 billion and 956 million riyals, an increase of 6.45 percent. (Read on …)

Returning to the basics, the reason for the fight against al Qaeda is the fanatics attack, terrorize and murder civilians in order to impose their rigid agenda on people who don’t want it. Over 100,000 Yemeni civilians fled immediately following the AQAP occupation of Zinjibar. They remain in dire circumstances, living in Aden schools, nearly a year later.

Families in other towns occupied by AQAP cannot leave; they are too poor and don’t know where to go. Some don’t want their homes looted by AQAP or are afraid of AQ retaliation. Despite General Patraeus’ prior statements regarding al-Mahfed, physical proximity to al Qaeda does not equal complicity or material support–especially when dealing with extremely impoverished people living in a country without any infrastructure or basic services including water.

While certainly US drone strikes seek to minimize civilian casualties, and it is AQAP’s crime in sheltering among civilians, families captive in the AQAP occupied towns are terrified of both AQAP and the drones. They want to know what to do, and that they won’t be killed by US drones, and no one is telling them anything except al Qaeda. The transitional government’s statements about a “massive war” on al Qaeda didn’t contain any references to the primary goal of the war– the protection of the people.

Any US narrative or planning about battling al Qaeda in Yemen (now that we can read it all in Al Shaq Alawasat) has to take into account both the lethal and non-lethal impacts of counter-terror policy. Mass internal displacement is but one. US policy statements should explicitly affirm that the goal of the WOT- the protection of civilians- extends to Yemeni civilians, and that they are as equally valued and deserving of life as any potential victims of AQAP in the US. (Whatever the actual metric is.)

Also these remarks by Victoria Nuland ( State Dept Press Briefing 3/5/12 ) are a slap in the face to many southerners by ignoring the very real issue and treating the southern movement like a bunch of dead-enders. thorooughly alienating the population where the battles are raging is not going to help either. She could have said, the US recognizes the very real grievances, regional discrimination yadda yadda but the Obama administration is reluctant to speak of any of Salehs many many crimes.

Related: the Lawfare Blog’s write up of AG Holder’s speech regarding the targeted use of lethal force, including against US citizens.

Meanwhile AQAP mutilates soldiers corpses:

USA Today: The death toll from an al-Qaeda assault on a military base in southern Yemen has risen to 185 government soldiers, military and medical officials said Tuesday. Many soldiers’ bodies were found mutilated and some were headless…The surprise attack and the mutilations have left government troops “fearful,” and in “low morale,” according to a senior military official who was part of the defeated force. Another 55 soldiers were captured and paraded through a nearby town by the militants, who lost 32 of their fighters in the assault.

Medical officials in the area confirmed the latest death toll and said some of the bodies of soldiers recovered were missing their heads and bore multiple stab wounds. They said that bodies packed the military hospital morgue to which they were taken, with some taken to vegetable freezers in a military compound for lack of space.

A senior military official said that the attack left his soldiers “fearful of al-Qaeda because of the barbarism and brutality of their attack.”— “It was a massacre and it came by surprise as the soldiers were asleep,” he said. Militants sneaked behind army lines and attacked from the rear where there was “zero surveillance.”

Recent AQAP war crimes: corpse mutilation, sheltering among civilians, using children as operatives, assassinations of civilians, looting residents’ homes, forced exile, behanding and other torture, crucifying suspected spies
Recent AQAP civil rights violations: banning news papers, satellite TV, smoking cigarettes, denying school (and sunlight) to girls.

First a Yemen Times link to “Terrorism operations grow in Hadramout”

Next adding to AQAP’s already substantial list of war crimes, including executions, use of children, amputations and crucifixions, from AJC:

The officials said Sunday’s fighting in Abyan province killed 107 soldiers and 32 militants. Scores were wounded on both sides. The latest death toll was confirmed by medical officials in the area.

The military officials said the militants’ surprise attack on army bases outside Abyan’s provincial capital Zinjibar also led to the capture of 55 soldiers. The captives were paraded on the streets of Jaar, a nearby town that like Zinjibar has been under al-Qaida’s control for about a year…The scale of Sunday’s attack points to the combat readiness of the militants as they launch more and more attacks in a region that the United States considers a key battleground in the war on al-Qaida.

I am naturally curious how many of these terrorist commanders and fighters fought in Saada (2005-2010) against the Houthis when many al Qaeda fighters were allied with Saleh and Ali Mohsen against the Houthis– with the US’s full knowledge and continuing support. As previously documented, some imprisoned al Qaeda were released from jail and send directly to Saada.

My concern, repeatedly expressed, about Al Qaeda fighters in Saada was that they were gaining battle experience. Saada was a training ground for al Qaeda’s army. And once they have been desensitized to the blood on their hands, its very hard to walk back these type of fanatics from continuing bloodshed.

Update: Detained soldiers train Al Qaeda operatives on looted heavy weapons:

About 60 soldiers were detained and taken to the Taliban-style Al Qaeda-declared Islamic Emirate of Jaar in the southern province of Abyan on Sunday morning. More than 110 soldiers were killed and more than 150 other injured when Al Qaeda operatives attacked camps and positions in Dawfas area, at the circumference of Zinjubar, the capital of Abyan.

About 20 from Al Qaeda fighters were killed and dozens were injured, according to sources in Jaar.

“The detained soldiers from Dawfas battles were seen today Monday in Jaar training Al Qaeda fighters on the looted tanks and artilleries,” said the local sources…The authorities were looking for three car bombs that were made in Arhab area, about 30 km north of the capital, where Al Qaeda has historic activities. Arhab is the village of the extremist cleric Abdul Majid Al Zandani, who is accused by US and UN of being a global terrorist. (ed- Arhab also subject to intense bombing 2011.) —

The threats of Al Qaeda to strike outside the battle field came also one day after security authorities said they had intelligence that three car bombs are somewhere ready to implement suicide attacks against Yemeni government and Western interests in Yemen.

Southern Military Commander Magwalah ousted, General Gatan is replacement, whats buzzing is Maqwalah refused Hadi’s orders, then handed the equipment over to al Qaeda, thus the tragic losses today among the Yemeni military outside Zinjibar, upwards of 50 soldiers killed. Al Qaeda brought the “captured” military hardware to Jaar where the locals are under occupation by al Qaeda, and there are no refugee camps for the people to go to even if they could flee without being literally crucified by the fanatics. The 100,000 who fled Zinjibar are still living in misery in schools in Aden without much support, still a better life than under AQAP control Also this school year in Aden is wrecked by AQAP as a result of the mass migration away from areas of their control.

Trojan Ox; oxen are a traditional tribal offering. In 2005, the motorcycle taxi killed two oxen on the steps of parliament in Sanaa to ask for relief from new restrictive laws that diminished their livelihoods

Morning Star At least 30 army soldiers and 14 militants were killed today in Yemen’s Abyan province, according to government officials. The military said that fighters of the Ansar al-Sharia group, which is linked to al-Qaida, had launched a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks on army outposts in the area before attacking in force. Equipment had been seized and “dozens” of soldiers kidnapped, local officers reported.

The attack came a day after suicide bombers hit a Republican Guard camp in Bayda, 75 miles south of the capital Sanaa. Militants gained entry to the camp by bringing an ox they said was a gift for the camp’s commander and then detonated their explosives once inside.

Al Masdar: AlQaeda kills 30 soldiers near Zinjibar: According to military sources and others close to al-Qaeda killed at least 30 Yemeni soldiers in three al-Qaeda carried out since early dawn on Sunday, with two targeting suicide car bombs this morning a launch pad for Katyusha rockets and a gathering of government forces in the outskirts of the city of Zanzibar, Abyan province south of the country.

al Masdar: Blew up a military cargo plane of the type of Russian-made Antonov Sunday afternoon at anchor Daylami air base in the capital Sanaa, where protests demanding its leader, Mohammed Saleh, isolating the red half-brother of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

:
The sources have revealed to Mareb Press that the Mahdi saying rejection of the presidential decree issued by President Hadi, appointed Major General Salem Cotton commander of Military Region South, and the appointment of Major General Mehdi saying Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, has been Major General Salem cotton during the past two days in Dar es presidency city of Aden together with Military Commission, which completed its tasks today.

The military sources have accused the Mahdi saying this morning to hand over heavy weapons for a number of military units of al-Qaeda Among these weapons, artillery and tanks, rocket launchers, “Katyusha”.

Barakish: Brach Forums – Special: A source field in the province of Abyan – South Yemen – that al Qaeda militants had seized military equipment huge military brigades that attacked her in the Dows on Sunday that the death toll of primary military forces of up to 70 people and the toll expected to rise as well to dozens of the wounded, as well as the occurrence of about 56 militants captured a soldier in the organization.

In the meantime, local residents said that militants in Jaar, the base were to the city of Jaar three-tank weapons and machine guns Dushka and different addition to four rocket launchers and a large number of armored vehicles, military vehicles and crews as well as modern and large quantities of ammunition.

According to the source, the Al-Qaeda and they send a painful blow and a large army in Dows and it is considered a major setback due to the enormity of human and material losses.

While a source familiar with the refrigerator Hospital Bazib Aden failed to receive the bodies of the dead coming from Dows, and about thirty bodies outside the refrigerator while the ambulances are still carrying the bodies of dead and wounded, pointing out that the information refers to the high death toll, while still many soldiers missing.

- A first addition: Open meeting room at the hospital to receive the bodies Bazib arrived Aad toll to at least 70.

- Add a second: sources Brach Net in Zanzibar, said 16 al Qaeda militants were killed in the battles of Dows, including Prince “frustration” and that the dead included five of the six Arab and Marib.

Reuters: – A gunman opened fire on a U.S. security team as it trained Yemeni soldiers in the south of the country, the Pentagon and a security official said on Friday, both denying reports from an Islamist group that a CIA officer was killed in the assault.

In the north of the country, a bomb blast hit an anti-U.S. protest, injuring at least 22 people, a rebel group that controls much of the region said. (Read on …)

America’s Dangerous Game a video by Jeremy Scahill at AJE, “This film reveals the full scale of Washington’s covert war in Yemen and asks: Is the US creating more enemies than it can capture or kill?”

A good, coherent presentation and analysis that follows up Scahill’s earlier article. It makes the point that no matter how many leaders are killed (and the US doesn’t really know who its killing with the drones), if the corrupt, nepotistic, despotic regime remains, there won’t real progress. The vid also makes the valid and previously contentious point that there is a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence services and the terrorists, which is a step beyond the (finally) widely accepted premise of Yemen’s ruling family manipulating the terrorist threat for profit and international support.

Barak Obama’s friend, the war criminal Ali Saleh departed the US and is back in Yemen. Saleh’s immunity is a central part of the US sponsored “transition” plan that followed a 48 million dollar, single candidate (sham) “election.”

Yemen’s first new president in 33 years, Abdo Mansour Hadi, previously Saleh’s Vice, was sworn in on Saturday. Hadi received 6.6 million votes of 10 million registered and two million eligible new voters. On election day, the electoral commission said 13 million votes were printed and they had run out of ballots during the day.

Also on Saturday, a suicide bomber in a slow moving pick-up truck killed 28 soldiers in Hadramout. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility via a text message to Reuters.

Link save: April 9, 2010, Yemen National Dialog Coalition Seeks Reform, Broad Political Inclusion

Yemen’s presidential “election” Tuesday was a single candidate affair designed by the United States. Abdu Mansour Hadi, Yemen’s Vice President since 1994, was elected to the presidency in a poll that saw broad turnout among men, women and children.

Yemenis embraced the opportunity to partake in dethroning Saleh. The ballot only contained a yes option although some voters scribbled the names of murdered protesters on the ballot before they voted.

The Obama administration is framing the election as a success and furthermore a model for other transitions, although the power transfer agreement designed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was imposed over broad public objections. One difficulty is Saleh’s immediate family remains in control of most of the security forces and military, as well as major economic concerns and vast swaths of land. This gif at Critical Threats.org shows the incestuous nature of power in Yemen.

Mr. Hadi was selected as a consensus candidate by UN envoy Jamal ben Omar under the terms of the GCC deal, and strongly backed by the US and Saudi Arabia. The GCC transition plan supersedes the Yemeni constitution and laws. In the event the unity government is unable to reach consensus on any issue, President Hadi makes the final decision. The plan effectively re-establishes a dictatorship although some have called it more akin to an international trusteeship.

In November, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement to resign in return for prosecutorial immunity for 33 years of major corruption, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN Security Council endorsement of the immunity deal for Saleh was unprecedented and likely violates international law and certainly UN principles, the UNHCHR said in a statement at the time.

Hundreds of protesters were killed during the Yemeni Revolution and thousands wounded. In addition, well over a thousand southern protesters were killed 2007-2011 in pro-independence protests. A five year war in the northern province of Saada was characterized by collective punishment including bombing villages, refugee camps, mosques and hospitals. The Saleh regime also deliberately denied food and medical supplies and international aid during the Saada War in a pattern that constituted collective punishment, Human Rights Watch found. Saleh got off scott-free for all of it.

The GCC deal was overt rejected by millions of protesters since its proposal in April 2011. Saleh agreed and reneged on the deal several times, once besieging western diplomats gathered for the signing with a mob of pro-regime gun-toting thugs.

Following Saleh’s November resignation, the GCC deal created a unity government between Saleh’s ruling party and the compromised and ineffectual opposition party coalition led by Islah, the Islamic Reform Party. The protests were triggered by the failure of the political party system, and the protests were neither led by nor endorsed by the opposition parties until they were well underway.

The unity government designed in Washington raised most regressive elements in society, Islah and the GPC, well above the levels of their popular legitimacy and re-establishes the political statement that existed for years in Yemen. A strong contingent of protesters clinging to the demand for a “civil’ government, non-military and non-theocratic, was sidelined by the Obama administration. Also frozen out are the protesters themselves, the southerners, the northern rebels in Saada. In one ironic twist, ruling party members who resigned the party in protest of Saleh’s barbarism toward the protesters are also excluded from the unity government.

Phase one of the GCC deal was completed with today’s poll. Next the unity government is required to ask for and accept international assistance. Russia (to whom Yemen owes $6 billion for MIGs and other weapons) will help reconcile the ruling party with the opposition parties. The US is going to take charge on restructuring the Yemeni military, quite an overdue and necessary task. The EU appears to have focused on necessary political reforms including electoral reform. A national reconciliation conference will designate a committee to draft a new constitution in three months.

The counter-revolution, a Saudi-US effort, derailed the protests by supporting Saleh months past any logical or moral threshold, and failing to hold him to account for any of his crimes. The US still has not frozen any of the funds or assets (reported to be in the billions) that Saleh stole from the Yemeni treasury.

While the US may frame the political intervention into the Yemeni revolution (coupled with the drone policy) as good counter-terror policy, many have questioned that premise including Jeremy Scahill, see Washington’s War in Yemen Backfires and Katie Zimmerman, Recipe for Failure at Critical Threats.org

Areas of violence during the vote included Aden in south Yemen where an announced boycott degenerated as mobs attacked polling centers and absconded with ballot boxes. Some southerners view the south as “occupied” by the (Northern) Saleh regime since 1994 when they claim, Saleh imposed the unity of north and south Yemen by force. Although mass marches broke out in 2007, southerners never developed representative mechanisms or an overarching organizational structure even as their numbers grew, accounting for the nihilistic approach to the election. The latest tally has eight killed, including both soldiers and separatist protesters.

The inglorious butcher Ali Abdullah Saleh has been in the United States since January 28. He may return to Yemen for Mr. Hadi’s inauguration and to lead the General People’s Congress party, according to the US ambassador to Yemen.

It is the tradition within the United States, where we actually have a regular transition of executive power, for the newly elected president to have a honeymoon period. Once the election is over, people stop attacking him (or someday her) based on party affiliation and hope the new president does good things for the country. The honeymoon usually lasts for a while to give the new president a chance to get used to the office, to see who he actually is as president, and until policy failures begin to really add up. Thus, as is the cultural norm for me and only polite, I support the new Yemeni President.

Now that Mr. Hadi is president of Yemen, ending the butcher Saleh’s 33 year tyranny, I wish him every success in solving all Yemen’s many issues.

The GCC document overrides the Yemeni constitution and grants Hadi unlimited powers; that is unchangeable and unchallengeable but then so are its guarantees (civil rights, transparency, womens’ participation etc) which are the law in Yemen now. If the whole GCC thing is a scam to re-empower the GPC or to subordinate the south, and it may be, there are avenues to create a democratic system. Over the last year, Yemenis have seen their own power and they still have it, especially as the new transitional government is under international scrutiny. Most of the Saleh regime remains in place, but with a meritocracy, a free press and anti-corruption measures, hopefully they won’t be for long.

Some things that can done in Yemen to bring about positive political developments are to collaborate for unlimited media freedom, organize new political parties and require the fiscal transparency that is guaranteed in the GCC plan. Yemen is literally starving, and the feeding the children, by direct aid and by jump-starting the economy, is the top priority.

It is what it is.

Idiotic, nasty, condescending statements by the US ambassador are of course another story. His honeymoon is long over.

Happy voter via “twitpics

Ibb votes in a robust orderly fashion:

Not that the vote tampering matters in the least: Cute kids vote

00:00: Man speaking; (This is) Polling Station 15,
00:00: Man speaking; Most of the voters are children,
00:09: Man speaking; who voted?
00:10: Child speaking; I voted
00:11: Man speaking; unclear… MarshAllah (God Willing) you all voted.
00:17: unclear… MarshAllah (God Willing) you are all good boys.

Dollars to donuts, after all the chaos and violence in the south, there won’t be an English language spokesman to explain where the boycott was or why: Mob takes boxes in Mallah, Aden

Explosions in the background during Al Jazeera report from Aden

Having a boycott is one thing, but rock throwing and stealing the ballot boxes is not how people who want a democratic state act:

Sanaa: when people start yelling, shoot in the air and swing your gun:

Voting day updates:

Its over! Hadi wins in a landslide. Many people happy to be rid of Saleh. Inauguration Saturday Feb 25.

The first test of the new Yemeni government is how honestly they deal with today’s election; while much was good, even stellar, hiding, minimizing or outright lying about the hot spots isn’t going to encourage confidence.

This is very encouraging because it reflects reality instead of the normal knee jerk propaganda:

Egypt Ind Separatists who had vowed to mark Tuesday’s presidential vote as a day of “civil disobedience” have seized half of the polling booths in Yemen’s main southern city Aden, a government official said.

“Half of the polling booths in Aden have been shut down after they were seized by gunmen from the Southern Movement,” a local government official told AFP. He said the gunmen had closed 10 out of the city’s 20 voting stations.

Beeb Four soldiers killed in Hadramout, half voting centers closed in Aden. Nothing on the wounded people. Everything peachy in Sanaa.

Why we reject the elections by Noon

A few Houthis in Taiz but otherwise voting smooth, needed and got more ballots.

No confirmation or news updates on the foreign workers, must have been a rumor, the best possible outcome. OR something happened and everyone is fine.

Also report: “News confirm the filling of election boxes (by votes of those who didn’t vote) just before closing time at six o’clock in the evening in most of the election centers in the Governorates of Omran and Hajah..”

Voting in the South is not smooth, tension and clashes in Aden, Hadramout and Shabwa. One report injuries, shooting ongoing in Aden. Violence reported in Amran, Aden Taiz, Lahij, Mukalla and Shihr. Half polling stations closed in the south by one report. After five years, there is still no official southern spokesman to explain why there is a boycott, or what happened where, to the world in Arabic or English. There are people getting shot because of the boycott and there’s no statement.

The Houthis on the other hand are very good with statements:

In an attempt to pre-empt failure inevitable for the proportion of citizens’ participation in (the province of Saada and Harf Sufian and the provinces of argument and the cavity) has the authority to distribute the ballot boxes in areas outside their constituencies so that the distribution of funds in (Imran and incited, Sana’a and argument) on behalf of the circles (Saada).

We emphasize that polling stations are open and there is no interference from us towards those who want to vote and to exercise electoral commissions operate without any hindrance Remember, all that is said in some of the media tendentious is an attempt to justify the failure and cover the popular rejection of the real adjustments unilateral imposed on people by force and ignored the suffering and demands .

And began to crowd in (Saada) out of hours marched Tazahria mass to reflect the absolute rejection of this farce is the predetermined and practice of form, and confirmed its progress continued in the popular revolution, without regard to any attempts at misleading the people deterred from continuing the path of revolutionary even up to achieve the goals of the revolution and you will detail later.

The difference in perspective between people in Sanaa and Taiz where everyone is happy and the south and Saada is striking. Hopefully the election overcomes the schism enough to enable conversation instead of making it worse.
(Read on …)

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 …)

This video purports to show SCER workers in Aden have issued several voter cards to the same individual voters as well as certified checks as payment for voting for Hadi. This kind of fraud was quite common in 2006 when registered male voters exceeded Yemeni men. Then the regime also redeployed army units to opposition strong holds as there are several definitions of domicile in the law.

(Update: I posted the video to the SCERs FB page and asked if it was true, and they deleted it, so I guess it is true. They didn’t deny it, explain it as a rogue worker, say they would investigate or call me a zionist, they just deleted it. Update 2: Some Yemenis are saying these are old voter cards from the 2006 election as southerners claim people have been trucked in to vote. )

While its absurd to buy votes in an uncontested election, the registration fraud in Aden is likely meant to undermine the southern boycott of the poll. Its unclear to me from the vid if these are new double registrations or if these are these duplicates from the last “free and fair” election. But they are current checks. With all the new donor cash floating around, there could be quite a high turn out in Aden on paper. With all the prior strong-arming of those who objected to the plan and the election, I doubt the US would discourage buying votes as long as the result looks good in the western media in time for the US presidential election.

The point of the bizarre 48 million dollar single-candidate election is to give constitutional legitimacy to Hadi by a public mandate, but the public overtly and continuously rejected the GCC blueprint which supersedes the constitution and all Yemeni law anyway.

I don’t think it has really sunk in yet to the pubic that GCC document is the law of the land for the next two years and cannot be challenged within Yemen. In the event of a failure of consensus, Hadi makes the final decisions. The plan creates a new dictatorship that is required to accept international supervision. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t widely published or discussed. It’s an international trusteeship, which might not be bad with the right administrators, but the UN and US embassy are trying to sneak it by the citizenry while calling it democracy.

Under the GCC plan, Southerners are invited to the upcoming national conference to discuss how to best accomplish a stable unified Yemen. A future referendum on unity is not an option. (But if the military restructuring is done prior to the enfranchisement of southern citizens, it will inflame passions and harden positions.) The causes of the Saada war will be explored. The new constitution will be written in three months (although the 1990 constitution before the later amendments isn’t so bad, it was just never enforced or interpreted and needs a bill of rights.) There will be some kind of justice for the protesters harmed in 2011. Those injured or killed before are unacknowledged and there’s no proposed remedy for them. Saleh and his regime got immunity and maybe the past war crimes and theft will all fade into smoke.Or else the US is creating another red line, another false reality and another source of tension to bubble on the streets until it explodes.

The framers of the GCC transitional document didn’t study the 2006 JMP National Reform Plan that was published after a year of rigorous discussions, compromise and work. The document reached agreement among the divergent parties on many vital issues including the south and Saada. It created structures for implementation. There were other important reform blueprints including the tribally based National Dialog Committee’s in 2009. The GCC document, now the highest law in Yemen, seems a hastily written, simplistic, non-Yemeni product designed to re-install the regime while convincing the protesters into returning home with a vague assurance of progress.

The US is seeking to replace the regime’s figurehead (temporarily) but not the regime. Saleh is welcome to return as head of the GPC, Feierstein says. Its so disturbing the mass murderer gets to return to the blood stained streets with total immunity and no one has any recourse.

The US ambassador has repeatedly trashed the Yemeni air force pilots (among many other groups) seeking the ouster of Mohammed Saleh al Ahmar, instead of taking this opportunity to push for his resignation. The Air Force is among the biggest financial black holes in the line item military budget. Yemen owes Russia six billion dollars, primarily for Air Force expenditures like MIGs, upgrading and repairing the MIGs and MIG parts, although most of the MIGs are off line. Where all the money actually went is an interesting question indeed. Russian will have a place in the internal political reconciliation process.

Brennan re-creating the Saleh dictatorship as a tactic in the battle against al Qaeda makes as much sense as Holder approving weapons shipments to Mexican drug cartels as a tactic in the battle against arms smuggling, and likely will be just as effective. However Saleh finally and officially dethroned, after 33 years and despite all the earlier US obstructionism, is quite an accomplishment for Yemenis.

(Read on …)

29,000 boxes committees

26 Sept: SCER: 103,000 officers and soldiers to secure the presidential election Saturday 18 February 2012

The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) has used over103,000 officers and soldiers from military and security units to secure all electoral committees and constituencies. (Read on …)

In the first half of the story, South Korea was paying well under fair market price since 2005 despite opposition and activists strenuous objections.

Yemen LNG and Total Gas LIFT gas shipments redirected to Korea
[18 / February / 2012] Saba

Agreed Yemen LNG, Total Gas & Power to increase the number of shipments transferred by 20 shipments per year to Korea during the years 2012.2013 and 2014 m due to the continued low gas prices in the U.S. market.

Under the new agreement which was signed in Paris on the fourteenth of February, the ongoing presence of the Minister of Oil and Minerals Engineer Hisham Sharaf Abdullah, will be selling LNG to Kogas, according to the current price of the market. (Read on …)

Another excellent report (besides Scahill’s Washington’s War in Yemen Backfires ) on US CT failure in Yemen, Recipe for Failure at Critical Threats.org:

“Saleh’s reach extended throughout the state’s organs, making it nearly impossible to disentangle his patronage network from the actual state. In this respect, Saleh’s Yemen was much more like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq than like Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, in which the military retained a considerable degree of autonomy.[1]…

Even the Saleh-controlled Yemeni state was already failing before the revolution, moreover, as the government attempted to juggle interrelated socioeconomic and security challenges. Yemen’s unemployment rate was already over 40 percent and over half of its population is illiterate…

The (US) strategy of pursuing political appeasement in order to build an ordered Yemeni state able to reconsolidate control and combat terrorists does not so far appear to be very promising…

Like American diplomats, U.S. policy apart from direct-action operations is thus now largely confined to the capital.[10] American soft-power efforts have historically channeled almost entirely through the central government at Saleh’s insistence.

It is far from clear that American strategy toward Yemen as it was operating before 2011 would have been successful. But the tools of that strategy have been severely degraded even as the threats and challenges have grown. This growing divergence between means and ends demands a fundamental re-evaluation of American strategy toward Yemen, but there does not appear to have been any such re-evaluation. The Obama administration has not articulated a shift in American strategy in Yemen since the outbreak of the Arab Spring and the general contours of U.S. policy have not changed. The current approach could conceivably succeed nevertheless, but only if a large number of improbable assumptions prove to be valid…

Until the U.S. government recognizes that its current approach is nearly certain to fail, it will not put the necessary energy into crafting a new one.

Its important to grasp the basic structure before you make the plan.

The GCC plan in English from and thanks to the Yemen Peace Project which on 2/12 said, “Although the GCC agreement was signed in Riyadh almost three months ago, most people have never seen a full text of the document, or of the implementation mechanism that was signed with it. Newspapers have only published quotations or summaries…we’re able to finally publish here the official English translation of the Implementation Mechanism.

Agreement on the implementation mechanism for the transition process in Yemen in
accordance with the initiative of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)

Contents:

Part I. Introduction

Part II. The transition period

Part III. First phase of the transition

Part IV. Second phase of the transfer of power

Part V . Settlement of disputes

Part VI. Concluding provisions

Annex: Draft Presidential Decree

Part I. Introduction

1. The two parties recognize that (Read on …)

A very good article by Jeremy Scahill examines US policy in Yemen in Washington’s War in Yemen Backfires and highlights some of the contradictions (mule headedness?) that are heightening tensions and increasing risks to national security.

I agree that the “US has always gotten it wrong in Yemen.” Its not just Obama, but rather a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of Yemen that stems back through the Krajeski era. There was never a good baseline and the echo chamber effect compounded errors as uninformed or misinformed analysis led to wrong conclusions and outcomes time after time. Perhaps it was the total isolation of the embassy personnel as their reality was shaped by the Saleh propaganda machine and prior misconceptions. In an interview regarding the piece at Democracy Now:

Scahill reports that U.S. drone strikes, civilian drone casualties and deepening poverty in Yemen have all contributed to the cause of an Islamist uprising and how the U.S. has always “gotten it wrong” in Yemen.

In the interview, Scahill says that, “The arrogance of the U.S. was always thinking that whatever U.S. official was sent to Yemen was smarter than Ali Abdullah Saleh. … [Saleh] was a master chess player and he milked counter-terrorism as his cash cow. [U.S.-supplied] forces have almost never been used to actually battle anyone determined to be terrorists. They’ve existed primarily for the defense of the Saleh regime.”

He goes on to highlight the difference in perspectives between the U.S. and the actual Yemeni people, “One tribal leader who said very clearly,’al-Qaeda’s a terrorist organization. Yes these guys want to destroy America’…’you consider them terrorists. We consider the drones terrorism.’”

Watch it here: