The Yemen - Fighting Intensified and Saleh Injured by Rocket Fire

[C. Flower]

The situation in the Yemen has moved from daily protests to open fighting in the last week.

President Saleh was reported wounded by rocket fire today as were three of his advisors. It is unclear if his injuries are serious.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/03/151679.html

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/world-news/rocket-strike-injures-yemeni-leader-2666061.html

Saleh has repeatedly refused to leave the country.

The situation in the Yemen is very unclear to me. The recent fighting seems to have driven the protests off the streets, as happened in Libya. There is definitely a US hand in the Yemen at present - "al Qaeda" has been talked up to provide grounds for military involvement in the State.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/middleeast/01yemen.html?_r=3&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

[C. Flower]

The WSWS says that the US has used the "unrest" to jack up the "war against Al Qaeda".

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/yeme-j10.shtml

The whole feel of the thing is a replication of the way that Libya was hastened into war.

[C. Flower]

Stratfor says that the bomb that wounded Saleh was an "Inside job".

http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000795712/Saleh_attack_was_bomb_inside_job_US_experts_/Article.htm

It doesn't seem likely that any of the fighting came out of the protest movement, which like the others in the regions, was for weeks a peaceful movement.

[C. Flower]

An article that makes more sense of what's going on in the Yemen. It seems highly likely that the US is still at the game of placing "jihadists" in order to stoke a pseudo war, as an excuse for establishing a long term military presence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/fighting-in-southern-yemen-leaves-as-many-as-30-people-dead-most-islamic-militants/2011/06/11/AGaFoCQH_story.html?hpid=z3


SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni soldiers battled Islamic militants Saturday in an attempt to drive them from several southern towns under the control of hundreds of the fighters. The clashes killed 40 people on both sides, officials said.

In a twist, the army commander leading the campaign to drive back the Islamists is among several top military figures who have turned against the country’s president and thrown their support behind the massive protest movement pushing for the autocratic leader’s ouster.

[C. Flower]

The excellent blog "Armies of Liberation" has reported on Tuesday's fake elections in the Yemen.

http://armiesofliberation.com/archives/2012/02/22/we-broke-it-we-own-it-yemen/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ArmiesOfLiberation+%28Armies+ of+Liberation%29


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.

US control over the military is a de facto coup.

The US has driven instability in the Yemen, as elsewhere, by the use of proxy / false flag "jihadist "Al Qaeda" actions opposed by the mass of Yemenis.

http://janenovak.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/yemenis-protest-against-al-qaeda/

The strategic importance of the Yemen is all too obvious.

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/yeas.gif

[Andrew49]

A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle outside a presidential palace in southeastern Yemen Saturday, killing 20 elite Republican Guards, under the command of outgoing president Ali Abdullah Saleh's son Ahmed, medics and a military official said. "The bodies of 20 soldiers were taken to the mortuary and there are many others wounded," said a medic at the Ibn Sina hospital in the Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla. Source (http://www.news.com.au/world/suicide-bombing-outside-yemen-palace-kills-at-least-20-as-new-president-sworn-in/story-e6frfkzi-1226281584407)

[C. Flower]

A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle outside a presidential palace in southeastern Yemen Saturday, killing 20 elite Republican Guards, under the command of outgoing president Ali Abdullah Saleh's son Ahmed, medics and a military official said. "The bodies of 20 soldiers were taken to the mortuary and there are many others wounded," said a medic at the Ibn Sina hospital in the Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla. Source (http://www.news.com.au/world/suicide-bombing-outside-yemen-palace-kills-at-least-20-as-new-president-sworn-in/story-e6frfkzi-1226281584407)

I wonder how they knew he was a suicide bomber?