The Dominion - Yemen

War in Yemen Means Business

dawn — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:14:59 +0000

While 30,000 IDPs remain inaccessible to relief, US Powered scores nuclear reactor

VANCOUVER—Yemen has been rocked by a series of violent clashes between government and rebel forces from the northern tribes since August, and plans to build a new nuclear reactor has sparked fears of increased tensions.

When the internal conflict in Yemen intensified in August from periodic clashes to full-scale military engagement, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was adamant that his forces would crush the rebel tribes.

"We are determined to destroy this sedition," he said in an address to military school graduates. "We will nip this cancer wherever it exists, in [the province of] Sa'ada or elsewhere."

The northern al-Houthi rebels immediately accused the armed forces of using weapons supplied by the US. A series of videos released by the Houthis displayed weapons they had confiscated from the army during skirmishes over the last year.

Yemen's government has since denounced the northern rebels for wanting to set up an independent Shia state in the country that mimics the pre-1962 theocracy.

In press releases, the government has also accused Iran of backing the Houthis with weapons and training.

On his website, the rebels' leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has denied both accusations. He countered that his people have been fighting for their rights against a government that has become too cozy with Saudi Arabia, whose fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunni rulers see the 10 million Zaydi Yemeni Shi'ites as heretics. He also stressed the difference between Zaydi and Iranian Shi'ism.

Saudi Arabia has a noted interest in the conflict, and has been accused by Houthis of disallowing internally displaced people (IDPs) from entering its borders. Saudi interests in Yemen are like those of the US—primarily related to the threat of terrorism.

US and Pakistani officials are looking at the Arabian peninsula as the new breeding ground for terrorist activities, alleging a movement out of Afghanistan towards countries such as Somalia and Yemen.

Early in the year, deputy chief of Al Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri merged the Saudi Arabian and Yemeni wings of the group. This made enough waves for US President Barack Obama to send Yemen's President a letter in September asking for more cooperation in fighting Al Qaeda in the region.

During US Senator John McCain's August visit to Yemen, he mentioned that the US wholly supports efforts to enhance Yemen's security.

Yemen also gained attention in Canada as an alleged training ground for Canadian Islamic extremists.

"There's a great, and I think growing, fear among policy makers in Washington, in London, in Canada and in Europe about what instability in Yemen will mean for the future of a group like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," Canadian Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan told the National Post on September 4.

Canadian firms were among those meeting with the Yemeni government in September over talks to build a nuclear reactor there. The deal eventually went to US-based Powered Corporation. Greenpeace was one of the first groups to note that the plant would likely increase instability in Middle East.

Energy shortfalls in Yemen are becoming worse, with rolling blackouts and water shortages affecting multiple provinces, particularly in the south of the country. Protests in that area are becoming increasingly violent, as more people become angry about marginalization by the federal government.

Reports regarding the war in the north are few and sporadic. By the end of September the Yemeni government was alleging that Operation Scorched Earth had killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and pushed the remainder out of their stronghold in Sa'ada.

In an October 14 address commemorating the Yemeni uprising against the British in 1963, President Saleh said that he expected to completely crush the rebels over the next few days.

The rebels have been reporting the opposite, claiming to have captured further cities and killed several government troops in Sa'ada province in September. Houthi sources said the rebels had even seized an army camp in early October.

Facts are hard to obtain since the Yemeni government has shut out news agencies from the area, forcing the latter to rely on government and rebel press releases. Both parties' claims have largely been unsubstantiated.

President Saleh mentioned in an Eid ul-Fitr address that Houthi rebels were using human shields and killing civilians. Resistance fighters countered that the army closed down a hospital because of its alleged links to Iran, and attacked a refugee camp.

Any potential for talks have been rebuffed by the government; further, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi stated on September 15 that Yemen would reject all offers of external mediation.

One fact that has not been diluted is the humanitarian impact of the fighting. A combination of aerial bombardment by the government and head-to-head fighting have forced thousands to flee their homes.

Since August, 50,000 people have been uprooted to refugee camps or are stranded in the fighting, according to the Economist. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees notes that around 30,000 of these IDPs are inaccessible to relief workers. A total of about 150,000 people have been displaced since the first round of fighting between the government and rebels in 2004.

Coupled with the unrest in the south, the war in the north is quickly earning Yemen its spot as possibly the most increasingly troubled and poorest region in the Middle East.

Isaac K Oommen is a freelance journalist and commmunications coordinator from Dubai, now residing in Vancouver. Born a nomad, Isaac traveled extensively through the Middle East, south-east Asia and Pacific Asia before settling in Vancouver.

Yemen Business

The South Roars in Yemen

dawn — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:19:05 +0000

Calgary's Nexen among targets of domestic attacks

VANCOUVER—What started off as the annual tremors of remembrance over the bloody 1994 Yemeni civil war have this time had far-reaching consequences.

Clashes in southern Yemen between protesters and police are common in the summer months that commemorate the 1994 civil war, which lasted from May to July of that year. The main grievance of protesting southern Yemenis is the north's control of quickly-depleting oil reserves in the south.

After three protesters and a policeman were wounded during an anti-government rally in early July, the government deemed all protests illegal. Many southerners have not obeyed the edict, believing the central government in Sana'a to be prejudiced against them.

Recent fighting has displaced as many as 3,500 people, bringing the total since 2004 to around 100,000, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Brian Whitaker, an editor with Britain's The Guardian newspaper, notes in his book The Birth of Modern Yemen the dichotomy between tribal pro-US North Yemen and detribalized pro-Soviet South Yemen. This division, according to Whitaker, was bound to lead to the civil war in 1994, where the south sent rockets up to Sana'a in response to the bombing of the southern town of Aden by the north.

The country has remained unsteadily unified since the north emerged victorious in July of that year, with many of the southern Shi'ite and Yemen Socialist Party leaders going into exile.

In July, Yemen's deputy interior minister praised the country's new program seeking to seize all unregistered weapons—a tactic that is being seen by tribes as one set up to forcibly disarm them. Simultaneously, Yemen's courts decided to throw one journalist in prison and order another to stop writing because of their supposedly separatist slants.

"The sentence constitutes another violation of free expression by Yemen," Reporters Without Borders told the Yemen Times.

In addition to controlling firearms and the press, the government sent its forces into southern territories in the name of national security and anti-terrorism: the military is currently surrounding the Wa'ela tribe, accused of holding the six surviving missionaries of nine who were taken hostage on July 12, 2009, in a suburb of Sa'ada.

Sheikh Saleh Habra, spokesperson for the tribe, told the Yemen Times rescuing the hostages is not on the government's agenda so much as a plan "to impose a complete siege on our supporters and expand their military sites."

Such measures from the government have not in any way curbed the violence between the Sunni north and Shi'ite south. Clashes between Houthis and Sunni militants over a northern mosque led to the death of ten people in July.

The Yemeni Defense Ministry newswire is additionally accusing separatists of killing three and wounding another in the Lahaj region of the south.

The violence has not gone unnoticed in the international community, particularly after an American intelligence official warned of possible attacks against the US embassy in Sana'a. Members of Salafia Jihadia, a group linked to Al Qaeda, are being accused of plotting the supposed operation.

To show the world Yemen is serious about fighting terrorism, courts in that country sentenced six accused Al Qaeda operatives to death in July for plotting against foreign and governmental targets.

These actions may be too little too late since western governments have already warned their citizens not to travel to Yemen.

On August 21, 2009, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs issued a travel report citing the presence of terrorism, tribal violence and government-secessionist fighting to warn Canadians against all travel to the region. The Canadian government lists one of the Yemeni rebel entities, the anti-government pro-theocracy Islamic Army of Aden, as a terrorist organization.

Canada has been particularly wary of Yemen ever since a small bomb exploded near the Yemeni offices of Canadian oil company Nexen on April 10, 2008.

According to Canada's report on bilateral relations with Yemen, the Canadian International Development Agency has spent $450,000 in Yemen to help remove landmines. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs is tied to Yemen via its Global Peace and Security Fund and Counter-Terrorism Capacity Building assistance.

Indirectly, Canada has also worked through the United Nations Development Program to help set up the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights.

Despite both domestic and international efforts, attacks within the country are multiplying.

At the beginning of July an unknown group exploded an oil pipeline controlled by a South Korean company in southeastern Yemen. Commercial attacks such as this are a bigger worry for the government than protests since the country is bleeding billions of dollars due to the world financial crunch, whether or not it refuses to admit it.

The Yemeni government's response to the crisis, which stems largely from an economy 90 per cent dependent on dwindling oil reserves, was to further poke at the south: it unveiled plans in July via the Yemen News Agency to open a new refinery in the southern city of Aden.

Southerners are not pleased.

Isaac Oommen is a writer, originally from Dubai and now residing in Vancouver. He traveled extensively through the Middle East and south-central Asia before settling in Vancouver to write.

Independence for South Yemen (Stamp)