Yemeni tribal chief: Saleh return could spark war

By AHMED AL-HAJ Associated press

June 21, 2011, 3:34PM

SANAA, Yemen — The head of Yemen's most powerful tribal confederation warned Tuesday in a letter to the Saudi king that Yemen could plunge into civil war if President Ali Abdullah Saleh is allowed to return home.

Saleh is currently in Saudi Arabia, where he is receiving treatment for serious injuries from a blast early this month at his palace in the Yemeni capital that left him with severe burns and chunks of wood in his chest.

In his message to King Abdullah, Sadeq al-Ahmar, the influential tribal chief who was an ally of Saleh before switching sides to join the opposition, appealed to the Saudi monarch to prevent Saleh from returning to Yemen.

"His return will lead to sedition and civil war," al-Ahmar said, according to an aid to al-Ahmar. Saudi Arabia is a key player in Yemen, and has pressed Saleh in the past to negotiate a settlement to Yemen's political turmoil.

Late Tuesday, al-Ahmar had his first meeting with Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi since Saleh departed, a possible step toward resolving the conflict. Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a general who defected to the opposition and deployed his units to defend protesters, took part in the meeting. Hadi is the acting president. He is under pressure to agree to a new government that effectively freeze Saleh out.

The tribal chief's aide said that they discussed steps to implement a cease-fire and withdraw forces from the streets. They also discussed "possible means to exit the current crisis," according to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Mideast, have been protesting daily since late January, demanding the ouster of Saleh, who has ruled Yemen for nearly 33 years. Their campaign has been largely peaceful, but fighting erupted in Sanaa between Saleh loyalists and fighters from al-Ahmar's powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid, after troops moved to attack al-Ahmar's residence.

The fighting has tapered off since Saleh left for Saudi Arabia. Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi became acting president following Saleh's departure.

The opposition on Tuesday accused Saleh's inner circle and family of hindering the opposition's dialogue with Hadi.

"Saleh's sons are not helpful in solving the problem, and they don't help the acting president to exercise his constitutional powers," opposition spokesman Abdullah Oubal said.

Yemen's opposition parties have sought to persuade Hadi and Saleh's ruling party to join them in a transitional leadership that would effectively shut out Saleh, who has resisted tremendous pressure at home and abroad to step down.

The president's son Ahmed, who commands the country's best trained military forces, the Republican Guard, and is the main force maintaining his father's grip on power, opposes such discussions.

Saleh's close aide and adviser, Abdul-Karim al-Iryani, arrived Tuesday in Riyadh for talks with Saleh, who requested the meeting. A leading member of the ruling party, commenting on reports that Saleh and al-Iryani were discussing a transfer of power, said he expected "very important decisions" to come out from the meeting.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The United States fears that Yemen's power vacuum will give even freer rein to al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, which Washington believes is the terror network's most active branch. Already, Islamic militants — some suspected of ties to al-Qaida — have taken control of at least two areas in the rebellious southern province of Abyan.

Late Monday and early Tuesday, government warplanes bombed suspected militant hideouts in Abyan, killing at least 22 al-Qaida-linked fighters, a defense ministry official said on condition of anonymity in line with ministry regulations.

Saleh 'back in Yemen on Friday', ruling party insists

Jun 22, 2011

SANA'A // Yemen's ruling party announced yesterday that Ali Adullah Saleh would be back in the capital on Friday, but an opposition leader discounted the possibility of the president's return.

Abdul Hafed Al Nahari, a spokesman for the General People's Congress, said preparations were being made for a massive celebration, which will be attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

Ahmed Soufi, Mr Saleh's senior adviser, said the only chance that Mr Saleh does not return this week is if his doctors in Riyadh recommend that he stays there longer.

"Saleh is healthy now and it is time that he comes back to Yemen and lead the country," Mr Soufi said.

A close family member of Mr Saleh said he underwent an operation yesterday to his lungs, his third since his arrival in Saudi Arabia more than two weeks ago.

"He is recovering faster than we thought he would. It will take him more than a month to return to full strength but President Saleh is seeking to continue the remaining simple medical procedures in Yemen," said the relative.

State television has not announced Mr Saleh's expected return to the country.

Yasser Al Yamani, a senior Saleh aide, said: "Saleh's arrival back to Yemen is not a surprise. We said all along that he is travelling for medical treatment and like any other president in the world, is expected to be back to his country and continue with the role of leadership."

The opposition Joint Meeting Parties are not taking the ruling party comments seriously. The JMP said that it received confirmation from a number of western ambassadors that Mr Saleh will not be back.

Hasan Zaid, the secretary general of the Haq party, said that if Mr Saleh were returning to Yemen on Friday it would mean that he had died and his body was there for burial.

"Seven of President Saleh's personal guards were killed in the presidential palace attack, and they were young and healthy. Mr Saleh was among them and it is only logic that his health is critical."

In Mr Saleh's absence, the acting head of state, vice-president Abdo Rabu Hadi, is under pressure to form a joint transitional government, a senior aide to the vice president said.

"Vice-president Abdo Rabu Hadi was given a short deadline to reach agreement between political factions and he is taking this seriously," the aide said on Monday.

Yaseen Noman, the secretary general of the Socialist party, said yesterday that numerous obstacles stand in the way of the opposition agreeing to any transitional council, including the existence of new forces within the opposition that want a share in power, including the Houthis, youth movements, newly formed political parties, and southern representatives.

Mohammed Qahtan, the JMP spokesman, said the youth movement rejected any representation for the ruling party and a transition government without them would not be fair or represent all the political factions in Yemen.

"Not giving Mr Saleh's party any representation in a transition government would not be accepted by the international community. That is why we cannot accept it," said Mr Qahtan.

President Saleh's supporters make the biggest feast in the world to celebrate his recovery and return

Protests Aside, Yemen’s Leader Has His Followers

By LAURA KASINOF, 21/06/2011

SANA, Yemen — Out of the ancient, ornate mud brick buildings and across the narrow alleyways where barefoot children play, a chant emerges frequently in the old walled city here in the capital. Seemingly at random, someone will raise his voice to announce: “The people want Ali Abdullah Saleh!”

Mr. Saleh’s government has suffered high-level defections and the loss of international support. The exact state of his health remains in question after an attack on the presidential compound forced him to seek treatment in Saudi Arabia. Crowds in the capital on Monday demanded that his sons also leave.

Still, the embattled Yemeni president has his fervent followers, especially in the old city.

“I am 100 percent sure that he’ll come back,” said Mohammed al-Ghaithi, a high school student who with his brother mans the family shop in a neighborhood of the old city, Al Jala, known for its historic bathhouse.

Their numbers are impossible to gauge with certainty, and motives among them are hardly uniform. Many of the tribesmen who show up at pro-Saleh rallies on Fridays are shipped in from across the country and paid by their sheikhs, who are in turn paid by the government. Thousands gather, and even illiterate people hold signs that read “yes to constitutional legitimacy.”

For months, Mr. Saleh gave weekly speeches at the rallies, and the ostentatious shows of support helped him justify keeping his grip on power in the face of the far larger and more organic antigovernment sit-ins here and around the country.

Also among the pro-Saleh camp: hundreds of paid thugs who roam the streets of Sana, with batons in hand ready to beat up a stray young antigovernment protester at random, and ruling party businessmen who greatly benefited from the corruption of the Saleh government.

However, many of the residents of the old city, whom Yemenis tend to stereotype as simple and kind, fit a different mold — though they do attend pro-Saleh rallies on occasion and many have low-level government jobs.

They are neither incredibly poverty-stricken nor involved in tribal warfare. With schools and hospitals near at hand and peace in the streets, they say they feel that Mr. Saleh brought them the stability in which they want to live their lives.

“The first thing is that people in Old Sana are educated,” Mr. Ghaithi said. “But another important thing is that there is more security here than any other place in the capital. We feel that this security comes from Saleh.”

When Mr. Saleh returns from Saudi Arabia, said Abdullah Swaid, a shopkeeper, “we will make the biggest feast in the world.”

“It’s going to stretch from Tahrir Square to 70th Street,” he said, referring to a square that is dominated by a pro-Saleh camp and a stretch of street about a mile away where pro-government rallies are held on Fridays.

There is a tent set up at the antigovernment protest camp in Sana University representing the old city, but several protesters say their car tires have been slashed when parked near their homes in the old city.

One evening, days after Mr. Saleh went to Saudi Arabia, his supporters celebrated by shooting Kalashnikovs into the air for hours when official media announced that he had come out of surgery successfully. Some people in the old city said it sounded as if war had broken out.

Local press carried reports of hundreds of people being injured by the falling bullets and of several being killed. The loyalists say they will light up the sky again with gunfire when Mr. Saleh returns from Riyadh.

“It was a miracle that he didn’t die,” Mr. Swaid said, sitting cross-legged on the ground in his shop, which was dark — there is very little electricity in Sana these days. “Everyone around him died. And somehow he didn’t die.”

The old city, where posters of a dapper-looking Mr. Saleh are plastered throughout, is also marked by a distinct hatred for Mr. Saleh’s main tribal rivals, the Ahmars, who were engaged in a bloody battle with the government for about two weeks early this month.

One afternoon, children were throwing their shoes at a scurrying rat. “That’s Hamid al-Ahmar!” they yelled, naming the most outspoken of the family. Adults make scoffing noises when any of the Ahmars are mentioned.

Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a prominent Yemeni political analyst, said that in the unlikely event that the Ahmars took power, people would flock back to Mr. Saleh’s side and even “take up arms.”

But if there is a relatively peaceful transfer of power —as the United States and Saudi Arabia are seeking — Mr. Iryani said hard-core supporters would most likely accept the reality that Mr. Saleh’s rule was finished. After all, many high-ranking members of the ruling party are in favor of such a proposal, brokered by Persian Gulf nations, which Mr. Saleh declined but was resuscitated after he left the country.

Of course, not everyone in the old city supports him.

While chatting around Mr. Ghaithi’s shop in Al Jala, a friend, Rami Hani, yelled as one of his neighbors walked by. “He’s an Islahi, he’s an Islahi,” he said, meaning a member of the most-powerful opposition party. As Mr. Hani made a pejorative gesture, the man hurried around a corner.

One night, a group of three men stood chatting quietly outside a dry cleaning shop lined with racks of the suit jackets that men from northern Yemen wear over their white robes.

“I go to the university at times during the week,” said Mohammed, who did not want his last name used out of fear of retaliation. “But on Fridays, my dad beats me if I don’t go to 70th Street.”

Source: The New York Times,

Yemen losses near $1-billion after pipeline blast

Sanaa, Yemen— Reuters

Jun. 21, 2011

Yemen has lost nearly $1-billion U.S. in revenues since a blast blamed on tribesmen supporting efforts to oust the president cut off the country’s main oil (CL-FT) pipeline, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The impoverished country has witnessed months of violent clashes which have killed dozens. Protesters are demanding president Ali Abdullah Saleh end his more than three decades in power.

“Yemen loses around $10-million a day due to the production and export stoppage since mid-March,” the official told Reuters.

The country of some 23 million people relies on oil exports for up to 70 per cent of its budget, the official said.

The blast cut off the supply of oil from the central Maarib province to the main export terminal at Ras Isa on the Red Sea.

It also stopped work at the main refinery in Aden, where officials this week began using oil donated from neighbouring Saudi Arabia to begin a restart.

No date has been set to repair the pipeline, which carries nearly half of the country’s 260,000 barrels per day (bpd) oil production.

“No date has been fixed,” the official said. “It depends on reaching an agreement between the government and the opposition.”

Tribesmen, who have repeatedly damaged the pipeline in the past, have prevented technicians from repairing it.

The Maarib oil fields, where international oil companies operate, produce high quality light oil which is in demand following the stoppage of similar exports from war-torn Libya.

The government has blamed the pipeline blast on tribesmen supporting opposition groups demanding Saleh’s ouster.

But tribal sources have said that relatives of a Yemeni mediator killed by mistake last year in an air strike targeting al Qaeda were to blame.

They said that Jaber al-Shabwani, who had been trying to persuade members of al Qaeda to surrender, died when his car was destroyed in a strike blamed on a U.S. drone.

Yemen says steps up fight against Islamists

June 21, 2011- (Reuters) - Yemen's army has stepped up an offensive to dislodge Islamist militants holed up in a southern province, killing at least 10 in overnight attacks involving air strikes, a local official said Tuesday.
About 300 militants from ultra-conservative Salafist groups linked to al Qaeda seized Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, in May, amid a wave of popular protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's nearly 33-year rule.
"Between 10 and 15 armed group members were killed in face-to-face confrontations in the town of al-Kud and other areas around Zinjibar," a local official involved in the military operation said.
He said Yemen's air force took part in the attacks.
Monday, a military spokesman said troops had killed 17 militants since an offensive began Sunday. Five soldiers had died and 21 were wounded, the military added.
Abyan's provincial governor, Saleh Hussein al-Zuari, said in comments posted on a government website that security forces were making progress against the militants.
It was not possible to verify his statement. No one was immediately available to comment from the armed Islamist group in the city.
Witnesses in Mudiyah, a town in northern Abyan, said on Tuesday they saw militants burying around 20 corpses.
The seizure of Zinjibar forced thousands of residents to flee and raised fears that militants with ties to al Qaeda were gaining ground as Saleh resisted pressure from his Saudi and U.S. allies to step down in favor of a transition to democracy.
Saleh has been in a Saudi hospital since being wounded in an attack on his palace on June 3, but he retains power.
Saleh's opponents say his forces handed over Zinjibar to the militants in order to bolster his argument that his departure would lead to an Islamist takeover of the poor Arab state.

Ali Saleh to return to Yemen

SANAA, Yemen, June 21 (UPI) -- Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, being treated in Saudi Arabia after a bombing attack on his compound, will return to Yemen Friday, a senior adviser said.

Saleh and other senior officials were injured June 3 in the attack on the mosque at the presidential palace and are receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia, CNN reported.

The attack came following months of unrest with protesters demanding an end to Saleh's rule.

Recent weeks have seen battles between Yemeni government troops and anti-government tribal forces and Islamic militants, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, CNN said.