101 people killed and wounded over last month

By Fatik al-Rodaini

SANA'A, April 5, 2012- At least 101 people, including children and women, were accidentally killed and wounded throughout playing with guns across Yemen in March.

Yemen's Interior Ministry said in a report posted on its website that 101 people, including 27 children and 6 women, were killed and wounded throughout playing with guns.

The report mentioned that at least 21 people were killed among them 10 children while 80 others were wounded in similar accidents among them 17 children and 6 women.

According to the ministry most of the incidents happened in 16 provinces across the country with 18 incidents in the capital Sana'a, 14 in Dhamar, 10 in Sa'ada, 7 in Ameran, 6 in Taiz, 5 in Aden and Ibb, 4 in Lahj and Sahbowa provinces, while the other incidents happened in the rest of Yemen's provinces.

Recent studies proved that weapons proliferation had drastically increased over the past year in direct connection with the revolution and the need civilians felt to protect their families.

Despite many positive steps which were taken by the Yemeni government in 2007 to curtail weapon-carrying in urban areas, the past two years pretty much rendered all efforts fruitless.

Social violence in the impoverished Republic is now exacerbated by the widespread ownership of weapons.

Although some statistics claim that there are an estimated 60 million weapons in Yemen a more recent and more accurate report cited a figure closer to 11 million in a country of 23 million, which in any case make the weapon per inhabitant ratio still one of the highest in the world.

2,000 Yemenis die every year in ethnic conflicts, according to government figures and gun-related crime is on the increase.

Many Yemeni children who accidentally killed their loved ones while playing with guns

On the other hand, Yemen's Interior Ministry has said that approximately 235 people committed suicide, including 24 children in a decline of 19.6 percent when comparing with 2010 when 292 committed suicide.

According to the ministry, 36 people were committed suicide in the capital Sana'a, 22 people in Taizi, 22 in Ibb and the rest of the figure was in other governorates.

Analysts say that most people commit suicide as a result of the poverty and unemployment in Yemen that faces sever hunger.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP) , five million Yemenis are moderately food insecure and at risk of experiencing further food shortages.

The protests that hit Yemeni in 2011 demanding the ouster of the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh sharply pushed up prices. The cost of most essential commodities has risen by 50 percent.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last year that Statistics indicate that one in three people are food insecure and under-nourished, and more than 50 percent of children are stunted.

A Yemeni economist, Mohammad Al-Afandi, had revealed that poverty in Yemen has raised to 70 percent and unemployment to 40 percent, pointing out the GDP growth rate declined to approximately zero and the reserves of foreign currency fell to $ 4.5 billion.

Yemen remains the poorest country in the Arab world, with a per-capita income of $1,300; almost half of the population lives on less than $2 a day.Yemeni economists expect that the donor conference on Yemen to be held in March in Riyadh, would enable the government overcome economic challenges.

IMF approves $93.7 mln for Yemen's crisis-hit economy

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund resumed lending to Yemen on Wednesday, approving the payment of a $93.7 million loan to the country to address its urgent balance of payments deficit, which has been worsened by a year of political turmoil.

IMF Deputy Managing Director Nemat Shafik said the fund would immediately disburse the full amount.

"A year-long political crisis and civil unrest have taken a serious toll on the Yemeni economy, endangering the humanitarian situation," Shafik said in a statement.

Sparked by street protests in other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Yemen was brought to the brink of a civil war that ended the 33-year-rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Yemen, with widespread poverty, is the poorest country in the Arab world.

The IMF approved a $370 million loan for Yemen in 2010, but just a fraction of the money was disbursed before its economic program went off track.

Shafik said the loan would help Yemen deal with pressing financing needs, giving the government time to compile a medium-term economic plan.

She also said donor support was critical.

"Financing needs are likely to remain large as the political crisis has worsened poverty and unemployment conditions and severely impacted tax revenues," Shafik said.

Yemen: 100 al-Qaeda fighters killed in south

Apr. 5, 2012 

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemeni government troops have killed more than 100 al-Qaeda fighters in the past two days in an offensive against militant hideouts in the country's south, the interior ministry said Thursday.

The military has been waging intense battles in the southern Abyan and Lahj provinces to rout the militants. The area has seen heavy fighting in the past week after two subsequent militant attacks on Yemeni army bases.

The interior ministry said the air and land offensive has rattled the militants, who are trying to regroup near the sea. The authorities vowed to continue their campaign.

The ministry's figure could not be independently confirmed. Earlier figures reported by The Associated Press said nearly 50 militants have been killed in the last few days of fighting in southern Yemen.

The statement gave no other details about the offensive and did not mention any casualties sustained by the military.

Al-Qaeda and other militant groups have taken advantage of Yemen's yearlong political turmoil to overrun large swaths of territory in the country's south, even capturing several key cities and towns there.

Yemen's uprising, inspired by Arab revolts elsewhere, forced longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh out of office in February. His successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, was later rubber-stamped as president in a nationwide vote. Hadi has vowed to fight al-Qaeda while restructuring the armed forces, in which Saleh's loyalists and family members still hold key posts.

Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is one of the movement's most dangerous offshoot.

South Yemen airstrikes kill at least 10: official

April 5, 2012

ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) - Airstrikes by the Yemeni military killed at least 10 Islamists in southern Yemen on Thursday, a local official said, in the latest episode of fighting with militants who have seized territory in the region.

A local official in southern Abyan province, parts of which are controlled by an al Qaeda-linked group called Ansar al-Sharia, said two strikes targeted Islamists in the village of Umm al-Jabalayn, near the city of Jaar.

Residents of Jaar, which is under the control of Ansar al-Sharia, said they saw members of the group bringing bodies back to the city for burial.

The United States has also carried out attacks with drones on alleged al Qaeda members in the region, and last year used a CIA drone to assassinate a U.S. citizen whom prosecutors later said plotted an abortive attack abroad.

The reported strike is near an area where Ansar al-Sharia last week said it killed at least 20 Yemeni soldiers.

Yemen has a seen a surge in violence in the south since President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi took office in late February, vowing to fight Islamist militants who expanded their footprint during political turmoil over the fate of Hadi's predecessor.

Mass protests aimed at ending the 33-year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, long a key figure in Washington's "counter-terrorism" plans, erupted in early 2011. The demonstrations were coupled with fighting within an army divided between Saleh's foes and allies.

Washington, which has said it wants to see Hadi reunify the military to fight Islamists, backed his succession under a deal engineered by oil producer Saudi Arabia, which fears a slide into chaos in Yemen could have effects across its borders.

Yemen caught between Ansar Allah and Ansar Al-Shariah

5 April 2012

Mohamed Bin Sallam

Ansar Allah is the military wing of the Shiite Houthis Movement, who fought six wars against Yemen’s army between 2004 and 2010. They currently control and run the northern governorate of Sa’ada, some parts of Hajja and areas within Amran.

Ansar Al-Sharia is an organization comprised of Islamists and jihadists that made its first appearance in Abyan, south Yemen in May 2011. This is when armed men took control of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan, after security personnel abandoned their positions and weapons in the governorate.

Most members of Ansar Al-Sharia are former jihadists who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and returned to Yemen in 1990. The connection between Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and this new group remains uncertain.

Ansar Al-Sharia is a mixture of fighters that are commanded by Khalid Abdul-Nabi, a Yemeni jihadist who was once part of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan. The ‘army’ was a jihadist group headed by Abu Al-Hassan Al-Mihdar, who was executed in 1999 on charges of abducting and killing westerners.

The Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan carried out many terrorist operations in Abyan including bombings and the abduction and killing of western tourists in 1998 before the emergence of Al-Qaeda in its present structure.

In the early 2000s Abdul-Nabi appeared to leave jihad activities and retreated to his own farm near Jaar in Abyan. Here he stayed for about six years theorizing about Jihadist Salafi ideology. In 2005, a top Yemeni official declared Abdul-Nabi fully rehabilitated and living the life of a peaceful farmer.

Abdul-Nabi was arrested along with 28 supposed Al-Qaeda supporters in an operation in Abyan governorate in August 2008. In an apparent meeting with then president Ali Abdullah Saleh, Abdul-Nabi agreed to support the Yemeni regime against its enemies, the Houthi rebels in the north and southern separatists. Abdul-Nabi was released in a general amnesty in early 2009.

With ambiguous attempts by the regime to contain Abdul-Nabi, his followers appear to commit to his ideology and created what was to become Ansar Al-Shariah. The organization announced itself when it seized control of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan.

The nature of the relationship between Al-Shariah and Al-Qaeda is unclear, but Al-Shariah shares many similarities with what is known as Jihadist Salafism. Abdul-Nabi has denied any relation with Al-Qaeda, a denial that sounds authentic. However, his ideological perspective seems to a large extent to be close to Al-Qaeda, especially as his group explicitly endorses the Jihad movement.

Ansar Al-Shariah appears to be the ideological extension of the Jihad movement, that in turn was a natural extension of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan previously led by Al-Mihdar.

Abdul-Nabi has recently denied the existence of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan in a press interview, a denial that at times has also been repeated by the state. However, the name was in common use in 1990s.

The militants of Ansar Al-Shariah view themselves as better than other militants. Their belief in their own superiority is reminiscent of the Houthis theory of Devine Selection.

The groups of Ansar Al-Shariah and Ansar Allah are opposites in the sense that the former represents Sunni fundamentalism and the other Shiite extremism. However, their way of thinking is similar as both groups tend to use violence to achieve their aims.

Jihadist experience in Yemen

The older jihadists in Yemen have more experience than those who named themselves the Jihadist Youth supported by Saudi organizations. This experience came as a direct result of their participation in the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

The original experience was a consequence of being part of the major jihad groups led by Osama Bin Laden and Tariq Al-Fadhli. That experience increased during the1994 civil war in Yemen. Hundreds of former jihadists in Afghanistan took part in supporting the military of Ali Abdullah Saleh against the Yemeni Socialist Party.

Some of the jihadists from the above conflicts joined with Abu Al-Hassan Al-Mihdar, and others with Abu Ali Al-Harithi, who was the suspected master mind behind the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Al-Harithi was killed by a US drone in Marib in Nov. 2002. That assassination can be seen as the real launch of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Ansar Al-Sharia instead of Al-Qaeda of Jihad

Many analysts claim that Al-Sharia is merely Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula changing its name to become a Yemeni organization. The claim is that the name change will have a positive media impact locally and abroad in favor of the group’s expansion.

Such a change of name may reduce pressure on Yemen to fight the new group, as it is ‘not Al-Qaeda’, which as an ally to the US ‘war on terror’, Yemen is committed to fighting.

A local group, with a local name, will attract less pressure from the United Nations on Yemen. It will become a Yemeni affair, and there will be less justification to intervene in Yemeni internal affairs, as the organization will not play a role in the Al-Qaeda versus the West conflict.

The former leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, had expressed a willingness to change the name of the organization. This suggestion was found in a letter on Bin Laden’s computer, confiscated after his assassination on May 2, 2011.

Bin Laden expressed in the letter that name ‘Al-Qaeda’ was not sufficiently religious, and did not express the message that the group was engaged in a holy war against the enemies of Islam. A name change would also put some distance between the criticism Al-Qaeda had attracted for killing a large number of Muslims.

While the Houthis’ Ansar Allah group expands their military presence in north Yemen, the Ansar Al-Shariah group intensifies their fighting against the Yemeni army in south Yemen.

Interior Ministry warns of potential terrorist attacks in Yemen's capital

SANA'A, April 5, 2012- Ministry of Interior ordered the security and police forces to raise the level of alert, to remain vigilant, and to double security presence around governmental institutions in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a in anticipation of potential terrorist attacks targeting some sites in it.

In a statement posted on the ministry of interior official website on Wednesday, the ministry also stressed the importance of setting up more checkpoints in the city with the aim to arrest those criminals who are on the wanted list as well as stop suspected vehicles.

It has further instructed that constant supervision of guarding units and the established checkpoints must take place regularly, urging all security and police units to coordinate and work with the spirit of one team to be able to foil any attack.

Sources close to the forces loyal to the former President Ail Abdullah Saleh announced that they had information that indicated al-Qaeda's intentions of carrying out attacks in the capital.

Security has deteriorated sharply in Yemen, especially in the southern and southeastern provinces as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has expanded its foothold and stepped up its attacks, taking an advantage of the current unrest that has gripped the poor state for over a year.

Source: Yemen Post