May 26, 2012
By EVA SOHLMAN
The New York Times
SANA, YEMEN — A year ago hundreds
of thousands of people flocked to Sana’s Change Square and turned it into the
symbolic heart of the revolution by calling from their tents for the
resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and euph Today, six months after Mr. Saleh stepped down,
a head-high wooden wall has been raised to separate the women from the men and
more than a thousand people remain in the square, waiting for the fulfillment
of a revolution stalled by the former president’s lingering influence and
internal divisions.
“The revolution is not finished
yet. Saleh may have resigned, but the old regime still clings on to power,”
said Fuad al-Himyari, the young, mild-mannered leader of the opposition
movement’s umbrella organization, the Higher Youth Coordination Committee,
during an interview in the tent city.
“In order to leave the square we need to see
Saleh and his family removed from the military, and the military needs to be
unified,” added Mr. Himyari, who is a member of the Islamist party Al Islah and
whose poems and sermons at Change Square mosque have earned him the nickname
“The Poet of the Revolution.”
According to a Gulf-brokered
agreement, which Mr. Saleh signed on Nov. 23, he and his family must give up
their powers in exchange for immunity and allow for a peaceful, democratic
transition from his 33-year rule. The military, which was divided during the
protests and brought the country to the brink of civil war last summer, must
also be restructured and integrated.
But this process has proven more
challenging than expected and has led to great tensions in the capital.
In the last month, President Abdu
Rabbu Mansour Hadi started the process of replacing some of Mr. Saleh’s
relatives and loyalists from the military while Mr. Saleh tried, but failed, to
stop him every step of the way. The most critical moment came when Mr. Saleh’s
half-brother, General Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmar, commander of the air force,
refused to step down and briefly took over Sana International Airport.
The country is bracing for Mr.
Hadi’s next move. “There is a serious conflict between the old and the new
presidents. The situation is very tense. We are not on the other side of this
yet,” said Jamal Benomar, the U.N. envoy to Yemen, during a visit to the
country last month.
The situation is further
complicated by an old triangle of rivalry that sparked the fighting last summer
between Mr. Saleh, the powerful tribal Ahmar family, and Major General Ali
Mohsin al-Ahmar, a powerful military commander who is unrelated to the Ahmar
tribe and who has since defected to the opposition.
Some militias, checkpoints and
roadblocks remain scattered across the capital. People wonder anxiously if the
resounding gunfire in the evenings is caused by weddings or fighting. Sana also
suffers daily power cuts because of anti-revolutionary sabotage so that
generators buzz constantly in shops, offices and homes. Dinner is sometimes
served in complete darkness as the latest developments of the Yemeni political
drama are discussed.
Those close to Mr. Saleh describe
him as a man locked in the delusion that the country cannot manage without him.
The bomb attack on the presidential palace last summer did not only cause him
long-lasting and painful wounds, but has also led to mild dementia, these sources
say.
Last week, the United States
warned supporters of Mr. Saleh that it might freeze their assets if they
blocked the transfer of power. It was a move intended to end the power struggle
and bolster Mr. Hadi, who has made a strong commitment to fight groups linked
to Al Qaeda, whose influence expanded during last year’s political chaos.
The fight with the Qaeda
militants, which has intensified in the last couple of weeks, further detracts
from the country’s democratic transition. On Monday, Al Qaeda claimed
responsibility for a suicide bombing in the heart of Sana that killed more than
100 soldiers and wounded several hundred.
Meanwhile, the delayed transition
has exposed deep divisions within the opposition youth movement orically
debating the future of Yemen.
In Change Square alone, there are
more than 300 groups represented — from independents, women’s rights activists,
Socialists, Houthi rebels from the north, secessionists from the south, to Al
Islah and different tribes — many divided along old political and sectarian
fault lines.
“It is very difficult to gather
and coordinate and create a platform for all these different groups and clans,”
said Mr. Himyari.
The most visible divide in the
square is the one between the independent women and the conservatives of Al
Islah. At stake are the future rights of Yemen’s women — and the revolution’s
democratic outcome.
In the early days of the
revolution, women played a key role and took an unprecedented place in Yemeni
history. They delivered blankets, cooked food and cared for the wounded. Soon
they were found at the front lines, side by side with the men, and led
protests, slept in the squares, and reported as bloggers and journalists.
Tawwakol Karman, the human rights
activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, shed her veil to address the crowds
and became the women’s most famous face.
Now many fear a backlash.
Well-organized, Al Islah has taken the lead, while the women have had
difficulty coordinating their views. During the first post-revolution women’s
conference in March some started throwing shoes at each other after a political
argument.
In Change Square, where Al Islah
has taken control, women described psychological and social pressure to go back
to their homes. After a wooden wall was raised to separate men and women under
the pretext of allowing women more privacy, women have become conspicuously
scarce, with about 5 to 10 women loitering around the area during daytime,
fully swathed in black.
One of the four women out of the
more than 1,000 men still camping in the square is Farida al-Yarimi, a
48-year-old protest leader who has come to be known as “The Mother of the
Revolution.”
“This is my fourth tent,” she said during a
visit to her small tent. “The others were torn down during the fights when Al
Islah tried to push me away.”
Sheik Hamid al-Ahmar, a member of
Al Islah’s political leadership, played down the women’s concerns and explained
that the party, which represents moderate to extremely conservative Islamic
forces, had changed and become more open.
But when asked about the square,
he shifted to a sharper tone: “There was bad behavior, which turned the square
into a discotheque! Those women wanted to go hand in hand with their boyfriends
as lovers in the demonstrations. This is not right and is against our
religion.”
This picture was challenged by
many in the square who are afraid that Al Islah’s rise might lead to the
oppression of human and women’s rights in an upcoming national dialogue on a
new constitution and a new social contract.
At such a critical time for the
movement, there were hopes that Ms. Karman would play a unifying role. But the
normally vociferous activist has been silent. She rejected a request from
women’s rights activists to help strengthen their voice ahead of the dialogue,
said Enas al-Arashi, a political analyst, saying that was possibly because it
could cause problems for her within her party, Al Islah.
“Tawwakol should do something for
the women now. She could at least write an op-ed!” said an activist in the
square, who declined to give her name because of the sensitivity of the matter.
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