President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen

The process took weeks to debate and finalize but the Yemeni parliament has finally approved the Gulf Cooperation Council’s peace accord. The organization of Arab Gulf states tabled the plan last April in an attempt to slide President Ali Abdullah Saleh from his post after thirty-three years as the country’s top man.

In return for stepping down, Saleh has been granted a total reprieve for crimes that he allegedly perpetrated during his three decades in power, including crimes that were committed during the past eleven months of bloodshed against Yemeni demonstrators.

The accord, when first proposed by the GCC, was highly controversial. Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights commissioner, denounced the plan as a breach of international humanitarian law due to its immunity clause. Human Rights Watch issued a scathing critique of the agreement as “a license to kill” more protesters. 

Anti-government protesters, some of whom have lost loved ones to regime shelling and snipers, are understandably the most upset. Before parliament formally endorsed the power transfer plan, tens of thousands demonstrated in cities across Yemen to express their frustration with what they perceive as a bill that not only condones murder but protects the murderer from prosecution.

If there is any consolation to the protesters, it is the fact that parliament took their anger into consideration.

Originally, the GCC agreement provided full immunity to Saleh and all of his aides for all crimes that may have been committed during the past thirty-three years. This would have not only included the killing of innocent Yemenis in city streets but violence connected to all of the country’s regional conflicts, including the indiscriminate bombing campaign against Shī’ah Houthi rebels in the north and a crackdown on separatists in the south. Monetary violations, such as shady real estate deals and outright corruption, would also have been barred from the courts.

Some of those stipulations are now gone. Saleh enjoys full immunity but his aides will no longer be protected from charges of corruption or crimes related to terrorism.

Although Saleh is not set to resign, the future for Yemen remains bleak at best. The president is reportedly scheduled to leave for Oman before flying to the United States for treatment on wounds that he received after a June assassination attempt at his palace. 

Washington will most likely ask him to depart after his medical tests are completed, rightly concerned that an extended or permanent stay would give Yemenis the impression that the United States are willfully harboring a war criminal. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already refused to take Saleh in which begs the question of where he will eventually end up.

Then there are questions relating to how much Yemen will actually change from a post-Saleh transition. His son, Ahmed, remains in control of Yemen’s most elite and well trained branch of the military. Loyalists are keeping their positions in the government which could help destabilize the country by allowing Saleh to manipulate Yemen’s politics behind the scenes.

In the end, ruling out of sight may not even be necessary for Saleh has already indicated that he plans to return to Yemen as an opposition candidate after his medical stay in the United States.

None of these concerns even begin to account for the country’s longer term problems, such as increased resentment in the south over what is seen as a “northern occupation” there. Al Qaeda’s freedom of movement is also a blaring problem with possible regional dimensions.

To expect Yemen’s unity government to solve all of these problems in a few months or even a few years would be a viewpoint in the realm of the imaginary. The international community will have to wait and see whether Saleh’s departure will really make any difference.

View of Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, January 13, 2007 (Eesti)

Al Qaeda’s core organizational leadership may be at its weakest point in over a decade but the group’s regional franchises are certainly making up for their losses.

Nowhere in the world is this more obvious than in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, with a government fractured internally and system of political parties fighting among itself. Add acute child undernourishment, widespread illiteracy, inaccessible health care services and a country awash in weapons to the picture, and it is a wonder why terrorists did not try to expand their territorial reach in Yemen sooner.

Yemen was in horrible shape to begin with, even before millions of Yemeni demonstrators took to the streets in strong opposition to their president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. But with eleven months of turmoil pitting security forces against demonstrators and armed tribes, in multiple cities, Al Qaeda’s wing in this Arabian Peninsula state has been given a gift from the ruling regime.

With Yemen’s elite counterterrorism units diverted to the capital and its army picked apart, AQAP is on the ascendancy, grabbing territory in the south and attempting to do what they miserably failed to do in Iraq years earlier—establish an Islamic emirate in an Arab state.

Abyan Province along Yemen’s southern coast has been, and continues to be, the hotbed of AQAP’s governing project. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni outfit, which used to call itself Ansar al-Sharia, has been in firm control of two large Yemeni towns in the province, including the provincial capital of Zinjibar since May of last year.

Eight months later, AQAP militants remain in the city, administering their code of justice and attempting to exert their will on the local population, despite multiple offensives from what is left of Yemen’s armed forces. The city of one hundred thousand now resembles a deserted town, with buildings completely abandoned, streets marked with potholes and what were homes that have transformed into military garrisons  Residents are only just returning, after being refused entry by the militants twice before.

Two towns held by Al Qaeda are disturbing enough. But evidently, the militants are only beginning their trek for more land and resources.

Earlier this week, fighters connected to AQAP entered the interior Yemeni town of Rada’a without resistance from the police forces. Residents in the area reported that some policemen voluntarily gave their weapons to Al Qaeda before fleeing town. AQAP is now essentially the policemen, service provider and mayor of the city, all rolled into one. In case anyone doubted its strength, the militants hoisted their black flag above the town’s mosque in a show of defiance to the central government, demonstrating, in the meantime, that the people of Rada’a are now beholden to Al Qaeda rule.

Yemen’s interim unity government may not view Al Qaeda or terrorism in general as its top priority. Given the country’s horror story, from Saleh prolonging the transition process to a desperate cash flow problem, perhaps Yemen’s government should not be. But Al Qaeda is not waiting around for Yemen’s leaders to pounce before making their move. The Yemenis may not be worrying about it but you can bet that the United States intelligence community is.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen (Reuters)

The man who once described ruling Yemen as “dancing on the heads of snakes” has been bitten by the wrath of his own people.

Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to transfer power to his vice president on Wednesday in exchange for an immunity arrangement that will save himself and his family from facing trial for the killing of Yemeni protesters.

The veteran Yemeni president had promised to relinquish power several times before this year only to backpedal from agreements at the last minute.

The country meanwhile, already among the most impoverished in the Middle East, is at a delicate standstill between a regime that refuses to make any concessions and a grassroots protest movement that has laid siege to the streets of the capital city since for nearly ten months.

Yemen’s demonstration committee estimates that at least one thousand civilians have died from pitched battles with Saleh’s security forces while hundreds of others were probably killed outside the protest zone in skirmishes between the country’s most powerful tribal confederation and remnants of Saleh’s Republican Guards unit.

The Yemeni army has been stretched thin across the country by the protests, making it difficult for the armed forces to simultaneously combat the separatist threat in the central south of the country where Al Qaeda has established a presence.

Pressure from months of protests and an assassination plot couldn’t make Saleh consider his neighboring states’ peace plan so what changed?

The exhaustion and depletion of the armed forces, an institution that is fighting deserting military units, tribes, separatists and Al Qaeda militants all at once, would be the most logical conclusion. A United Nations Security Council resolution that embarrassed Yemen s government for all of the world to see last month may have also had a role in Saleh’s sudden determination to quit.

The final nail in the coffin may well have been how the Security Council resolution was passed—unanimously, without any objection from permanent council members like China and Russia that have otherwise resisted Western initiatives at the UN.

Saleh, once an American ally, evolved into a man that was more isolated diplomatically than Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who has to date retained the lukewarm support of Beijing and Moscow. Indeed, it is difficult to find anyone alive today who was still standing by Saleh’s side as his country deteriorated into anarchy. Most of his countrymen want him detained and tried for war crimes for the excessive force that has been deployed against them since February. Once allies were turned off by his arrogance and dictatorial attitude.

Given Saleh’s wily personality and survival skills, he might try to draw out the implementation phase of the Gulf Cooperation Council proposal, only to make sure that his sons and nephews hold onto their positions in the military and security forces. He has, after all, performed circus tricks before when he decided to backtrack on the power transition a total of three times. This time, the feeling in the air is different. Ten months of excruciating stress, a near death experience, a three month exile to Saudi Arabia and the loss of his closest friends seems to have weighed the strongman down to the point of capitulation.

This is not the end for Yemen. The country faces problems that together resemble a combustible flame. Saleh left in his wake a nation that, hope aside, has been ruined diplomatically, financially and politically. Yemen is awash in guns but running out of oil and water.

Saleh may be gone, but his relatives are still sitting comfortably behind their desks. Other elements of Yemen’s elite may find it wise to draw up plans of their own in the hopes of grabbing some power themselves. Vice president Abd al-Rahman Mansur al-Hadi, used to sitting in the background, is now thrust in the spotlight of international affairs. In the meantime, the government and the opposition must find enough common ground to rebuild a transitional government before presidential elections can take place months down the road.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen

Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to transfer power in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday in a deal that was brokered by the oil kingdom and its smaller Gulf neighbors.

Last week, Saleh told France 24 that he would step down “within ninety days” of reaching agreement with Yemen’s neighboring states. Since the uprising began in his country in February, the president has repeatedly promised to relinquish power only to change his mind every time.

Wednesday’s agreement sees Saleh transferring power to his vice president within a month in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Presidential elections should be scheduled within three months.

This summer, the Yemeni president was severely injured in a bomb attack on his palace. He spent months recuperating in Saudi Arabia where former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has also lived since his regime was swept away in a popular uprising earlier this year.

Saudi Arabia has a long history of interfering in Yemen’s affairs. The country is divided along ethnic and political lines. The main opposition party Islah is conservative and Islamist while many of the young protesters in Yemen’s streets call for democracy and free elections.

The Hashid tribal federation, the second largest of its kind in Yemen, is probably the most powerful group within the Islah party. It is based in the north and northwest of Yemen where a guerrilla campaign has been waged against the government for many years. The Saudis built a wall along their southern borders to contain this uprising and conducted air strikes in the area to prevent rebels from crossing the border into their kingdom.

The northern insurgency is distinct from the separatist threat in the central south of Yemen that is fueled by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, currently perceived as the most powerful branch of the infamous terrorist network.

Saleh has maintained for years that the two conflict are intertwined; that Al Qaeda was coordinating tactics with the northern insurgents while Iran was masterminding the plot from afar. The United Kingdom and the United States have backed Saleh’s government with arms and funds to crush the Al Qaeda presence but it’s unclear whether he hasn’t diverted those resources to combat the more existential threat to his regime which is the Hashid presence in the north.

The Saudis were quick to side with Saleh when riots erupted in his capital but they now appear to be more sympathetic toward the opposition. Both were acceptable to the kingdom—Saleh and the Hashid have depended on Riyadh for financial support. The only outcome that it may not be prepared to accept is democratic chaos that will divide Yemen again.

The first United States Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft reconnaissance system arrives at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, May 26

Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni American cleric that the United States have been trying to kill for the past year, finally met his maker on Friday.

American drones hovering in Yemeni airspace spotted the radical imam in a remote area in the north of the country, considered the tribal heartland of Yemen. Awlaki had just finished breakfast and was headed for his vehicle when the unmanned aircraft fired their their missiles, first at the car of Awlaki’s companions, then at Awlaki himself. The missiles incinerated the two vehicles and left Awlaki in scattered pieces until his hosts gathered his burnt remains and buried him deep underground.

Besides Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawhiri, Anwar al-Awlaki has been one of those senior Al Qaeda figures that Washington has hoped to get its hands on for years. His name rapidly elevated in importance after investigators learned that the young Nigerian who attempted to blow up an airplane with explosives sewn in his underwear was encouraged and directed by Awlaki to hit the plane with full force.

The American intelligence community has been trying to kill him ever since and came extremely close to doing so this past May when an earlier drone attack targeted a convoy of vehicles that Awlaki was believed to be riding in. The Yemeni American escaped that strike unscathed, providing the United States with an even greater incentive to find him and finish the job.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (APAP), a franchise group that the Obama Administration has called the most lethal and dangerous terrorist threat to the American homeland, has not had many bad days. Friday was the exception. Not only was Awlaki killed; his associate and chief propagandist, Samir Khan, another American, was neutralized in the same attack as well.

Khan is better known as the editor of AQAP’s online magazine, Inspire, which releases articles about its martyrs and lengthy statements urging Muslims in the West to go after their host countries.

In a single day, AQAP lost two of its more charismatic figures. But the organization is still up and running and will likely continue to run until the Yemeni political crisis is resolved and the Yemeni Government extends its authority throughout its tribal frontier.

For President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Awlaki’s demise could not have come at a better time. Saleh has been battling his own citizens in Yemen’s major cities for eight months. His family, which controls the country’s security services, is besieged by tribal fighters supportive of the opposition (the Ahmar family) and former soldiers of his own military (General Ali Mohsen).

The United States, the president’s biggest military benefactor, have distanced themselves from Saleh’s regime as the protests grew larger and bloodier with so sign of any political opening. It was only a few months ago that the Yemeni president was burned and severely wounded by an assassination attempt at his palace. The perpetuators are still unknown.

The latest counterterrorism success against AQAP may be the most significant yet for Saleh, potentially consolidating his domestic position in relation to his armed rivals. In any event, it will strengthen Saleh’s argument that he is the only man capable of stopping an Al Qaeda takeover of the entire country—a claim still ludicrous to millions of Yemeni protesters but buzzing louder in the corridors of power in Washington.

There is no clear indication as to whether the United States will now give Saleh and his regime a pass on stepping down from power and living a life of leisure in a third country, which would kill any chances of improving America’s image with the Yemeni population. The Yemeni intelligence service is rumored to have been a key interlocutor and partner during the Awlaki operation—a rumor that if substantiated, could give American officials pause in their call for the Yemeni president to quit.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, 2010

It has been a little over two months since Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was nearly killed. On June 3, shelling from tribal forces in residential neighborhods of the capital Sana’a hit the presidential palace’s mosque just as he and a number of government allies were praying there. The mortar attack killed a few of Saleh’s elite Republican Guard troops, injured several of the highest officials in his ruling National Congress Party, including the prime minister, and came close to ending Saleh’s own life. His face was burned and shrapnel was lodged close to his heart, enough to have him whisked off to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment.

Government spokesmen have issued multiple statements on Saleh’s health—so many that it is difficult to determine which ones are accurate and which ones are being used for propaganda purposes. But Saleh put an end to the confusion over his fate on August 16, when he released a videotaped speech to his tribal supporters claiming that his health was improving by the day and vowing to return to his native Yemen. In the same speech, he vowed not to resign amid threats of threats, violence and inflammatory rhetoric—even as he deployed those very tactics to subdue his opponents.

We must discuss all the available data, all the events in Yemen, and how to get our country out of the crisis. The crisis which was fabricated by some political forces to reach power. We welcome the opposition and tell them that you can reach power through ballot boxes, not through coups, statements, denunciation, insults or irresponsible speeches.

The speech is the epitome of what Saleh has represented for the past thirty-three years—a shrewd political survivor and manipulator. He knows how to get under the skin of his rivals, when to use threats and when to act like a consoling figure willing to reach out to his opposition. This is the same talent that fooled the Yemeni opposition, his Arab Gulf neighbors and the United States not once or twice but three times, when Saleh reneged on signing a Gulf Cooperation Council deal that would have transferred power over to his deputy within a month.

With Saleh nursing his wounds in Riyadh, responsibility for quelling the protests and hostile anti-government tribes fell to his son, Ahmed, and his oldest nephew, Yahya. The preeminent security institutions in Yemen are under the control of Saleh’s close relatives, assuring that defections from elite units will be kept to a minimum.

The ploy has worked good enough, so far. Downtown Sana’a is still full of Saleh loyalists and has been used as a sanctuary to rain rockets and shells on tribal strongholds in the capital’s periphery. Yet in a society as fragmented and armed as Yemen’s, central Sana’a is where Saleh’s influence runs out. The Hashid confederation, led by the influential Sadiq and Hamid al-Ahmar, is in no way deterred by the Republican Guard’s many attacks. In their eyes, they see the Guard maneuver as an act of desperation and a tacit admission that the influence of Saleh’s government is bottled up in the central corridors of the capital.

Southern Yemen is a rather different story. While street battles and demonstrations are as frequent there as in other parts of the country, the revolt in the southern mountains has a dangerous extremist dimension that caught the United States and its Yemeni counterterrorism partners off guard.

Militants thought to be affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have seized Zanjibar, the capital of Abyan Province, and held onto their territory despite repeated campaigns by the Yemeni army and air force to scatter them. Government troops report militant casualties every day yet the balance of power on the ground is still the same as it was a month ago. Yemeni soldiers situated in the southern end of the peninsula have increasingly been prime targets for militant attacks, including a suicide bombing along a checkpoint last week that killed eight troops. American drone aircraft have picked up the slack, bombing suspected terrorist positions and relieving some of the stress that the Yemeni army has had to deal with.

Saleh’s return is still questionable. If Saudi Arabia were smart, they would “convince” the Yemeni president to join his Tunisian counterpart on permanent vacation in the kingdom, sparing Yemeni civilians an even greater amount of violence were he to return. Regrettably, even this prescription would not dampen the bullets from firing in the direction of anti-government forces, as Saleh’s son and nephews could easily use Yemen’s security establishment to kill off any political transition.

The United States are is once again left with few options—a testament to how versatile and people driven the Arab revolutions have become.

The crossover occurred two weeks ago when Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen, rejected for the third time a peace proposal mediated by the Gulf Cooperation Council that would have rewarded him with immunity for stepping down. The country’s most powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid (which Saleh’s own tribe is a part of) finally decided that enough is enough. With the blessing of the tribe’s leaders, also Yemen’s wealthiest businessmen, Hashid fighters have begun attacking Saleh’s government with live ammunition.

The battles between Saleh’s security forces and Hashid insurgents have plunged the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, into a state of desperation. Over two hundred people have been killed over the last week of fighting alone with both sides registering casualties. Hundreds of Yemeni families are gathering up their belongings and heading out of the capital city toward towns in the periphery which are experiencing problems of their own.

In a bid to consolidate his authority and eliminate his strongest political rivals, Saleh’s military rained mortars and rockets onto the Hashid leadership compound. None of them were killed though the attack highlighted the steps that Saleh was willing to take to kill his opponents and silence dissent.

The military operation only worsened the situation however. Rather than cow down, tribal fighters approved a retaliatory strike by shelling the president’s palace residence in the heart of the city. Saleh, his prime minister and the speaker of the Yemeni parliament were all injured in the attack. Seven guardsmen were killed and the violence got so out of hand that the White House and American State Department released a statement calling for all sides in the conflict to stand down and implement another ceasefire.

Luckily for the United States, Saleh was not killed in the shelling. For if he was, the administration would have been forced to recraft its Yemen policy virtually overnight.

Washington may be distancing itself from its onetime ally and asking the president to lead a peaceful transition but the death of Saleh would have been a catastrophic blow to the American position. Counterterrorism is America’s top priority in Yemen even if the safety, security and prosperity of the Yemeni people happen to concern the United States as well. Economic reconstruction and the development of strong and resilient governing institutions in Yemen is one way President Barack Obama has attempted to stem the pool of terrorist recruits in the bud. Unfortunately, that strategy has hinged on the hope that Saleh would act responsibly and use his power to bring about political reforms. In the record of the past four months, indeed of the past decade, it is evident that improving the lives of Yemeni citizens is not on Saleh’s “to do list.” Any foreign assistance that is diverted away from the military would strain the patronage network that Saleh has depended on for the past three decades.

The problem for American policy in Yemen is its lack of depth and clarity. Fighting terrorism and preventing extremism from proliferating in Yemen has been the central focus for the past ten years. Supporting Saleh to the hilt, even as the sixty-five year old president detained human rights activists and terrorized religious minorities, was a far easier way for the United States to bring this about rather than addressing Yemen’s root insecurities. Building schools, fostering political participation, diversifying Yemen’s economy and redesigning its political structure would take years, if not decades, to achieve. Training Saleh’s army and hoping that they would take the fight to Al Qaeda, on the other hand, is a quicker way of frustrating the terrorists’ plans.

Yemen policy since 9/11 has been to promote a short term fix to a terrorist threat that has longevity. Indeed in Yemen, extremism is generational, with former Arab resistance fighters telling their children stories about the 1980s Afghan jihad. Their lessons are passed onto grandchildren, creating another wave of recruits for the radical Islamist cause.

Saleh is, or was, an integral part of America’s fix against terrorism in Yemen. Yet his history of combating jihadists is spotty at best. During the 1994 Yemeni civil war, Saleh’s regime enlisted Salafi extremists to fight southern secessionists, to deadly effect. The Yemeni leader has also been known to hype the Al Qaeda threat in the hopes of extracting more money from the United States and the international community.

Saleh’s near death experience should serve as a warning to American officials. It is time to look to the future. Sooner rather than later, Saleh will be gone and Yemen’s various power centers will begin competing among themselves for a spot in the new government. That new leadership may or may not have the gumption to thoroughly pluck away at Yemen’s multiple problems. Even if there is dedication, Yemen’s fumbling economy assures that these new leaders won’t have the resources to do the job effectively.

Washington has money but not the dedication. Dedication will only come if a new strategy for Yemen is devised, one that is geared toward helping the Yemeni people rather than aiding the Yemeni regime. A post-Saleh Yemen could be a fresh start for both.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen (Reuters)

If you thought Ali Abdullah Saleh was on the ropes when he had just the Yemeni demonstrators to deal with, think again. The United States, Saleh’s most important financial and military donor outside of Saudi Arabia, are now edging ever closer to the opposition. And if rumors are correct, Obama Administration officials are in modest talks with the Yemeni Government and the political opposition to ease Saleh out of power, for good.

Although Yemen is distinct from other Arab states (tribes are vastly more important than the central government and the state is riddled with weapons), one cannot help but compare this latest shift in American policy to the hasty response during the Egyptian protests two months ago.

Ali Saleh, like Hosni Mubarak, is a man who sat in the presidential palace for over three decades, manipulating his country’s politics by exploiting tribal fissures within his own society. Saleh, like Mubarak, is (or was) a pro-Western Arab autocrat, allowing Washington to conduct air strikes and counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in military reimbursements. Saleh’s son, Ahmed, holds a prestigious position in the Yemeni Government, serving as the commander of the Republican Guard. Mubarak’s oldest son Gamal was a top official in the National Democratic Party, planning policy for the group and ushering in economic reforms to benefit Egypt’s new entrepreneurial class.

But perhaps the most obvious parallel between the Egypt and Yemen scenarios is the way Washington has been forced to deal with both crises—quickly, and without time for a full assessment of America’s goals and what it seeks to accomplish.

Days after the political unrest began in central Cairo, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all but dismissed them as a minor nuisance to Mubarak’s “stable” regime. Vice President Joseph Biden went one step further by refusing to call Mubarak a dictator, despite the thousands of political dissidents who were rounded up and jailed before the demonstrations grew into a formidable power in Egyptian society. It was only when Mubarak’s lame concessions were refused by the millions of protesters in Egypt’s cities that the White House reassessed its strategy. The result was the resignation of an American ally.

The situation in Yemen is not exact, but it is reminiscent of at least a partial déjà-vu.

A month and a half ago, American officials were quite confident that Saleh could weather the storm and maintain his grip on power. After all, he had done it before, first during the country’s unification in 1990 and then during Yemen’s brief civil war in 1994. The tribes, which have long been the backbone of Yemeni politics, were consistently bought off by Saleh’s inner circle in return for loyalty to the regime and tentative peace in the countryside. The sixty something year old politician also discovered a way, like Mubarak, to plead for American assistance, giving his government the revenue needed to sustain operations by paying off its soldiers, tribesmen and clerics.

Yet that arrangement seems to be all but over. According to this New York Times story, the United States decided to stop backing Saleh once he entered negotiations with the opposition. A possible transfer of power agreement, whereby Saleh would step down in exchange for immunity, is now in the works and sponsored by the Gulf Cooperation Council.

It’s far more plausible to suspect that the United States threw in the towel with Saleh weeks ago, when Yemeni security services and government loyalists killed over fifty protesters in the capital. Not to mention that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the most important issue for the United States in Yemen, has been taking advantage of the government turmoil by stepping up attacks in the south and reportedly capturing several small towns in the southeast. Combine these two elements and it becomes quite clear that Saleh has lost all of his value.

The costs of backing a tepid counterterrorism partner have now outweighed the benefits of being connected or associated with a regime that is fractured and unable to provide the most basic public services for its own citizens.

Nobody wants to back a government that indiscriminately kills fifty of its citizens in cold blood in a single day. Now the United States, Yemen’s most strategic non-Arab ally, is among that growing list.

For more opinions on the evolving situation in Yemen, check out expert Gregory Johnson’s blog and Dexter Filkin’s article in last week’s issue of The New Yorker.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, 2010

With the world rightly focused on the international air strikes over Libya (that campaign, at least tactically, is promising in the early stages), Yemen is inching ever closer to a full blown civil war.

The civil war scenario sounds dramatic but in a country as poor, illiterate, and tribal as Yemen is—and with most Yemeni civilians carrying firearms themselves—the prospect of such a conflict is not altogether implausible.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a staunch American ally against the Al Qaeda offshoot in his country, has been pressured on all fronts over the past month to relinquish power after thirty-two years. Up until this past Friday, the protests were more of a sideshow for Saleh than an actual threat—the president and his family, mastered in the tactics of consolidating authority, have dealt with demonstrations before, to no avail. But the show has now collapsed and quickly transformed into the very threat that Saleh hoped would never materialize. And the instigators of that transformation were none other than his own security forces and loyalists, who shot and killed fifty-two demonstrators in cold blood on a single day.

Since that incident, Saleh’s government has virtually collapsed amid a significant amount of defections and resignations.

On Sunday, Saleh fired his presidential cabinet in a bid to shake up the power structure and get new blood into his palace. The top general of Yemen’s armed forces, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, relinquished his post and threw his support behind the protest movement a day later. Over half of Yemen’s foreign diplomatic core, including the Yemeni ambassadors to the Arab League and the United Nations, have followed suit, demanding that Saleh step down before further blood is shed.

Perhaps the most significant, at least symbolically, of the resignations came when the leader of the Hashid tribe, Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar, decided to cast his lot with the opposition. Saleh is a member of the Hashid tribe, so losing support from within his traditional base is not necessarily positive for his future.

Where does this leave Yemen now? The easy answer is that it is too soon to tell. Saleh still retains the allegiance of his son Ahmed, who commands the most professional and capable of Yemen’s security forces, and all of his nephews, who hold positions of authority.

The Republican Guard, under the command of Ahmed Saleh, stands outside the presidential palace in a clear and overt exhibit of support for his father. On the other side of the street, General Ahmar and his battalions are standing with the opposition, ready to protect Yemeni civilians if necessary. Indeed, there have already been reports of violence between the two, with one dead and three more injured.

Once again, America finds itself enclosed in a tight box. Saleh, despite all of his excesses and abuses, has been Washington’s central ally against terrorism. Yemen is home to the most active Al Qaeda franchise in the world, with an English speaking cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki taking over Osama bin Laden’s place as the organizations most public and charismatic figure. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into Saleh’s security services in the hopes of taking the fight to the enemy. American drones have been partnering with the Yemeni Government over the last year, flying reconnaissance missions and bombing terrorist hideouts when necessary.

In short, the United States are heavily invested in the continuation of Saleh’s rule. But with protests strengthening in the capital and across the country, that investment is now looking like an exceedingly poor one.

So while the United States should continue to stay on the sidelines as the Yemeni people demand their legitimate political rights, they should also make sure that the violence is kept to a minimum. Another fifty people killed by Yemen’s security forces or by the opposition is a sure receipt for long term disaster—a disaster that the region certainly doesn’t need right now.

Luckily, Washington has contacts on both sides of the divide, with Saleh representing the government and General Ahmar representing the opposition. Both men have been heavily involved in Yemen’s counterterrorism effort against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and both have profited from America’s (and the international community’s) bank account.

Using these relationships, however difficult, could be a promising way to avoid the possibility of further conflict. Stalling a civil war must be the world’s primary objective in Yemen, above that of killing Awlaki and any other short term objectives. A Yemen in chaos does nothing to help the fight against terrorism, nor does it create an environment conductive to the one thing that millions of Yemenis have been working towards—democracy.

However, in the capital Sana’a, it was precisely the victory of the Egyptian people over their dictator that brought Yemenis streaming into their own Tahrir Square in jubilation. And it didn’t take long for chants to change to, “Go, go Ali!” Equally predictable has been the state’s response to both sets of protests.

Human Rights Watch estimates that “hundreds of men armed with knives, sticks and assault rifles attacked anti-government protesters in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, as Yemeni security forces stood by.” The organization witnessed at least ten army trucks carrying men in civilian clothing to Tahrir Square where a crowd of around a thousand Yemenis had been demonstrating.

Around the south, there were mixed results from the state. Demonstrators in Dali’ chanted secessionist slogans and waved the flag of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which merged with the northern Yemeni Arab Republic in 1990. In Abyan protesters wore white shrouds to signify their willingness to die for democracy. The protest was led by former jihaddist and former regime ally, Tariq al Fadhli. Unlike in dozens of prior instances, the security forces did not assault the demonstrators.

The port city of Aden was another story. Days earlier, police used tear gas and live rounds to disburse a protest and wounded four, including one woman. Thursday saw the arrival of military reinforcements. Friday’s protest saw many injuries and arrests and figures remain inexact. One wounded man was seized in hospital by police. At midnight, reports continued that crowds of youths were burning tires and blocking roads, inflamed by the earlier injuries, as police shot live rounds over their head.

Since 2007 when the movement began, absent Western media, police in the southern provinces have used tear gas, batons, water cannons, arbitrary arrests and live fire to put down hundreds of peaceful protests. Well over one hundred citizens were killed, many hundreds injured and thousands arrested including children, journalists and political party leaders. Women, lawyers, professors and former ambassadors “disappeared” and teenage protesters shot dead on the street. A state imposed media blackout means that many outside the affected area have no real sense of the scale of the atrocities. When calls for equal rights were met by bullets and tanks, positions hardened and now nearly 70 percent of southerners support dissolving 1990′s unity agreement with northern Yemen.

The southern movement’s leaders uniformly advocate an internationally supervised referendum on secession as recently occurred in the Sudan. But that’s about all they agree on. As in the north, the southern movement’s political leadership is fragmented, jealous, aged and not computer literate. Historical figures dominate the political landscape along with tribal leaders whose revered status is based on lineage not accomplishment. Activists, journalists and bloggers in both the north and south carry the weight of a scattered, youthful and largely illiterate and poverty stricken populace But if anyone can find a common ground among disparate demands on the state, it would be the younger generation.

The Pink Protest in Sana’a

The unprecedented abdication of Tunisian President Ben Ali in January sent a shockwave across the Middle East. Masses in Egypt took to the street challenging the legitimacy of one of the Unites States’ most trusted allies, and one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

For a day, attention focused on Yemen and its “Day of Rage,” which was tagged #Feb3 on Twitter. When the protest and counter protests in the capital Sana’a passed without violence, Western attention shifted back to Egypt’s Tahrir Square. Even Yemenis were slightly bored. Pre-protest maneuvers by both the opposition parties and President Saleh unfolded like a chess game, neutralizing the impact of the day. Online activists and youth groups accused Yemen’s political opposition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) of hijacking their movement.[ii]

The opposition parties include the Yemeni Socialist Party, which formerly ruled south Yemen, as well as the Islah party, an Islamist reform platform that ranges from hardline Islamists to hardliner democrats and a strong tribal wing. Others in the grouping include a small Zaidi (Shiite) party, Ba’athists and a Nasserite party, explaining the otherwise bewildering small protest where marchers held pictures of Gamal Nasser aloft. Individually their ideologies are stale but the JMP’s unified platform since its inception in 2002 calls for social reform, corruption controls and the establishment of a proportional voting as well as a parliamentary system.

With momentum building and scenes of state violence in Egypt broadcast to the world, the Yemeni opposition announced that the purpose of the planned February 3 rally was not to demand the ouster of long ruling President Saleh. Instead they demanded electoral reforms which were agreed to in 2006. Another demand was the withdrawal of constitutional amendments unilaterally advanced by the ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), that revoked term limits on the presidency. As Faisel bin Shamlan the JMP’s candidate for president in 2006 had said after the election, “The Mountain was in labor and brought forth a mouse.”

It’s not just the United States and Western nations that choose stability over progress and stagnation over reform—even in the face of deplorable governance and widespread public discontent. In Yemen, many are fearful of change including the Joint Meeting Parties who have a vested stake in the continuation of the status quo. The JMP’s failure to reach out to disenfranchised southerners and their willingness to engage the regime before the people was considered a sellout and defined the grouping as not fully within the opposition. With the high incidence of arms in Yemen, and the Saleh’s regimes history of brutal violence against it citizen, the JMP chose pink as the protest’s color to signify their nonviolence intent.

Yemen’s opposition parties failed to capitalize on political opportunities before. The 2005 fuel riots began as spontaneous public protests at a hike in fuel costs and, leaderless, spiraled out of control. The JMP condemned the protesters and wholly failed to address the underlying national issues of corruption, poverty and mismanagement. Following the 2006 election, opposition voters were poised to take to the streets to protest fraudulent votes counts, but the JMP accepted the vote totals in exchange for the electoral reforms they were promised again last week. The 2009 parliamentary elections were postponed to 2011, not only because the state reneged on the reform agreement, but also because of the laziness of the JMP to put in the required work.

Promises, promises

The every wily President Saleh preempted the momentum of the #Feb3 protest by agreeing to all the JMP’s demands, leaving them little to chant about. And he went further and pledged a raise in military salaries of around $30 a month. There are an approximate 600,000 on the military payroll, and an average of ten dependents each, meaning about a quarter of Yemenis will directly or indirectly benefit from the raise, if it is in fact implemented. Other civil servants were granted raises as well. And promising pay raises is a tactic that has worked before in Yemen to defuse social tension.

In response to the 2005 fuel riots, President Saleh enacted the revised Wages Strategy which purported to offset higher fuel costs with salary increases for civil servants. Designed with a multistaged rollout, the failure to fully implement the second phase of the strategy later triggered strikes, notably by the teachers union. In negotiations, the union demanded the salary increases should be retroactive to the date they became law.

Saleh’s current promise to increase wages is being framed by the regime, correctly, as implementation of the third phase of the 2005 Wages Strategy. In the weeks prior to the 2006 presidential election, Saleh promised a bonus to civil servants, payable after the election. However, here in 2011, Yemen is teetering on bankruptcy and there is little to no cash in the state’s coffers.

Another regular tactic in response to anti-government protests is the counter pro-regime protest, and like clockwork, Saleh bussed in loyalist tribesmen to camp out in Yemen’s Tahrir Square, forcing the JMP to move the February 3 rally to the campus of Sana’a University.

Arrests, arbitrary violence and suppression of the media are other characteristic tactics of the regime, deployed against southern protesters and civilians in areas of the northern Houthi rebellion. These tactics invariably swelled the ranks of the southern and Houthi opposition movements, and if implemented again in Sana’a, they will have the same effect on the newborn northern protest movement.

To run or not to run

In advance of the #Feb3 rally, Saleh made what for Westerners was a grand concession. Saleh announced he would not run for reelection in 2013. It was promise he has made before. “The door of candidacy is open not for Ali Abdullah Saleh but for everyone who likes to run for president’s position,” Saleh said on July 5, 1999. “I’m not a candidate, and I don’t accept candidacy because I know what the power is,” he added. Four days later, the ruling party announced Saleh as its candidate. The opposition Islah party also nominated Saleh and he won handily in September’s election. Yemenis say he made the same announcement, only to renege, several times since 1985.

On July 17, 2005, Saleh announced that he wouldn’t run in the 2006 election, saying, “We want to establish a model for peaceful handover of power.” Saleh urged political parties to, “nominate for this post young leaders capable of bearing responsibility based on clear programs to manage the country.” However, as the fuel riots were raging against the regime, on July 21st adoring GPC crowds had convinced him to change his mind and the formal announcement came in November at the party conference.

Despite a history of broken promises, Saleh’s announcement in February 2011 was hailed by authorities in the Unites States and the United Kingdom and others around the world. Few can imagine he’ll stay. Yemenis can’t imagine he’ll go.