THE HANDSTAND

NOVEMBER-JANUARY2010

fawwaz trabulso on the Yemeni conflict

From The Angry Arab - Diab kindly translated the article by comrade Fawwaz Trabulso on Yemen (from As-Safir):

"With the Saudi army initiating its military operations against the Huthi movement across the border with Yemen, it is fair to say that president Ali Abdallah Saleh had succeeded in turning an internal conflict that normally wouldn't require much concessions to resolve into yet another chapter in the regions' military conflicts. In doing so , he represented a typical case of Arab rulers relaying on foreign powers against their local opponents by soliciting foreign interventions to reassert the legitimacy of their rule, to gain foreign legitimacy to such rule and to bequest their rule to sons and brothers as well as the inherent financial gains that such wars generate.

The war in Sada started five years ago with an incident when president Saleh dispatched a police force to arrest Yahya Al haut, the conservative Zaidi Hashimi leader of the " devout youth" movement that was agitating against the growth of Wahhabi influence and was adamant in holding on to its anti American and anti Israeli slogans ( "damn the Jews") , the Huthi then resisted and the war started.

It is worth mentioning that in 1994 president Saleh brought the Huthi to Sada , he financed and armed them to counter the influence of the Saudi financed , Wahhabi inspired religious schools spread by the " Yemeni reform caucus" party , an allay of president Saleh. During the early years of the war , the Huthi demands and the sectarian aspect of the conflict were limited to some type of self rule asserting the "recognition of the cultural distinction" of Sada as a center of the Zaidi believe. The war dragged on in part due to the difficulty in scoring a victory over the movement and as is the case with such wars , they function far beyond their original goals.

The first function of this war is "war profiteering" form financial assistance solicited and siphoned by the principles involved primarily from billions of gulf and Saudi money. The second function, to put it poetically, the war "sooths the hand milking it" , whereby a war economy had flourished and with it segments of the regime , its officers in the security and armed forces , its entrepreneurial mafias , weapons smugglers and traders, they reaped astronomical profits and commissions relative to to the country's prevailing poverty and its meager resources. The third functioning of the war, being the iron fisted regime that it is in military and security terms , it was not strange for the war to be superimposed onto the squabbles within the ruling family for the succession of president Ali Abdallah Saleh , where his son Ahmad the commander of the presidential guard is competing with his brother Ali Mohsen Al-ahmar the commander of the north western region where the war is taking place , also one can't rule out his nephew Yahya Muhamad Abdallah Saleh one of the commanders of the central security apparatus. At the outset of this war, president Saleh announced that he would crush the " Huthi rebellion" in two weeks, yet four months after it started he announced that all that had gone on in the past five years was nothing more then a "rehearsal" and "training" for his forces , declaring that the war had started the day the Saudi army crossed the Yemeni borders. During the past four months alone of president Saleh "training" of his forces , the number of Yemeni victims , civilian and military is estimated at 3800 dead ,16 thousands wounded , more then one hundred thousand displaced refugees and billions in property and collateral damage. Yet despite such an exuberantly expensive "training" of president saleh forces he found it necessary to call upon the Saudi army to prosecute and continue the war. Saudi Arabia justified its intervention due to Huthis infiltrating its territory and the "attack" on its border guards and its people, on the other hand Huthi sources accused the Saudi air force of bombarding its positions and facilitating the passage of government forces through Saudi territory in a move to surround the Huthi fighters specifically in the border area on smoke mountain which is being mentioned a lot these days.

It would be a rush to consider Saudi military actions in the border area as a precursor to a Saudi military intervention against the huthi combatants deep inside Yemeni territory , but rather one can suppose that this new development is an attempt to box the Huthi combatants in a pincer between the Saudi and Yemeni armies. What ever it may be , the mere presence of Saudi forces on Yemeni territory antagonizes a wide spectrum of the Yemeni populous which is peculiarly sensitive towards their oil rich neighbor for a variety of reasons and one of the first reactions was the statement by the "common Meeting" of the Islamic - nationalist - leftist opposition parties that accused the government of squandering national sovrenty in its war in Sada. Since the issue relates to border sovrenty ,it is present on the minds of many Yemenies that president Ali Abdallah Saleh had dared to do what no other Yemeni ruler before him , not even the Imams of Al hameed al deen dared to do which is to officially concede to Saudi Arabia Yemeni lands the size of the Syrian Arab republic in Aseer , Najran and Bam that the kingdom had occupied in 1934 .

As for president Ali Abdallah Saleh, in inviting Saudi military intervention ,he had reach the panicle of playing on a host of internal , regional and international contradictory and explosive mixes ,aided and abetted by the American administration, he is faced with two violent civil conflicts in the north western and southern regions , and a sizable multi faceted opposition in terms political , intellectual and ideological , that spans the entire country. Facing all that , the regime in sanna did not limit its oppression to its military and security tools but had pushed sectarian , regional and tribal elements against each other north and south of the country , now it is toting to the Saudi and US administrations the dangers of " al qaida" to guarantee the continuity of the foreign legitimacy bestowed upon it. It should be noted that it regime had called upon and utilized thousands of jihadies in its war against the south in 1994 and against its rivals and political opponents throughout the country.

On the foreign front , president Saleh did not advance one convincing proof of Iranian involvement on the side of Huthi aside from the insinuation of the theological kinship between them and the Islamic republic , despite that , if his accusations are true then all he had accomplished is to invite " Iranian influence" and Iranian military influence in particular to the borders of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The state of president Ali Abdallah Saleh and his regime , as expressed by a Yemeni journalist , is like someone dancing amongst snakes, it is not clear what would prevent them from biting him all at once. While we are at it , US weapons sales had increased in 2009 by 4.75 % over the year before to reach $37 billion , most noted customers are Arab and Islamic countries , the largest customer was United Arab Emirates ( $7 B ) Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia ( $3 B ) Egypt ( $2 B ) Iraq ( $1 B ) and the war sooths the hand milking it."
Posted by As'ad at 10:20 AM

Not in the US press: the US role in the Yemen war
from The Angry Arab News Service

The US press has been largely ignoring the war in Yemen. The NYT and other newspapers have published articles here and there. But none mentioned anything about the American role in Iraq. Make no mistake about it: this is an Obama war, not a Bush war inherited by Obama. It is clear that the Saudi intervention is coordinated by the US. But you know what is very conspiratorial and fishy? (Here you are supposed to ask me: what? What o, wise one? What o all-knowing one?) The daily press briefing at the Department of State has been ignoring Yemen completely although Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat (the mouthpiece of Prince Salman) carried a front page story two days ago to the effect that the US government supports Saudi bombing of Yemen). Look at the press briefings at State yourself. And now this: "The U.S. and Yemen have signed a military and security cooperation agreement in Sanaa after officials from both countries concluded two days of talks. The U.S. embassy in Yemen declined to confirm the agreement reported by the local media as being signed Tuesday, only admitting there were talks about counterterrorism. The embassy spokeswoman, Debrah Smith, said Brigadier General Jeffrey Smith, the commander of the U.S. 5th Signal Command, was present in the talks." Posted by As'ad

november 18th 2009

Houthis release photos of Saudi phosphorous bombs Tue, 17 Nov 2009

Houthi fighters in Yemen say Saudi forces have used unconventional weapons in their fight against Shias in northern country.
The fighters said many civilians were killed or injured after Saudi warplanes dropped phosphorous bombs on villages in north.
They have also released pictures of phosphorus bomb attacks by Saudi warplanes.

In a move to protect the civilian population from the raging war in north Yemen, Amnesty International wrote a letter to Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister, Crown Prince Sultan bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud last week asking whether phosphorus bombs were used in the attacks. The London-based rights group demanded Riyadh's explanation about the manner in which the bombs were used and what precautions were taken to ensure that civilians were not put at risk. The organization however has received no response from Saudi officials yet.

Saudi Arabia launched earlier in November an offensive against Shia fighters, who accuse the kingdom of supporting the Yemeni government in its crackdown. The Yemeni government launched Operation Scorched Earth in August in an effort to crush the Houthis, whom it accuses of seeking to restore an imamate that was overthrown in 1962. The Houthis, however, dismiss the accusations, saying they are only seeking to put an end to the government's discriminatory policies against them.

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