Yemen Updated: July 22, 2012

Yemen is a poor, deeply divided country that has been in turmoil since January 2011, when protesters inspired by the Arab Spring
took to the streets in a violent uprising against the autocratic rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh — at a cost of hundreds of deaths
and rising chaos.
In February 2012, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the country’s former vice president, was elected president. But the reality is that Mr.
Saleh still wields considerable influence in Yemen. His relatives control most of the military and government security agencies.
Mr. Hadi has been slowly shedding his government of officials from the old administration who are either members of the Saleh
family or staunch Saleh loyalists. But this has not always gone smoothly, and the extent of Mr. Hadi’s authority to remake Yemen
remains in doubt.
And while Mr. Hadi has been fending off Saleh loyalists, his fledgling government has found itself overwhelmed by a set of
dangerous new challenges to the country’s stability, including a series of bold attacks by a resurgent militant movement in the south,
where many are eager for secession and a security breach has allowed anAl Qaeda affiliate to grow strong. In addition, he has faced
open defiance from the old guard, after he tried to dismiss or reassign officials loyal to his predecessor, Mr. Saleh.
Mr. Hadi’s first months in office have served as a reminder of Yemen’s persistent divisions and vulnerabilities, complicated by a year
of political revolt against a generation of Mr. Saleh’s autocratic rule.
Financially struggling, Yemen is facing an increasingly brazen Qaeda franchise that controls large parts of its territory in the southern
provinces of Abyan and Shabwa. With the government and army remaining fractured, the militants have taken advantage of the
power vacuum.
Suicide Bombers Wage Brutal Attacks
In May 2012, the country was rocked by the worst terrorist bombing in years when a suicide attacker disguised as a Yemeni soldier
blew himself up in the midst of a military parade rehearsal near the presidential palace in Sana, the capital. The Yemen Defense
Ministry said more than 90 people were killed and hundreds wounded.
Militants allied with Al Qaeda quickly claimed responsibility for the bombing. The militant group, which goes by the name Ansar al
Shariah, said in a Facebook post that the attack was aimed at Yemen’s defense minister and was intended to retaliate for the
government campaign against Al Qaeda’s southern sanctuaries that began earlier in May.
The militants inflicted heavy losses on Yemen’s weak and divided army, despite a stepped-up United States campaign of drone
strikes and military assistance.
The suicide bombing brought scenes of horrific carnage to a central square in Sana, which was heavily fortified and had been spared
the worst of the insurgent violence.
The bombing came just a week after President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, visited Sana and soon after
the discovery of the third attempt to smuggle a bomb aboard a United States-bound jetliner by by Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based
affiliate,Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The attack took Yemen’s security forces completely by surprise and was likely to further weaken morale among troops who are
already angry about poor pay, ill treatment and corruption in the top ranks.
Hours afterward, President Hadi announced the ouster of four high-ranking commanders and delivered a televised address in which
he pledged to continue the fight against Al Qaeda “until their eradication, no matter what sacrifices are required.”
In mid-June, an important military commander, Maj. Gen. Salim Ali Qatn, was killed by a suicide bomber in the southern port city of
Aden just days after the Yemeni government announced a major military victory over Qaeda militants in the region.
The commander was killed on his way to work when the bomber blew himself up in front of General Qatn’s vehicle, according to a
statement by Yemen’s Defense Ministry. An earlier message by the ministry identified the suicide bomber as a Somali national.
General Qatn’s driver and another man traveling with him were also killed.
A Voice of Authority Emerges From the Opposition
In the aftermath of Yemen’s civil conflict, Sheik Hamoud Saeed al-Mikhlafi, a former top rebel leader in Taiz, Yemen’s cultural capital
and commercial center, has taken on a new role as the city’s ultimate arbiter. Part judge, part chieftain, part local political don, Mr.
Mikhlafi has been filling the gap left by the absence of effective judicial institutions since the uprising against Mr. Saleh began. Men
from all over the surrounding region come to him to resolve disputes and crises, or simply to seek advice.
The state in Yemen has always been weak, and even before the conflict, local chieftains had a lot of autonomy and power. But Mr.
Mikhlafi’s new role is emblematic of how opposition voices that were marginalized under the 33-year authoritarian rule of President
Saleh have gained increasing influence as the government in Yemen has grown even weaker since his ouster.
Taiz was a major battleground in the uprising. The fighting raged for months here and was more lethal than that in the capital, Sana.
Hundreds of civilians were killed, a toll for which Mr. Mikhlafi’s rebels share responsibility. A Human Rights Watch report in February
accused his forces of placing civilians at risk by deploying fighters in densely populated areas, and of using children as armed patrols.
But by spearheading a revolt against a government that many felt oppressed them, he won local hearts and minds.
His status, though, many here say, owes as much to his humility as to his military background and record of political dissent. At 46,
with hair flecked with gray and a warm personality, he is a sharp contrast with the ostentatious tribal leaders in Yemen’s north who
Yemenis say care more about stuffing their pockets than helping their tribes.
He dresses simply and lives in an unexceptional house with his wife and 12 children, all of whom, unlike their father, speak English
well. He has a record of standing up for the average man; a recent cause was campaigning for the government to provide the
months of unpaid salaries to soldiers who defected to the opposition during the political uprising in 2011.
Mr. Mikhlafi’s secular critics point out that he is an Islamist, a member of the Islah Party, which has gained a large stake in the
power-sharing agreement that is part of Yemen’s transition government. Wary of Islamists’ rising influence and concerned about
what they say is the increasing impunity of Islah leaders, they portray him as a religious warlord who is promoting tribalism instead
of the rule of law.
But Mr. Mikhlafi’s persona resists easy generalization. His eldest daughters are medical doctors, and some of his close friends, from
whom he takes advice, are secularists. Another famous Islah Party member, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, is his
first cousin
Background
With its location at the southwestern end of the Arabian Peninsula, the land of ancient Yemen became rich from the spice trade. So
rich that the Romans called the land Arabia Felix — Happy Arabia — and Augustus Caesar tried, but failed, to annex it. That
prosperity overlapped with the rule of an Islamic caliphate in the 7th century. When the caliphate broke up, Islamic imams exerted
control, sowing the seeds of a theocratic political system that would survive for centuries.
Northern Yemen became part of the Ottoman Empire. Southern Yemen was in the hands of the British after 1839, when they built a
protectorate around their port of Aden. North Yemen would become independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and declare itself
a republic in 1962; it was not until 1967 that the British withdrew from southern Yemen.
When Marxists took over the government of southern Yemen in 1970, many people fled to the north, and a civil war raged for two
decades. The conflict became a proxy conflict in the cold war, with the Soviet Union aiding South Yemen, and the United States
bolstering the north.
Though north and south were unified as the Republic of Yemen on May 22, 1990, the violence and internecine conflict did not end.
The country’s extreme topography — with dramatically rugged mountains and remote deserts — helped create impenetrable
fortresses for warring tribes, which have long attacked government officials and foreign tourists, as well as one another.
Beginning of the Protests
The demonstrations against the Saleh government first began in late January 2011, at roughly the same time as those in Egypt, and
picked up steam in February. Mr. Saleh’s initial heavy-handed response only fueled the protests, and his initial offers to step aside at
a future date seemed to equally embolden the demonstrators.
A turning point appears to have come on March 18, in a bloody but failed attempt to break the back of the protest. As tens of
thousands of demonstrators rose from their noon prayers, security forces and government supporters opened fire. At least 50
people were killed and more than 100 injured, but the attack failed to disperse the crowd.
Mr. Saleh responded by firing his cabinet. On March 21, five army commanders and one of the country’s most important tribal
leaders threw their support behind the protesters. A stream of Yemeni officials resigned from the government, including the mayor
of the restive southern city of Aden, a provincial governor and at least one of the country’s ambassadors.
Yemen’s opposition coalition, the Joint Meetings Parties, proposed a plan under which Mr. Saleh would leave at the end of 2011,
and he agreed. But protesters then rejected the plan and called for Mr. Saleh’s immediate ouster.
In April, the United States, which had long supported Mr. Saleh,quietly shifted positions after concluding that he was unlikely to
bring about reforms. On April 7, the Gulf Cooperation Council, an organization of oil-rich Persian Gulf states, joined the increasing
number of international voices calling for a transfer of presidential powers to a government of national unity.
On April 23, 2011, Mr. Saleh said that he accepted a proposal by Gulf mediators that would shift power to his deputy 30 days from
the signing of a formal agreement and grant him and his family, who occupy key positions in Yemen’s security apparatus, immunity
from prosecution. Leaders of the street protests rejected the deal, saying he should leave without condition. After an initial
hesitation, the Joint Meetings Parties said it would accept the idea, including immunity, if protests were allowed to continue during
the interim period.
Many in the opposition believed that Mr. Saleh was merely playing for time, and in fact, he repeatedly pulled back at the last minute
from signing the deal.
Hadi: Leading a Transition to Democracy
In February 2012, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the country’s former vice president, was elected president. Mr. Hadi is charged with
leading a transition to democracy, and his new unity government, composed of members of Mr. Saleh’s party and the opposition, is
to begin a national dialogue on a new constitution. If that effort is to succeed, the government will need to find a way to bring in the
separatists in the south and the Houthis in the north.
The south has been discriminated against and marginalized by the Saleh government since north and south Yemen unified in 1990,
and many southerners bitterly hate the Sana government. Although Mr. Hadi is from the southern province of Abyan, he fled to Sana
in the 1980s and is seen as a traitor by many in the south.
An Uncertain Future
There is recognition by many that the transition of power is merely a first step for Yemen, the poorest nation in the Arab world.
Yemen also has high illliteracy and birth rates, and deeply entrenched government corruption. Its economy is precariously tied to oil
resources, which are declining rapidly.
The governing elite has come mainly from the Sunni majority, which makes up 55 percent of the population and is concentrated in
the more developed coastal regions of the south and southwest. A Shiite movement, based in the mountainous north, declared
independence and its intermittent rebellion has left thousands of people dead since it began in 2004.
The government is deeply unpopular in the remote provinces where Al Qaeda militants have sought sanctuary. The tribes there tend
to regularly switch sides, making it difficult to depend on them for information about Al Qaeda. “My state is anyone who fills my
pocket with money,” goes one old tribal motto.
After the Uprising, Assessing the Damage
Yemen is beginning to assess and deal with damage to the economy and social fabric after a nearly yearlong public uprising against
Mr. Saleh, who governed for three decades before being ousted. That is especially true in the south, where the political transition
has magnified longstanding complaints that southerners have been marginalized politically, economically and socially by the
northern government since the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990. That sentiment, along with the growing strength of
the Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia, has created a volatile environment.
In some small cities and towns, Ansar al-Sharia is functioning as a de facto government, and it is winning the loyalty of at least some
of the population, according to residents.
The militants are working from an established playbook, offering the services that the government has failed to provide. They are
giving food rations to civilians and providing some sense of security with their own police force and court system based on strict
interpretations of Islamic law.
Protesters’ New Goal: Overhauling the Military
As Yemen entered a new political era in which Mr. Saleh no longer ruled, antigovernment protesters nonetheless remained on the
streets in the thousands, still unsatisfied with the state of affairs.
Over the past year, Yemen’s protesters built a permanent sit-in site in Sana, creating a vast city of tents in front of Sana University.
With Mr. Saleh’s ouster as their chief demand, the protesters withstood bloody attacks from government forces, rainstorms and
internal fighting.
Now, rather than being content with their success and packing up their tents and going home, the protesters say that Change
Square, as their protest site is known, will remain in place until there is a complete overhaul of the country’s divided military.
Confrontations With the Old Guard
When President Hadi took office, he announced that he was replacing or reassigning about 20 top military commanders and the
governors of four provinces, a purge that included several of Mr. Saleh’s loyalists. The former president’s half-brother, Mohammed
Saleh al-Ahmar, who commanded the air force and has refused to leave, was accused of shutting down the airport in protest. He and
other officials denied he was responsible.
The protests by Mr. Saleh’s supporters — and by Mr. Saleh himself — notwithstanding, Mr. Hadi has been wary of upsetting the
power balance too much. While he reassigned Mr. Saleh’s nephew, he left the former president’s son in place as the head of the
powerful Republican Guard. At the same time, officials and analysts said Mr. Hadi appeared to have taken a page from Mr. Saleh’s
playbook in trying to build his own power base by appointing allies from his home province of Abyan to key posts.
Battling Al Qaeda in the South
Of all the challenges that Mr. Hadi faces, none may be more imperative than the unsettled state of the south, where many are eager
for secession and a security breach has allowed an Al Qaedaaffiliate to grow strong.
Mr. Hadi moved quickly to try to shore up the south amid rising violence and political uncertainty. He appointed a new head of
security and a new governor for the southern province of Aden, as well as a new commander of the southern military force. But
residents of the south say that while shifting personnel may help in the long term, the crisis needs to be addressed more
aggressively.
Mr. Hadi’s new government has been partnering with the United States in an ambitious plan to overhaul its military to combat the
Qaeda franchise, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that has exploited the political turmoil to seize control of large swaths of the
south.
The plan’s two-pronged strategy calls for the two countries to work together to kill or capture about two dozen of Al Qaeda’s most
dangerous operatives, who are focused on attacking America and its interests.
At the same time, the administration will work with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to train and equip Yemeni security
forces to counter Al Qaeda’s wider threat to destabilize Yemen and the government of Mr. Hadi.
This approach mirrors the White House’s global counterterrorism strategy in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: to
employ small numbers of Special Operations troops, Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary teams and drones against elements of
Al Qaeda that are committed to striking the United States, while arming and advising indigenous security forces to tackle costlier
long-term counterinsurgency campaigns.
In September 2011, an American drone strike killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who was one of the group’s top
operatives, and Samir Khan, another American who edited the group’s English-language online magazine. Their deaths deprived the
group of its two most skilled operatives focused on attacking America.
In May 2012, Yemeni authorities said a senior Qaeda militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, 37, who had been on the F.B.I.’s
Most Wanted Terrorists list in connection with the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000, died in
an airstrike in Shabwa Province in one of the rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents.
With Mr. Hadi pledging to work closely with the administration to fight Al Qaeda, John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief
counterterrorism adviser, said the administration would slowly start resuming security aid that was suspended in 2011. The United
States has allocated $53.8 million in security assistance for Yemen in 2012, up from $30.1 million in 2011, according to State
Department figures.
On May 14 and 15, the government unleashed airstrikes and ground assaults in the south to recapture towns from Islamist
insurgents, which left dozens of people dead, including some civilians, according to officials and witnesses on the ground.
Another Plot to Bring Down a Plane
In May 2012, American counterterrorism forces revealed that they had thwarted an apparent plot by Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula to bring down a commercial plane, seizing a new, more sophisticated explosive device designed to be worn by a
passenger, according to government sources.
Officials said the plot appeared to be a second attempt at the kind of attack that failed in 2009 when a passenger on a flight to
Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to set off an explosive hidden in his garments. The explosive may have been designed by
the same bomb-maker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, they said.
This time, the would-be suicide bomber was actually an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia who infiltrated the terrorist group and
volunteered for the suicide mission, American and foreign officials said.
In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both
the innovative bomb designed for his air attack and critical information on the group’s leaders to the C.I.A., Saudi and other foreign
intelligence agencies.
After spending weeks at the center of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the agent provided critical information that permitted the
C.I.A. to direct the drone strike that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso. The agent also handed over the bomb, designed by the
group’s top explosives expert to be invisible to airport security, to the F.B.I., which is analyzing its properties.
Officials said the agent, whose identity they would not disclose, works for the Saudi intelligence service, which has cooperated
closely with the C.I.A. for several years against the terrorist group in Yemen. He operated in Yemen with the full knowledge of the
C.I.A., but not under its direct supervision, the officials said. The agent is now safe in Saudi Arabia, officials said. The bombing plot
was kept secret for weeks by the C.I.A. and other agencies because they feared retaliation against the agent and his family.
Officials said on May 8 that risk had been “mitigated,” evidently by moving both the agent and his relatives to safe locations.
A senior American official said the device was sewn into “custom fit” underwear that would have been very difficult to detect even
in a careful pat-down. Unlike the device used in the unsuccessful December 2009 plot to blow up an airliner over Detroit, this bomb
could be detonated in two ways, in case one failed, the official said.
In addition to the attempt in 2009, in which a young Nigerian tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit with chemical explosives
hidden in his underwear, in October 2010, Qaeda operatives placed two printer-ink cartridges loaded with explosives and addressed
to Chicago aboard cargo planes. The bombs were detected and removed en route.
The group has also sought to acquire castor beans, from which ricin, a deadly toxin, is produced.

Source:

The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/yemen/index.html