San‘a Bulletin #2

We have received an update on the situation in San‘a and elsewhere in Yemen from the same friend we featured in an earlier guest-post. This friend would like to remain anonymous, but we can say that this person is a well-known Western scholar with a long background in Yemeni studies. We are fortunate to have a chance to share this person's observations with our audience. It should be stated, however, that the following does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the YPP. Amidst all the chaos developing this past week here in Yemen I thought it be good to have a talk with a good friend, or two, in order to catch up on events and personalities driving protests from Aden to Taiz and Sana’a.  The main reason for wanting to write this is to provide a more clear perspective on events that still remain outside media’s grasp and yet much of the information we read is based on speculation by analysts outside Yemen.

Since my last conversation with AJ, peaceful protests which were the primary tactic by youth organizing outside political institutions using Facebook and other social media, have escalated to brutal confrontations between pro-change demonstrators and pro-government thugs that cannot be called counter protesters.  Since protests in Sana’a on 3 February’s Day of Rage, which spread to areas like Dhamar where protests were led by local Islahi shaykhs, we have witnessed protests led not by political parties, but by the spontaneous initiative of a number of young students in cities like Aden, Taiz and Sana’a. Much still remains unclear as to how students organized in order to draw such large numbers as we’ve seen in Aden and Taiz.  Protests in Sana’a still remain relatively small, larger than initial gatherings in front of Sana’a University after 3 February but much smaller than the 3 February demonstration organized by the JMP.

Protests in Aden and Taiz are becoming the center of the anti-government movement for a number of reasons.  The case of Aden remains extremely unique, while it is the heart of the South it had remained beyond core activity by the Southern Movement, whose activity since 2007 focused on Abyan, al-Dhalea, Lahj, and Shebwa.  Activity in Aden instantly escalated to violent confrontations primarily because of the strategic value.  Government forces have a strong presence to safeguard the city from the Southern Movement’s sphere of influence.  This is the primary reason for why the government reacted immediately with special forces against the protesters, since it could not mobilize public support through political parties. The city has been a long standing stronghold for al-Islah and the GPC is unable to gather enough support is such short notice. Most of the protestors remain university students who were mobilized after the first death during protests this past week.

Taiz, on the other hand should not surprise observers. As it was acknowledged this week by members of al-majlis taghlef qabail mareb wa al-jawf this has been the historic center for reform movements, and while education levels are higher than other regions, unemployment among youth is extremely high.  The Tribal Council from Mareb and al-Jawf also released a statement this week apologizing for racist insults from government elements against people of Taiz, calling them ‘burghulis’ (see Mareb Press article), and this shows the importance given to the city by tribal elements.  People began to flock to the area of Tahrir (Taiz) and the Noor Mosque in the Huraysh St/Jammal Abdul Nasser St intersection (in old Safer area) during day and night.  Friends in Taiz spoke of people spending the night in the area while many women supplied them with food and water.  This Friday witnessed the largest crowd of pro-change protesters to date, while pro-government numbers remained a fraction.  Again, although the president had just visited the city to rally support for his constitutional amendments leading up to the now postponed elections, the GPC does not maintain strong popular support, so he had to react with overwhelming military presence to contain the protests.  As we see to date, it has failed and protests continue and grow in numbers by the day.  The grenade incident on Saturday 18 February definitely escalated the situation and has allowed the organizers to attract more people to protests.

In Sana’a the situation deterorates daily, the number of pro-government elements grows to counter the otherwise peaceful gatherings.  Here is where we actually see the politcs of the regime at play, and showing its uglier side.  Protests this week have escalated to direct confrontations between protesters, young and old, and pro-government ‘hooligans’ sent to the streets to intimidate activists and their followers.  Tahrir Square continues occupied by tribal elements paid by authorities to prevent pro-change protesters from entering the symbolic city center.  All pro-change protests have been contained to the area between the Old and New Sana’a University campuses.  The confrontation have been attributed to personalities such as Abd al-Rahman al-Akwa (Mayor of Sana’a), Hafed Ma’yeed and Arif Azuka (Security), who are said to be responsible for paying the hooligans confronting peaceful protestors.  This shows how the strategy to contain the protests moved beyond Saleh’s hands, and his nephiews Yahya M. Saleh (Central Security) and Amr M. Saleh (National Security), whose forces were primary during the government’s response since 3 February.  All security forces in Sana’a are a combination of Public Sesurity and Central Security elements charged with containing the area of the protests.

In Sana’a the situation also involved the first political casualty, Dr Khalid Tamim (Pres. of University of Sana’a).  There are two versions to the story.  On the one hand, young activists indicated he was fired because he failed to allow a number of buses from entering the campus to transport students to a meeting with President Saleh.  The student association in Sana’s in associated with al-Islah party, but the relationship with Tamim was not contentious to the point were he would have obstructed their access to President Saleh.  The other version says that miscommunication between Tamim and the presidnet’s office led to Tamim’s suspicion certain elements in the regime planned to arrest the students under the pretense of a meeting with Saleh.  Some believe that based on a lack of communication or mistrust of sources informing him of the meeting, ie. Azuka, al-Akwa or Ma’yed, Tamim aimed to protect the students.  Either way the president thought he needed to be removed and replaced by Saleh Ba’Sadrah (Hadhramawt).  While Tamim’s removal was known by Wednesday afternoon, no official media source made it public, even two days after Mareb Press reported on the changes.

The political situation within the regime may develop along the lines of family and in-laws.  Before the protests began in Aden and Taiz with the current numbers, it was said that Saleh would begin a reshuffle that would have alianeted some of his in-laws within the government.  The family, controlling the military and economy, would not see much reshuffle, but the many in-laws within families like Arhabi, Akwa and others would have lost some posts, giving way to Islahis and Socialists as reward for engaging Dialogue.  It seems these in-laws either really want to hang on to their posts by making huge mistakes in trying to show Saleh he still needs them, or the in-laws are trying to make him and the family look worse in order to increase opposition and create chaos within the regime.  If he does not step in immediately and stop the hooligans, I doubt the tribesmen in Tahrir will be able to deter a violent revolution that as people here begin to say, will lead to a civil war.

Youth in the streets and YPP on the radio

Monday marked the YPP's first foray into public broadcasting. Two of our co-directors, Dana Moss and myself, were featured in an hour-long interview on a local university radio station. An hour on the radio is more than most talking heads get at a single time, but it goes fast. If we'd had two hours it still wouldn't have been enough time to cover everything, and I'm sure some who listen to the interview will fault us for leaving something out, or for getting something wrong. But that's how it goes. I think Dana and I did a pretty good job of covering the basics; ironically we didn't manage to talk very much about the recent and ongoing demonstrations, which were ostensibly the subject of the show. Listening back to the interview, though, I don't think that was a mistake. A number of sources have minimized (you could also say ridiculed) Yemen's February 3 demonstrations. These sources seem to be working on the assumption that every popular protest in the Middle East must have the same goals and follow the same pattern. This idea ignores the obvious fact that Yemeni politics are quite different from Egyptian, Tunisian, or Algerian politics, and that no two countries have exactly the same constellation of circumstances. The fact is that Yemen's various opposition movements, whether within the political mainstream or on the fringes of society, have different goals from each other, not to mention from their counterparts in other countries; and the regime of 'Ali 'Abdullah Salih is itself very different from the Mubarak and Bin 'Ali regimes. So if the actions of last Thursday (some participants won't even refer to them as protests, though I would disagree) did not result in an immediate challenge to President Salih's political or physical survival, or in the sustained occupation of public spaces, that does not mean that they failed.

I'll save my elaboration on the many strands of opposition for another post. I'm also not going to get into all of the ways in which Yemen differs from the other Arab states currently facing protests. For now I just want to argue the point that the February 3 demonstrations were far more important than many commentators (and participants) have made them out to be. Here's why:

• They forced President Salih to realize that he is not immune from popular discontent. This may seem like a silly thing for a politician to have to realize, but he and his fellow despots are a special breed, adept at delusion. He is also incredibly talented at dodging disapproval, or redirecting it by force.
• They forced the Yemeni people—including the leaderships of the GPC and JMP—to realize that their president is not immune from popular discontent. Again, this should be self-evident, but it's not. Even in "truly" democratic countries, people routinely forget that they wield political power. While I doubt that anyone in Yemen is under the illusion that a few protests will solve their country's deep-seated political problems, they have now seen their president raise his head at their raised voices, and that simple fact means that the relationship between ruler and ruled has changed.
• They demonstrated popular ties between Yemen and the wider Arab world. President Salih has long been bolstered by support from Saudi Arabia and other friendly (you could also say opportunistic, manipulative, exploitative...) states; now his citizens have shown that they too have connections abroad, that they can learn from and participate in regional and global developments.
• They engaged a significant number of young people. Yemen is mostly made up of young people these days, but in recent years Yemen's protest culture has not been a youth culture. Protest has been something that secessionists, Islamists, insurgents, veterans, and journalists engage in, not something for students or the non-radical youth at large. The February 3 protests and subsequent actions have appealed—and will continue to appeal—to young people  who have not previously identified with any marginalized or activist group.

The points listed above all seem to favor of the opposition(s). But there is one big point in the regime's favor: the events of February 3 were completely mis-covered and misunderstood by the international media. Nearly every article in the press focused on the demonstrations in San‘a. If another city was mentioned, it was only briefly and only because some editors seem to insist that a story about Yemen include a bit of violence. But the coverage ignored the major differences between protests in different cities. For instance, San‘a's demos included very few women, while much larger demos in Ta‘iz hosted thousands of women. San‘a's protests were calm, and dispersed in time for lunch, while those in some cities lasted all day and were met with violence from the police and military. But so long as the press stays in San‘a, and San‘a stays calm, the regime retains a free hand to deal with unrest elsewhere with more force.

The list above is not exhaustive, and some people will surely argue with one or all of these points. But I think the importance of these protests will become increasingly visible in the coming weeks and months. I doubt we'll see a revolution in Yemen, and I think that's fine. Revolutions are painful things, and they're not necessary if substantive change can be achieved some other way. I think the people have found their voices, and I'm excited to see where this leads.

The JMP and other, non-mainstream groups have more demonstrations planned for February 10 and 11. The army is apparently pouring into Aden, and opposition/Southern Movement demos there will probably be met with force. We'll have to wait to see how protesters in the rest of the country will respond.

From San‘a: Developing the Grassroots Movement

Through a mutual friend, I recently got into contact with someone who is in Yemen right now and who has spoken with an off-shoot student activist group of the pro-democracy movement in San‘a. For obvious reasons, all involved want to remain anonymous, but this person kindly wrote up his/her reflections for us. The recollections below cannot be verified, as journalists say, but this person has provided a fascinating account of how young people are working to organize themselves. I thank the contributor for taking the time to share this on our blog. Another day of protests are planned for tomorrow, Feb. 10th. We will be sure to update you on what we find out. Very interesting -- check it out! Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar and Foreign Minister Dr Abu Bakr al-Qirbi are correct, Yemen is neither Tunisia nor Egypt.  By this we mean its social composition and structures, although everyone will agree the 20-year old Republic of Yemen has been part and parcel of the 60-year old Arab nationalist project.  Yet what we saw in Tunisia and now witness first hand day by day throughout Egypt would be difficult to replicate in Yemen.  A number of socio-political obstacles stand in the way of similar popular uprisings, although economic conditions throughout the Republic are indeed much dismal than drivers behind the Jasmine Revolution and now al-Thawra as-Shab.

Activism of the type we’ve witnessed since 14 January remains problematic here due to institutional monopolies on mobilization and tribal resources at government’s disposal which act as deterrents, as we witnessed on 3 February.  Such are the challenges new youth activists face in organizing a truly non-institution based grassroots movement for tangible change.  Today we begin to learn of a youth movement that began with one young university student, AJ, who--after watching media reports of events in Egypt--took it upon himself to upload images on his Facebook wall and to tag his friends, something he admitted was otherwise never his practice.

We first learned about this new group of 100 Yemenis through asSharah (The Street) newspaper on 5 February, which reported on a group of young Yemenis who ‘spontaneously’ began to clean al-Dayri street following the JMP organized protests of 3 February. AJ filled me in on his first reaction to organize his friends on Wednesday before the "Day of Rage." He promised that Feb. 3rd would become a turbulent event after President Ali Abdullah Saleh warned the population during his address to Parliament the morning of 2 February of potential violence organized by protesters.  AJ mentioned the initial response came from 100 of his Facebook friends, some of whom met later on Wednesday at a local café (about 30 of them) for a preparatory meeting, which was followed the same evening by a meeting at a friend’s house. In this meeting they all agreed to contribute YR200 (less than one US dollar) in order to purchase trash bags and plastic gloves.  Another friend, not on Facebook, offered to print flyers for the group.  This is the account of what may become Yemen’s grassroots movement toward credible change in the months to come.

I asked AJ to describe the ambitions and expectations of this small group of young university students, he began by commenting on the t-shirts worn by the 20 group members who participated in the 3 February protests, the slogan was ‘Peaceful Change’ written under a Yemeni flag.  While the protesters were told to wear Pink during the protests, the Facebook Youth chose white to symbolize their priority, a peaceful expression of their ambitions.  AJ commented on his personal hopes for the group as he perceived the motivation of others in the group.  The priority is to contribute to a new “culture of change”, which they intend to manifest by advancing a civil movement that cares first and foremost about Yemen’s future.  He believes the president’s initiatives were part of a political game, but granted Saleh a great deal of credit for preventing chaos similar to the Tunisian or Egyptian events.  Yet, the initiatives are not enough, and AJ and the ten groups now joining the Facebook Youth look for expanding freedom of speech and progress in democratization of the political process.  Yemeni youth want improved education and health care, as well as a stronger fight against corruption.  His most striking comment came when he mentioned that most important for the movement is a “revolution of mind”, a change in the mentality of people who are blinded by the rhetoric of security over development toward a brighter future for the country. [bolded for emphasis]

AJ believes that change will come, whether at the hands of conservative forces or under the current regime, but may be not within the next six months.  He spoke to me about the limitations for the groups who are mainly found in urban centers.  Also, he spoke of the limited connectivity via social media, which only a very small percentage of young Yemenis engage with on a daily basis.  Technology is one instrument of many to utilize in order to reach a wider sector of Yemeni society, said AJ. In the coming months it will become vital for group members to reach beyond their local environment, but this may still depend on traditional methods that involve more personal contact than technology’s global reach.  Another major obstacle remains the uncertainty of people’s participation. He indicated many youth are still hesitant to take part in any activities due to fear of reaction by the government and the opposition, who may fear an end to their monopoly, or even portions of the population who do not understand their activities. AJ hopes that Thursday’s (10 Feb.) peaceful demonstrations will not only bring the movement to the surface but also allow the youth to network in order to expand awareness.

More to come after what appears to be a successful and peaceful demonstration Thursday.

From Sana’a…

Countdown

Mass demonstrations in San‘a are scheduled to begin at 10:0 am tomorrow—just ten hours from now. According to Yemeni activists on Twitter, San‘a's Tahrir Square, which is one block from the Yemeni parliament, and surrounded by other government buildings, has been occupied by "armed thugs." Accordingly, protest organizers plan to gather their followers near the university, on the other side of town, instead. Yesterday's announcement from President ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih that he would neither seek reelection nor allow his son to run for the presidency seems to have been accepted by the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP)—the opposition coalition that includes Islah and the Yemeni Socialist Party—but it may not satisfy the street. The internet is a poor indicator for real-world events, especially in places like Yemen, where so few people have internet access on a good day, but judging from the current buzz, I expect tomorrow's demonstrations to draw significant crowds.

Some observers have minimized earlier protests, saying that they were little more than opposition party rallies. Tomorrow will see events in several cities organized by the JMP, but I think we'll also see expressions of real popular anger, which the parties may not be able to contain. The presence of "thugs" in advance of the protests is very worrisome, especially in light of today's tragic events in Cairo. It also means that Salih and his party haven't yet decided how to handle these events. Will they offer more concessions and let the citizens blow off steam, or will they crack down? I think the answer may depend on the scale of tomorrow's demonstrations. But then again, I said in my last post that I wouldn't be making any more predictions. The best any of us can do is work for change, and hope for peace.

UPDATE: 6:30AM YEMEN TIME

The sun is rising now in San‘a, and although I'm thousands of miles away, I am extremely uneasy about the coming day. Massive demonstrations are scheduled to begin in a few hours in San‘a and in other cities. These are meant to be peaceful protests, but recent developments make peace unlikely. As I write this I'm listening to Al Jazeera's live coverage of the battle in Cairo's Tahrir Square, which in 24 hours has changed, in Al Jazeera's words, from a festival to a war zone. According to Twitter, San‘a's Tahrir Square has been preemptively occupied by pro-government forces. Security forces have allegedly lined the streets in other parts of the city.

Governments do not send soldiers into the streets to maintain peace, but to enforce their will. I've promised twice now not to make predictions, but what's happening right now in Egypt feels like the prelude to a massacre. The government, which just days ago seemed to be on the verge of collapse, is still firmly in control, and its proxy forces now occupy positions surrounding the protesters. I really hope I'm reading the situation wrong, but the constant sound of gunfire gives some credence to my theory.

Earlier today, according the website of Yemen's ruling party, US President Barack Obama called President Salih to congratulate him on his "wise decision" to offer (totally meaningless) concessions to the opposition. The US government has continuously criticized Egypt's violent crackdown on protests, but has done nothing at all to really discourage the repression. Now with the blessing of his American patron, what reason will President Salih have to restrain his own response to anti-government demonstrations?

We at the YPP want nothing more than to see the Yemeni people express their grievances in public, and to have their voices heard. I and my co-directors would give anything to be in San‘a this morning. At the same time, I am terrified for the Yemeni people. The international community, despite its harsh language, is content to stand by while Mubarak's regime in Egypt attacks its own citizens; America has not hesitated in the recent past to fund and carry out attacks on Yemeni civilians, so we can be sure that if tomorrow's protests turn violent, no one in the outside world will come to the aid of the people.

We support and praise our brothers and sisters in Yemen who are exercising their rights of expression and protest, and we strongly condemn any violent response to popular protest. We hope that the United States government, from the lowest embassy officers to Secretary Clinton and President Obama, understand that they will bear responsibility for any violence against the Yemeni people, and we urge them to do everything in their power to prevent such violence.

Finally, we encourage our friends in Yemen to share their views and their experiences with us, and with the wider world, by sending emails, writing on our discussion boards, tweeting, and texting; and we urge the Yemeni and foreign media to cover today's events responsibly, in all their complexity. We will post updates as we are able.

P.S. Yemenis without internet access can post messages to Twitter by leaving voicemails at the following international phone numbers: +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855.