Yemen’s Unfinished Revolution

AFTER more than five months of continuous protests, I stand today in Change Square with thousands of young people united by a lofty dream. I have spent days and nights camped out in tents with fellow protesters; I have led demonstrations in the streets facing the threat of mortars, missiles and gunfire; I have struggled to build a movement for democratic change — all while caring for my three young children.

We have reached this historic moment because we chose to march in the streets demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, an end to his corrupt and failed regime and the establishment of a modern democratic state. On June 4, our wish for Mr. Saleh’s departure was granted, but our demand for democracy remains unfulfilled. Following months of peaceful protests that reached every village, neighborhood and street, Yemen is now facing a complete vacuum of authority; we are without a president or parliament. Mr. Saleh may be gone, but authority has not yet been transferred to a transitional presidential council endorsed by the people. This is because the United States and Saudi Arabia, which have the power to ensure a peaceful transition to democracy in Yemen, have instead used their influence to ensure that members of the old regime remain in power and the status quo is maintained. American counterterrorism agencies and the Saudi government have a firm grip on Yemen at the moment. It is they, not the Yemeni people and their constitutional institutions, that control the country.

American intervention in Yemen is a product of the war on terror. In exchange for military and intelligence partnerships established after the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in 2000, the United States provided the Saleh regime with increased economic aid and military assistance. Because American security was given priority over all other concerns, counterterrorism agencies paid no attention to the human rights abuses being committed by their local partners. Indeed, American officials chose as local partners the Central Security Forces, the National Security Agency and the Republican Guard, all of which are controlled by Mr. Saleh’s sons and nephews. As a result of their partnership with United States counterterrorism agencies, these organizations received generous American financing as well as guidance and technical assistance. Because America has invested so heavily in Yemen’s security forces, it now seems that a transition to democracy will depend on whether Washington believes that investment will remain secure. The establishment of a new government will therefore be contingent on American officials’ approving the country’s new leaders. Sadly, it seems likely that the United States will support figures from the old regime rather than allow a transitional government approved by the people to take control of Yemen. This would be a grave mistake.

American policy makers must understand that the activists and young people who started Yemen’s peaceful revolution deeply respect the United States and Western civilization. Indeed, it was in Washington and other capitals throughout the free world that many of these activists learned the peaceful methods they employed during our revolution. We call on American officials to engage with the leaders of Yemen’s democracy movement and abandon their misplaced investment in the old regime’s security apparatus, which has killed more innocent women and children than terrorists. We understand America’s concerns about terrorism and recognize your right to attack terrorist sanctuaries. We have no objection to agreements that protect your security interests. We only ask that you respect international standards on human rights and the Yemeni people’s rights to freedom and justice.

On behalf of many of the young people involved in Yemen’s revolution, I assure the American people that we are ready to engage in a true partnership. Together, we can eliminate the causes of extremism and the culture of terrorism by bolstering civil society and encouraging development and stability. We also call upon our Saudi neighbors to let us pursue a democratic path. For 50 years, the Saudi government has provided a special committee of its ministers with an enormous annual budget to intervene in Yemeni affairs. Over the years, this committee has consistently meddled in Yemen’s domestic politics and exerted considerable influence over the country’s development. In many cases, Yemeni tribal leaders and other prominent individuals have received far more generous aid payments from Riyadh than from the Yemeni government.

Saudi interference in Yemen is also motivated by a fear that the Arab Spring, which spread from Tunis and Cairo to Sana, might soon reach Riyadh. But the fear that our revolution will cross the border is unfounded. This is an information age revolution; it spreads through Facebook, Twitter and other social media, which are not subject to political boundaries. We ask our neighbors in Saudi Arabia to stop hindering the rule of law and healthy economic development through the purchase of politicians and tribal leaders. We also call on the Saudi government to stop pursuing policies that undermine the people’s desire for democratic change. Saudi initiatives that aim to remove the president while keeping the old regime and its security apparatus intact risk unleashing a civil war, which would no doubt have dire consequences for Saudi Arabia as well as for Yemen.

The young people of this revolution have made their demands clear: authority must be handed over to a transitional presidential council approved by the people. This council will manage the country until a constitutional referendum and elections can be held. And the government’s security forces must never again be used to serve the personal agendas of government officials or to establish a monopoly on power.

Yemen’s people have charted the course of revolution and we will follow this course to its end. We have left our authoritarian past behind. Now, we ask our friends in Washington and Riyadh to help us build a democratic future.

Source: New York Times

U.S. to Join Talks on Helping Yemen

A month after the failed airplane bomb plot that put this country’s problem with Al Qaeda in the international spotlight, the United States and 20 other countries are gathering for a conference on Wednesday in London to discuss ways to address Yemen’s growing instability. But in their efforts to move beyond a narrowly military approach to fighting Al Qaeda here, the conference participants are likely to run up against a morass of social, political and logistical obstacles that have frustrated similar efforts in the past. And some diplomats and analysts say they fear that the sudden rush of aid and attention, if it is not handled properly, could reinforce patterns of patronage that have contributed indirectly to Yemen’s culture of extremism. Western donors have already begun increasing their aid commitments, and the London conference — though not aimed at securing more money — is focused on the need to address the many crises that help breed radicalism in Yemen.

The facts are appalling: half the population is living on less than $2 a day; the official rate of illiteracy is 45 percent; fewer than half of Yemenis from ages 15 to 24 are employed. Outside the major cities, access to public water supplies, electricity and health services is vanishingly rare. Those desperately poor hinterlands have become a haven for Qaeda militants, who have regrouped here in the past two years and claimed credit for training Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian militant accused of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound jet on Dec. 25.

Addressing Yemen’s needs, though, is no simple matter. As in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, security concerns have put some of this country’s poorest and most dangerous areas beyond the reach of development assistance. An intermittent war rages in the country’s remote north, and a secessionist movement has grown worse in the south. A vast, corrupt and spectacularly inefficient government bureaucracy has been a stubborn obstacle to aid as well. For those reasons, only a tiny fraction of the $4.7 billion pledged to Yemen during a London donor conference in 2006 has been spent. More money, in other words, is not necessarily the answer. Yemen’s main development agency, the Social Fund for Development, has $12 million in unspent aid money for the Jawf Province, a huge, impoverished area where Qaeda militants have found refuge, said the agency’s director, Abdulkarim Ismail al-Arhabi. The province is too dangerous, and there are no effective intermediaries who could help spend it, Mr. Arhabi said. Western donors say they understand the challenges and are calling for political and economic reform to pave the way for more effective aid. Fixing Yemen’s system of diesel fuel subsidies — which consume almost a third of the budget and are widely said to be an avenue for smuggling and kickbacks — is an important priority, diplomats say.

The conference will also seek a more unified international approach to Yemen, including support from its immediate neighbors. Pressing Persian Gulf countries to open their labor markets to Yemenis could provide tremendous relief for the ailing economy, Western and Yemeni officials say. Another focus will be Saudi Arabia, which gives far more to Yemen than any other country, though mostly through unofficial channels. Western diplomats say they hope to persuade Saudi Arabia to start making its support conditional on political and economic reforms in Yemen. But previous reform efforts have repeatedly stalled. And diplomats say that the publicity created by the Dec. 25 bombing attempt could generate more foreign military and development aid, which in turn could — without the necessary reforms — strengthen the patronage networks that have helped weaken Yemen’s state institutions in the past.

Part of the problem, critics say, is that Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has concentrated too much power in his own hands, skillfully balancing the country’s various political and tribal groups over his 32 years in office, but failing to build a modern state. “At the heart of the economic problem is corruption, and at the heart of the corruption problem is unchecked presidential power,” said Abdel Ghani al-Iryani, a political consultant. Government officials counter that patronage is part of the price of stability in a country that is fragmented along lines of sect, tribe, region and social class. They say that corruption, though widespread, has been exaggerated, and that reforms are under way. Last year Mr. Saleh endorsed a 10-point plan that would bring new blood to the civil service and cut back on the government’s use of diesel fuel. “The corruption is a symptom of the lack of money, the lack of capacity for monitoring this kind of thing,” said Jalal Yacoub, a deputy finance minister and one of the authors of the plan.

The Yemeni state’s administrative weakness, Mr. Yacoub added, derives in part from two major crises of recent years. North Yemen and South Yemen united in 1990, and the north had to absorb hundreds of thousands of public employees from the formerly socialist south. A year later, Saudi Arabia expelled a million Yemeni laborers, following Mr. Saleh’s decision to side with Saddam Hussein in the first Persian Gulf war. Afterward, the Yemeni civil service became a social safety net, as Yemen struggled to find jobs for the returning workers. Mr. Yacoub and other Yemeni officials say they put their hopes in well-financed pilot projects that can quickly improve people’s lives, especially in remote areas where distrust of the government is high. That is also the goal of the United States Agency for International Development, which channels its aid mostly through Yemeni nongovernmental groups. The agency signed a $121 million three-year development assistance program in September, a major increase. But that effort will be hampered by Washington’s inability to send Americans to Yemen’s most dangerous areas, which are also some of its poorest. And they are not the first efforts of their kind. Starting in 2003, a former United States envoy, Edmund J. Hull, traveled to Marib, Jawf, Shabwa and Abyan Provinces to foster aid projects, including the building of new hospitals. “The formula was ‘no security without development, no development without security,’ ” Mr. Hull recalled. “I proposed a virtuous circle to replace the vicious circle.”

Today, the provinces Mr. Hull focused on constitute the main havens of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Source: New York Times