It has four soaring minarets, seven ornate domes and can be seen from all over Sana‘a: the Yemeni capital’s Salih mosque is a vast monument to the country’s president, Ali Abdullah Salih, its lights blazing all night even when power cuts plunge parts of the city into darkness.
“Look at it,” said Nasser al-Rimahi, a teacher. “Do you know how many millions that mosque cost? Do you know the state of our hospitals and schools, the problems of making a living here? They say it was a gift from the president. But where did he get his money from?”
Salih has compared ruling Yemen to “dancing with snakes” — a striking image in a predominantly tribal country whose water and oil are fast running out and which has catastrophic rates of poverty, illiteracy and population growth. But it has taken the specter of jihadi terrorism to galvanize global interest unprecedented in his 31 years in power.
Alarm bells went off when the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, praised by Osama bin Laden as a “heroic warrior,” tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day. The stark realization that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) could strike so far beyond its Yemeni base has resulted in a high-profile international conference in London this week to discuss the twin issues of terrorism and development, and coordinate efforts to help a state that some say is failing in slow motion.
Many Yemenis say the threat from AQAP is exaggerated by Western governments and media.
“Life here is normal,” said Ismail Sohaily, of al-Iman University, fighting off a reputation as a hotbed of Islamist activism. “This is not Waziristan or Tora Bora. My students joke that they were surprised we weren’t blamed for the earthquake in Haiti.”
Still, normality in Sana‘a includes a fortress-like US embassy hit by suicide bombers in 2008, troops searching vehicles for wanted men and weapons and displays of counterterrorist firepower for the foreign TV crews who poured in after the Detroit incident.
“The media frenzy is over now,” commentator Nasser Arabyee said, “but Yemen’s problems remain.”
It is not hard to gauge public opinion. Salih presides over a system of what one expert calls “pluralized authoritarianism,” with a vocal and predominantly Islamist opposition and a press that is highly critical despite a crackdown in recent years.
Fears about terrorism are bad for desperately needed foreign investment and tourism.
“It has been very hard these last few months,” lamented a shopkeeper in Sana‘a’s labyrinthine old city, looking at his unsold stock of curved daggers, brocaded belts and jewelry. “It’s all because of the security problems.”
But fighting against rebels of the Shia Houthi clan in the north, the economy, corruption, separatist unrest in the south, malnutrition and a young population of 23 million that will double in 20 years all feature higher than al-Qaeda in most people’s lists of concerns.
“There is the ideology of al-Qaeda that you can’t get rid of very easily,” Yemeni Deputy Finance Minister Jalal Omar Yaqoub said. “Yemen has become fertile ground for it because of its economic and development challenges. Citizens want job opportunities, basic services, electricity, water, healthcare and the rule of law. If these are available, the majority will be law-abiding; the security forces can deal with the small minority who are not.”
Yaqoub is one of a “new gang” of technocrats close to Salih’s son, Ahmed Ali, expected by some to succeed his father. But critics caution that the president will have to give up some of his immense power to allow formal government to function more effectively.
“If Salih continues to rule like this the economy will collapse,” said Abdel-Ghani al-Iryani, a consultant. “The regime must understand that if it wants to survive, it must change.”
Economics, development, politics and terrorism are seen as inextricably interlinked: Diminishing oil revenues have limited Salih’s ability to buy support and maintain security in provinces such as Abyan, Shabwa and Marib — “ungoverned spaces” where al-Qaeda is operating. The snake-dancing is getting riskier.
Yemeni officials hope that the current international concern will produce financial aid — US$4 billion a year is the figure bandied around. But Washington and London insist there will be no “blank checks” or new pledges unless serious reforms get under way. Fuel subsidies, which consume a staggering third of state spending, are a prime target; thinning the ranks of the bloated civil service another. Both feature in a 10-point reform plan drawn up by Yaqoub and praised by the US.
Help may come from Saudi Arabia, increasingly worried by the dangers from its poorer neighbor. It already pays billions of dollars a year to Yemeni sheikhs and others but has no long-term development strategy. Agreement by the Saudis and smaller Gulf states to reopen their labor markets — closed to Yemeni workers since Salih rashly backed then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait — could generate huge sums in remittances. That would be far better than any handout.
Diplomats say Salih is watching his back: Sheikh Abdel-Majid al-Zindani, the cleric and Afghan war veteran who taught Osama bin Laden and founded al-Iman university, has already warned of a US plot to occupy Yemen.
Iraq and Afghanistan have taught painful lessons about getting too close to Washington: With the vast majority of Yemenis against foreign intervention, US involvement is likely to remain discreet.
“It’s a lose-lose situation,” a former official said. “When the government attacks al-Qaeda, the opposition and the Islamists go crazy. The US has unrealistic expectations of what can be done.”
So what can the London conference achieve?
“We’re seeing results in [Yemen’s] counterterrorism efforts and we want to see similar results when it comes to development,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Friday.
Yet some in Sana‘a worry that for the West, fighting al-Qaeda will take precedence.
“It’s got to be about reinstating the rule of law, about things that matter to the people of Yemen — not just the outside world, said Nadia al-Sakkaf, editor of the Yemen Times.
Incubator of terror
In an audio tape purportedly recorded by Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief on Sunday claimed responsibility for the failed attempt to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day. But one senior US intelligence official said there was “no evidence whatsoever” that bin Laden had any involvement in the plot or even knew about it in advance. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student accused of attempting to carry out the attack, has told investigators that he was trained by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Sunday that AQAP had been “rising on our radar” for 18 months to two years before the Christmas Day attack showed it had a global reach. Officials in Sana‘a estimate that AQAP has 200-300 fighters in a few remote areas. These include Yemenis, Saudis and Egyptians. But Abdulelah Shaea, a journalist who has met its leaders, has said it has only a few dozen core members.
The Yemeni government’s view is that the group can be defeated with local firepower and financial and intelligence help from the US, but that there is a political cost. Yemeni forces who stormed “terrorist nests” in Arhab last month were attacked by tribesmen afterwards.
AQAP was set up a year ago in a merger of the Saudi and Yemeni franchises of Osama bin Laden’s group. The first sign of its capabilities came last August when a supposedly repentant Saudi jihadi from Yemen blew himself up in the home of Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the deputy Saudi security chief, using a bomb hidden in his rectum. The prince survived.
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