Mohammed Ghobari
By Mohammed Ghobari
As Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi cements his ties with Washington, Yemen’s interim president risks alienating his own people, who resent the US drone war on Al Qaeda in their country.
Hadi’s White House visit on August 1, a mark of favour from the United States, coincided with an intensification of US drone attacks on suspected members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based group seen by the West as one of the global militant movement’s most aggressive branches.
The State Department also temporarily closed its embassy in Sanaa and withdrew some diplomats over warnings of a potential Al Qaeda attack, with other Western embassies following suit.
Yemen at first decried these measures as exaggerated. But it later said it had foiled an AQAP plot which also involved seizing energy facilities and a provincial capital, a claim which a government spokesman in Washington later played down.
Drones have killed at least 37 people in just over two weeks amid extra security measures that have frayed Yemeni nerves.
In Sanaa, a US reconnaissance plane buzzed overhead for hours each day and security checkpoints mushroomed across the capital during the normally joyous Eid Al Fitr feast.
Hadi took office with firm US support after protracted unrest forced veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh, once also a US ally, to step down in late 2011 after 33 years in power.
A southerner with a military background, Hadi was Saleh’s vice president for nearly two decades. So far he has kept the support of Saleh’s friends and foes alike and has met little serious opposition — not even from Islah, an Islamist party linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hadi knows, as Saleh did, that pleasing the United States boosts the flow of military aid and badly needed humanitarian support. Washington allocated $345m to Yemen in 2012 and is expected to give $250m in 2013 and the same in 2014.
But many Yemenis who opposed Saleh are dismayed by the drone attacks and their country’s continued dependency on Washington.
“These strikes project Hadi as implementing the agenda of his predecessor, and for sure affect his popularity,” said Yahya Qasseb bin Sahl, law professor at Aden University. “They also channel the Yemeni street’s feelings in favour of Al Qaeda.”
A national reconciliation conference led by Hadi is due to conclude next month. Its aims include tackling the grievances of southern Yemeni separatists and of Shia rebels in the north — two groups Saleh fought and failed to crush.
Yet progress on a new constitution to be completed before scheduled elections in 2014 has been slow and many Yemenis are unconvinced that the dialogue will end chronic corruption or the conflicts of an impoverished nation whose 25 million people form a patchwork of tribal, sectarian and regional affiliations.
In this maelstrom, Washington finds Hadi a more amenable partner than Saleh, depicted in US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks as manipulative, self-serving and untrustworthy.
But the US drone strikes, which infuriate many Yemenis, pose a political risk for the interim Yemeni leader.
Abdelrazzaq Al Jamal, a Yemeni journalist who specialises in Al Qaeda, says the drone campaign is counterproductive.
“There is no province in Yemen, no city, where there are no victims of American drone strikes,” he said. “The desire for revenge is growing. This is not in the government’s interest but only in the interest of the US war on terrorism.”
REUTERS
By Mohammed Ghobari
As Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi cements his ties with Washington, Yemen’s interim president risks alienating his own people, who resent the US drone war on Al Qaeda in their country.
Hadi’s White House visit on August 1, a mark of favour from the United States, coincided with an intensification of US drone attacks on suspected members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based group seen by the West as one of the global militant movement’s most aggressive branches.
The State Department also temporarily closed its embassy in Sanaa and withdrew some diplomats over warnings of a potential Al Qaeda attack, with other Western embassies following suit.
Yemen at first decried these measures as exaggerated. But it later said it had foiled an AQAP plot which also involved seizing energy facilities and a provincial capital, a claim which a government spokesman in Washington later played down.
Drones have killed at least 37 people in just over two weeks amid extra security measures that have frayed Yemeni nerves.
In Sanaa, a US reconnaissance plane buzzed overhead for hours each day and security checkpoints mushroomed across the capital during the normally joyous Eid Al Fitr feast.
Hadi took office with firm US support after protracted unrest forced veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh, once also a US ally, to step down in late 2011 after 33 years in power.
A southerner with a military background, Hadi was Saleh’s vice president for nearly two decades. So far he has kept the support of Saleh’s friends and foes alike and has met little serious opposition — not even from Islah, an Islamist party linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hadi knows, as Saleh did, that pleasing the United States boosts the flow of military aid and badly needed humanitarian support. Washington allocated $345m to Yemen in 2012 and is expected to give $250m in 2013 and the same in 2014.
But many Yemenis who opposed Saleh are dismayed by the drone attacks and their country’s continued dependency on Washington.
“These strikes project Hadi as implementing the agenda of his predecessor, and for sure affect his popularity,” said Yahya Qasseb bin Sahl, law professor at Aden University. “They also channel the Yemeni street’s feelings in favour of Al Qaeda.”
A national reconciliation conference led by Hadi is due to conclude next month. Its aims include tackling the grievances of southern Yemeni separatists and of Shia rebels in the north — two groups Saleh fought and failed to crush.
Yet progress on a new constitution to be completed before scheduled elections in 2014 has been slow and many Yemenis are unconvinced that the dialogue will end chronic corruption or the conflicts of an impoverished nation whose 25 million people form a patchwork of tribal, sectarian and regional affiliations.
In this maelstrom, Washington finds Hadi a more amenable partner than Saleh, depicted in US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks as manipulative, self-serving and untrustworthy.
But the US drone strikes, which infuriate many Yemenis, pose a political risk for the interim Yemeni leader.
Abdelrazzaq Al Jamal, a Yemeni journalist who specialises in Al Qaeda, says the drone campaign is counterproductive.
“There is no province in Yemen, no city, where there are no victims of American drone strikes,” he said. “The desire for revenge is growing. This is not in the government’s interest but only in the interest of the US war on terrorism.”
REUTERS
