Armed men are reported to have taken control of a provincial capital in the unsettled south of Yemen.
Government officials and residents said fighters from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) were among those who seized Zinjibar, in Abyan province.
But opponents said President Ali Abdullah Saleh had given up the town to stoke fears of a militant takeover.
He is resisting calls to step down, despite months of popular protests and growing opposition from a key tribe.
At least 124 people died in recent days in the capital, Sanaa, in clashes between government forces and fighters loyal to Hashid tribal leader Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar.
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"About 300 Islamic millitants and Al Qaeda men came into Zinjibar and took over everything on Friday," one resident told Reuters.
Conflicting interpretations of the loyalties of the armed men reflect the complex nature of military loyalties in Yemen.
While government officials said the men were AQAP, one analyst told the BBC they were in fact an older, more established group of fighters loyal to President Saleh and his now-rival, the defected army officer Ali Mohsen (who is also Mr Saleh's brother-in-law).
The government has blamed previous attacks in southern Yemen on al-Qaeda, but the country's opposition has accused President Saleh of stoking fears of an Islamist takeover.
AQAP is known to be active in southern Yemen, but the region is also home to a long-running separatist insurgency.
The group is described by the US as one of the world's most energetic al-Qaeda cells.
I've been writing the past few days about the potential for the Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda to gain influence, power and followers during the current crisis in Yemen. Now comes word from the BBC that Al-Qaeda fighters have potentially taken a southern Yemeni town.
I have to assume that the West is involved in some way in what is going on and given the fact that they aren't bombing cities in Yemen like they are in Libya, it would be behind the scenes playing on influence and politics. Lets just hope that this strategy can avoid the growth of Al-Qaeda in Yemen and help to put a check on world terrorism in general.
Yesterday I wrote about the disproportionate response from the West concerning revolutions occurring in North Africa and the Middle East. One of the things I touched on was how the West while openly and militarily supporting the revolutionaries in Libya didn't seem to be doing much in Yemen. I hinted at the fact that this could be a powder keg situation and one that could have grave consequences for the West given Al-Qaeda's presence there. A worsening of the situation could serve to fuel Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a section of the terrorist organization that has shown itself to be much more unpredictable and innovative than their former masters in Pakistan (read Osama Bin Laden).
Reports from Yemen say that government planes have bombed armed tribesmen who had seized an area outside the capital Sanaa.
At least 10 people were killed overnight in the Arhab region, 15 kilometres north of Sanaa International Airport, where government forces clashed with the country's most powerful tribal group.
The security situation in Yemen continues to get worse.
A few hours ago, President Ali Abdullah Saleh gave a defiant speech on state radio. He said he wouldn't relinquish power and urged foreign governments to stop interfering.
From Kahled, an oil worker:
No-one envisioned that the situation would deteriorate so rapidly.
On Thursday the sound of heavy artillery was heard throughout in the city.
From Rahan, a nurse:
It's obvious that the country has become unstable and it is a ticking time bomb.
I love Yemen and it breaks my heart to see the current situation, especially knowing it can only get worse. Security is plummeting and the economy is spiralling into oblivion.
Foreign intervention, although probably inevitable, will be too late.
It is exactly in situations like this that organizations that are fueled by fear and hate flourish. Al-Qaeda is just such an organization and they are already active and on the ground in Yemen.
2011 has been a historic year of change for countries in North Africa; the rising of the populace in Tunisia, the overthrow of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the uprising in Libya. Add to that the turmoil in Yemen, Syria and the Gold Coast and it hard not to see the ‘winds of change’ blowing through Africa and the Middle East.
There are however differences in all these cases. The Tunisian uprising was led and fueled by the internal populace tired of an authoritarian regime and desperate for change. The toppling of Mubarak began much the same way but towards the end they were supported by international pressure when violence against the protestors broke out. Then there is Libya.
No doubt the people of Libya, long suffering under the despotic regime of Col. Gaddafi, saw change happening elsewhere and took the chance to make it happen for them too. Forces loyal to Gaddafi though had other thoughts and after some dramatic gains by the anti-regime forces, they were able to force back the ‘rebels’ and brought the uprising pretty much to a standstill. Then the UN and NATO got involved.
Libya has long been a thorn in the side of the west. Reagan bombed the country back in the early 80s. They were under sanctions for nearly two decades due to the support that Gaddafi showed to terrorists and terrorist organizations. When the Spring of Change bloomed in Libya I’m sure that many in power in the West were happy to see Gaddafi fall. But he didn’t. Instead he was able to marshal the forces loyal to him and stall the insurrection. This led to “UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized air strikes to protect Libyan civilians from attacks by forces loyal to Col Gaddafi.”
How can one argue that NATO shouldn’t be involved right? I mean the protection of civilians from military units loyal to a despotic ruler is a good thing.
What I find confusing about the whole issue is: why Libya?
What is it about Libya that gets the UN and NATO involved when there are similar protests happening in Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, with much more bloodshed and the world stands by and watches?
On what grounds can President Obama justify military intervention in Libya that do [sic] not also mandate immediate action in Bahrain and Yemen? In all three cases, authoritarian governments are cracking down on protesters and dissent with murderous reprisals.
On March 19, 2011 President Obama made a statement from Brazil explaining American intervention in Libya stating that “we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy” and that they were “answering the calls of a threatened people and we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world.”
Despite these assurances it’s hard not to come to the same conclusion that many came to when George W. Bush when into Iraq; oil. In fact an influential Democratic Congressman Edward Markey (Mass) argued that "we are in Libya because of oil," Markey said on MSNBC. "It all goes back to the 5 million barrels of oil we import from OPEC on a daily basis." Senator James Webb (Virg) came to a similar conclusion.
As Mr. Leonard points out, the oil produced by Libya is a type known as ‘sweet light crude’. It has a very low sulfur content, which requires much less refining than say Saudi Arabian oil that has a much higher sulfur content. Libyan oil burns cleaner and is much easier to refine into gasoline. This in turn keeps gas prices down, which is critical for an economy such as America’s, suffering as it is through very tough economic times.
One might balk at this idea given the inclusion of countries such as France and Spain in the NATO forces taking action against the Libyan dictator. But one has to recognize the fact that European oil companies are major players in the Libyan oil fields and they too have much to lose.
The West wants what Libya has, vast resources of ‘sweet light crude’ oil that are relatively untapped due to sanctions enforced upon Libya in the past. Libya has the ninth largest oil reserves in the world estimated in 2007 at 41.5 billion barrels.
One might then take the realpolitik approach, as mentioned in Mr. Leonard’s column, and argue that if the West’s intervention in Libya was simply about oil, it would be much easier to simply back Gaddafi and get back to business as usual. But what we can see is that business as usual isn’t that good, given that it was dependent upon a rather unstable dictator. If the West were able to help democracy flourish in Libya they would be rewarded with an opening of the oil market in Libya allowing foreign oil companies the opportunity to take advantage of a vast oil field that produces high quality oil at very low rates (as low as $1 a barrel in some existing oil fields).
So there is a sense of the humanitarian behind the West’s actions in Libya but the foundation is politics and economics. Much as it is for much of human action.
The fact remains that the West did not step in to help protect people in Bahrain (45,000 barrels a day) or Yemen (260,000 barrels a day) or Syria (400,000 barrels a day). These numbers may seem like a lot, but pale in comparison to the 1.8 million barrels a day that were being pumped out of Libyan oil fields in 2006. Plans were underway to increase production from this 2006 number to 3 million barrels a day sometime between 2010 and 2013.
One also has to take into account that not many people liked Gaddafi. He was an essentially easy target. Nobody in Africa was standing up for him. He had run roughshod over so many for so long that nobody is willing to come to his defence now. The same can’t be said of either Syria or Yemen who have ties with Iran.
If there was a case to be made for intervention by the West it would be Yemen.
Recently the US was able to ‘assassinate’ Osama Bin Laden and many rejoiced at the news. What may have been lost on many is the fact that while Al-Qaeda as led by Bin Laden had become predictable, his assassination has led to the question of where Al –Qaeda will go from here.
Al-Qaeda in Yemen is younger and less committed to such a rigid structure. Its master bombmaker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, is 29. The country's top al-Qaeda commander, Nasser al-Wahishi, is 34. Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who has become a leading figure in the organization, is 40.
Bin Laden was 53 and had spent the past several years holed up in a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when U.S. Navy SEALs killed him this month. His likely successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, is 59.
Bin Laden's writings show that, to the end, he remained committed to carrying out spectacular attacks on high-profile targets. The Yemeni branch has embraced the idea of recruiting terrorists over the internet, providing them with bombmaking instructions and letting them pick their own targets.
Bin Laden liked symbolic targets and dates. Al-Qaeda in Yemen has selected targets of convenience. The suspected Christmas bomber, for instance, picked Detroit only because it was the cheapest ticket.
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An innovative al-Qaeda is less predictable and arguably more dangerous, he said: "They've been quite successful at being innovators that make our jobs more challenging."
So while President Obama can make statements such as he did on March 28, 2011:
"To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and -- more profoundly -- our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are," Obama said. "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."
It is hard not to see the actions of not only America, but the West as being one predicated on economic self interest rather than true humanitarian grounds. If the West was to take such statements seriously it would be involved in Syria and Yemen, instead of playing backroom politics and trying to sway the leaders there to end the violence they have been inflicting upon their people.
One could also make the additional argument that the West should be involved in Yemen not only to protect the people but to help put an end to the Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda that has shown itself to be dangerous, innovative and unpredictable.
Of course there is something to be said for the idea of just not getting involved at all. It was the West’s involvement in the past that helped to screw things up. Perhaps its time for the West to step back and let others govern themselves for a change, because it doesn’t seem that the current actions of the West in North Africa or the Middle East is going to bring any better fruit than it has over the past few centuries.
Of course at this point to sit back would be to party to the slaughter of thousands and the suppression of millions. Is this something that the West can abide? Should it?
