The problems of partnering with Yemen

• Published in: Yemen times
• Main Authors: Bouckaert, Peter, Wilcke, Christoph
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sanaa Yemen Times 22.04.2010
• Subjects: Saleh, Ali Abdullah
• ISSN: 1564-0434

President Barack Obama's pledge to "strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government" shouldn't lead to a Western embrace of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government. The United States and other outside powers also need to address Saleh's terrible human rights abuses, which help fuel al-Qaeda recruitment. In southern Yemen, for instance, the government has responded to massive and largely peaceful protests in favor of secession with unprovoked deadly gunfire on numerous occasions. To date, the international community seems to be giving Yemen a free hand to deal with internal opposition under the cover of combating terrorism. The hastily convened Yemen meeting in London in January declared a "commitment to non-interference in Yemen's internal affairs." In a March 3 visit to Yemen, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said that Washington "consider[s] what is happening in the southern provinces to be an internal affair, for Yemen alone, and we do not believe that any outside party should intervene." That same day, Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi admitted to parliament that a U.S.-assisted airstrike in December 2009 against al-Qaeda, also in the southern Abyan province, killed 42 civilians. Repression and lawlessness partly account for Yemen's worsening instability and for al-Qaeda's rise. The government has made Yemen a dangerous place for journalists. On January 4 -- less than 48 hours after Obama pledged his support -- Saleh's security forces opened fire on protesters demanding the re-opening of Yemen's largest independent newspaper, Al-Ayyam, which was shut in May 2008 for "inciteful" reports on government abuses against southern protestors. On March 11, government forces entered the offices of two large regional satellite television channels, Al Jazeera and al-Arabiyya, and confiscated their broadcasting equipment in response to their coverage of southern unrest that the government said "encouraged sabotage and separatism."