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Omani players celebrating after a goal at the Gulf 20 tournament in Aden and Abyan.

Sunday, Nov 28, 2010 ISSue 22PrIce: yer 30

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A suicide bomber killed a tribesman on Friday travelling to the funeral of the spiritual head of Shiite rebels observing an uneasy truce with Yemen’s government, a rebel spokes-man and tribal sources said.

The bombing in northern Yemen also wounded another eight tribal dignitaries who had travelled up from the east of the country for the funeral of Badreddin al-Huthi, who died on Thursday at the age of 86, the sources said.

The attack came just two days after a suicide car bomber killed 23 Zaidi Shiite rebel fighters or supporters as they took part in a religious proces-sion in Al-Jawf province.

“One person was martyred” and “eight people were wound-ed, some seriously, when a car

carrying tribesmen from Maar-ib province on their way from Saada to Dahyan, exploded,” rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told AFP by tele-phone.

He said that the attack on the three-car convoy headed to the funeral venue near the Saudi border from the rebel strong-hold of Saada was the work of a suicide bomber.

Tribal sources confirmed the mourners had been hit by a sui-cide bombing on their way to Dahyan.

Following the attack, the rebels searched all cars coming into Saada, witnesses told AFP.

“In a terrorist incident,” a bomb-laden car attacked a “convoy from Maarib province

Suicide bomber kills Yemen mournerNational Yemen Staff

National Yemen Staff

Despite international fears of terror attacks, Yemen is proving itself to be a perfect host for an eight-nation football tourna-ment on the Arabian Peninsula.

When I told a friend I was off to Yemen for the Gulf Cup of Nations football tournament in Aden, he asked me if I was in-sane. He was not alone.

According to one newspaper, this was “the most dangerous region of the most dangerous country on earth”.

The headline in an American magazine expressed the reac-tion of many: “Al-Qaeda bomb-ings, drive-by shootings and penalty kicks - what are they thinking?”

Kuwait and Bahrain took some convincing to join the tournament

I asked another friend, a dis-tinguished sports writer, if he fancied a few days out in the Gulf. Out of the question, he said. His wife would not let him go.

On the surface it seemed only reasonable to question the wisdom of staging an interna-tional football tournament in the heartland of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

And for once this was not a uniquely Western view. Some of Yemen’s neighbours had their doubts, too.

There were wobbles from

Kuwait and Bahrain, before they decided to grin and bear it and join the six other Gulf countries in Aden.

A Yemeni friend told me of the Arab tourism minister who had got the jitters and frantical-ly prepared a will before his flight to Yemen.

“Then I got here,” he said later, “and on my first day in Aden I found myself wandering through the streets at two in the morning, speaking to people, eating outside in restaurants thoroughly enjoying myself. I was completely comfortable.”

Electric atmosphereYou have to wonder what the

Iraqi footballers, who have lived through an inferno of vio-lence since 2003, made of all the fuss.

Women at the Yemen vs Sau-di Arabia match were the noisi-est supporters

In the run-up to the tourna-ment the government launched an unprecedented security op-eration involving more than 30,000 soldiers.

That did not mean people were not worried about the opening ceremony and the match that followed it, Yemen versus Saudi Arabia.

What chance an al-Qaeda

Gulf Cup terror fears no match for football in Yemen By Justin Marozzi, BBC

A number of participating delegations in the 1st Interna-tional Conference for Medical Education and Academic Ac-creditation for Mideast Coun-tries and the executive meeting of the Association of Arab Uni-versities arrived on Friday in Sana’a to take part in the con-ference and meeting to be kicked off on Saturday in Sana’a.

Some of those who have ar-rived for this purpose are Sec-retary General of the Associa-tion of Arab Universities Prof. Saleh Hashim, Rector of Atatürk University Prof. Hik-mat Kushoku, Vice Rector of

the University of Algiers Dr. Aziz Suleiman and Vice Rector of Bor Saeed University Dr. Inas al-Sheikh.

Secretary General of the As-sociation of Arab Universities Prof. Saleh Hashim said, in a statement to Saba, that the con-ference will deal with the latest developments in the various fields of medicine.

For his part, Rector of Atatürk University Prof. Hik-mat Kushoku described the conference as important for it will discuss improving work and medical education at the level of the Arab world and the globe.

Yemen’s First International Medical Education Conference National Yemen Staff

Korea has voiced under-standing for Yemen’s call to re-evaluate the prices of gas ex-ported from Yemen, a Yemeni official said on Monday. After his arrival from Korea last Monday, undersecretary of Oil and Minerals Ministry Abdul-Malik Alamah said that he held talks with Korean officials on gas prices. The Korean officials said that they would submit a report on Yemen’s request to the Korean leadership.

A delegation from the Minis-try under the chairmanship of Abdul-Malik Alama, undersec-retary of the minister, visited Korea accompanied with a del-

egation from the French com-pany Total for gas to negotiate with the Korean side in order to modify gas prices. This visit carries out the president’s in-structions after his meeting with the president of Total dur-ing his visit to France.

Alama said that the delega-tion held talks with the KOGAZ Company on the reconsidera-tion of the sale agreement with Yemeni liquefied natural gas, according to current prices. “It is not fair that KOGAZ pur-chase Yemeni gas that is trans-ferred from America and Eu-rope at double the price then to buy from Yemen directly,” Ala-

ma said, “Review of gas prices is in the interest of all parties, including KOGAZ itself,” he added, “There is no legal re-quirement to change the price,” but he confirmed that the Ye-meni side is in a serious posi-tion of negotiations and flexi-bility.

Responding to a question posed by Yemen Observer over Yemen’s demand to reconsider gas prices the South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Sung hwan said that according to the contract between the Ko-

South Korea Sides With Yemen Over LNG Prices

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Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com2 National YemenADVERTISEMENTS

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com 3National Yemen

T h e Fa c t s A s T h e y A r e e-mail: info@nationalyemen.comwebsite:www.nationalyemen.comaddress:al-qiada st.

Hush Up A Minute

How can we distinguish be-tween image and reality? ... should we?

One of Yemen’s chief trou-bles is its image – that’s quite well-established. At the mo-ment, however, there are other images at play, which I can’t help but flicking backwards and forwards between.

The first is Gulf 20. I see end-less crowds of fans in a stadium situated in a province which a couple of months ago had mili-tary operations against Al-Qaeda there. The fans cheer jubilantly whilst the team who just scored runs to the northern corner of the pitch to do their victory dance – prostrating towards Mecca prais-ing Allah for the goal.

Follow that line northwards and you’ll come across Al-Jawf, in which there have been two purported suicide bombings this week against a Shia religious procession (Al-Ghadeer) and against a funeral. Tens were killed and injured in a suicide bombing – you can only imagine the sense of grief and loss in that community, if perhaps you were walking along in the procession too, and a truck exploded cutting a father, a daughter, a husband of yours to ribbons. Tears stream down your mother’s cheeks.

Let’s keep with the tears. Back down South, after an open-ing ceremony which most inter-national news groups thought would be bombed, tears roll down the face of one of the beautiful Yemeni female sup-porters after a 4-0 hammering by the Kingdom.

Afterwards outside the stadi-um where international delega-tions float about and almost a hundred thousand supporters pack the streets you might ex-pect a blast amidst such a high profile event. But nothing comes, and nothing comes of

your security apprehensions. And it’s not as if anyone else there was worried about it. Peo-ple just end up going to a restau-rant, or to smoke sheesha or to chat outside a juice bar.

It’s the people who are al-ready here who keep going on happily, if obliviously, with ev-eryday life. They’re not the ones fretting from images. It’s people who aren’t here who are ob-sessed with such imagery. Ev-eryone else is just living.

Take the two distinct images of this week – the despondent aftermath of a suicide bombing in the North juxtaposed next to a scene with all the emotions of an international football tourna-ment a few miles South.

The suicide bombing could so easily have happened at the sports event, and the suicide bombing victims could easily have been ok. But that’s not how events unravel – it’s just how the cookie crumbled.

The security narratives built up around the North and the South of the country were based around the images of safety and risk in both locations.

The opening questions to this editorial were not designed to enter a philosophical post-mod-ernist discussion, but rather to lead to this; much of security re-volves around image, or is pro-duced and devoured by it. But in the end the image of security means everything and nothing to its reality to what happens.

That’s the problem with our security-centric state of affairs; image dictates reality, and vice versa. And in so doing, nothing really gets solved, but a quasi-military industry builds uncon-trollably, communities are ag-gressively and chokingly securitized, and funds which could have been for water or housing projects instead go to military training.

I watch Gulf 20 matches and admire the work which our de-veloping country has managed to put together to pull off such a tournament given the circum-stances. I’m genuinely touched. But then I turn to the newspa-pers, and there’s yet another ar-ticle about Gulf 20 security, and I’m reminded of all those nega-tive images. I much preferred the image on the television screen of Al-Ghofari putting one past Qatar. I just wish all those security commentators could shut up for a minute and let me watch the match.

Fakhri al-ArashiPublisher & Chief Editor

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Journalist Abdul-Ilah Haidar seemed in a bad health condi-tions in the fourth hearing of his trial before the competent Penal Court (the State’s Security Court). Haidar appeared cough-ing all the time due to him being exposed to intense cold in his small cell in the underground political security prison cell, along with five other prisoners.

Haidar requested the judge transfer him to a civil prison where there are at least minimal standards of human treatment.

He also complained of them depriving him of his right to medical treatment, or seeing the sun or watching television and reading newspapers.

In the fourth hearing session, the Penal Prosecution displayed what it called firm evidence, which are recorded messages on the laptop in “text files” and a memory picture for an un-known person wearing the Ye-meni costumes in addition to video clips for some of Sana’a streets taken from a camera on a car.

The prosecution said that

these clips contain pictures for homes of security leaders, which it did not submit in addi-tion to pictures of the wall of the central security that is oppo-site Al-Sabeen Park and Raimas Restaurant.

When asked about his re-sponse to what the prosecution had displayed, Haidar contin-ued to abstain from dealing with the court, reminding the judge of his request to bring the “kidnappers” who stole his lap-top before they detained him incommunicado for thirty-five days.

Judge Ridhwan Al-Namir said that he is bound by the in-dictment decision and cannot go beyond it or bring anyone who is not involved in the case, which shocked Abdul-Rahman Barman, the lawyer from the HOOD organization, a leading Yemeni human rights organiza-tion.

Barman said that it is legally acknowledged that the judge has the right to reject, by him-self, if needs be, any request; including any facts in the case;

or change description or bring in other suspects and this is among the most basic principles of judicial work.

This court has no guarantees for fair trial, according to Bar-man, who added, “This court has a history of violating the law and confiscating the defen-dants’ rights in addition that the decision of establishing it was in violation of the constitution.”

This matter made the law-yers boycott the session of this court. After closing the ses-sion’s proceedings, the judge stated the request of Journalist Abdul-Ilah Haidar of transfer-ring him from the prison of the political security to another prison. He ruled that the prose-cution talk to the political secu-rity office to provide the pris-oner his rights, and then refused to transfer him to a civic pris-on.

In his comment on the pro-ceedings of the session today, Lawyer Abdul-Rahman Bar-man said that it is surprising that the public prosecution pres-ents a laptop that has been sto-

len during a kidnapping opera-tion that no official authority has claimed to have conducted; “we were surprised by the sto-len laptop being presented as indictment evidence, which can only be used against those who kidnapped Journalist Haidar and stole his laptop, which was exhibited today.”

“The prosecution claimed that it contains correspondence it did not say from who and to who and when sent and how it can prove that. He added that if we were before an ordinary court and before a normal judge, this stolen laptop would not have been presented and the first thing the lawyer would do is to ask for the seizure report of this stolen laptop and question-ing the prosecution how it got this instrument from which it exhibits the indictment evi-dences,” he added.

Judge Ridhwan Al-Namir decided to adjourn the session until next Sunday to enable the prosecution to exhibit the rest of its case.

Public Prosecution Reviews Evidence in Journalist Al-Nimrani Case

An International Organiza-tion for Migration operation to help up to 2,000 Ethiopian mi-grants stranded in northern Ye-men to return home was set to resume in the early hours of yesterday morning, Sat 27th November.

A group of 33 irregular mi-grants will be voluntarily taken to Ethiopia on a commercial flight. They will be first taken to the Yemeni capital, Sana’a from Haradh on Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia.

Between 29th November and 9th December, an additional 434 stranded Ethiopians will be assisted to return home. This in-cludes 140 vulnerable Ethiopi-

an women and minors currently held in Yemeni detention cen-tres around the country as ir-regular migrants.

More than 600 stranded Ethi-opian migrants were already as-sisted by IOM in mid-Novem-ber. They were part of a group of 2,000 irregular Ethiopian mi-grants referred to IOM by UN-HCR. Stranded at the Yemeni border with Saudi Arabia in very poor health and with no food, shelter or the means to ei-ther continue their journey or return home, the migrants had been living out in open spaces and surviving on whatever scraps of food they could find.

However, the Organization is

urgently seeking one million US dollars to help the remain-ing nearly 1,000 migrants re-ferred to IOM for assistance.

The 2,000 Ethiopian mi-grants represent a fraction of the growing numbers of mi-grants in Haradh. Yemen has long been a major transit route for migrants and asylum-seek-ers from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East and beyond. However, the conflict between Houthi insurgents and govern-ment forces in Yemen’s Saada province, and Saudi Arabia’s reinforcement of its border with Yemen in recent months, has led to a bottleneck of migrants at Haradh, the only open cross-

ing point with Saudi Arabia. Although most of the mi-

grants in Haradh are young men from Ethiopia, with some com-ing from Somalia and Sudan, there are also women and chil-dren present.

IOM is able to assist a total of 1080 Ethiopian migrants thanks to the Rapid Response Transportation Fund (RRTF), an IOM-maintained emergency fund which can only be activat-ed through a direct request to IOM to help especially vulner-able groups of migrants in need of transport assistance, UN-HCR and the Swiss Develop-ment Cooperation (SDC).

IOM Evacuation of Stranded Ethiopian Migrants Resumes

By NY Staff

Continued from ( 1 ) South Korea Sides With Yemen Over LNG PricesContinued from ( 1 ) Suicide bomber kills Yemen mourner

rea Gas Corporation and YLNG regarding the introduction of LNG, which was signed in Au-gust of 2005, the renegotiation of the price of LNG is possible in 2014, which is 5 years after the date of its initial export.

“In this regard, I learned that a delegation from the Depart-ment of Oil of Yemen is plan-ning to have discussions with the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Korea Gas Corporation. I hope that the matter can be resolved through close cooperation” said the Minister.

Talking about the 25th anni-

versary of diplomatic relations between Yemen and South Ko-rea he said looking back upon the history of bilateral relations over the past 25 years, Korea and Yemen have developed a friendly relationship in various areas on a consistent basis since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1985. In particular, there has been enhanced coop-eration between our two coun-tries in almost every field, in-cluding economic, trade, technical, cultural and interna-tional cooperation.

“We’re very optimistic that these bilateral relations will

grow even further through co-operation in the energy and power sectors, assistance in de-velopment projects in Yemen, providing scholarships and training programs and support-ing human resource develop-ment. All this cooperation will serve as a conduit to sustain-able growth for Yemen. Also, with more frequent visits and exchanges of government offi-cials, businessmen and mem-bers of academia, I believe Ko-rea-Yemen relations will be further strengthened,” said the Minister.

LOCAL

By NY Staff

which was coming to partici-pate in the funeral of the schol-ar Badreddin” al-Huthi, the rebels said on their website.

The car targeted the convoy because Maarib province has become a stronghold for “Wah-habis and the Saudi agents of Al-Qaeda,” they added.

Abdulsalam accused the United States and Israel of be-ing behind “what is called the Al-Qaeda network.”

Spiritual leader Badreddin al-Huthi was the father of rebel commander Abdulmalik al-Huthi and of his predecessor Hussein al-Huthi, who has been killed in the on-off Shiite upris-ing in northern Yemen that erupted in 2004.

Badreddin al-Huthi, whose Shiite faith makes up the ma-jority community in Yemen’s northern mountains but a mi-nority in the mainly Sunni country as a whole, had long suffered from asthma, the rebel spokesman told AFP.

A tribal chief has blamed Al-Qaeda for Wednesday’s bomb-ing, which he has said was aimed at stoking sectarian ten-sions.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has been a growing focus for the opera-tions of his worldwide network, sparking a sharp increase in US military aid.

But its attacks had previous-

ly been largely confined to the capital Sanaa and to the mainly Sunni south and east of Yemen, rather than the Zaidi majority north.

The latest round of fighting between the Zaidi rebels and the government culminated in a Qatari-brokered truce in Febru-ary but it has repeatedly been challenged by clashes between the rebels and pro-government tribes.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says more than 300,000 people have fled the fighting in the north, of whom just 20,000 have so far returned to homes in Saada province.

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com4 National YemenSOCIAL

There is a tide of death and misery that washes up almost daily on the shores of Yemen. This is the Arab world’s poorest nation, a land whose lawless-ness has made it a fiefdom of al-Qa’ida, and the launch pad for the recent attempt to bring down a plane over the US. It is also at the centre of a vast people-smuggling industry.

Nearly 80,000 were traf-ficked by criminal gangs last year. There would have been more, but some of the human cargo die en route. Treated no better than consignments of contraband freight, they perish on the hazardous sea crossing from the Horn of Africa.

In the past year or so, more than a thousand have died, many of them tipped out of boats to drown within sight of the beach. And those who do make it through are helping cre-ate one of the Arab world’s big-gest humanitarian crises – camps and bands of displaced persons who are, to all but the few agencies that care for them, mere human flotsam and jetsam.

For decades, the Red Sea country has been the middle link in an illegal people-smug-gling chain that spans five coun-tries. But a recent tightening of controls on borders with Saudi Arabia has led to an unfolding human crisis with thousands of Africans stranded in one of the most inhospitable regions of the country. Tens of thousands of Africans fleeing civil war and destitution in Somalia and Ethi-opia have crossed the Gulf of Aden on rickety boats as part of a trafficking industry thought to be worth at least $20m (£13m) annually.

Over the past three years, the number of asylum-seekers and economic migrants arriving on the southern shores of Yemen has almost tripled, from 29,360 in 2007 to 77,802 last year, fu-

elled by an upswing in violence in Somalia and an increasingly desperate situation in Ethiopia. Yet the journey undertaken by those trying to escape persecu-tion and poverty is among the most dangerous international migration routes in the world.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy, of the International Organisation for Migration, says the situation has reached the point where it is now a “daily tragedy. Once they get on to the boats, people get rifle-butted and they get beaten up. They are forced to jump off the boats when they approach the Yemeni coastline because the smugglers don’t want to be captured and arrested by Yeme-ni security forces, so they push people overboard. They don’t [all] know how to swim so they drown. It is an ongoing cata-logue of abuse.”

More than a thousand people have died attempting the peril-ous sea journey since the begin-ning of 2008, including at least 300 people during the first nine months of 2009. But of the two main maritime routes taken, the one leaving from the Somalian port city of Bossaso, the cheap-est, is considered the worst. Smugglers operating dhows from the bustling port are noto-rious for their brutality. A report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 2008 revealed the ex-tent of their ruthlessness.

To maximise profits, smug-glers were found routinely to overcrowd boats, with double, and sometimes triple, the safety limit. Passengers reported pay-ing between $50 and $80 to board a small boat, and, to get on a faster craft, as much as $150. That is the equivalent of a year’s salary in some parts of the region. This is for a voyage that can take between one and three days.

To prevent boats capsizing, smugglers order passengers not

to move. But, as the hours drag on, severe muscle ache and pain from sitting in the same position mean people have no choice but to disobey the orders and stretch.

A 50-year-old Somali man who undertook the journey in 2007 explained how the ex-treme conditions aboard almost drove him to suicide. “They beat you badly on the boat, they have guns and knives. The con-dition on the boat was really

very bad. I preferred to die, be-cause of the beating. We had no water and nothing to eat. It is overcrowded, people are sitting on you, you cannot move. Peo-ple are sometimes passing urine and stool on you.”

Because of the cramped con-ditions, many male passengers have experienced skin loss from the scrotum. Trauma wounds to the head and back are inflicted by blows from rubber whips, sticks, pipes and fists. A number reported pain in their buttocks and genitals from sitting in sea-water and urine-soaked clothes. Women, children and the elder-ly are not spared either, with

rape, sexual harassment and vi-olence reported to MSF.

By far the worst experiences came from those put in the “hold”– small windowless spac-es traditionally used for storing fish. More than three-quarters of people interviewed by MSF said passengers had been put in the hold.

A 49-year-old car mechanic from Mogadishu described what the experience was like for him. “They have no mercy. I was thrown in the worst part of the boat – the hold. Whenever I raised my head to breathe, the smugglers beat me with the butts of their rifles.”

As harrowing as the sea jour-ney is, for many the most dan-gerous part of the ordeal comes at the very end. Afraid of being arrested by Yemeni security forces, smugglers routinely force their exhausted and dehy-drated passengers to disembark in deep water with poor visibil-ity at night and several hundred metres from the shores. Drown-ing is commonplace and survi-vors must live with the memory of losing loved ones within sight of the beach.

One woman recalled the mo-ment she saw her husband’s dead body: “As the boat was coming towards the shore, my husband was getting the chil-dren ready. He wanted to give them biscuits, but the smugglers threw the biscuits in the sea.

“Then suddenly the smug-glers threw him into the sea by grabbing his legs. He resisted, holding on to the boat, but they hit him with knives. Then the smugglers threw my two daugh-ters into the sea. I held on to my youngest son. The children were crying. But, thank God, there was a young man who could swim very well who helped my children to reach the shore. We slept on the shore. In the morn-ing, I saw the dead body of my

husband.”For those able to survive the

perilous journey, an uncertain future awaits. The Yemeni gov-ernment has granted Somalis prima facie refugee status since the outbreak of civil war in 1991, meaning they are given access to safe refuge.

For most, this means a life fending for themselves in urban centres. For others, it means a life confined to the Kharaz refu-gee camp, a makeshift colony of tents set in the scorching semi-arid desert 100 miles west of Aden, which is now home to ap-proximately 17,000 refugees.

Ethiopians face a different set of challenges. Despite hav-ing signed the 1951 Convention on Refugees, Yemen refuses en-try to them, and those found face the possibility of deporta-tion. Those who reach the shore

must therefore embark on a land journey of more than 250 miles from Bab al-Mandab to the bor-der crossing with Saudi Arabia, to search for work there or in the other neighbouring, wealthy Gulf states.

A recent crackdown on bor-ders with Saudi Arabia earlier

this month has resulted in a build-up of stranded Ethiopians.

The International Organisa-tion for Migration has appealed for $1m to help repatriate stranded Ethiopians, but condi-tions for those still stranded re-main dire.

“The fact that the border re-gion is less permeable than it used to be means that these mi-grants who are trying to get into Saudi Arabia are now really stuck in a dead end,” says Mr Chauzy. “They have no money, they have no papers, they can’t go forward or backwards. They are basically marooned in the border region. It’s a very inhos-pitable region. They are literally left there to rot.”

But for all the trauma en-dured by passengers fleeing the Horn of Africa, the massive in-flux of refugees in Yemen repre-sents a burden for a country ranked third in the world for the highest levels of malnutrition. More than half (58 per cent) of its children aged under five are stunted, and one in 10 children is acutely malnourished. The rate of unemployment stands at around 35 per cent.

With the country’s food and water resources already stretched to the limit and more than 300,000 internally dis-placed persons struggling to survive following internal con-flicts, the lucrative people-smuggling industry presents a double-edged sword: traffickers may profit but increasing num-bers of refugees and economic migrants present a strain on the local economy of this impover-ished nation.

It was my honour to be in the beautiful city of Aden, Yemen’s famous Bride of the Sea last week. A port that for centuries has been open to the world, where nations have profited through peaceful commercial and cultural exchange, was an appropriate place to launch a bold new campaign against ter-rorism and extremism. The tim-ing of our new venture is also auspicious, announced as Aden is playing host to her seven neighbours in a joyful celebra-tion of sport: the Gulf Cup 20 football competition.

Yemen is a country of peace and moderation, praised as such in the holy Quran. Yet a small group of extremists has dam-aged Yemen’s reputation in the eyes of the world so that those who do not know this beautiful country now associate it exclu-sively with terrorism. We know that this is far from the truth. It is time for us to defeat the ex-tremists and let the world know of our success.

I call this project A New Hope. It will be a battle for hearts and minds and it will be fought and won with the youth of Yemen. It goes without say-ing that these boys and girls are the country’s future. We must deny the fanatics space in which to operate and allow the peace-

loving youth to lead the agenda.I am delighted to be working

in close partnership with the government of Yemen, which has already demonstrated admi-rable seriousness of purpose in this monumental confrontation.

The Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh has been taking concerted action against the ex-tremists and achieving success. We are highly fortunate to be supported by the ministries of youth and sports, culture and tourism, together with two pio-neering Yemeni non-govern-mental organisations.

Our project has three ele-ments to it, all confronting the hateful and destructive ideology of extremism: First, we will wage a vigorous media and in-formation campaign. Working closely with our partners in the ministry of information, we will roll out a campaign rejecting ex-tremists’ ideology and promot-ing temperance and moderation using every medium available, from television and print media to the internet and the pulpits of mosques the length and breadth of Yemen. We will be relentless, remorseless and ruthless in the battle against extremism.

Second, we will identify and train a new generation of young leaders, selected from every town and city in Yemen. I will train these young men and women personally and through my Right Start Foundation. They will be the beacons of A New Hope in Yemen, spear-heading a campaign that con-fronts and exposes the utter

emptiness of extremism wher-ever it lurks in the country.

Finally, we have selected 100 of the Muslim world’s most re-spected and renowned preach-ers whom we will bring to Ye-men. With the support of Yemen’s Ministry of Endow-ments (Awqaf), they will be trained to broadcast true Islamic teachings. We will use the latest technologies - podcasts and the internet - as well as the most tra-ditional - Friday sermons in the mosque.

This will be a year-long proj-ect, involving extensive training and repeated reviews from my team.

Violence does not succeed in confronting violence, and gov-ernments alone will not succeed in confronting it. It is the youth who are most able to move strongly against it. Remember the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him, who said the true Muslim is the Muslim who doesn’t harm anyone with his tongue or his hand. The extrem-ists have lost sight of this funda-mental truth and they have de-parted from the eternal teachings of Islam.

The success of A New Hope will be underpinned by four or-ganisations: Life Makers Inter-national Union, which has oper-ated all across the Muslim

world, from Morocco and Alge-ria to Sudan and Iraq, and the Right Start Foundation Interna-tional will be joined by our val-ued Yemeni partners, the Al Saleh Foundation and the Na-tional Awareness Association. This last organisation, which was established in January, is already succeeding in its efforts to counter fanaticism and to demonstrate how alien the ide-ology of extremists is to the an-cient nation of Yemen, the birth-place of Arab civilisation.

Wherever we seek to under-mine the extremists, we find the youth willing and ready to take up arms. Yemen is no different. I have already met many young men and women here who are excited to be in the forefront of this epic struggle. When in 2007 I asked for Arab youth to send me their dreams, I received 700,000 replies. A third of these were Yemenis. The message is clear: Yemen is ready.

Our project will pull up the roots of extremism in Yemen and the Arab world more wide-ly. It will show the true beauty of Yemen. God willing, we’ll prove to the world within a year that the terrorists have lost and that Yemen once again is bright and beautiful.

(Article published in The Na-tional, 28th Nov 2010)

Yemen’s tragic tide of trafficked humanity By Maryrose Fison, Independent

From podcasts and Friday sermons, a new start for YemenAmr Khaled

Violence does not succeed in con-fronting violence, and governments alone will not suc-ceed in confronting it. It is the youth who are most able to move strongly against it.

‘‘They are forced to jump off the boats when they ap-proach the Yemeni coastline because the smugglers don’t want to be cap-tured and arrested by Yemeni security forces, so they push people overboard. They don’t [all] know how to swim so they drown.

‘‘

Once they get on to the boats, people get rifle-butted and they get beat-en up. They are forced to jump off the boats when they approach the Yeme-ni coastline because the smugglers don’t want to be captured and arrested by Yemeni security forc-es, so they push people overboard. They don’t [all] know how to swim so they drown.

‘‘

As harrowing as the sea journey is, for many the most dangerous part of the ordeal comes at the very end.

‘‘

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com 5National YemenContinued from ( 1 ) Gulf Cup terror fears no match for football in Yemen

Thousands of Yemenis turned up for the first game of the Gulf Cup

spectacular? I watched the game in the

city’s main stadium, packed way beyond its capacity of 30,000.

In scenes that made Western security experts wince, fans crowded up and down gang-ways, sat and stood and danced on the stadium’s outer rim and filled every space available.

The women, wrapped in black abayas, were easily the noisiest, cheering wildly and waving the national red, black and white flags of Yemen deliri-ously.

A few rows down from me was a boisterous Saudi fan sur-rounded by Yemenis.

From time to time he broke into exuberant song, waving his green-and-white Saudi flag.

Each time his team scored, he jumped up and started danc-ing and yelling in glee.

More than 30,000 people turned up to see Yemen take on Saudi Arabia

His celebrations would have struck most British observers as provocative. I could not help cringing.

If he was not careful, I thought, this triumphalist Saudi

would end up being lynched by insulted home fans.

In England, he would not have lasted long. But then in England he would not have been standing with rival fans in the first place.

The Yemenis, however, sa-luted him and joined in with his songs. The atmosphere was electric, the joy infectious.

Yemen has been confound-ing foreign visitors like this for centuries.

The birthplace of Arab civili-sation has seen a succession of foreigners come and go: the Portuguese, Ottomans, British and Russians have all been bamboozled by a famously complex country.

I certainly was not expecting to see a statue of Queen Victo-ria in her pomp proudly dis-played in one of Aden’s public parks. So much for al-Qaeda’s heartland.

For their part, Yemenis do not always understand the out-side world, either.

They are slightly baffled by the reaction to the parcel bomb that was not, al-Qaeda’s failed plot hatched in Yemen to down a US-bound cargo plane. It

strikes them as Western hyste-ria.

In the end, the only thing spectacular about the opening evening of the tournament was the result, a thumping 4-0 thrashing by the Saudis.

Link to qat?Yemenis love their football

but, like English football fans, have grown used to a team that traditionally disappoints.

Some commentators have at-tributed the poor performance of Yemeni footballers to the chewing of qat leaves, the mild-ly hallucinogenic, amphet-amine-like stimulant that is le-gal in Yemen - and in the UK - and reportedly consumed by 72% of men here.

Lunchtime sees most of the country dashing into the nearest market to buy the freshest leaves, returning home with the tell-tale red plastic bags stuffed full of foliage.

Once the football is over, I plan to do the same. A friend in Sanaa has invited me for a quiet afternoon chew. Not something to tell the wife about.

That would be letting the qat out of the bag.

Improvements Despite Challenges at Al-Jumhouri Teaching Hospital

The health care sector in Ye-men struggles; lack of funding, shortage of skilled workers, in-creasing cost and inaccessibili-ty for urban and rural popula-tions are only a few of the problems that prevent the suc-cessful development of health-care provision.

As easy as it may be to de-pict a picture of a broken sys-tem, some staff at Al-Jumhouri Hospital in Sana’a plead to hold the proclamations of failure as there have been some improve-ments in spite of the increasing challenges that Yemen faces.

Dr. Ahmed Ghalib, a dentist working in the Al-Jumhouri Hospital, noted that he has wit-nessed a remarkable improve-ment in the hospitals of Sana’a in the last 10 years. He reflected that, “Until the 1990s we had no equipment for operations … the only thing hospitals had were a couple of chairs. Even the numbers of needles were so limited that they were often kept for multiple uses.”

Dr Yahyan Al-Wa’ali agreed, “In the past it was rare to have medical equipment, and if it was available, it was usually old or malfunctioning.” He rec-ognized that currently not only the health care facility has been appropriately equipped, but also the laboratory test analysis equipment also have been en-

hanced.These successes have been

spurred by recent financing of the Capital Secretariat which has improved the capacity of the Al-Jumhouri hospital, said its Deputy Director, Dr. Al-Dholae.

The new funds have gone to upgrade the Burns Department at the hospital by providing it with 600 million YR. Further funds have also helped to im-prove other departments as well as the funding of a new phar-macy within the hospital.

Yet despite the optimism of some of the doctors, they are not jaded in the problems they face. The Burns Department, despite its increased funding, still severely lacks enough re-sources for all the patients that require its services.

Furthermore, Dr Yahyan Al-Wa’ali stated that there is a sig-nificant danger as appropriate vaccinations continue to remain scarce. This danger, he said, is compounded by the fact that the general public is skeptical or unaware of the importance of vaccinations.

In addition to that, he stated that it wasn’t uncommon that pharmacist behaved as doctors and actually prescribe the wrong medicines to their cli-ents.

“We might prescribe a medi-

cine for the patient, but some-times he comes back to us com-plaining that the medicine did not serve them.”

Dr. Ghalib also mentioned that even the idea of prevention has only recently taken hold in Yemen. He met with patients who were knowledgeable about their disease but the majority lacked the basic knowledge on how to prevent it. Problems such as these are only a small number of the actual challenges which stymie the improvement of health care in the Al-Jum-hour hospital and across Ye-men.

However, Dr. Al-Dholae re-mains upbeat in addressing the current and future challenges that the hospital will face.

“Our plan is to expand the hospital and offer a quality ser-vice to every patient and in or-der to do that we need to in-crease the number of capable doctors”, he remarked.

As a result, the hospital is cooperating with various uni-versities, both public and pri-vate, to offer a 6 month training period for students in an effort achieve this.

With efforts such as these, and increased research into needed solutions, the staff of Al-Jumhouria say there is hope that Yemen can avoid a truly broken health care system.

By Jihan Anwar & Dan Driscoll

Turkey may be the most Muslim nation in the world. It was forged through blood and war as a state exclusively by and for Muslims -- a claim it shares only with Pakistan. Flee-ing persecution in Europe, Rus-sia, and the Caucasus, millions of Turkish and non-Turkish Muslims settled there, and to-day almost half of Turkey’s 73 million citizens are descendants of these disparate peoples. This little-known story is why mod-ern Turkey was born a Muslim nation: when the Ottoman Em-pire finally collapsed at the end of World War I, Muslims from all over the empire joined with ethnic Turks to defend the new nation against Christian foes -- the Allied forces, Armenians, and Greeks. Since then, the bal-ance between this Islamic as-pect of Turkey’s identity and its other -- secular nationalist -- side has guided the course of Turkish foreign policy.

Religion remained a salient national identity well into the post-Ottoman period. For ex-ample, when Greece and Tur-key exchanged minority popu-lations in the 1920s as part of the settlement of the Greco-Turkish conflict, Turkey hand-ed over Turkish-speaking Or-thodox Christians from Anatolia in return for Greek-speaking Muslims from Crete. Still, Turkish identity was not based purely on Islam: starting in the 1920s with Mustafa Ke-mal Atatürk, Turkey’s first president, the country’s Kemal-ist politicians have tried to em-phasize the unifying power of nationalism. They promoted the idea of a singular, Western

democratic civilization that was not only unified by religion and had room for all Turks. Turkish nationalism was secular in the sense that citizens were expect-ed to be Westernized but could still be Muslim if they chose. Consequently, Kemalists turned Turkey’s foreign policy west-ward. And from the 1920s to the early part of this century, Turkish elites and governing parties adopted pro-Western foreign policies, embraced NATO, and marched closer to-ward EU membership.

But now Atatürk’s legacy has started to unravel. Since 2002, a party with Islamist roots, the Justice and Develop-ment Party (AKP), has un-earthed Turkey’s Muslim iden-tity. At first, many assumed that the AKP’s emphasis on Islam would not move Turkey away from the West. In fact, many heralded the AKP’s Turkey as a model democratic Muslim na-tion. But due to the resonance of the notion of a politically-defined “Muslim world” in the post-9/11 world, a state with a Muslim identity is especially vulnerable to viewing the world in terms of Huntingtonian clashes of civilizations.

Riding the wave of anti-Western sentiment unleashed by the 2003 Iraq war, the AKP has chilled Turkey’s relation-ship with the West and, instead, has tried to reposition the coun-try as a leader of the re-chris-tened Muslim world. It has en-couraged an “us (Muslims) versus them (the West)” world-view at the expense of Turkey’s historic flexibility. In his book, Strategic Depth, the AKP For-

eign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, summarizes this position: “Turkey’s traditional-ly good ties with the West are a form of alienation.” Undoubt-edly, the AKP’s hostility toward the West would not have reso-nated with Turks before 9/11 and the wars that followed. The AKP was able to cast the war in Iraq as an attack on Muslims -- Turks included -- and place Turkey firmly on the side of the Muslim world.

At first, many assumed that the AKP’s emphasis on Islam would not move Turkey away from the West. In fact, many heralded the AKP’s Turkey as a model democratic Muslim na-tion.

The AKP, after eight years of rule -- an unusually long reign in Turkish politics (and the lon-gest in Turkey’s democratic history if the party wins up-coming general elections in June 2011) -- has amassed enough power to turn its words into actions. Already, it has stocked the high courts with sympathetic judges, after win-ning a referendum that empow-ered the party to appoint top judges without a confirmation process. And it has sought to limit the role of the army in the government’s affairs.

Although this move may seem good for democracy, it has actually done harm. The government has used Er-genekon, the code word for an alleged nationalist organization that supposedly was plotting a coup, as an excuse to bully the military and arrest opponents,

Sultan of the Muslim WorldWhy the AKP’s Turkey Will be the East’s Next Leader

By Soner Cagaptay, Foreign Affairs

Continued on Page ( 7 )

REPORT

National YemenNATIONAL YEMEN VACANCY NOTICE

Role JUNIOR NEWS / NEWS ANALYSIS JOURNALISTS

Number of va-cancies

Two

Application deadline

6 December 2010

Start date Immediate

Starting salary $450 USD monthly salary + benefits

Work pattern Full-time (40 hour weeks) / irregular shifts (journalists will be required to travel)

Description The NATIONAL YEMEN (NY) newspaper requires two staff journalists to cover ‘breaking news’ and ‘news analysis’ articles. Journalists must be prepared to travel frequently, and at short notice, to provide coverage around Yemen.

Our news journalists will be required to write approximately 1000 words of ‘news’ articles, and 2000 words of ‘news analysis’ articles each week on pre-agreed topics, meeting appropriate deadlines.

Journalists will be required to attend two weekly staff meetings at NY HQ, and also to complete our journalism training packages.

Eligibility We are looking for young, reliable, articulate, reasonably experienced journalists.

Journalists will be expected to be punctual and to meet both our deadlines and our standards. Failure to meet either our deadlines or our high professional standards may result in instant dismissal.

Advanced English language competency is required. Journalists will be expected to be competent computer users.

Incentives In time we will offer an improved salary, commensurate with the journalists’ com-petency and professional development.

This job is also an excellent opportunity to begin a promising career, and will pro-vide excellent professional training. It also may lead to international coverage of a journalist’s work.

Apply Applicants should send a covering email, their CV, including all contact details, and also a sample of their written work. The written sample should be 800 words long, in a ‘news analysis’ style, on a subject of their choice.

Selection Applicants will be contacted within three days, if they have been successful. The applicant will be expected to attend an assessment day and interview within one week, and will be expected to write a further article, of our choice.

Selected applicants will work for one month on a non-paid probation status after being selected. If the trainee journalist meets our deadlines and reaches our stan-dards over the probationary period, they will be fully welcomed to a permanent position with us, with full pay.

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com6 National Yemen

Courtside stories about wives accused of murdering their hus-bands were once almost un-heard of in Iran, but these days they are common enough to ex-cite little attention.

In the last decade, the num-ber of women accused of the crime has surged.

One ongoing case involves a woman accused of strangling her husband with a motorcycle chain. Making her eighth court appearance on November 10, the defendant, who has been named in court only as Leila, continues to insist she is inno-cent and says her husband com-mitted suicide. Her daughter testified against her.

“Mariticide as a common-place crime is a recent phenom-enon in Iran,” a local lawyer who wanted to remain anony-mous said. “I can scarcely recall any cases of this kind occurring 30 or even 20 years ago.”

Precise statistics are hard to come by but Samira Kalohr, a social studies researcher who reviewed cases reported in the

news in 2007 found that 22 per cent of murders committed within the family involved women killing their husbands, and 27 per cent were men who killed their wives.

Kalohr’s figures did not in-clude murders of men where the wife was implicated as an ac-complice – quite a common phenomenon in such cases.

Shahla Moazzami and Mo-hammad Ashouri, professors at Tehran University who carried out a rare study of the issue, found that when husbands were murdered, only a third of the crimes were committed by the wife herself, and the rest in-volved a third party acting on her behalf. Often these were men involved in illicit relation-ships with the wives.

Mostafa Rajabi, deputy head of criminal investigations in the Iranian police, has said the pro-portion of murders that occurred within the family in 2009 was 33 per cent of the total. Figures from 1989 indicated that this kind of crime accounted for 16 per cent of the total that year.

Ashouri, who is head of the Criminology and Forensics Re-search Institute at Tehran Uni-versity, told the Hamshahri dai-ly, “The percentage of crimes committed by women is low in Iran, but unfortunately the fig-ures for mariticide are high.”

This is a significant shift in Iranian society, where murders involving spouses have in the past almost always involved men killing women, often in what is known as an “honour crime”.

Article 630 of Iran’s Islam-based criminal code makes it legal for a man to kill both his wife and her partner if he finds them in the act, and it is consen-sual. In reality, this standard of proof is rarely met and “honour killings” are often committed out of jealousy, suspicion or merely as a way of ending a marriage.

In the case of wives who kill their husbands, the available re-search indicates that two-thirds of cases are motivated by a de-sire for revenge for the husband being unfaithful.

The survey that Moazzami and Ashouri conducted across 15 provinces of Iran showed that in 58 per cent of cases, the women had been unable to get a divorce because their husbands or families would not agree to it, or had children and would have had no means of support-ing themselves if they had sepa-rated from their spouses.

My own research indicates that many women who resort to violence are themselves victims of abuse, and have been unable to find justice through the legal system.

For many years, women’s rights activists in Iran have been calling on the government to es-tablish shelters for women who fall victim to violence. The au-thorities have so far refused to accede to this, citing Islamic laws that state it is wrong for a woman to leave home without her husband’s permission.

Many of the women who commit mariticide fit the same profile – they commonly live on the impoverished outskirts of major cities; they are house-wives and do not have a high school diploma; they were forced into marriage at an early age and may be much younger

than their husbands. This com-bination of factors means they are less able than most to find other ways out of the situations they are in, and turn to murder as a last act of desperation.

Such murders are often car-ried out with unusual brutality.

Behjat Karimzadeh, who is currently awaiting sentencing in Karaj’s Rajayi Shahr Prison for killing her husband together with an accomplice.

“I strangled my husband, and then I looked at him and I was scared he might not be dead, so I cut off his head with a knife,” she told me.

Another convict, Fatemeh, speaking after ten years in Shi-raz’s Adelabad prison, said, “After giving my husband poi-son, I cut off his hands. He broke my nose with those hands.”

Fatemeh has won a stay of execution because her hus-band’s family gave consent for clemency, with no need for monetary compansation.

My interviews with ten wom-en in Tehran’s Evin prison and the Rajayi Shahr jail indicated that all the murders involved premeditation. Nine of the ten did not regret killing their hus-bands, and eight considered themselves innocent.

Moazzami’s survey similarly showed that men tended to re-gret murder more than women in equivalent cases.

“After committing an act re-sulting in murder, the majority of men take their spouses to hospital and attempt to save them. And more than a quarter of the men in prison for wife-killing turned themselves into the police,” she said. “Women, however, see themselves as in-nocent afterwards, and will not confess to murder even after years of incarceration.”

The case of Akram Mahdavi the phenomenon of women who seek a male accomplice to carry out the murder – in sharp con-trast to men, who are generally the sole perpetrators.

Mahdavi, now in the Rajayi Shahr prison, grew up in a poor family and was forced to marry her cousin when she was just 13. She divorced him after dis-covering that he had taken a second wife, but her father forced her into another marriage when she was 20, this time to a 75-year-old antique dealer.

She says she tried and failed to secure a divorce after finding out that her husband was sexu-ally abusing her young daugh-ter. Then she started looking for

an accomplice, and found a man willing to carry out the murder.

At present, the death sen-tence against Mahdavi is sus-pended pending payment of “blood money”, the compensa-tion that a murder victim’s rela-tives can be paid if they so choose. A group of rights activ-ists were able to get one of her husband’s close relatives to agree to compensation. If other relatives disagree, they can pay the percentage due to the person who gave consent, and overturn the act of clemency.

The judicial process is marred by gender inequalities. For example, blood money pay-able for a woman is half that for a murdered man, meaning that husbands are more likely to be able to come up with the com-pensation funds than women are.

Another significant differ-ence is that wives convicted of murder are shunned by their own relatives and receive no prison visits. Mahdavi was be-ing taken to the gallows just be-fore a last-minute stay of execu-tion was ordered. She said, “I will never forget that my family didn’t even come to see my sen-tence carried out.”

This is a significant shift in Iranian soci-ety, where murders involving spouses have in the past almost always in-volved men killing women, often in what is known as an “honour crime”.

In the case of wives who kill their hus-bands, the avail-able research indi-cates that two-thirds of cases are moti-vated by a desire for revenge for the husband being un-faithful.

Such murders are often carried out with unusual bru-tality.

“I strangled my husband, and then I looked at him and I was scared he might not be dead, so I cut off his head with a knife,”

The judicial pro-cess is marred by gender inequalities

‘‘

‘‘

‘‘

‘‘

‘‘

Husband Murder on the Rise in Iran More and more women convicted of once unheard-of crime of killing husbands.

By Saba Vasefi, Iran - IWPR

INTL REPORT

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com 7National YemenKidnapping on Rise in Afghan NorthBusinessmen increasingly targeted in crime wave that experts warn will harm economic prospects. By Qayum Babak, Afghanistan - IWPR

Like many businessmen in northern Afghanistan, Moham-mad Daud wants to keep his success a closely-guarded se-cret.

“The worst thing anyone can call you is rich,” he said, ex-plaining that this would amount to an open invitation to kidnap-pers in the current climate.

“I have sent all my children out of the country, but I’m obliged to stay behind because of my business in Mazar-e Shar-if,” he said. “If things continue like this, however, then I’ll be going as well.”

Kidnappings and robberies targeting the relatively well-off are increasingly common in parts of the north, including Balkh province of which Ma-zar-e Sharif is the main town. Observers warn that such as-saults on business leaders are damaging the local economy.

Mohammad Zarif, who owns a pharmacy in Maimana, a town in the northwestern Faryab province, described how he nar-rowly escaped abduction on Oc-tober 18.

Driving home from work that evening, he noticed that he was being followed and called the police. When he arrived at his home and got out of the car, masked men attempted to seize him, but police were already

waiting and the attackers fled.Shopkeeper Mohammad

Karim, an eyewitness to the failed kidnapping attempt, de-scribed the scene.

“I was shutting up my shop when I heard a shot from a Ka-lashnikov about 20 metres away, and saw men getting out of a four-wheel drive vehicle, firing guns,” he said. “They ran away, but one of them was un-able to get away so he threw his pistol to the police and called out that he was surrendering.”

Zarif said he himself escaped a similar kidnapping attempt six months previously.

“Since then I’ve become very worried, because these people can do anything; they have very powerful gangs,” he said.

Other recent cases involved Balkh businessman Haji Gul Ahmad Zargar, kidnapped in September and freed by police after a search lasting several days, and oil trader Ismail Jam-shidi, abducted in Balkh prov-ince and freed on payment of a 400,000 US dollar ransom.

One of Jamshidi’s employ-ees, Mohammed Gul Logari, complained that “we found that the police were unable to do anything to secure his safe re-lease, so we had no choice but to pay the kidnappers the ran-som. Otherwise Mr Ismail

would have been killed.”Afghan police accept that

there has been an increase in kidnappings for ransom

Salehuddin Sultan, head of Balkh province’s crime depart-ment, says that in the first seven months of 2010, there were 60 recorded cases of kidnap and robber in his area, up from 42 last year. This year’s figure rep-resented about seven per cent of total recorded crimes.

“Criminals we have appre-hended state in their confes-sions that their crimes were a consequence of increasing pov-erty and unemployment,” Sul-tan said.

He predicted that assaults on businessmen would create a vi-cious circle where “factories and businesses close, [more] people turn to crime to earn a living, and the incidence of crime thus continues to grow, so that next year we see more of-fences”.

One alleged kidnapper who appeared at a press conference following his arrest in Faryab province said he acted out of desperation.

“I was totally frustrated, so I decided I would either get some money to feed my children, or die trying. I didn’t commit this crime because I wanted to,” he said.

Businessmen are naturally concerned for their security.

“As an Afghan businessman, I say here and now that I do not feel safe, nor is my family safe, nor is the capital that I’ve in-vested here safe,” said one man in Mazar-e Sharif he walked to his office, surrounded by armed bodyguards.

In a climate where it was close to “suicidal” to remain, he said, bodyguards were a neces-sity as the security forces would not protect him or his family.

Economists say prosperity in the north depends on security, so the risks to business activity are already being felt.

“Falling levels of business have a direct impact on con-sumers, who are under pressure as supply declines and demand rises, affecting prices,” eco-nomic expert Abdul Satar Nai-mi said.

Traders like Mohammad Ibrahim, a shopkeeper in Ma-zar-e Sharif, say they have al-ready been hit by price rises.

Just six months ago, he said, wholesale prices were reason-able and it was easy to get goods on credit. Now, however, “goods are less available on the

wholesale market, and busi-nessmen are selling at higher prices and won’t give goods on credit. When we buy at high prices, we have no choice but to sell at high prices, too,” he said.

According to Mohammed Hassan Ansari, head of industry and exports at the Balkh Cham-ber of Commerce, “Kidnapping has had an immensely negative impact on trade… trade is fall-ing with every day that passes.”

Ansari said that despite nu-merous approaches made to the security agencies, successful businessmen now felt that they had no choice but to hire private guards, even though this was not always enough to protect them.

“One prominent business-man was abducted even though he had armed bodyguards,” he said. “A branch of Kabul Bank was looted despite having six armed guards, and the culprits are still at large. Bodyguards are not the right way out of this.”

General Daud Daud, who commands Afghanistan’s Northern Police Zone, appeared to downplay the gravity of kid-napping.

“Even in the most advanced countries, there are criminal gangs that commit crimes,” he said, adding that measures were being put in place to counter the problem. “Police will shortly be giving the public 24-hour phone numbers, so that people can contact the police about such cases, crimes are prevented, and people feel safe.”

Habibullah Habib, a defence and security affairs expert, said that in the north of Afghanistan, gangs directed by local militia commanders were well armed and felt able to act with impu-nity.

The solution, he said, was uncompromising action to serve as a deterrent against criminals.

“When a criminal is arrested, he should be shown in the me-dia and subject to tough punish-ment,” Habib said. “That way, the number of crimes will fall.

“Unfortunately, however, be-cause criminals are in close con-tact with certain high-ranking officials in government, they are sent to prison through one gate, and leave through another.”

“I was totally frus-trated, so I decided I would either get some money to feed my children, or die trying. I didn’t commit this crime because I wanted to,” he said.

‘‘

Ansari said that de-spite numerous ap-proaches made to the security agen-cies, successful businessmen now felt that they had no choice but to hire private guards, even though this was not always enough to protect them.

‘‘

successfully neutering any op-position. The government’s use of illegal wiretaps against crit-ics has created a republic of fear: anyone who challenges the AKP can land in jail under the most spurious of allegations. Recently, Hanefi Avcı, a police chief famous for rooting out communists in his district in the 1980s, was arrested and charged with being a member of a com-munist cell. This came just days after he published his memoirs, which were critical of the AKP’s methods of intimidation.

Not long ago, many would have expected the military, which has traditionally been the guardian of Turkey’s secular, nationalist identity, to intervene as politics got out of hand. But the implication of the AKP’s ever-increasing power, espe-cially after it changed the line of succession for the military’s top brass, is that the military will bend to the AKP’s will and play along with its newfound leader-ship role in the Muslim world. In October, the military re-

mained quiet when the AKP ob-jected to NATO’s plans to place a missile defense shield in Tur-key. This suggests that the AKP no longer perceives Iran and Syria as threats. And there are already signs that the military is stopping its decades-long prac-tice of purging Islamist officers from its ranks, which would open the way for grass-roots Is-lamization of NATO’s second-largest army.

As the AKP goes, so will the Turkish population. Since the modernizing days of the Otto-man sultans, the political cul-ture of the population has been imposed by the elite. And the AKP, with its coterie of Islamist billionaires, media personali-ties, think tanks, and universi-ties, is Turkey’s new elite. Tur-key’s population has already seemingly bought into the AKP mindset. According to a recent poll by TESEV, an Istanbul-based nongovernmental organi-zation, the number of people identifying themselves as Mus-lim increased by ten percent be-

tween 2002 and 2007. Almost half of them described them-selves as Islamist, which means they believe that this illiberal ideology, rather than secular de-mocracy, should guide Turkey’s political system. This is a stark departure from Ataturk’s vision, which suggested that Turks could be Western, politically secular, and Muslim all at once.

Many Turks formerly be-lieved that they shared values and interests with the West, making collaboration with NATO, the United States, and the European Union, beneficial. But after the rise of the AKP -- and after the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war defined the Muslim world in opposition to the West -- that is no longer the case: ac-cording to the 2010 Transatlan-tic Trends report, 55 percent of Turks now feel that Turkey has such different values from the West that it is a non-Western country. And although in 2004, 73 percent of Turks believed that membership in the Europe-an Union would be a good thing,

only 38 percent did in 2010. Alarmingly, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project, 56 percent of Turks view the United States as a mili-tary threat. As suspicion of the West has grown, desire to coop-erate with the Middle East has risen. This year, according to Transatlantic Trends, 20 percent of Turks desired more coopera-tion with the Middle East, com-pared to ten percent in 2009.

If the AKP is emphasizing Is-lamic identity and positioning itself as the leader of the Mus-lim world at home, is the Mus-lim world ready to accept its leadership? In fact, Turkey may be well suited for the role: in ad-dition to its status as the seat of the Ottoman Empire, which was the heir to the caliphate, Turkey has the largest economy and most powerful military of any Muslim nation. Nonetheless, the AKP has some work to do to convince Muslim countries that Turkey is their rightful sultan. Some, including the Syrian re-gime, which is looking for a

new, strong regional patron, might be willing to accept Tur-key’s leadership. But others, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will be more reluctant. They al-ready consider themselves the center of the Muslim world.

Still, the AKP appears to have enormous popularity on the streets of Cairo and Damas-cus. Finally, many non-Arab Muslim countries promote their own brands of political Islam and have their own ideas about who should speak on behalf of the Muslim world. To win them over, and increase its standing in the skeptical Middle East, the AKP will cynically use Islamist causes to improve its standing with Muslim publics. For ex-ample, it might declare solidar-ity with Hamas (but not the secular Palestinian Authority) to agitate for Palestinian nation-hood. It can also be expected to lambast European policies to-ward Muslim immigrants and vocally take issue with any U.S. policies involving Muslims, such as the Israel-Palestine con-

flict, the conflict in Sudan, and Iran.

So far, many of the AKP’s ef-forts to defend global Islamist causes, such as its frustrated at-tempt last summer to broker a nuclear deal between Iran and the West, have faltered. Still, even if Turkey cannot convince the rest of the Muslim world of its power, Turks have already bought into the AKP’s brand of us-versus-them Islam at the ex-pense of its nationalist identity. In other words, the AKP will have its cake and eat it too un-less Turks stop believing in a Huntingtonian clash between the Muslim world and the West -- or unless Kemalism reemerg-es to assert the nationalist, secu-lar aspects of Turkey’s identity. And the next chance for that to happen will be the June 2011 elections, which may be the most important battle for Tur-key’s soul in over two centuries, since the Ottoman sultans first turned Turkey to the West.

Continued from ( 5 ) Sultan of the Muslim World ...

INTL REPORT

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com8 National YemenBUSINESS

The unemployment rate was greatly increasing last year, reaching 40%, a government re-port has revealed. Resultantly, members of Parliament de-manded the government adopt a clear vision and programs to counter the drivers of unem-ployment.

The report has attributed the reason for the rise in unemploy-ment to the deterioration of the economic situation as well as the decline in volume of invest-ments in various areas, especial-ly oil investments. The report

also said that the rate of unem-ployment and poverty level have been on the rise during the last year, finally reaching 40%.

In a report on unemployment, the parliament has affirmed that unemployment is the most seri-ous challenge facing the Yemeni society, especially in light of the high population growth and the increasing number of people en-tering the labor market, namely young people of graduate age.

The report pointed out that the labor force increases annu-ally by 4.3%, which is a rate

much higher than the annual rate of available work opportu-nities of 3.7%. the report de-manded the government to adopt a clear vision and pro-grams to counter such a prob-lem through exerting efforts to improve and update the educa-tion and vocational training sys-tem and make it more suitable for the requirements of labor market, as well as improving the investment environment, to contribute to creating work op-portunities to meet the growing work force and to work more on

opening labor markets in neigh-boring countries to facilitate the Yemeni labor work access.

A recent study titled “The Problem of Unemployment in the Republic of Yemen: Devel-opment, Policy Assessment and Treatments ” prepared by the economy expert Dr. Moham-med Ali Jobran, Professor of Economy, Sana’a University, Republic of Yemen, tackled the reasons of unemployment in the Republic of Yemen.

Dr. Jobran said that there is no specific program to deal with

unemployment. He added that the privatiza-

tion system and selling of public sector units have played a sig-nificant role in the layoff of a great deal of the workforce, re-ferring them to the Civil Service fund.

Moreover, the decline in pub-lic, private and foreign invest-ments, the spread of corruption, money laundering, decline in the rate of necessary research and development to improve products as well as the weak-ness of the education and train-

ing system and its deficiency in keeping up with the change in labor market.

Jobran said that according to the official reports of the Cen-tral Statistical Organization (CSO) the unemployment rate is decreasing every year, where according to the Annual Statis-tics Book it was 16.2% in 2004 (39.6% among the males versus 13.0% among the females) and it went down to 15% in 2008.

40% Unemployment and Poverty Rate Last Year By NY Staff

By NY Staff

The King Fahd 26th Summit in Abu Dhabi December 2005 made the strategic decision to rehabilitate Yemen economy and determine the supply re-quirements that cover the period 2006-2015.

That summit was five years ago. Today Yemen is hosting matches of the Arab Gulf Cup Tournament 20 during the peri-od from 22nd Nov to 5th Dec for the first time since Yemen’s membership in most Arab Gulf institutions nine years ago.

The Yemen-Gulf economic relations have undergone dis-tinct phases, most important of which is the 22nd Summit which brought leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States to Muscat in De-cember 2001. It accepted Ye-men’s membership in four of the council’s institutions.

Another important summit was the King Fahd 26th Summit in Abu Dhabi December 2005, which made the strategic deci-sion to rehabilitate Yemen’s economy and determine the supply requirements covering the period 2006-2015. Back then, the joint meeting of for-eign ministers of the GCC States and the foreign minister and expatriates was held in Sana’a, in order to reach a joint proposal to rehabilitate Yemen economically, in addition to the London Donors Conference’s adoption of the general assem-bly of the GCC States and the Investment Opportunities Con-ference in Yemen.

The year 2006 represents an important historical turning point in enhancing joint coordi-nation and cooperation between Yemen and the GCC States.

In December 2005, the deci-sions taken in the King Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz Summit, in Abu Dhabi, emphasized the agreement of the leaders of the GCC States on the strategic im-portance to rehabilitate Yemen economy in light of HE Ali Abdullah Saleh’s initiative to fellow leaders of the Council in

the last quarter of 2005. This was bolstered in the

joint meeting with the Ministe-rial Council of the GCC States in March 2006. The joint meet-ing statement stressed the need to study the Yemen economy re-habilitation mechanisms ac-cording to a specific and sched-uled plan, provided that the plan is presented in the international conference adopted by the GCC States to provide the necessary supply requirements to achieve a comprehensive developmen-tal rehabilitation including all economic, social and education-al aspects.

The meeting also endorsed that the technical committees of the finance ministries in the GCC States and the Ministry of Planning & International Coop-eration in the Republic of Ye-men and the General Assembly of the GCC take help of the in-ternational monetary bodies in the preparation of necessary studies to determine the devel-opment requirements in Yemen and turning them into a working plan and programs with specific dimensions and a time range ac-cording to a program until the year 2015 and to determine the financial requirements of this plan.

The decisions and positive outcomes of the Gulf summits and the conferences of the Min-isterial Council have contribut-ed to the crystallization of stra-tegic visions and orientations for the creation of a number of joint working mechanisms be-tween authorities in the GCC States, Yemen and the Council’s General Assembly (GA).

A number of working chan-nels have also been determined, which include comprehensive development rehabilitation in light of the Yemeni report on the evaluation of sector require-ments to improve human devel-opment in Yemen to match the level common in the GCC States by 2015.

A second axis includes the rehabilitation of Yemen econo-

my in order to create an encour-aging environment for local, Gulf and international invest-ment by the private sector and the resultant economic growth and provision of work opportu-nities.

This dimension was culmi-nated with the holding of the Investment Opportunities Ex-ploration Conference in Sana’a during the period April 22 – 23, 2007.

The third axis includes the development funds in the GCC States and the competent au-thorities to finance Yemen’s in-frastructure, and the GA coordi-nates with the competent authorities in Yemen to lay ar-rangements for that and to agree on financing specific projects in Yemen.

The fourth axis is represented in a joint work group of Yemen and the GCC States for laying a joint mechanism between both sides in light of the 2002 agree-ment, and proposing appropri-ate steps for Yemen’s accession to the Gulf institutions and the specialized organizations.

Accordingly, the Gulf institu-tions have urged the private sec-tor to invest in the country, where the Gulf investment proj-ects registered at the General Investment Authority (GIA) and its branches for the period 1992 – 2010 have amounted to around 219 investment projects. Ac-cording to the GIA report, the Gulf investment projects cost has reached almost 562.33 Bn Yemeni Riyals, and has gener-ated almost 17,000 job opportu-nities.

The report pointed out that these projects were distributed among the economic, service and production sectors. The Saudi investments ranked first with 124 investment projects, at an investment cost of 348.7 bil-lion YR making 62% of the to-tal Gulf investment capital in our country, and estimated over 10,000 work opportunities.

The Qatar investments ranked second in terms of in-

vested capital and fourth in terms of the number of projects; 4 investment projects at 106.24 billion Yemeni riyals, that is 19% of invested capital, creat-ing over 1,000 work opportuni-ties. The most important Qatar investment project during that period is a tourist recreational residential complex at the cost of 105.5 billion Yemeni riyals, with fixed assets of around 6.39 billion Yemeni riyals, creating 500 work opportunities.

The UAE investments ranked second in terms of the number of projects – 57 projects, and third in terms of invested capital of 55.44 billion, at approx 10% of the Gulf invested capital in our country during the period 1992 – 2010, creating around 4,000 work opportunities.

The Kuwaiti investments ranked fourth in terms of invest-ed capital of 26.16 billion riyals - 5% of invested capital; while the Kuwaiti and Omani invest-ments ranked joint third in terms of the number of projects – 16 projects of each, creating around 610 work opportunities.

The report pointed out that the two important Kuwaiti proj-ects in our country are: Al-Eisi City expansion project at an in-vestment cost of 16.52 billion riyals, and the second is an elec-tricity power and distribution station at a cost of about 3.15 billion riyals.

In relation to the Omani in-vestments, the report said that they came fifth in terms of in-vested capital at around 25.62 billion riyals, 4.57% of the Gulf invested capital in our country with 16 projects, creating 918 work opportunities.

The key Omani project in our country during that period is a cement factory with an invest-ment capital of 20.34 billion ri-yals, and fixed assets of 15.16 billion riyals, creating around 270 work opportunities.

The Bahrain investments in our country came last in order in terms of the number of projects and invested capital of 93.34

million riyals, only 0.02% of the Gulf invested capital in our country during that period, with 67 work opportunities.

The report pointed out that the first project is fishing and exporting aquarium fishes at 18.86 million riyals and the sec-ond is a workshop for furniture and décor at an investment capi-tal 74.48 million riyals.

According to the General In-vestment Authority report, our country had given permits dur-ing the 3rd quarter (July – Sep-tember) of the current year 2010 to projects at 93.48 billion ri-yals, with a 74 billion riyal in-crease over the 2nd quarter.

The report pointed out that the investment projects regis-tered at the GIA and its branch-es for the 3rd quarter of the cur-rent year have been distributed on 12 governorates in economic service and production sectors, providing around 2,000 work opportunities, where Hodeida ranked first in terms of invested capital of 60.92 billion riyals - 65% of invested capital, key projects being a power station, a residential city and a factory for mixing lubricants, creating about 500 work opportunities.

Aden comes next in order with an invested capital of 22.88 billion riyals, 24% of the invest-ed capital, Key projects include electric power and land trans-portation, creating 314 work op-portunities.

The capital secretariat ranked third with an invested capital of around 3.33 billion riyals, 3% and the key projects established in the capital secretariat is tour-ist suites, a center for geological surveys, a maintenance center for hydraulic and heavy equip-ment as well as a sponge facto-ry, creating 644 work opportu-nities, while all of Sana’a, Hadramout, Lahj, Taiz, Ibb, Mahweet, Dhale’, Shabwah and Hajjah provinces followed re-spectively in terms of invested capital.

The report mentioned that the industry sector ranked fist in

terms of invested capital, esti-mated at around 61.46 billion riyals of the total invested capi-tal, 65.74%, with 1,021 work opportunities, while the service sector ranked second with 26.29 billion riyals, 28% of the total investment capital and 489 work opportunities.

Following is the tourist sec-tor with an invested capital of 5.29 billion, 5.7%, creating 337 work opportunities, while the agriculture sector came last in order with 446.2 million riyals, 0.5% of the total invested capi-tal with 97 work opportunities.

In relation to foreign invest-ments in our country during the 3rd quarter of the current year, the report said that the invest-ment cost of foreign projects reached 39.27 billion riyals, by 42% of the total investment cap-ital for the 3rd quarter, which amounts to 93 billion.

The Egyptian projects ranked first with an invested capital of 21.9 billion riyals and a key Egyptian project is for generat-ing electric power, while the Kuwait investments ranked sec-ond with a capital of 16.52 bil-lion riyals and among the key Kuwaiti projects is a residential city.

The Saudi investments ranked third with 560 million riyals for the project of a center for geological and environmen-tal studies and soil research, while the French, Tanzanian, Syrian, UAE, Malaysian, Jorda-nian and US investments come next in order in terms of foreign investment in our country for the 3rd quarter of the current year.

It is worth mentioning that the 3rd quarter of the current year has witnessed a qualitative rise in investments in compari-son with the last period, which is attributed to the GIA’s efforts in promoting for investment in our country during exhibitions, conferences and seminars in or-der to make known of the eco-nomic sectors abroad and the advantages Yemen enjoys.

Over 562 Billion YR in Gulf Investment Projects in Yemen last period

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com 9National Yemen

Cheerleaders blamed for Yemen beach volleyball defeat

Bikini-clad cheerleaders have been blamed by the Ye-men beach volleyball team for their defeat during the Asian Games.

Organisers of the games in China have hired four cheer-leader squads, each made up of eight girls, to entertain fans during breaks in the volleyball action, according to the Tianfu Morning News.

But Yemen beach volley-baller Adeeb Mahfoudh has now accused the squads of be-ing distracting, and partly to blame for their defeat to Indo-nesia.

“They had an effect on how we played,” he said. “I think they had something to do with our losing the match.

Besides cheering, the girls also perform routines that in-clude traditional Chinese ele-ments including martial arts and fan dancing.

“These girls are very beauti-ful. With them here, more peo-ple will pay attention to beach volleyball,” Mr Mahfoudh added.

“If I can, I hope to watch them perform at the next match.”

SPORT

The Gulf Cup of Nations, which kicked off in Aden and Abyan last week, provides the ideal opportunity for teams to finalise their preparations for the AFC Asian Cup 2011. Once again this year we can expect the usual quota of drama and surprises, with reigning cham-pions Oman and hosts Yemen out to upset some of the bigger names in the competition.

Yemen played Saudi Arabia straight after the opening cere-monies, suffering a demoraliz-ing 4-0 defeat. Things looked up by half time on their next match against Qatar last Thurs-day, however their title hopes were sadly dashed by the final whistle with another defeat, 2-1.

President Saleh himself stat-ed before the matches that Ye-men can win even if it’s team does not, referring to the vast investment and development in Aden and to a lesser extent, Zinjibar, Abyan, sees and will see by hosting the Gulf 20 tour-nament.

Yemen’s losses have caused much depression, and even a little anger, with some support-ers calling for the resignation of the Minister of Sports & Youth for spending so much on the team’s preparation for the Gulf Cup 20 tournament. However,

these are in the minority.Much media reportage has

covered the omnipresent secu-rity forces posted around Aden and Zinjibar, Abyan where the 22nd May and Al-Wehda (Uni-ty) international stadiums are hosting matches. However, a much-speculated attack against the event seems to have been averted. Many Gulfi delegations have since rescinded their re-quests for armoured convoys, viewing the request as unneces-sary and excessive, upon their arrival to Aden.

A military helicopter dis-tracted fans by hovering above the KSA-Kuwait game. The head of security, , later affirmed that it was not placed for secu-rity, but rather for aerial photog-raphy and filming purposes.

Also sweeping the headlines around the Arab world has been the phenomenon of Arab wom-en both chanting in the stadi-ums, and working for part of the Gulf 20 efforts – in press rooms, in security, and in administra-tion.

Some sound sports analysis courtesy of FIFA follows to give our readers an overview.

Defending champions

Oman’s goal will be to de-fend the title they won on their

home turf last time out. Indeed, the team have a proud record in this tournament in recent times, having finished runners-up in the two previous editions, 2004 and 2007, when they lost out to hosts Qatar and UAE respec-tively.

The Omanis, coached by Frenchman Claude Le Roy, who led them to victory in 2009, can focus fully on the event after failing to qualify for next year’s Asian Cup. Their group rivals, by contrast, will be hoping to build on their performance here as part of their preparations.

Le Roy is quietly confident of his side’s ability to retain the title, saying, “We’re ready to defend our crown in Yemen even though we know the com-petition will be extremely tough and we must be at our best. I don’t know how things will go in our group as it contains Iraq, UAE and Bahrain – all very good teams. That said, we cer-tainly have a very good chance of making it to the semi-finals.”

The main contenders

Saudi Arabia are again among the leading candidates despite the decision of Portu-guese coach Jose Peseiro to drop 11 members of his squad for “technical reasons”. The Saudis will now be relying heavily on outstanding mid-fielder Mohammed Al Shalhoub if they are progress in the tour-nament.

Speaking ahead of the tour-nament, Al Shalhoub himself had this to say: “The Gulf Cup is the region’s favourite tourna-ment, and the Gulf people view the games as being just as im-portant as any international matches. Winning the trophy is the aspiration of everyone play-ing in it.”

The Saudis have won the cup on three occasions, first in 1994 then again in 2002 and 2003. They also reached the final at Oman 2009 when, after a goall-ess 120 minutes against the hosts, they lost 6-5 on penalties.

Saudi Arabia travel to Ye-men, having prepared exten-sively for this tournament. Their build-up included five friendlies over the past two months, pro-ducing wins over both Uzbeki-

stan and Gabon, draws with Uganda and Ghana, and just a solitary defeat at the hands of Bulgaria while at a special train-ing camp in Turkey.

For their part, UAE will be gunning for a second title in three attempts after tasting suc-cess at the 18th edition in 2007. Slovenian coach Srecko Katan-ec can call on a number of vet-erans from that title-winning side, including star striker Is-mail Matar.

UAE have also been busy fine-tuning their formation in pre-tournament friendlies, go-ing down to Chile and Angola before trouncing India 5-0. The Whites, as the team are known, have plenty to prove in Yemen, after the disappointment of a first-round exit last time.

Katanec, for one, was in con-fident mood in recent days, say-ing, “Our primary aim is to qualify from the group, and af-ter that to go as far as we can. The players have a burning de-sire to succeed at the Gulf Cup.”

The dark horses

Iraq go in search of their fourth victory at the prestigious tournament after winning on home soil in 1979, in Oman in 1984 and in Saudi Arabia four years later – all under the tute-lage of legendary coach Em-manuel ‘Ammo’ Baba. Howev-er, since returning to the competition in 2004 the team have found success harder to come by, going out in the first round on all three occasions with only one win from nine games.

Under German coach Wolf-gang Sidka all that might be about to change though. His side have posted some encour-aging results in their recent friendlies – wins against Qatar (2-1) and India (2-0) as well as a creditable draw with Kuwait (1-1) – and take that impetus with them to Yemen.

The hosts, meanwhile, will be hoping it is fifth time lucky, having failed to survive the group stages on each of their previous four appearances. The man charged with ending that ignominious run is Croatian Srecko Juricic, who has previ-ously coached both UAE and

Bahrain.No one could accuse Yemen

of not taking the build-up seri-ously, however, with the squad following a preparatory pro-gramme going back 15 months. Along the way they have en-joyed friendly wins over Liberia

(2-0), Senegal (4-1) and a draw with Uganda (2-2) only last week.

The other teams

Kuwait, who have the benefit of a settled backroom staff un-der Serbian coach Goran Tufeg-dzic, are another team with grounds for optimism, especial-ly after victory last month at the West Asian Championship.

History is also on the Ku-waitis’ side, the team having lifted the Gulf Cup a record nine times. By way of preparation

for Yemen 2010, they have been busy with friendlies, including two while based at their training camp in Abu Dhabi – a 9-1 rout of India followed by a creditable 1-1 draw with Iraq.

Bahrain, meanwhile, go in

search of a maiden Gulf title un-der coach Salman Sharida. Hav-ing competed in the Gulf Cup on numerous occasions as a player, Sharida is aiming to help Bahrain go all the way after fin-ishing runners-up no fewer than four times.

Finally, Qatar will be hoping to add a third title to those won in 1992 and 2004, although their results in recent friendlies have been less than encourag-ing. Under French coach Bruno Metsu they will be anxious for some morale-boosting results ahead of their hosting of the 2011 Asian Cup next January.

Gulf 20 Tournament

By NY Staff

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com10 National YemenREPORT

The suicide car bomber which targeted Al-Houthis crowd in Al Jawf province left seventeen Houthis killed and five wounded. The incident re-ceived global coverage in print-ed media and on television channels which worsened more the already misrepresented im-age of Yemen.

The Yemeni street received the news with mixed attitudes. Starkly they were divided be-tween condemnation and praise. I have read many comments on the attack and they were mostly contradictory.

Some journalists and media analysts view the incident as a heinous crime, pointing a finger to Al-Qaida as the chief perpe-trators, some consider it as the seeds of a rift in Yemen, blam-ing the government for the event, and others express their jubilation of the incident echo-ing Al-Houthis’ disdain at the loss of life.

The denunciation by the gov-ernment was expected and dif-fident. It was meant mainly to give the impression that they are there on the screen, rather than to show any sympathy to the victims or seriousness in arrest-

ing the main agents behind the attack, and indeed the master-minds.

As for me, I believe Al-Qaida is behind this attack since the tactics and the motives are simi-lar to those witnessed of Al-Qa-ida in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, the incident is consid-ered as a real critical develop-ment in the Yemeni political and security context. It is an demor-alizing signal of the commence-ment of a potentially bloody battle between the two tradition-al and ideological enemies, Al-Qaida and Shi’ites.

The two groups however, in spite of their ideological differ-ences, still have in common the government of Yemen as an en-emy. Both have been in simmer-ing confrontation with the gov-ernment since the beginning of the millennium.

Thus, the two groups share the goal of toppling govern-ment, but they do so for agendas that cannot meet.

The Al-Houthi groups aims at restoring the Immamat king-dom they lost five decades ago, while Al-Qaida aims at threat-ening western interests and if possible to establish an Islamic

state in Yemen. In spite of these ideological

differences, they could never declare an open battle against each other. Thus, if Al-Qaida is confirmed behind the attack, then the question that poses it-self is: why now?

Simply, the ideological dif-ferences between the two groups are much more that what they share in common. Their agen-das can not co-exist side by side or to be contained, for where agendas differ, conflicts occur.

The Houthi celebration of the “Al-Ghadeer day is a show of power; by concentrating many followers in one place at one time, they simultaneously high-light their identity and challenge the government, in a bid to gain more supporters and to oppose those who are not in favour of their ideology, particularly the tribal shaikhs in the area.

Thus, the attack by Al-Qaida was just a message to the Houthis that you cannot turn the country into a Shi’ite state while they are there. It is seemingly meant to prevent Houthi sup-porters from celebrating Al Ghadeer festival in the province of Al Jawf.

Al-Ghadeer is celebrated an-nually by Shiites to commemo-rate the day in which they claim Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) an-nounced Ali bin Abi Taleb as his successor for after his death. This theological fact is totally against that of Sunnis and par-ticularly viewed by Al-Qaida as not in keeping with Islam.

Al Qaida has repeatedly is-sued warnings against Al Ghadeer, celebrations declaring it as ‘Bedah’, not truly Islamic occasion to celebrate. Thus, similar attacks previously hap-pened in Iraq and Pakistan for the same intention; throwing the Al Ghadeer celebrations into disarray in those countries and if possible to prevent the Shia’ates from celebrating them for ever.

Interestingly, however, the Houthis have not accused Al-Qaida of perpetrating the attack. Rather, perhaps tactfully, they have highlighted the alleged en-emies, America and Israel, and their foreign intelligence appa-ratus.

Accusing the US and Israeli intelligence as being responsi-ble for the attack is a smart strat-egy by the Houthis to mark

those behind the attack as agents for the enemy of the nation . Thus, if Al-Qaida happens to declare its responsibility of the incident, as it usually does, it will save the Houthis the effort to declare Al-Qaida as agents that serve the agenda of Israel and United states in the area, which is in fact a common per-ception of Al-Qaida of many Shi’ites in the North of Yemen, in general.

From another perspective, the Houthis cannot declare Al-Qaida behind the attack; at the end of the day they cannot af-ford charging into battle with an unseen enemy which has been in a severe confrontation with the most powerful country in the globe for almost a decade.

The Houthis are aware that a battle with Al-Qaida will not be run in the same way as the skir-mishes they have had with the government. They know that Al-Qaida will attack them only in such Festivals.

However, it will be a disaster if Houthis try to seek their re-venge from Sunni muslims in Dammaj madrassah located in Sada’a, administered by a Sunni group that finds solidarity with

Al-Qaida on some intellectual levels, but never approves its method. If that happens, an ever lasting civil war may erupt.

If Al-Qaida is confirmed be-hind the attack, then the battle between the two traditional en-emies will be in the interest of the government. That is, if it is not going to last and its scene is not widened to involve the ma-jor cities of the country.

If the battle goes on, it will cause a collateral damage across the whole country and be an in-sufferable pain to all the people in the area. It will effect the country’s already deteriorating economy, social security and in the long run its already misrep-resented image and reputation in the global media. It will sell Yemen as a chaos and turbulent country.

It is a high time for wise peo-ple in the country to stand up against such a a threat before more blood shed and more vic-tims fall. If we keep watching passively all of us will pay the high price handing a whole country on a silver platter over to a group of violent Islamists divided between the Houthis and Al-Qaida.

Al-Houthis and Al-Qaida in Yemen: A New ChapterBy Dr. Murad Alazzany, Researcher in Islamic Groups

The Yemeni government has sought the help of the popular Egyptian television preacher Amr Khaled to launch a battle against radical and extremist ideology in the country.

Mr Khaled, an influential and moderate Muslim preacher known for wooing young crowds in a high-pitched voice, said his one-year campaign was meant to influence Yemen’s youngsters and engage them in the fight against extremism.

He said about 50,000 people yesterday attended his sermon on the importance of moderate Islam at Al Saleh mosque in the capital Sana’a.

“The objective of this project is to uproot and spread modera-tion and the true Islam that was brought by the Prophet Moham-med. Yemen is a country with a deep-rooted civilisation that has been hit by terrorism. We want to present a good picture of Ye-men and win the hearts and minds of its youth in this bat-tle,” Mr Khaled said in an inter-view on Thursday in Sana’a.

Mr Khaled, whose modern style trades clerical robes for

sharp suits and laces sermons with references to the internet and sport clubs and who appeals to youths across the Arab world, is confident in his approach.

“It is big challenge but I think we will succeed because we are depending on the youths to con-front extremism. Violence does not succeed in confronting vio-lence, and governments alone will not succeed in confronting it,” he said.

The campaign will involve training about 100 young peo-ple who will create about 50 projects to educate and raise public awareness about “the real Islam”, Mr Khaled said. These projects include estab-lishing a website to confront ex-tremist ideology. The youth trainees, to be selected from dif-ferent regions in Yemen, will, in turn, train others who show an interest in the projects.

“We think that a lot of youth, many of whom are away from the public affairs in Yemen, are positive, ready to do something for their country and confront extremism. We are going to train them to do this. And we are

confident that in one year we can make the difference,” he said.

About 100 preachers and clerics will also receive training in preaching proficiency and el-oquence to help them confront extremist ideology in their ser-mons.

In addition to juggling an in-surgency in the north and a sep-aratist movement in the south, the Yemeni government is strug-gling to combat a resurgent wing of al Qa’eda. The group is considered to be a serious threat by the US after the botched at-tack on a US-bound plane in December and the US-bound parcel bombs in October.

Under pressure from the US, Yemeni government forces have launched attacks against al Qa’eda militants in recent months, without much success.

Mr Khaled, who has received a warm welcome by the Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and his top officials, said that he and 15 other clerics involved in the awareness project would lecture university students and military personnel during their

10-day visit to Yemen.According to Mr Khaled, the

project is funded by the govern-ment as well as donations by Yemeni businessmen. He said the youths would generate fund-ing from the private sector.

Hassan al Lawzi, Yemen’s in-formation minister, said the project would help distribute the message.

“It is a call to the youths to understand the right concept of Islam, which is the religion of peace,” Mr al Lawzi told report-ers during the launch of the project in the port city of Aden on Wednesday.

However, Mohammed Ayesh, a well-known writer, said fighting extremism re-quired a review of government policies, which employ religion in political battles.

“The government needs to make a serious effort in review-ing its policies which used reli-gious groups against each other, or against its political oppo-nents,” he said, describing the result as a flourishing of radical groups.

Mr Ayesh said government needed to review its education curricula, and media and mosque rhetoric which encour-

age radicalism, as well as its co-alition with extremist groups.

“It is only this way that a crackdown on extremism and terrorism can be fruitful,” he said.

Mr Ayesh also said the move was a response to the western pressure on the government to address the roots of terrorism.

“The government would like to give an impression that it is not only cracking down terror-ism, but also on extremism, as the West has recently begun to focus on the need that Yemen addresses the roots of extrem-ism,” he said.

Yemen seeks Egyptian preacher’s helpBy Mohammed al Qadhi, National

The preacher Amr Khaled is known for wooing young crowds in a high-pitched voice. Above, the cleric addresses a ceremony in Aden, in the south of Yemen. Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

Entomologists Robert Kete-laar and Jaap Bouwman told public broadcaster NOS that they identified a “tubby, grey-ish” cricket living in caves, a winged orange-coloured lo-cust, and some minor ground beetles hitherto unknown to scientists.

Socotra Island is known for its unique flora and fauna, with at least a third of the 800 local

species being found nowhere else in the world. The four-man team of Dutch biologists led by Ketelaar and Bouwman spot-ted 91 species, according to the report published Thursday from their March 2009 trip.

One of the already known indigenous species seen by the team, the Glomeremus pileatus night cricket, is shown in the photograph below.

New beetles discovered by Dutch biologists in YemenTwo new species of insects have been have discovered by Dutch biologists on the island of Socotra in Yemen.

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010 Issue 22 www.nationalyemen.com 11National Yemen CONGRATULATIONS

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