by Judith Brown
In order for you to understand the Yemen uprising, and the uprisings in many parts of the Arab world, I would like to tell you about Amr. He is the sort of young man most parents would be very proud of. He has graduated from university with a degree in engineering. He is polite and well mannered, he always looks clean and smart. His parents are very ordinary people, his father a policeman, his mother recently made redundant from her job teaching hairdressing to refugees. Seeing that Amr needs new skills, they took on debt in order for him to take extra courses in IT and English, and he has worked hard at these courses. A year and a half after graduating, he is without work. His mother told me that he leaves home every day with his file of certificates, to visit prospective employers. He told me that he would be willing to do anything, and then he emphasised it, repeating, ANYTHING. He cannot leave home, or consider marriage, until he has an income, and he cannot see any possibility of an income at any point in the future..
In Yemen, 70% of the population is under 30, and 50% under 15. There is extremely high unemployment, especially amongst the young. Those who get jobs tend to have family or tribal connections - if you belong to a poor, unconnected family, your chances of finding employment is very low indeed.
But one way that people can get employment of a sort is by becoming a member of the balataga. These are thugs paid for by the President. They get 2,000 riyals a day (about £6), plus food and qat, the narcotic leaves that Yemenis chew. It is alleged that they are paid for out of money that US provided for anti-terrorist activity.
There can be no country in the world where the terrorist activity is over-egged as it is in Yemen. It helps the Yemeni government get aid from US, UK and the rest of the world. Despite claims that Al Qaeda in the Arab Penisular is now based in Yemen, there has been very little evidence of that except for a scatty plot over a year ago to put a bomb in a printer on a plane, and that failed. For example, there has been no large scale terrorist acts such as occurred in regularly Saudi Arabia before Al Qaeda was driven out.
Whereas the Yemeni military can be relied on to fight in places like Aden, with its separatist aims, and north of Sanaa where there is a Shia population, it cannot be relied on to fight in Sanaa, where the army is more sympathetic to the population. So the balataga has been used by the President to challenge protesters in Sanaa from the beginning of the uprising, occupying the central square, Tahreer, causing the protesters to set up camp outside the university, renamed as Al-ghreer Square, or Change Square. It is about two miles from the centre, on the ring road, and the main inconvenience was that traffic had to be diverted around their camps. Two weeks ago, the protests were virtually ignored by all, and everyone was just getting on with life. When talking to Sanaa residents, although they wanted a change, many said that Saleh was not as bad as many leaders in the Arab world. There were very few considering joining in with the protest.
There have been some military attacks on the students at Al-ghreer in the past weeks, and allegations of the use of a nerve gas that caused convulsions on student protesters. But the main attack that came last Thursday was almost certainly the actions of the balataga, although there is no emerging evidence either way of Presidential orders. Friends who live in the area tell me they heard machine guns firing for twenty minutes. I heard that the protesters were hemmed in by the army, whilst the balataga stood on roof tops, machine-gunning those below. So far, 52 have died according to the Yemen Observer, and 200 more were injured. The massacre stopped when student protestors went to the roof-tops and caught the protagonists and handed them over to the police. Despite Yemeni people having wide access to weapons, the protesters have not been drawn into using weapons as part of their protests, to their credit.
This dreadful event has resulted in many protest resignations. The head of the army and other top military officials, some of whom are now in tanks protecting the protesters. Members of the government, including the Minister for Human Rights. Ambassadors, including those to the UN and Lebanon. The President has declared a State of Emergency, sacked the government but asked them to keep on working until he appoints a replacement. Saudi is acting as a mediator between the President and opposition groups.
So where from here?
With the military divided, could it be a civil war? Without this massacre, it was very likely that Ali Abdullah Saleh would hang on to power, particularly since the unclear outcome in the Libya uprising, but now, everything has changed.
But it stands to reason that something has to give in Yemen. Apart from horrendous youth unemployment, the country is fast running out of water, with Taiz already out of water, and the capital, Sanaa, likely to be the first capital city in the world without water by 2015. At 8000 feet above sea level, this will present a huge challenge. The country's oil reserves are dwindling, Yemen is hoping to find gas but it won't be in significant quantities, and oil is currently its only significant export. And what is more, the known oil is in South Yemen, that demands separation from the North, making the issue more complex.
Whatever happens, ordinary Yemenis are in for a tough time, especially the young. I hope that young men like Amr find a future and are able to reach their potential, or I dread to imagine what will happen to the Arab world.
The saga grinds to an end at last:
