"Day of Rage" shakes Yemen, Saleh sacks governors (Reuters)

By Mohammed Ghobari and Mohammed Mukhashaf Mohammed Ghobari And Mohammed Mukhashaf – Tue Mar 1, 3:59 pm ET

SANAA/ADEN (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of protesters flooded Yemen's streets on Tuesday in a "Day of Rage," demanding an end to the president's three-decade rule.

In the capital Sanaa, demonstrators chanted "With blood and soul we support you, Aden," referring to the southern port city where most of the 24 people killed in the past two weeks of protests have died.

Some demonstrators flashed "V" for victory signs while others wore white headbands with "Leave" written in red -- a message addressed to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Tens of thousands more marched through the streets of Ibb and Taiz, south of Sanaa.

Already rocked by separatism and an al Qaeda insurgency, Yemen is one of the Arab nations most shaken by popular protests sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East.

Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda, has failed to quell two months of protests in a country of 23 million where 40 percent live on less than $2 a day and a third are undernourished.

On Monday he offered to form a unity government but the opposition rejected it. On Tuesday, Saleh replaced the governors of five mostly southern provinces at the center of the protests.

"Victory is coming and it is near," Hassan Zaid, an opposition leader, shouted to the protesters gathered in Sanaa, where they have been camping out for two weeks. "We have one goal and one demand, and that is the quick end of the regime."

Protesters are angry at widespread corruption, as university graduates struggle to get jobs without connections, and youth unemployment is high. Northern rebels and southern separatists say they are denied resources and a say in politics.

As oil and water resources dry up, the 68-year-old Saleh is less able to pay off allies to keep the peace.

CLASHES IN NORTH

In Hodeidah province in the north, Saleh loyalists and protesters fought with rocks and sticks. Four people were hurt.

Security forces in the south have come under frequent attack in recent days. On Tuesday, separatists fought the army in southern Habilayn, killing two soldiers and wounding three.

The U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said at least eight people detained by Yemen security forces last month, including several southern separatists, had disappeared.

"Snatching and hiding political opposition leaders ... is hardly compatible with the government's claim to protect rights," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East director.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement: "We have seen over and over again in the past few weeks that violent responses, in breach of international law, do not make the protesters go away and only serve to exacerbate their frustration and anger."

CLERIC SWITCHES SIDES

A leading hardline Muslim cleric, Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, who two weeks ago backed the idea of Saleh staying in power until his term ends in 2013, joined protesters in the capital.

"There is no legitimacy to a ruler whose people do not want him," Zindani said in Sanaa.

Veteran leader Saleh lashed out at President Barack Obama over demands that leaders show restraint in tackling unrest as protests, galvanized by successful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, rage across Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman.

"Every day we hear a statement from Obama saying 'Egypt you can't do this, Tunisia don't do that'," Saleh said in a speech at Sanaa University, a rallying point for protests in the capital where tens of thousands have gathered outside campus.

"What do you have to do with Egypt? Or Oman? Are you the president of the United States, or president of the world?"

(Additional reporting by Mohamed Sudam in Sanaa and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Erika Solomon; editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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Yemen separatist leader held, two die after protests (Reuters)

By Mohammed Mukhashaf and Mohammed Ghobari Mohammed Mukhashaf And Mohammed Ghobari – Sun Feb 20, 6:19 pm ET
ADEN/SANAA (Reuters) – The leader of Yemen's secessionist Southern Movement was arrested and shots were fired on the ninth day of demonstrations in the capital Sanaa on Sunday.
A male protester and a young girl died in a hospital in the southern city of Aden, after being wounded, apparently by stray bullets, during protests on Saturday in a nearby town, a doctor told Reuters. Their deaths brought the toll from the past two days to seven.
Thousands of people staged sit-ins in the cities of Ibb and Taiz, as well as in two districts of Aden, to demand the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who renewed an offer of dialogue to opposition parties.
Saleh, a U.S. ally battling a resurgent al Qaeda wing based in Yemen, has held power for 32 years in the poor Arabian Peninsula state, which faces soaring unemployment, dwindling oil and water reserves, and chronic unrest in northern and southern provinces.
Security in Aden was stepped up on Sunday, with tanks and armored vehicles out on main streets.
Hasan Baoum, head of the secessionist Southern Movement, was arrested by an "armed military group" in an Aden hospital where he was being treated, his son Fadi Hasan Baoum told Reuters.
Baoum was also arrested in November last year, accused of planning illegal demonstrations.
CALL FOR DIALOGUE
Saleh renewed his call for dialogue with opposition parties and blamed the latest protests on "elements outside the system and the law."
"Dialogue is the best way. Not sabotage. Not blocking the roads," he told tribal, military and civil leaders in Sanaa.
But the coalition of main opposition parties, including the Islamist Islah and the secular Socialist Party, said there could be no dialogue with "bullets and sticks and thuggery," or with a government "which gathers mercenaries to ... terrorize people."
Around 50 government supporters tried to break up a demonstration outside Sanaa University by 1,000 protesters.
A Saleh supporter fired shots from an assault rifle but there were no reported casualties and the government supporters soon dispersed, while the protesters chanted, "Leave, Ali!"
Both sides fired weapons on Saturday outside the university -- the first reported use of firearms by demonstrators. Several protesters were hurt in those clashes.
PROTESTS AND SIT-INS
Protests have taken place across Yemen, a country of 23 million which borders the world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.
In the southern city of Ibb, around 1,000 protesters set up camp in Freedom Square waving banners which read "Leave" and "The people want the fall of the regime," witnesses said.
In Taiz, thousands continued a sit-in for a ninth day. Hundreds launched new sit-ins in the Mansoura and Crater districts of Aden.
Twelve Yemeni human rights groups demanded in a statement that security officials in Aden, Sanaa and Taiz be put on trials over attacks on protesters.
On Saturday, Saleh blamed a "foreign agenda" and a "conspiracy against Yemen, its security and stability" for the protests against poverty, unemployment and corruption which have gained momentum since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Saleh is facing an al Qaeda branch that has launched attacks at home and abroad. He is also confronted by a separatist revolt in the south and trying to maintain a shaky truce with Shi'ite Muslim rebels in the north.
(Additional reporting Mohamed Sudam; writing by Jason Benham, Dominic Evans and Firouz Sedarat; editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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Yemen, awash in guns, wary about unrest (The Christian Science Monitor)

Sanaa, Yemen – As Yemeni protests escalate, tribesmen from rural parts of the country have come to Yemen's own Tahrir Square. But despite sharing the same name as the epicenter of Egypt's revolution, this central square in Sanaa has yet to attract throngs of antigovernment protesters – perhaps in no small part because the tribesmen occupying it are armed.

They're not the only ones carrying guns, however. In Yemen, which has one of the highest guns-per-capita ratios in the world and a weak central government, the Kalashnikov has become emblematic of masculinity, the size of one’s weapon cache synonymous with power.

“Shame on a man who leaves his house without his gun,” says Sinan Abo Zeid, a native of Yemen's northern border province Al Jawf, where men are known to pay for their cars’ gasoline in bullets whenever they don’t have enough cash. “In Al Jawf, the Kalashnikov is the government.”

Countries in the Middle East where the 'winds of change' are blowing

As Yemen has become more volatile – a state headed toward failure, where it's unclear who would fill the power vacuum that could follow – the number of weapons slung across men's shoulders and stashed in tribal outposts is increasingly seen as problematic.

“There are dangerous risks that these weapons will get into the hands of the wrong people," says Sultan al-Atwany, a member of parliament (MP) from the opposition Nasserite party. "This is a big security risk in Yemen."

Grenades, mortars, and an odd tankDue to a history of internal conflicts and international meddling, Yemen has 60 guns per 100 people – second only to the United States, according to a report conducted in 2007 by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based independent research project.

Traditionally, tribal law regulated weapons use in this country. However, as a result of the gradual erosion of tribal norms due to urbanization, Yemen’s weak central government, and competition over resource depletion, gun-related violence is increasing. Revenge killings, kidnappings, and politically inspired fighting – including the terrorist operations of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – plague Yemeni society.

Moreover, Yemen’s population is armed with weapons more powerful than guns. Tribes are widely said to have supplies of rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and in some rare cases, tanks.

'Using my gun to take my rights'Revelations from WikiLeaks’ released diplomatic cables highlight US concern about widespread weapons proliferation in a country where a regional branch of Al Qaeda has set up shop.

Starting in 2004, according to a cable, the US worked with the Yemeni government to buy back surface-to-air missiles, or MANPADS, in an attempt to remove them from the Yemeni arms market so that terrorists would not obtain the missiles. Other cables reveal US concern over weapons being smuggled out of Yemen to other terrorist organizations around the globe.

Rashad al-Alimi, the deputy prime minister for security and defense affairs, claimed that arms proliferation is one of four security challenges facing Yemen, says a report published by the Small Arms Survey in May 2010. Others include terrorist threats, border protection, and “weak loyalty to the state.”

Lack of federal rule of law in Yemen’s countryside has created a ethos of “using my gun to take my rights,” says Ayesh Awas, a researcher at the Sheba Center for Strategic Studies in Sanaa who has examined small-arms proliferation in Yemen.

“Weapons are not the main reason for internal conflicts, but they certainly make our conflicts more intense,” Mr. Awas says. “The presence of weapons encourages crimes.”

New laws, weapons seizuresThe Yemeni government has made efforts to increase gun control in recent years.

In 1992, the Yemeni government passed a new regulation that prohibited carrying firearms in major cities, although it wasn’t until 2007 until authorities readily enforced the law. The central government had to realize, says Mr. Atwany, the opposition MP, that if absolutely no checks were put on weapon usage, it could end up backfiring against them – quite literally.

“The government used to say, 'Oh, this is the culture of Yemen,' " as an excuse to not have to deal with international concern regarding Yemen’s highly armed population, he says. “But when they saw that these weapons could be used against the state because of the strong resentment growing against [the central government], they started to enforce the law.”

The official Saba News Agency reported in April that the Interior Ministry has seized around 600,000 weapons since August 2008.

But parliament members who support an increase in state-sponsored gun control say it's unclear to what extent President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime, which also has an interest in preserving allegiances with tribal sheikhs, is willing to press for stricter measures.

A new law, which would require that every piece of weaponry be licensed, is trying to make its way through parliament, but is being held up because many supporters of Yemen’s ruling party are powerful sheikhs who don’t want the state tampering with their stashes of weapons that number into the hundreds.

“If the state had the political will it would be able to enforce [gun-control laws] all over the country,” says Ali al-Mamari of Yemen’s ruling General People’s Congress party. The problem, he says, is that “those who are considered the best people in this country are not the better educated, but the people who are trained to shoot.”

Needed: Anti-gun campaign based on honor, courageDuring Yemen’s civil wars in 1962 and 1994, leaders from the opposing sides in war would hand out weapons to tribes who provided them with support, Awas explains. This included Saudi Arabia, which started providing Yemeni tribes with weapons after 1962, in order to weaken the strength of northern Yemen’s recently established, Egyptian-supported republican government.

In Yemen’s south, the Soviets who supported South Yemen’s socialist regime heavily armed the population throughout the 1970s and 80s.

Now with weapons possession ingrained in the national psyche, analysts don’t see an easy solution to disarming the country.

“Programs could be initiated that attempt to change tribal values about owning and using weapons," says a 2003 Small Arms Survey report. "The difficulty, however, will be fashioning a campaign that can play on tribal strengths – such as honor, courage, and self-control – without advancing an argument that sounds ‘Western,’ which is a derogatory term throughout the region as it signifies a lack of respect for Islam and Arab tradition.”

Countries in the Middle East where the 'winds of change' are blowing

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Egypt echoes across region: Iran, Bahrain, Yemen (AP)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The possible heirs of Egypt's uprising took to the streets Monday in different corners of the Middle East: Iran's beleaguered opposition stormed back to central Tehran and came under a tear gas attack by police. Demonstrators faced rubber bullets and birdshot to demand more freedoms in the relative wealth of Bahrain. And protesters pressed for the ouster of the ruler in poverty-drained Yemen.

The protests — all with critical interests for Washington — offer an important lesson about how groups across Middle East are absorbing the message from Cairo and tailoring it to their own aspirations.

The heady themes of democracy, justice and empowerment remain intact as the protest wave works it way through the Arab world and beyond. What changes, however, are the objectives. The Egypt effect, it seems, is elastic.

"This isn't a one-size-fits-all thing," said Mustafa Alani, a regional analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "Each place will interpret the fallout from Egypt in their own way and in their own context."

For the Iranian opposition — not seen on the streets in more than a year — it's become a moment to reassert its presence after facing relentless pressures.

Tens of thousands of protesters clashed with security forces along some of Tehran's main boulevards, which were shrouded in clouds of tear gas in scenes that recalled the chaos after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. A pro-government news agency reported one bystander killed by gunfire.

"Death to the dictator," many yelled in reference to Ahmadinejad. Others took aim Iran's all-powerful Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with chants linking him with toppled rulers Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Tunisia's Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali.

"Bin Ali, Mubarak, it's Seyed Ali's turn," protesters cried.

The reformist website kaleme.com said police stationed several cars in front of the home of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi ahead of the demonstration. Mousavi and fellow opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi have been under house arrest since last week after they asked the government for permission to hold a rally in support of Egypt's uprising — which Iran's leaders have claimed was a modern-day replay of their 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Karroubi and Mousavi, however, have compared the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia with their own struggles. Mousavi said all region's revolts aimed at ending the "oppression of the rulers."

A new U.S. State Department Twitter account in Farsi took a jab at Iran in one of its first messages Sunday, calling on Tehran to "allow people to enjoy same universal rights to peacefully assemble, demonstrate as in Cairo."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed support for the Iranian protesters, saying they "deserve to have the same rights that they saw being played out in Egypt and are part of their own birthright."

In Yemen, meanwhile, the protests are about speeding the ouster of the U.S.-allied president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has promised he would step down in 2013.

Monday's protests mirrored the calls in Egypt and Tunisia against the leaders there who had been in power for decades: "The people want the regime to step down."

Protesters in the tiny Gulf nation of Bahrain are not looking to topple its monarchy. But their demands are no less lofty: greater political freedom and sweeping changes in how the country is run.

The next possible round of demonstrations gives a similar divide.

A coalition in Algeria — human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others — has called protests Saturday to push for the end of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's 12-year rule. Kuwait's highly organized opposition, including parliament members, plans gatherings March 8 to demand a wholesale change of cabinet officials, but not the ruling emir.

"We are experiencing a pan-Arab democratic moment of sorts," said Shadi Hamid, director of research at The Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. "For opposition groups, it comes down the question of, 'If not now, when?'"

But he noted that the newfound Arab confidence for change will go in various directions.

"The Arab opposition are using the Egyptian model as a message that anything is possible," Hamid said. "Then they interpret that into their local context."

In Yemen, more than 1,000 people, including lawyers in their black courtroom robes, joined a fourth consecutive day of protests in the capital of Sanaa — a day after police attacked anti-government marchers with sticks and daggers. Human Rights Watch said police on Sunday also used stun guns and batons to disperse protesters.

"We will continue our protests until the regime falls," independent lawmaker Ahmed Hashid said.

Police separated the opposition rally from a hundred government supporters holding pictures of the president.

Bahrain was more violent. Security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot pellets at thousands of anti-government protesters heeding calls to unite in a major rally and bring the Arab reform wave to the Gulf for the first time. At least 25 people were injured, and one man died after suffering severe head trauma.

Police later used vans and other vehicles to block main roads into the capital of Manama to prevent a mass gathering that organizers intended as an homage to Egypt's Tahrir Square.

Social media sites have been flooded with calls by an array of political youth groups, rights activists and others to join demonstrations Monday, a symbolic day in Bahrain as the anniversary of the country's 2002 constitution that brought pro-democracy reforms such as an elected parliament.

But opposition groups seek deeper changes from the country's ruling dynasty, including transferring more decision-making powers to the parliament and breaking the monarchy's grip on senior government posts. Bahrain's majority Shiites — about 70 percent of the population — have long complained of systemic discrimination by the Sunni rulers.

The nation — no bigger in area than New York City — is among the most politically volatile in the Gulf. A crackdown on perceived dissidents last year touched off riots and street battles in Shiite areas.

Some protesters carried mock Valentine's Day greetings from a prominent Bahraini blogger in custody, Ali Abdul-Imam.

"Arabs have been inspired by Egypt and empowered to believe that their voices must be heard and respected," wrote James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, in a commentary in Abu Dhabi's The National newspaper. "It will make life more complicated for Western and Arab policy makers."

Monday's unrest touched on two key points of Washington's Mideast constellation.

Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, one of the Pentagon's main counterweights to Iran's attempts to expand influence in the Gulf. Yemen's militant networks offer safe haven for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which has planned and launched several attack against the U.S., including the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas Day 2009 and the failed mail bomb plot involving cargo planes last summer.

The U.S. military plans a $75 million training program with Yemen's counterterrorism unit to expand its size and capabilities in the nation's difficult mountain terrain. Last month, the U.S. also delivered four Huey helicopters to Yemen and has been training the aviation units.

"What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt has terrified pro-Western Arab rulers," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics.

"One of the lessons that the U.S. will take from current unrest is that the status quo is no longer sustainable," he added. "There are huge cracks in the Arab authoritarian wall. It's the end of an era and the U.S. must make very tough choices and decisions."

Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who is visiting Iran, urged governments in the Middle East to listen to the their people.

"When leaders and heads of countries do not pay attention to the demands of their nations, the people themselves take action to achieve their demands," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Gul as saying.

___

Associated Press writer Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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Troops in Yemen push back protesters (AP)

SANAA, Yemen – Troops in Yemen have beaten some anti-government protesters who were celebrating the resignation of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and demanding the ouster of their own president.

Hundreds of protesters in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, had tried to reach the Egyptian embassy on Saturday.

The ouster of Mubarak after an 18-day uprising raised questions about the long-term stability of Yemen and other Western-allied governments in the region. President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has been in power for three decades and tried to blunt unrest by promising not to run again.

Witnesses say several thousand protesters were driven out of Sanaa's main square by troops and plainclothes security agents on Friday night.

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