الصحف الامريكية فتحت ملف اسرة الرئيس اليمني وفضائحها وتقاسمها للسلطة والثروة
SANA, Yemen — The United States is quickly ramping up its aid to Yemen, which Washington sees as a revived new front against Al Qaeda. But one of the most delicate tasks will be managing the relationship with the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has filled his government with numerous members of his family and who wants to ensure that his son Ahmed succeeds him, Yemeni officials, analysts and Western diplomats say.
Mr. Saleh, 67, is wily, witty and fit. But he has been spending less time in the past two years managing the complicated tribal and regional demands of fragile Yemen than trying to consolidate the power of his family, the analysts say. As Yemen’s oil revenues erode and Mr. Saleh has fewer resources to spread around, the reach of the central government has been shrinking — “the government is practically caged in the capital,” Sana, one senior Western diplomat said.
Mr. Saleh presents the Obama administration with a problem that is all too familiar in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is amenable to American support, but his ineffective and corrupt bureaucracy has limited reach. And his willingness to battle Al Qaeda, which he does not view as his main enemy, is questionable.
Much of Yemen is in turmoil. Government forces on Monday killed two militants suspected of being with Al Qaeda. There is another round of rebellion in the north and a growing secessionist movement in the south. In important provinces where key oil resources are and where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is strong, government troops and the police largely remain in their barracks or in the central cities. Order outside the cities is kept by tribal chiefs, with their own complicated loyalties.
“You can’t see anyone in a government uniform in Abyan,” said Murad Zafir, a Yemeni political analyst, referring to a southern province. “There are large areas of the country where there is no electricity, no running water and no central authority.”
United States aid was paltry until last year, and it was only when American intelligence could show Mr. Saleh that his family was being singled out by Al Qaeda that he began to take the group’s threat seriously, diplomats said.
How effectively Yemen addresses the threat depends largely on Mr. Saleh’s family. Ahmed Saleh is head of the Yemen Republican Guard and the country’s special forces.
The president’s nephews — sons of his late brother — include Amar, the deputy director for national security; Yahye, head of the central security forces and the counterterrorism unit; and Tarek, head of the Presidential Guard. The president’s half brother is head of the air force.
The sense of Yemen as a family corporation that has also enriched itself is part of the problem, Mr. Zafir said; the president’s mosque, al-Saleh Mosque, was completed less than two years ago and is said to have cost at least $120 million. “President Saleh wants his son to succeed him,” Mr. Zafir said. To make that happen, he has sought to consolidate power in his family’s hands, but his influence over the tribal chiefs has receded, Mr. Zafir said.
Najeeb Saeed Ghanem, a former minister of health, is a member of Parliament from the largest opposition party, Islah, an Islamist party with close ties to tribal groups. “It is the size of the deterioration of the regime and its control over the country that we’re afraid of,” he said.
With oil revenues down, Mr. Saleh has had to turn to outside allies to help finance the war in the north. Saudi Arabia provided $2 billion last year to make up for the budget shortfall — an amount that dwarfs the $150 million in security assistance that the United States will ask Congress to approve for the 2010 fiscal year.
“The Saudis understand,” said Ahmed M. al-Kibsi, a political scientist at Sana University, “that they are the real prize for Al Qaeda, and Yemen is the platform.”
But there are challenges to Mr. Saleh’s goals of empowering his son, if not direct challenges to Mr. Saleh. One of his main allies, even as a young lieutenant colonel in 1977 when he initially took power in the north, was Ali Mohsen. Now he is the military commander in charge of the effort to stamp out the Houthi rebellion to the north. The Houthis are Shiites, and Mr. Mohsen is said to be a Sunni religious conservative.
Mr. Saleh and Mr. Mohsen are not related and are not considered rivals for the presidency. But Mr. Mohsen has signaled that he does not favor a direct succession of Ahmed Saleh to the presidency, diplomats and analysts said. Mr. Mohsen believes, they said, that the younger Mr. Saleh lacks the personal strength and charisma of his father and cannot hold the country together.
The tension between the two old comrades is visible in the criticism of the way the war in the north is being handled, with government officials sometimes complaining that Mr. Mohsen set off renewed fighting there by occupying or destroying the mosques and holy places of the Houthis and building Sunni mosques and schools in the area. Mr. Mohsen’s supporters have countered that the war has not been fully supported by the central government.
Mr. Saleh and his son also face another internal challenge from the next generation of the powerful Ahmar family, Yemeni bluebloods. Sheik Abdullah al-Ahmar was the chief of the powerful Hashed tribe, founded the Islah party and was Parliament speaker until his death in December 2007. One of his sons, Hamid al-Ahmar, a businessman in his 40s, now leads Islah.
Mr. Saleh has tried to keep the family close, in particular by letting Hamid al-Ahmar invest in major cash cows, like the main cellphone company, SabaFon, oil interests and the Bank of Saba. But in August, Hamid al-Ahmar stunned Yemenis by appearing on Al Jazeera to describe Mr. Saleh as having overstayed his time and calling on him to leave office and not try to enthrone his son. “If Saleh wants the people of Yemen to be on his side against monarchy and defend national unity, he himself must quit pursuing monarchy,” he said.
How the United States manages Mr. Saleh and his family ambitions will have much to do with success or failure against Al Qaeda. “Washington must work with and behind the regime, whatever its flaws, while trying to push Saleh toward reconciliation with his opponents,” a Western diplomat said. “I am afraid it will take more delicacy than the Pentagon can do.”Read more…
Ottawa International Poets and Writers for human Rights (OIPWHR)
