There is more than meets the eye to recent events in Yemen, writes Fahmy Howeidy* During a recent upsurge of violence in Yemen, the assistant secretary-general of the Socialist Party, Garallah Omar, was assassinated and three American staff members of a Christian missionary hospital in Jibla, Ibb, were murdered. I have six observations to make on these incidents, which, I fear, suggest that Yemen is entering a phase of escalating tension that may erupt into a domestic conflict of considerable magnitude that would have unpredictable repercussions. First, these assassinations occurred 45 days after an anti-terrorist operation in which a guided CIA aircraft fired a missile killing six Yemenis, one of whom was said to be linked to the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the other five of whom were suspected militants. The missile struck the car in which the men were travelling through the province of Marab killing them instantly. The incident stunned public opinion in Yemen. It was the first time an American plane was used to assassinate Yemeni suspects on Yemeni territory in an execution that was effected without a trial. Another shock followed shortly with the announcement that the operation had the prior consent of the government in Sana'a. Certainly this factor contributed to increasing the Yemeni public's anger over the incident. Second, it should be noted that Yemeni authorities exploited the two aforementioned assassination incidents to settle political scores. From the outset, security officials stressed that the assassins belonged to the political party the National Rally for Reform (Al- Tajamu) and that one of them had been a student at Al-Iman University, the president of which is Sheikh Abdel- Maguid Al-Zandani, a leader of that political party. Official statements to this effect suggest that it is Al-Tajamu and the university that the government wants to put on trial and that it has condemned the defendants in advance of such proceedings -- regardless of whether witnesses and evidence do point to their guilt. The speed with which charges were filed was also suspicious, especially in light of information that contradicted the claims that were initially aired, not to mention the fact that in its 12-year existence, there was no evidence that Al-Tajamu ever sought recourse to arms against its opponents. The man accused of assassinating Garallah Omar had studied for a year at Al-Iman University before being expelled. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Sana'a, after which he joined the army. He was never a member of Al-Tajamu, nor had he ever been invited to a party congress, although he did succeed in attending under false pretenses. It is curious, therefore, that so much emphasis was placed on the single year the suspect had spent at Al-Iman while his subsequent seven years in the government school system and army were virtually ignored. Could it be that his terrorist inclinations had been formed during that year and that the subsequent seven years failed to erase them? Are we to presume he is innocent on the basis of his statements during investigations that he hated Al-Tajamu and that its leaders had betrayed God, the Prophet and Islam? The man accused of murdering the staff at the missionary hospital has put Yemeni authorities in a difficult position. Although they claimed he was a member of Al-Tajamu, the governor of Ibb who belongs to the ruling People's Congress Party denied that the accused had ever belonged to the opposition grouping. Such contradictory claims affirm that there is more than meets the eye to this affair than the prosecution of two assassins. Political rivals in Yemen have begun a new round of mutual vengeance. Third, as the preceding suggests, there is a climate of mistrust between the major political forces in Yemen, with the ruling People's Congress on one side and the rest of the parties on the other. Available information suggests that Al- Tajamu was instrumental in gathering other political forces in an opposition bloc under the banner of a "common ground". In addition to Al-Tajamu, the coalition includes the Yemeni Socialist Party and the Nasserist Unionist Party. This fact, alone, suggests that a certain party has a major stake in dismantling the coalition and in provoking a rift between the Socialist Party and Al- Tajamu. The crisis of confidence was made abundantly apparent when Al-Tajamu hastened to detain and interrogate the assassin of Garallah Omar for four hours, in the presence of security officials and opposition party leaders, before handing him over to security agencies. The purpose of this, of course, was to forestall the possibility that the government would twist the suspect's statements to accomplish certain ends. It is noteworthy that when the authorities learned that they had been pre-empted and that the suspect was being questioned before they could get hold of him they denounced Al-Tajamu for violating the constitution and subverting justice, whereas in many other similar cases they were perfectly content to leave the business of justice to the tribal authorities, far from the machinery of government and the law. Fourth, I observed that most foreign journalists in Sana'a contented themselves with transmitting the Yemeni security agencies' version of the murders, rather than striving for more balanced coverage. Thus, a British newspaper, for example, spoke of a link between Al-Tajamu and Al-Qa'eda; a well-known Arab satellite network, in one of its reports, virtually held Al-Tajamu responsible for the murder of Garallah Omar. Such coverage suggests that the media is lending itself as a weapon in the Yemeni vendetta process rather than serving as a disinterested party whose function should be to inform the public of the facts. Fifth, news reports failed to highlight indications that the assassins may have been members of a new organisation called the Jihad, which may or may not be linked to Al- Qa'eda. Evidently, the interest in attributing guilt to Al-Tajamu overshadowed the concern for investigating other possibilities -- in spite of their significance. Yet, if the assassins were not members of Al- Tajamu, tracing their actual affiliations, if indeed they were members of the Jihad or another group, could well shed considerable light on the pattern of terrorism and extremism in Yemen. Conversely, to ignore or cover up such possible affiliations contributes to presenting a distorted picture of extremism in the country and, perhaps, leaves the actual masterminds free to act again. My final observation is that, even as we vehemently condemn the murder of the staff members in the Baptist-run missionary hospital in Ibb, we must ask what brings missionaries to the heart of Yemen, and why Ibb in particular? However abhorrent I find the crime, I am not convinced that the presence of Christian missionaries in a country that had only been populated by Muslims and Jews is a wise idea. I realise that this is a sensitive issue, but I cannot understand a presence that is potentially highly provocative and after which we are to condemn those whose anger drove them to extremes. It seems that logic would have it that we should condemn both the horror of the reaction and the original wrong of provocation that led to such tragic results. There are two new churches in Aden, one a Catholic church in Al- Tawayi and the other a Baptist church in Crater. In Sana'a, a building has been rented with the aid of indirect funding from the US Embassy to be used as a Christian house of worship. Then, we have an American Baptist-run hospital in Jibla, whose missionaries-cum-staff members deal with people of modest means, enter their homes and influence the more credulous. More than 100 Yemenis have been converted to Christianity according to the Islam on-line Web site, whose report on the recent incidents furnished much useful information. Certainly, such practices breed anger, even if they do not justify the resort to violence in response to the original wrong. Any observer of developments in Yemen must sense how awkward the position of the government is, especially after 11 September, and should be able to sympathise when it behaves, sometimes, in a manner that is difficult to swallow. If President Ali Abdullah Saleh mentioned in a speech of his that his country would be subjected to an assault similar to that which was waged on Afghanistan if the "academies" were not put under direct government supervision, we can only imagine the other pressures that have been exerted on Yemen from 11 September to the present. However, there are some actions with which one cannot sympathise and which cannot be excused because they are based on purely domestic calculations and because they threaten to propel the country towards new crises. * The writer is a political analyst and columnist with Al-Ahram. He has authored many works on Islamism, domestic and regional politics.
