Here’s where the story ends?

Farewell but not goodbye

An Oscar winning creation any Hollywood script writer would be proud off:

• An embassy siege of foreign diplomats

• Al-Qaeda militants take over a city

• A brutal military crackdown on civilians

• Tribal war in the country’s capital

• The president, following an apparent assassination attempt, jets off into the night for emergency medical care.

And all in the space of a fortnight. You couldn’t make it up. But how the drama ends is still unclear. Can the wounded President Saleh return as a hero…restoring law and order…saving the nation from complete collapse? Or do the people get to decide their own fate?

According to the script Saleh wrote, in the final chapter (the first part of which is now starting without him) the country will fall into chaos in his absence. But will he return to prove the country can’t survive without him and fulfil his self-proclaimed prophecy? Or take the exit he achieved on his own terms?

Like Derren Brown himself, Saleh has turned his ability to out wit his opponents and leave them stunded and bemused by his antics, in to a master skill. One thing’s for sure, he cannot be underestimated. Saleh’s art of surprise has been diminished by recent transparent foolery but only Brown himself could really know what will happen, what Saleh will do next and how the story ends.

Beware the heffalump trap

Anyone who has ever vaguely followed Yemen politics - there will be few as it’s a thankless task - or has recently been confused by constantly conflicting headlines, will be (or becoming) familiar with its trademarks: backtracking, squabbling, multiple U-turns, contradictory statements, posturing and games usually confined to the school playground.

Even though I’ve only been here just over six months it’s clear that these often farcical political gymnastics are usually instigated by the wily President himself and without fail leave the political opposition - the JMP - flat on their backs on the tarmac before they pick themselves up, march off in a strop and then proceed to go home and throw a tantrum - to continue the playground analogy.

“Does that really make Yemen’s politics stand out from anywhere else?” I hear you cry. Well here is a prime example of a quote:

“Both parties approve of the initiative. The only thing to agree upon is the date. We said Sunday. The JMP said Saturday and the host said Monday,” said presidential information office Ahmed al-Sofi.

Al-Sofi is of course referring to the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) deal, that may not be a deal, that may not (as I write events in Aden could influence this) even be signed…or not by President Saleh...or not by him as president, as such. 

So, if the Gulf-plan, with more pitfalls than a Home Alone movie is signed.

(I went into some detail about these when I originally wrote this post to go on the Frontline Club website, but they’ve been having some technical difficulties, which means it’s been sitting in my drafts box for some time. In the ensuing period two people have done the job already of pointing them out. See: Louisa Loveluck and Brian Whitaker.)

Neither side - the JMP, or the ruling GPC plus Saleh - require any extra opportunities to pick a fight, or in the JMP’s case, fall out with themselves. And the GCC plan provides them with more than enough to squabble over and plenty of scope for the whole initiative to collapse.

Don’t forget, the JMP have been boycotting parliament since the end of last year after failing to agree with the GPC on electoral reforms, in discussions that date back to 2009. Plus, the likelihood of them being able to see out the 30 days never mind the logistical impossibility of organising elections here in 90 days, when the electoral register is years out of date, are both rather remote.

The heffalump trap has been set. Now it just depends who will fall in first. Going on previous form, Saleh’s recent rhetoric, and the disunity of the opposition, my bet is on the JMP. But by definition, the creator of the trap should be the one that ends up in it, which means the GCC and its EU and US backers will be the ones left trying to scramble out of the pit.

They shoot horses, don’t they?

Laid out on a hospital trolley with thick clots of blood haemorrhaging out of his nose and ears. The life carrying fluid trickled from the corner of his already glazed and lifeless eyes. The gunshot wound to the back of his head, hidden by the grey blanket that had carried him from the street where he fell.

Looking down on the bearded man my mind flashed back to the last time I’d witnessed such a bloody scene. A field in Ireland; a horse lay alive but with his guts spilled out on the red stained grass. After the bullet passed between his eyes blood gushed through his nose and mouth. As on previous occasions, I pulled a large clear plastic bag over his head and tied it with baler twine around his throat, to prevent the dogs from lapping up the thick red liquid after his body had been dragged away.

Unlike my four-legged friend, the man that lay before me was full of life just moments earlier, kneeling to pray with thousands of others in the heat of the midday Sana’a sun. He wasn’t shot to put him out of pain and misery, or because his body was beyond repair. He was killed because he dared to call for a politician to leave office.

Two days later I saw him again, wrapped in a shroud of the Yemeni flag with his portrait stuck with sellotape around his neck. Standing over him, alone and crying, was his brother. As I spoke briefly to the tribesman I didn’t reveal how I’d seen his twenty-four-year-old sibling once before, or how I’d recognised the eyes that had stared straight through mine just 48 hours earlier.

Slaughtered like an animal, this son, father and brother was one of the 52 shot dead on March 18. Just one of the more than 140 killed in Yemen’s uprising since February 16, just a statistic of the thousands that have died in clashes with security forces, soldiers and plain-clothes government loyalists during the so-called Arab Spring.

Yemen’s uprising - the region’s longest running - is now into its fourth month. Receiving less coverage than its Arab neighbours, probably not helped by the low Internet penetration here and the three, soon to be two, freelancers covering the entire English speaking press. Or, as one editor said to me yesterday when I rang in from outside the football stadium, as people were being shot:  “Eight people dead? Our focus is on Syria at the moment, sorry.” Yesterday’s death toll rose to 12, marking the bloodiest day in the capital since March 18.

Despite the prospect of a soon to be signed political deal (don’t hold your breath on that one) being mooted as a solution to the ‘crisis’, what has been left out of the political equation is the demonstrators themselves. The youth revolution council has rejected the political agreement and there is no sign of them giving up their fight to rid the country of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and see him prosecuted.

The gap between the politicians and the people is widening, along with it the gulf between now and the visible end of Yemen’s unrest stretches on. From the outside you might not get to see tanks rolling through the streets, or rebel fighters taking on loyalist soldiers as in Syria or Libya. But from the inside you witness the protracted social and economic collapse. Not as dramatic as bombs and guns, but equally effective at destroying a country.

As I’ve explained several times to unbelieving ears in the last two months; Yemen’s determined unarmed protesters don’t’ run from gunfire. If anything they run towards it and they’re increasingly willing to lay down and die for their cause.