Yemen’s Hidden War:

Sectarian clashes between Houthis and Salafist tribesmen have left 52,000 people displced in the past three months in Yemen’s remote northern province of Hajjah. 
(special thanks to UNICEF, Yemen)

Democracy Now!

In an interview, Yemeni activist Tawakkul Karman said her Nobel Peace prize is a victory for Yemen and for all of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Kaman is a 32-year-old journalist and the head of the Yemeni non-profit group, Women Journalists Without Chains. She was detained for a time during the political unrest earlier this year. She is the first Arab female to win the Nobel Peace Prize and is believed to the youngest winner of the peace prize to date, slightly edging out the Irish activist Mairead Corrigan who won in 1976. Democracy Now! gets reaction to the announcement from British journalist Iona Craig, who has been closely following the uprising in Yemen. “This nobel peace prize will actually in some ways go towards protecting her. Now she will become an even greater international figure and certainly if the regime sought to detain her again, I think they would create a huge problem for themselves,” Craig says. 

It’s been a long battle

Although currently on leave, thoughts are still with Yemen.

Sorting through old video footage I took these clips on March 12 but never uploaded them.

Just one of the more violent days in more than six months now of daily protests. At the end of this street battle Central Security Forces retreated after running out of water and teargas leaving two men dead and dozens wounded. I along with one demonstrator had a narrow escape that morning when a single bullet from a sniper passed the three foot gap between our two heads and through the metal shutter of a shop door we were standing against.

As government officials maintain the line that Saleh will be back in Sana’a “soon”, added to by today’s official statement that his “medical leave” is “temporary” and he “will return to Yemen from Saudi Arabia to re-assume his duties soon after he recovers”, this song keeps reverberating around my head.

CBSNewsOnline

Mediation efforts between Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the political opposition have all but collapsed, leaving the country on the brink of civil war, reports Iona Craig of Global Radio News.

DemocracyNow.org -

Democracy Now! interviews independent journalist Iona Craig, who is reporting from the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a. Clashes are continuing across Yemen in the growing conflict over President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s refusal to step down. At least 15 people were reportedly killed in overnight clashes in Sana’a. Dozens have been killed since Monday, when artillery explosions and machine-gun fire shattered a tenuous cease-fire that lasted less than 48 hours.

Dawn this morning across the north of Sana’a as renewed clashes broke out between Sadeq al-Ahmar’s men and government troops in the district of Hasaba.