As reportd by Reuters:
* Protests gather momentum, spontaneity
* Revolts in Tunisia, Egypt galvanise opposition
* Al Qaeda could exploit chaos if Saleh overthrown
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent
Feb 15 (Reuters) - Hundreds of pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed in Sanaa on Tuesday in the latest unrest to hit Yemen, where the fall of autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia has galvanised opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Protesters who had first called for reform now carry posters with the message "Leave, leave" to Saleh, a crafty military man who has ruled the fragile southern Arabian state for 32 years.
Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, has offered concessions, promising to step down in 2013 and asking for talks with the opposition, which has agreed to negotiate.
Here are some questions and answers about the Yemeni crisis:
COULD SALEH BE TOPPLED?
Protests are still fairly small, but have become bigger, wilder and more spontaneous since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow. Change in Yemen, a deeply tribal society awash in guns, could be a bloodier process than in Egypt.
Mubarak's removal and an outbreak of popular unrest in Yemen uncoordinated with the formal opposition coalition are new factors in Yemen's troubles, said Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen.
Saleh, who scrapped a trip to Washington this week, faced "very critical" weeks, the Princeton University scholar added.
There have been few indications so far that Saleh, 68, has lost the loyalty of the armed forces, police or security services which have helped keep him in power for three decades.
But the president, whose impoverished country is running out of oil and water, now has fewer resources to grease the network of patronage and favours used in the past to buy the loyalty of unruly tribes and members of his own military-security elite.
"Saleh will fall if he persists on using repressive tactics," said Philip McCrum of the Economist Intelligence Unit, saying his promise to step down in 2013 had bought him some time, but that Mubarak's ouster had changed the playing field.
"These new protesters are not Houthis (northern rebels), they are not southern secessionists, nor are they Al Qaeda militants. They are ordinary, disaffected Yemenis. If he doesn't treat them with respect, that disaffection will grow rapidly."
Fear of chaos in Yemen, however, is far more real and frightening than in Egypt -- a factor Saleh can play on.
"Saleh may be the architect
of many of Yemen's problems today, but he is also the person who has kept the country together for these past 30-odd years," McCrum said.
"Also, Saleh still commands a broad swathe of public support and there is a significant section of society who don't want to see him go and may mobilise against his opponents."
WHO COULD TAKE OVER?
Ruling Yemen would be a daunting challenge for anyone. Saleh himself has likened the task to "dancing on snakes' heads".
He has no obvious successor, although many Yemenis believe he had hoped to lever his eldest son Ahmed, head of the Republican Guard and the special forces, into the post.
Saleh has disowned that idea. "No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock," he said on Feb. 2 alluding to proposals by his party on term limits that might have kept him in office.
Yemen is emerging from a civil war with northern rebels and is fighting a violent secessionist movement in the south. Much of the rugged countryside in both areas already defies central government control, which has always been fitful.
If Saleh fell, another military man might make a grab for power, but further conflict and fragmentation would be likely.
The loosely allied opposition parties are in poor shape to take over. They are now reacting to protests, not leading them.
"The opposition is very confused at the moment, there's no leader that's emerged. There's a variety of different leaders in the opposition that are trying to get a handle on this, but no one really knows what direction to turn," Johnsen said.
WHAT IS FUELLING UNREST?
Saleh has repressed his opponents on occasion, but he prefers to co-opt them and to manipulate powerful constituencies to support him, while maintaining a semblance of democracy.
What really drives popular rage is the widespread corruption fostered on his watch, enriching a privileged elite even as Yemen's 23 million people sink deeper into poverty and despair.
About 40 percent live on less than $2 a day and a third suffer chronic hunger. In Saada, a northern war zone, 45 percent of children are acutely malnourished, UNICEF says.
Unemployment is about 35 percent, said Yemeni political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, citing government estimates.
The cash-strapped government is almost powerless to meet the needs of its fast-expanding population and might swiftly lose control if it cannot pay wages to public servants and soldiers.
A tumble in the Yemeni rial forced the central bank to inject some $850 million, around 15 percent of its reserves, into the market to support the currency in 2010.
Yemen also finds it hard to absorb foreign aid. Only a tenth of the $4.7 billion pledged by donors in 2006 has been disbursed due mainly to administrative hurdles, officials say.
Yemen's water crisis, among the world's worst, is aggravated by irrigation for qat, a mild narcotic leaf beloved by Yemenis.
Thus Saleh has scant room for economic concessions.
"People are upset. They want Saleh to leave. He's been in power for 33 years and has destroyed the country," said Abdullah al-Faiqh, a political science professor at Sanaa University.
WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF INSTABILITY?
Apart from the dire impact on a population already short of jobs, education, food and security, turmoil in Yemen alarms neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Their main worry is that Osama bin Laden's Yemen-based network, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), would acquire a safer haven for attacks beyond Yemen's borders.
"Popular-driven regime change in Yemen is the U.S. and Saudi nightmare scenario," said McCrum. "The idea of the country falling into political limbo, where AQAP is free to operate, will give U.S. and Saudi officials cold sweats."
Washington aims to spend $75 million to double the size of a special Yemeni counter-terrorism unit, a U.S. official said on Monday. The funding, yet to win Congress's approval, was part of a wider effort to pile pressure on AQAP, the official said.
Washington seems to be signalling support for Saleh, though it has sometimes questioned his commitment to fighting AQAP.
"But Yemen could possibly present Washington with a very tricky moral conundrum," McCrum said.
"It has clearly stated that it is on the side of those seeking liberty but if it chooses to continue supporting Saleh in the face of growing popular opposition, then the U.S. could risk losing what little political capital it has left in the Middle East."
* Protests gather momentum, spontaneity
* Revolts in Tunisia, Egypt galvanise opposition
* Al Qaeda could exploit chaos if Saleh overthrown
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent
Feb 15 (Reuters) - Hundreds of pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed in Sanaa on Tuesday in the latest unrest to hit Yemen, where the fall of autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia has galvanised opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Protesters who had first called for reform now carry posters with the message "Leave, leave" to Saleh, a crafty military man who has ruled the fragile southern Arabian state for 32 years.
Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, has offered concessions, promising to step down in 2013 and asking for talks with the opposition, which has agreed to negotiate.
Here are some questions and answers about the Yemeni crisis:
COULD SALEH BE TOPPLED?
Protests are still fairly small, but have become bigger, wilder and more spontaneous since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow. Change in Yemen, a deeply tribal society awash in guns, could be a bloodier process than in Egypt.
Mubarak's removal and an outbreak of popular unrest in Yemen uncoordinated with the formal opposition coalition are new factors in Yemen's troubles, said Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen.
Saleh, who scrapped a trip to Washington this week, faced "very critical" weeks, the Princeton University scholar added.
There have been few indications so far that Saleh, 68, has lost the loyalty of the armed forces, police or security services which have helped keep him in power for three decades.
But the president, whose impoverished country is running out of oil and water, now has fewer resources to grease the network of patronage and favours used in the past to buy the loyalty of unruly tribes and members of his own military-security elite.
"Saleh will fall if he persists on using repressive tactics," said Philip McCrum of the Economist Intelligence Unit, saying his promise to step down in 2013 had bought him some time, but that Mubarak's ouster had changed the playing field.
"These new protesters are not Houthis (northern rebels), they are not southern secessionists, nor are they Al Qaeda militants. They are ordinary, disaffected Yemenis. If he doesn't treat them with respect, that disaffection will grow rapidly."
Fear of chaos in Yemen, however, is far more real and frightening than in Egypt -- a factor Saleh can play on.
"Saleh may be the architect
of many of Yemen's problems today, but he is also the person who has kept the country together for these past 30-odd years," McCrum said.
"Also, Saleh still commands a broad swathe of public support and there is a significant section of society who don't want to see him go and may mobilise against his opponents."
WHO COULD TAKE OVER?
Ruling Yemen would be a daunting challenge for anyone. Saleh himself has likened the task to "dancing on snakes' heads".
He has no obvious successor, although many Yemenis believe he had hoped to lever his eldest son Ahmed, head of the Republican Guard and the special forces, into the post.
Saleh has disowned that idea. "No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock," he said on Feb. 2 alluding to proposals by his party on term limits that might have kept him in office.
Yemen is emerging from a civil war with northern rebels and is fighting a violent secessionist movement in the south. Much of the rugged countryside in both areas already defies central government control, which has always been fitful.
If Saleh fell, another military man might make a grab for power, but further conflict and fragmentation would be likely.
The loosely allied opposition parties are in poor shape to take over. They are now reacting to protests, not leading them.
"The opposition is very confused at the moment, there's no leader that's emerged. There's a variety of different leaders in the opposition that are trying to get a handle on this, but no one really knows what direction to turn," Johnsen said.
WHAT IS FUELLING UNREST?
Saleh has repressed his opponents on occasion, but he prefers to co-opt them and to manipulate powerful constituencies to support him, while maintaining a semblance of democracy.
What really drives popular rage is the widespread corruption fostered on his watch, enriching a privileged elite even as Yemen's 23 million people sink deeper into poverty and despair.
About 40 percent live on less than $2 a day and a third suffer chronic hunger. In Saada, a northern war zone, 45 percent of children are acutely malnourished, UNICEF says.
Unemployment is about 35 percent, said Yemeni political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, citing government estimates.
The cash-strapped government is almost powerless to meet the needs of its fast-expanding population and might swiftly lose control if it cannot pay wages to public servants and soldiers.
A tumble in the Yemeni rial forced the central bank to inject some $850 million, around 15 percent of its reserves, into the market to support the currency in 2010.
Yemen also finds it hard to absorb foreign aid. Only a tenth of the $4.7 billion pledged by donors in 2006 has been disbursed due mainly to administrative hurdles, officials say.
Yemen's water crisis, among the world's worst, is aggravated by irrigation for qat, a mild narcotic leaf beloved by Yemenis.
Thus Saleh has scant room for economic concessions.
"People are upset. They want Saleh to leave. He's been in power for 33 years and has destroyed the country," said Abdullah al-Faiqh, a political science professor at Sanaa University.
WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF INSTABILITY?
Apart from the dire impact on a population already short of jobs, education, food and security, turmoil in Yemen alarms neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Their main worry is that Osama bin Laden's Yemen-based network, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), would acquire a safer haven for attacks beyond Yemen's borders.
"Popular-driven regime change in Yemen is the U.S. and Saudi nightmare scenario," said McCrum. "The idea of the country falling into political limbo, where AQAP is free to operate, will give U.S. and Saudi officials cold sweats."
Washington aims to spend $75 million to double the size of a special Yemeni counter-terrorism unit, a U.S. official said on Monday. The funding, yet to win Congress's approval, was part of a wider effort to pile pressure on AQAP, the official said.
Washington seems to be signalling support for Saleh, though it has sometimes questioned his commitment to fighting AQAP.
"But Yemen could possibly present Washington with a very tricky moral conundrum," McCrum said.
"It has clearly stated that it is on the side of those seeking liberty but if it chooses to continue supporting Saleh in the face of growing popular opposition, then the U.S. could risk losing what little political capital it has left in the Middle East."
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