In the country's south, the government is waging a similarly repressive campaign against a secessionist movement. Until 1990, Yemen was divided into two countries, with the south enjoying the backing of Moscow. With the Stalinist bureaucracy's move to dissolve the USSR, this support ended, leading to unification. The Saleh government's ruthless repression of protests against the dismissal of southern government officials and military personnel and other forms of regional discrimination provoked an armed insurgency.
It is largely to secure US backing for these repressive campaigns that Saleh has collaborated with the US "war on terrorism," directed against Islamist elements with whom the president was formerly allied. The Yemeni government has invoked terrorism as a justification for suppressing all opposition, with the imprisonment, torture and disappearance of political dissidents, journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates.
When oil refinery workers struck last month in protest over wages and working conditions, nearly 50 of them were rounded up by troops and thrown into al-Qatta'a prison.
Simmering unrest is fueled by the country's desperate poverty. Nearly half the population lives on $2 or less a day, while a quarter suffers from chronic hunger.
Also provoking opposition and generating support for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the US intervention in the country. Hundreds of US special operations troops and intelligence operatives are deployed in Yemen, carrying out assassination missions and training Yemeni security forces.
US missile attacks, which are apparently now to be escalated, have sparked public outrage. In the worst of these, 41 civilians, 14 of them women and 21 of them children, were slaughtered last December 17. A US Navy Tomahawk missile carrying cluster bombs ripped through the victims' homes in the southern district of Abyan.
A subsequent drone missile attack reportedly aimed at an alleged Al Qaeda member in Marib province last May instead killed the province's deputy governor, Sheikh Jaber al-Shabwani, and members of his family, prompting members of his tribe to attack an oil pipeline operated by the government.
In a statement given to the Yemen Observer last Thursday, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Shabwani, brother of the deputy governor killed in the US drone attack, reported that US drones are now flying daily over Marib province.
"The drones are flying over Marib every 24 hours and there is not a day that passes that we don't see them over Wadi Abida," said al-Shabwani. "Occasionally they fly at a lower altitude while at other times they fly at a higher altitude. The atmosphere has become wary because of the presence of US drones and fear that they could strike at any time."
The New York Times on Monday quoted unnamed US officials as saying that the Al Qaeda group in Yemen "might pose the most immediate threat to American soil." Such claims are the likely precursor to a major US military attack.
For its part, the Wall Street Journal editorial page invoked the Yemeni terror allegations as justification for the Obama administration's declared intention to carry out the "targeted killing" of a US citizen, Anwar al Awlaki.
Without presenting any evidence, the administration has accused the New Mexico-born Muslim cleric of involvement in terrorist plots and ordered him killed. It marks the first time in history that the US government has publicly called for the assassination of one of its own citizens.
The Journal editorial denounced a lawsuit brought by the man's family and the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenges the right of Obama to act as judge, jury and executioner, without presenting any charges, much less allowing a defense, for the man he has ordered killed. The Obama administration has insisted that the authorization to use military force passed by Congress in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks gives it the right to summarily kill anyone it deems a terrorist, including US citizens.
The attempt "to thwart these attacks in a lawsuit could get Americans killed," the Journal warns, ignoring the obvious fact that failing to thwart them will certainly result in the death of at least one American and potentially many more who fall afoul of Washington.
The editorial further argues that the latest terror scare "underscores how crucial it is that US intelligence be able to eavesdrop on email and phone conversations" without having to obtain a warrant.
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