Life after the signing haven´t changed anything dramatically, except, of course, no mortars, no shooting and, yes, people are more relaxed everywhere, especially the check points. That is a great difference! But we are still confined not to leaving Sanaa, and that is beginning to bother me. I don´t have a lot of time to get a camel and do the very steep and difficult ride and trek from the coast and up to Sanaa, crossing two mountains over 3 000 metres. I don´t sleep a lot now. It is hard to find people. Especially those individuals who can make a difference. My friend, the Self Made Man, is busy and involved in getting the new government on the feet. He is trying to find time to help me, but it is like asking Barack Hussein Obama if he can help me finding a camel and permits to do a trek through the US.

I need more hours a day. The Arabic takes a lot of energy, but I am getting better and better. That is a great joy, but still far to be fluent. Pamela is a step ahead, but I am at least better than Eva who still works on her few words like Pappa (abi in arabic) and Mamma (omi in arabic). In all languages! I have found six characters which will make a difference in the film, but filming still isn´t easy. Security is watching and military is touchy and everywhere, but it is coming together. For a price of some lack of quality sound and images. But not too bad I think. It can be salvaged by a good editor! But that is what has to be done, if you want to film anything during these circumstances.

So right now everything is loose and it seems hard to tie the knot. I don´t have all needed images for those characters I am following. I still don´t have the permits from everyone I need to do the trip. I don´t know exactly where yet, where to get at least one good camel. Zabid or Bayt Al Faqih. Prices seem to range from 1500-2500 dollars, though I have found a place where to leave them in Sanaa, namely at the zoo. Maps doesn´t seem to exist in this country, so I might need somebody who can come with me. I don´t want to travel on the main road, what a scare! But along the old coffe trail from Mocha to Sanaa, via Zabid, Bayt Al Faqih, Mahwiht and Sanaa. Does it still exist?

I have ten days, or say, nine, to get all this onboard. The girls are still sleeping, Time is 4 in the morning and the government have turned on the electricity, Internet doesn´t work, but I can write this piece of worry. I think I am just tired at the moment, because Yemen is still like a dream. These generous, hospitable and child loving people offer a never a boring second. And the Old Sanaa is an amazing world in itself.

Politically, we are all waiting to see what will happen. The Houthis and Salafis are still fighting in the north. And a separatist movement for a free Southern Yemen seems to get stronger in the south. But at least the Saleh Family, Ali Mohsen and Al Ahmars are resting their guns right now. It is actually really, really silent, almost dead here in Sanaa. If you readers want action and extreme problems, read the global newspapers or watch the news on TV. You will find all you need there from terrorism, kidnappings, big amounts of killed Yemenis and ongoing demonstrations.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. I have started a weekly course of documentary filmmaking and dramaturgy together with a Swedish female journalist who lives and works here, Tanya Holm, for a group of young Yemeni girls. At least I will do two classes before I hopefully set off on a camel. It has really opened a little door to this unknown and exciting world of Yemeni women and I am really happy to be a little part of these motivated girls, who really know how to move between all worlds to be able to tell a story. I also want them to help me get in there, but this won´t happen until I get back in early March. I was given a visa of two months, so I have to get out, go to South-America as a guide, go to Yakutsk and Barcelona and lecture, before I can come back on a totally different visa which will allow me and my family to stay until I have done my trip. In shallah, I need three months at least to cross the country!

Woow, I have been sitting here for three hours figuring out what to write, what would be possible to film today and how to go about things. Eva just woke up, wants for the 547th time see parts of the Lion King and I need to do a nice porridge with banana and UNT milk for the family. On my petrol stove, since the school ran out of gas and diesel yesterday. Like most other Yemeni families. I really admire the average Yemeni for staying alive. I really don´t know how they do it with rising costs and wages the same or even lower than before.

I just got back to Sanaa from probably one of the most important excursions I have ever made!

I am bitten all over the body by bedbugs, I may have malaria, I am really, really tired and nobody in the city really believes that I was able to get the permit to leave the city, travel to Taizz which is the other serious flashpoint of the war in Yemen, as the locals call the battle between the Ali Abdullah Saleh and his opponents, and spend Eid al Adha in a village two hours south of the countries most populous city. And spend a week there as the first foreign visitor they had at least for the last 96 years and return without any problems to the city again. And get back with one kilo of smoked camel cheese from the covered bazaar of Taizz!

“There´s no way you will get a permission to leave the city as things are right now!” , I was told by pretty much everybody, when I tried to get a permit to go and visit my very good friend Rashad in his home village located in between two big mountains south of the country´s biggest city Taizz.

Rashad was my teacher last time I was in Yemen two years ago, preparing for my first major Expedition since Siberia, and I have been in touch with him since. He is, as most Yemenis today, going through some really, really hard times. He is working half time at the Iranian Embassy, since he speaks Persian and is a shia, but on his wage, about 300 euro a month, he supports 17 people. And the war forced him to send his wife, his studying brothers, and his 15 months old son back to the village. Because he lives on the border between an area dominated by the government and one of the main opponents, general Ali Mohsen. His neighbourhood have been badly shelled and he therefore sleeps in the hall of his apartment, to have as many walls in between himself and the outside world if hit by a rocket. A month ago it was so bad he had to run zigzag on the streets outside his house to catch a bus to work. He is an intellectual, 31 years of age, politically aware and one of the Yemenis around which a future middle class will, or should, be built. Once you get a big and influential middle class, in any country, than you have something of a safe base to build a country on. And he speaks fluent English, and as usual, when it comes to pretty much all analysis as regards to the situation in the country, it is based on people located in one of the three big cities, who never seems to venture outside these, because, if it is one thing I have learned from travelling, the heart of a country is NOT in the cities, it is in the villages. So, this would be a very important visit for anyone making political analysis! That is if I did get the permit to leave Sanaa. Which I did get after 4 days of hard work. The solution was me going personally to the so called tourist police myself and what happened is so much Yemen!

“No way, it is impossible!” the person in charge told me directly, “The Minister of Interior have personally told us not to give out any permits. The risk is to big.”

However, as always, you can discuss virtually any issue with the Yemenis. They’re amongst the most conversational people on earth. They love to talk and discuss pretty much any subject. So I just told him truthfully about my love to the country and its people and asked:

“What would the danger be if I travelled together with Rashad to his village? I know there was people killed in Taizz yesterday I said, but we would just pass through. And how can it be safe for Rashad but unsafe for me? It doesn´t make sense!”

He agreed and made a few phone calls and said, ok, if I fly there, I could go to Taizz. But I said, I want to see the scenery, which I have heard is amongst the best on earth on the road to Taizz. Plus that I wanted to see if it all was as dangerous as everybody seems to think. I have already realised after arriving in Sanaa, after all those incredibly overwhelming warning stories of the danger, that people tend to overdo things, especially if you are in media or in security professionally as many of our friends. Sanaa has been dead safe so far. And, I also wanted to see Yarim, the place where the Swede Peter Forsskål died on the first known Expedition exploring Yemen at the end of the 18^th Century, to so called Carsten Neighbur Expedition.

“Sorry, it is impossible than” , the person in charge said with a smile.

Me and my new teacher, Abdul Aziz, who was my translator, we left the office with a negative answer, but laughing, since everyone was so kind, funny and helpful. When we passed the gate, the young and heavily armed guard, asked what had happened and where we wanted to go, so we told him and he exclaimed:

“But Taizz isn´t dangerous at all. I am from there!”

So he took us upstairs to the real boss, a great old man, who smiled, joked and laughed and he said he understood I wanted to see his beautiful country close up, so he called the guy who had said no, who in an instant came running up and asked which village we wanted to do to and when Abdual Aziz told him, he said:

“I come from the next village!”

So that is how I got the permit!

Next morning I ran through Tahrir Square, which is occupied by Saleh supporters and their big tents, and ran next to the great walls of the walled city to Bab Al Yemen, where I met Rashad and boarded a bus to Taizz. The supposed 5 hours took almost 8 hours. All those vicious check points I had been warned about, by Rashad as well, who a month earlier had been stopped at one, been kicked out of the bus by the Republican Guards, a hardcore unit run by Salehs son Ahmed, and forced to walk all the night to get help. Just because he was a single man and these loners were thought to be amongst the protesters against the regime. Well, we weren’t stopped once. Once in Taizz we grabbed a taxi, passed through the area were 7 people had been killed two days earlier by shelling, avoided a heard of beggars who showed their children covered by serious wounds when first seen, but when checked more clear, they were all fakes, however, this specific area looked like a bombed out Beirut, and we there after passed through the city and headed out for the village. It took another two hours and we arrived on a really, really bad dirt road late at night in the darkness, but it was such a relief stepping out into the silence of the village and the fresh mountain air. Country life!

Now, Rashad had told me that as far as he had heard, based on the word of the oldest man in the village, a 96 year old, they have never had a foreign visitor. So there were some pressures on Rashad that I didn´t know beforehand. I was kind of the Ambassador for All Foreigners and my behaviour would be important. So, my visit could well determine whether more foreigners could visit the village in the future. And, for Rashad, it was important that I personally got a good opinion of the village and its inhabitants since he knew why I was there.

Rashad lived in a simple house built by stones, I think six rooms hosting 17 people, and built in stone on the outside but by clay on the inside. Easy to keep clean, low ceilings to keep cool and just a few windows to let through the wind. They did get electricity two years back and had running water and as the rest of Yemen, electricity a couple of hours a day. So the house was beautifully lit up by kerosene lamps. Simple but very comfortable. The family was extra ordinary hospitable and treated me like a King. We were served a great meal of mashed beans and giant pieces of home made bread plus uncounted cups of sweet tea. I fell a sleep immediately inside the meeting room, or mafrag as it is called in Yemen, on the floor. The beans made me release unknown amounts of air and when I woke up next morning I realised some of his 5 brothers had slept in the same room. Not a sound from them when I woke a few times in the complete darkness.

Rashad had returned to the village for Eid Al Adha, as most other men we met during my time there and he had brought loads of clothes and presents, which was expected, but which of course strained his economy badly. His elder brother had opted not to leave Sanaa, he didn´t have the money to buy presents. Or not even a ticket. He worked for a government agency, but hadn´t been payed a wage for seven months!

For me the visit in the village was not only a great time, but very important since I needed to know if my thoughts on the country was right or wrong! As I said earlier, the problem with the media today, is that all journalists and analytics base themselves in the cities and base their opinions on what goes around there. But the cities have never, and never will be, the heart of a community or country. What I learned during these four lovely days in the village gave me a very important perspective of the situation and its people.

Most discussions in the country are done by meeting in a mafrag, a meeting room, and chewing khat. And since this was Eid and the wedding season we pretty much immediately ending up in a mafrag belonging to a neighbour who was getting married. Now a wedding is really straining the economy for families of the groom. The dowry is at least 800 000 Yemeni rials, which is like 3000 US dollars. For this reason, today, most men can´t get married until say they´ve reached at least 35 years of age. Half of the dowry goes directly to the father of the bride. The rest is spent on gifts and food and, most of all, khat for all the guests. Rashad got married to his wife two years back and still is in debt. Most of the partners are picked by the mothers, sisters and the women of the groom’s family. So Rashad´s wife is his uncles daughter.

“What do you think about the issue of dowry?” I asked at one khat chew and they all said more or less the same: “It wouldn´t be a problem if we had work and good wages.”

There’s no doubt the khat is extremely important to most Yemenis. Due to a bad harvest season and the war, there was little khat around and most of the days of the village was kind of dominated by the urge to get more khat. I, of course, as a visitor, to be accepted, one has to eat and live like the locals, so I did of course chew khat. I have to admit, just as the last time I was here, it hardly affects me. It is more like the effects of a few cups of strong coffee, nothing else. But what I like though with the issue of khat chews is the meeting of all people in the mafrag and the discussions that take place. I literally spent a whole working day all together chewing khat and learned an enormous amount of things of great value. Everything from sufism to how the village buries there dead. We talked a lot about politics and there’s no doubt that the sitting, legally elected president of Abdullah Ali still has supporters. People who thinks he has done a lot of good to the country. Like building a functioning infrastructure, schools and so on, because this just didn´t exist properly before he came to power 30 years back. However, what I like the most with the kat chews is that it shows that Yemen really have a base for democracy, because in a kat chew, no matter what your opinions, you have a say without getting attacked to badly. Now of course, most kat chews I attended and took part in, is all male. Women have their own, as political as the men’s.

As regards to the women in the village; Most of the time in the village I just saw them running away in fear of the nasrani, the Christian, as was also the case initially in Rashad´s home. But after a few days the women of the house moved around freely as normal. It was just a case of the worries of the unknown. The older women of the village were dressed in very colourful clothes and were uncovered. And I saw them working hard throughout the visit. Very few of them had work outside the village and lived their traditional roles.

Everybody in the village was very happy, even honoured; that I was there and the dignity I was shown lacks most experiences I have gone through as a traveller…..

(I wrote this section between 5 and 7 in the morning and than the power cut arrived and it is now 6 p.m, and since it is Eid, Sanaa is dead. No people, no sounds of the war and nothing gets done, so I still need a few hours to reload all batteries. So the only written work I can do is a few hours every day. But Eva is in such a brilliant mood every day, so there´s not a dead second!)

…power is back….the village just to belong to the Jewish community which had been present in the country a long time before the arrival of the prophet and Islam, but most of them left the country when Israel was proclaimed 1949. An operation called the Magic Carpet. The village has a Jewish name and when they left, the land was shared between the inhabitants who’d lived their for a long time. Rashad´s father, a builder, moved in afterwards, which means they can’t own any land except where they’re house stands. They are also too poor to be able to vie any power. The area is still under the rule of a local sheikh, which I met and who was dressed as a sanaani, with the belt and jambiyya (see attached photo) and really nice, but it is an inherited power on which a lot of Abdullah Ali Saleh has built his governance.

The wedding started very early one morning with professional drummers showing up banging incessantly throughout the day and since the groom were a neighbour to Rashad we went over there first as guests and than Rashad was their to meet the other guests coming from the villages. Lots of kisses and dancing started and around lunch we were all invited to a big meal of meat, rice and sweets in the mafrag and than we all started a long session of khat chewing, 6 hours, and it was so interesting so we missed joining the other men who set of in a long caravan to the home village of the bride accompanied by the drummers! In dark they returned with the bride and when she reached the house of the man she had never met, his sister, mother and their female friends were there to make her feel welcome. Loads of fireworks exploded when she arrived.

The Eid Al Adha celebrations followed the next day with the family slaughtering a sheep as a sign that God intervened when Abraham felt forced to sacrifice his son Ismail. A big lunch followed where we all, like hungry vultures, ate from a big plate of all what the sheep could offer, rice, sweets and other delicious plates. Another khat session followed after a long walk through the village together with one of Rashads best friends, who showed us his khat farm, a real money maker, and he told me that the school had one teacher on 120 pupils and that was a serious problem they were facing. The village survived on people like Rashad, who was working outside the village, sending money back. Even though it was beautifully tucked in by two mountain rages, the farmed land wasn´t offering enough to the fast growing population. The growing number of people had also virtually taken all burnable trees in the niegbourhood and a bad erosion didn´t look to far away. Before I left I asked Rashad if he would like to live forever in the village he loved, gained weight every time he returned and he knew inside out:

“The future lies in Sanaa” , he answered; “And I am used to what the city has to offer in intellectual challenges and they just doesn´t exist in the village, if you have big ambitions as I have!”

I returned the long arduous way next day, met a really dirty, polluted and run down Taizz, ran into an armoured vehicle pointing its barrel on me, very nasty indeed and took the bus back to Sanaa and only got stopped at the last check point before entering the city by a very improper soldier from the Republican Guard, but my permit was enough to cool him down that I wasn´t carrying any cameras…

Summary: Great trip! I did learn a lot, got some of the best footage I have ever filmed and 5 minutes of the documentary done, BUT, I also did get a major tip where to get good camels for a reasonable fee, Bait Al Faqih! And being a country boy myself of a meagre background with a dad being a builder, is very helpful. Most people thought I was a scientist or a doctor and when learning that my background was simple, teared down some unnecessary walls of communication.

Back in Sanaa. It is very silent, no movement, according to local media, there might be some major developments soon on the political scene, like Saleh signing the GCC agreement. And Eva?

We don´t regret a second bringing her! She has acclimatized quickly, put on fat, met and sees the most extra ordinary things every day and she is in a better mood than I have ever seen before. We move around pretty much everywhere and it all feels very safe. I have seen the Lion King quite few times though…only way to put her to sleep….Pamelas research is moving forward according to plan.

By the way, the other week I took the best shot I ever have, see http://500px.com/photo/2985344

For more images, go to this photo gallery!

Waiting for a war

by

Siris Hartkorn

It is not often that you find yourself waiting for a war, but these days I do along with the rest of the Yemeni population. We are in a stand off caught in a power game far beyond our control. A game that involves a global and a regional superpower, two families and one tribe. Ourselves, no matter if human rights activist, protesters, Islamists, secessionists or just normal citizens trying to live our lives are nothing but pieces in a puzzle so complex that there is reason to fear it will not be solved anytime soon.

Copyright Melany Markham

A fragmented snapshot

If all actors in Yemen where to freeze in this exact moment and somebody take a snapshot of the country it would look like this: The president and most of the government is out of the country. They are in Saudi Arabia recovering from an inside attack on the presidential palace back in early June, killing seven and wounding 87, including the president himself. In their absence the vice president is officially ruling the country, but without much real power he is exercising a cautious balancing act from his office at the Ministry of Defense, under the protection of Ali Mohsin and 1. Armored Division. Ali Mohsin is an old alley to the president and origins from the same tribe, but turned his back on the president and joined the revolution after the killing of 51 youth protesters in Sana’a on March 18. He has taken half the military with him and Sana’a is currently divided between the checkpoints of 1. Armored Division and the Republican Guard still loyal to Saleh. While loyal to the revolution, Ali Mohsin and his soldiers remains on the payroll of the government, money they spent on giving military training to the peaceful youth protesters. The president’s son, Ahmed Saleh, has moved into the presidential palace from where he together with his cousins continues to exercise the real power – or at least the power the government has left. In the southern province of Abyan militant Islamists are fighting against the military and local tribesmen. The Islamists has seized control over the city Zinjibar and while the soldiers of the 25. Brigade fighting against the Islamists are no longer receiving salaries, most people believe that the Islamists are funded by the government to prove Saleh’s point; that without him as ruler Yemen will be consumed by chaos. USA has launched an extensive drone program in the south, a program which legal fundament remains questionable. North/east of the capital in al Jawf province Houthi rebels from Sa’ada are fighting against local tribes loyal to the opposition party Islah.

Not far from the fighting, at the revolutionary square in Sana’a, Houthis are sitting together with Islah party members, chewing qat and planning the revolution. A tribal alliance consisting of sheikhs from all of Yemen’s powerful tribes have announced that Saleh will not rule Yemen again, as long as they are alive. Yet splits exist within all tribes, especially the president’s own, and loyalty is divided. Just outside the capital in Arhab district the government is bombing local tribes, yet has not managed to defeat them. The government says the tribes of Arhab are trying to take over Sana’a International Airport and the strategically important Sama military base, while the opposition argues that the tribes are fighting to block Republican Guard soldiers from reaching the capital. The bombs can be heard in Sana’a and the airport is frequently closed for flights. Confused yet? Then it might not help to mention the interference from the regional superpower Saudi Arabia or the global, USA. Both remains deeply involved in the conflict, USA driven by a counter terrorism narrative and Saudi Arabia by a combination of concern for national security and domestic legitimacy. It is not in the interest of neither Saudi Arabia nor USA that Saleh returns, yet he is determined to do so. Saleh’s has openly stated his plan for Yemen; to leave the country as it was 33 years ago, when he resumed power, meaning a country fragmented by conflict and lack of a central state. Why would he want that? Would be a reasonable question, and the answer is as absurd as everything else in Yemeni politics; to prove that he, and only he, can rule a country where half the population owns a weapon, tribes are in de facto control most places and where the everyday life of the majority of the population, who remains the poorest in the Arab region, is dictated by a mixture of religion and consumption of the mildly narcotic plant qat. Half the population is illiterate and unemployed. Malnutrition levels are comparable to sub-Saharan countries and the country is running out of water as well as oil, the last making up 75 pct. of the state income. This was the statistics before the crisis started earlier this year, since then there has been an acute shortage in fuel, leading to an increase in prices on basic goods such as water, food, cooking gas and fuel reaching as high as 400 percent on some goods. How the regular Yemeni survives remains a mystery.

This snapshot is not just complex it is also pessimistic leaving little hope for Yemen’s prospect as a united country heading towards democracy and rule of law – the objectives of the youth revolution. Nobody knows what will happen next, but most seem to accept that full blown civil war is a likely scenario. But even with this accepted, the war remain a semi reality. It is not here yet, but it is still affecting our lives. It might never come, but we will only know for sure when it comes. It is a distant circumstance of our lives yet a very real part of our future. So while we are waiting for the war that might, might not, come, maybe tomorrow or maybe in a year, we continue to live our lives. And life in Yemen these day mainly consist of two activities; overcoming practical challenges and gathering in qat sessions discussing politics.

Enemies gather in the mafraj

The practical challenges might seem trivial compared to the bigger picture, yet they take up a lot of time, planning and resources. Take for example an easy task such as having a functional cell phone. There are three main cellphone providers in Yemen; Sabafon, MTN and Yemen Mobile. All three used to have their share of customers, but then the revolution came and with Sabafon owned by a key opposition figure and businessman, it was sabotaged by the government. Having Sabafon you can no longer call landlines or receive international calls. So the customers shifted to MTN, which in turn doesn’t have the capacity for that many active phones, resulting in poor coverage and frequent shut down of the network. That leaves Yemen Mobile. Having been unable to use my MTN phone for a couple of days, I decided to get out and buy a Yemen Mobile phone card. First step was to find a friend with fuel enough to take me to an ATM and then a teleshop. Having found a friend willing to help, next stop was an ATM. Yet my international visa card only works in one ATM in Sana’a and this happens to be a bank owned by the same opposition figure owning Sabafon. For the same reason the bank is short of cash, and to prevent people from withdrawing too much, they frequently turn of the power to the ATM. Simple solution, a lot of headache. It took me three days of going back and forth to the bank, until I finally had luck and managed to withdraw some cash. Right away my friend and I went out to buy the new phone card, only to find out that most teleshops where closed due to power outage. After a two hours search my friend and I found an open teleshop with a generator and I delivered the cash, a copy of my passport and my visa plus fingerprints and got a Yemeni Mobile phone card in return. Problem solved, until I got home and put my new phone card in my phone, only to learn that Yemen Mobile only works on certain phones and mine where not one of them. Next day’s project was then to repeat the procedure, but this time to buy a new phone. A trivial practical matter of getting a new phone card thus took me a week and the procedure would be the same for almost everything. With no electricity, fuel or gas moving around, making a photocopy, getting fresh food, cleaning, doing laundry, making a cup of coffee, checking your email and almost all other daily activities turn from routine to projects.

When not engaged in solving the challenges of everyday life people meet in qat sessions to exchange the latest rumors and discuss political ideas. The growing and transportation of qat demands a lot of water and fuel, yet the price on qat has gone down during the crisis. As most other things this is blamed on the government, not because people are very unsatisfied with the cheap qat, but because qat keeps people calm and thereby prevents the public protests from escalating. Yet qat also serves to keep the political discussions alive and bring together people from fighting fractions. It is not unusual to sit in a qat session where half the mafraj supports the president and the other half the opposition. Discussion can be heated, but after the initial hours of loud exchange of opinions the qat will kick in and bring people into more intimate and low conversations one to one. By the end of a qat session political enemies put their guns back in their belt, grab their flashlight and leave back out in the dark night where the sound of machineguns can be heard in the streets. In qat sessions without competing political interests among the attending the subject of debate will instead be the many rumors surrounding almost every event. In a country where free media has been interpreted as free fantasy depending on the political affiliation of the owners, nobody really trusts any media. Instead information flows through informal networks and personal contacts. In Yemen there is no such thing as one political reality or one truth. It is the rumors that shape peoples life and creates powerful imperatives. And they travel fast. You might hear a certain rumor in a qat session with politically connected and well educated Yemenis, only to hear the same rumor being retold by your illiterate neighbor later the same evening. When presented to a Western audience, most rumors would appear to be nothing but fantasy driven conspiracy theories. Yet in the history of Yemen there is no conspiracy theory unlikely enough to later turn out right. No matter the subject, there is always more to it than the official story which also is the reason, that international media tends to get Yemen wrong.

So is it all black everything? No, it’s neither black nor white. Yemen is neither going to turn into a new Somalia nor a new Saudi Arabia. Yemen needs to be taken for what it is, an ancient civilization with a long tradition of mediating conflict, managing competing power interests and overcoming crisis. A country currently facing the biggest political and financial problems in its history and therefore urgently needs the assistance of the international community, not to fight Al-Qaida, but to feed it’s children. A country so complex that nobody, not even the Yemenis, will ever be able to fully grasp it. And while the future looks everything but bright, we will continue to live our lives – in the vacuum waiting for the war, through the fighting and destruction during a war and in the new reality that will follow a war. Not because it is possible, but because giving up is impossible. And from what we hear, the war might never come.

Siris Hartkorn is currently working as a security consultant and political analyst. She is now permanently based in Yemen but it is her fifth time in Yemen since 2009, the other times she has been there to do research. In the fall she was based in Somalia and Kenya for DDG.

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Why Yemen is not Egypt

by

Kyle Anthony Foster

With the winds of change blowing across the Arab world, many news organizations are focusing on Yemen as a potential next Egypt. My analysis is that Yemen will not descend into chaos as Egypt, or at least Cairo, has. Why? Simple. The people of Yemen do not hate President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

President Saleh has a remarkable touch with the people of Yemen. He’s actually a pretty hard-working president who is seen regularly on television at various ribbon-cutting ceremonies across the country. From large-scale projects to small schools, Ali is there, with the people, promoting the interests of the country. President Saleh’s sons have a respectable reputation and — unlike other sons of Arab leaders — they have not run rampant over the population.

In the 2006 Yemen presidential election, Ali Abdullah Saleh won the vote with a reported 77 percent. International election monitors were welcomed and the results were reported as generally fair. In a region where president/dictators generally win with 99 percent of the vote, this result was monumental as a standard for transparency and fairness in elections for the region. Furthermore, it may not have been too far off the mark.

The Saleh regime has managed to keep the faith with the people of Yemen. Yemenis enjoy perhaps more freedoms than the people of any other Arab nation. Civil society institutions are permitted and encouraged by grants from the Yemen Social Fund For Development. The Yemeni press has issues with the government; however, relative to other Arab states, it enjoys an incredible amount of freedom of expression.

Yemenis understand that their country faces some monumental problems. Yemen is the poorest Arab state, and unemployment and illiteracy are rampant — both figures hover around 50 percent. The nation faces a crushing water shortage. The list of development concerns is endless, and if not faced now, there will be trouble later.

The winds of change are blowing across the Arab region, and if they continue to do so for an extended time, the Saleh regime could be vulnerable. Most Yemenis do have concerns about the pace of change and the level of commitment to democracy that the Saleh regime embraces. But they are generally willing to extend President Saleh more time, with limits. For now, the social contract that President Saleh has earned through genuine concern for the nation will stand.

Kyle next to me at a kat chew in Sanaa

Kyle Foster is an international development and political consultant.

He studied at the University of Nebraska and the School For
International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont.  He lives in Sana’a,
Yemen and the United States.

Read previous article by Kyle on my site here!

And don´t miss this slide show from Yemen here!

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Yemen Needs Change

by

Rashad Saeed

Rashad Saeed

2011 brought freedom to many Arab states, starting in Tunisia moving to Egypt, Jordan and Yemen, and proved that people are still alive where authorities and regimes thought that they had killed the will of the people. In the last two years, Yemen witnessed a lot of political developments, but the most important are the postponement of parliament elections for two years  and creating a national talk committee  to undertake the national discussion between the congress ruling Party and opposition. The talk committee started with 200 representatives, and then reduced to 16, ended with 4 representatives as the president wished.

By the end of 2010, specially, after the 20^th Gulf Cup and the success of organizing it in Aden despite of all security concerns; authority, congress party and their allays misunderstood how to use the success and thought that they could control all national crisis the same – through the power of security forces – so, president Saleh appeared in front of students at the Aden University  announcing  his move to elections alone and canceling the role of the national talk committee ignoring all agreements agreed on before. At the same time, the ruling party representatives in the Yemeni parliament presented new constitutional amendments which allowed the president to run for no limited periods.

On the other side, the opposition represented by The Joint meeting of parties realized this bold step of the ruling party which controlled the army and security forces, so, they threatened to go down to the street to start their peaceful demonstrations, but the ruling party had no ears to listen to that.

The joint meeting of parties decided to make 2011 a year of peaceful conflict and went to street calling for “popular Intifada”. At the beginning, they organized some festivals in some cities, while the ruling party was also preparing for the elections. Meanwhile, Tunisia’s people were arising against their regime and after a few days they won the battle. It didn´t seem that the Yemeni regime learnt anything from the Tunisian lesson. President Saleh appeared again in front of some military congregation  informing people and opposition parties that he refused the results of national talk committee and his wished to continue going to elections alone. President Saleh said in his speech that Yemen is not Tunisia and he would not allow what happened in Tunisia to happen in Yemen. This was also was the American position concerning Yemen.

But the Tunisian revolution gave the Yemenis a new spirit to return to the streets to protest and once again raise their demands of changes and reforms, aloud enough for the regime  to understand that changes are needed. But the regime continued their stubbornness concerning elections, national talk and constitutional amendments.

Unlike the wish of the regime, the freedom spirit moved on from Tunisia to reach Egypt – a country which is considered as a reference for many Arab regimes – caused a lot of changes there and once again encouraged Yemenis to return to the streets and raise their ceiling of demands despite the concessions presented by Saleh .

Last week, the joint meeting of parties called for a “Thursday of Anger”, so, hundreds of thousands of people went to streets in many Yemeni governorates demanding for change, chanting against corruption and despotism and raising songs that demanded the president to depart with his party, but even thought they never stopped our protests, they gathered their supporters and pushed them to streets in a step to show their power to the opposition which is trying – as they think – to ride the wave of revolution and changes happening in the Arab area.

They won´t win over the people.

Rashad Saeed

If you want to get into contact with Rashad, write to me at mikael@mikaelstrandberg.com and I will forward it.

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I met these gentlemen on my way to the Matam....

So I just walked into a hole in a wall, sat down at the back of the room, next to a big poster of the president Ali Abdullah Saleh who was gazing kindly down at the hungry lot of Sunday eaters. The restaurant was kind of closing up, it was midday Friday and the big prayer day for all our globes Moslem’s. Traditionally dressed Yemenis hurried past the restaurant, bags of kat in their hands and the jambiyya polished and tucked down in the belt and the muezzins were already calling. A couple of beggars passed by, the owner gave one of them a cup of chai, (tea) a coupe of flat breads and sent him on his way. This particular beggar sleeps just outside the school and I give him an orange on and off and some change. It makes me feel good and he looks happier. For a moment. And that is enough for me. Because the fact is that people who have been hit by the shit of life, knows what a difference the merest of gifts can do for one´s happiness and attitude. Friday is of course the big giving-day for the Muslim world and that means that there are a lot of unfortunate people walking around the winding streets of Old Sanaa.

Salta - the national dish of Yemen

My salta was delivered steaming hot together with flat bread and some spices and it took me a good ten minutes before I could tuck into this great meal. The salta initially looked, for me, like a meal of left overs, but in reality, this national dish of Yemen, consist of meat broth, eggs, ground meat, onions, tomatoes and something called a hilba, which all of you know is a mixture of fenugreek and grated leeks. A very filling and tasty meal, eaten of course with the right hand.

Inside the restaurant looking out on the busy, narrow 26th of September

This was the first time since I arrived to Yemen that I was out cruising Sanaa by myself and even though I really love the company of my good friends here, Lise, Pamela, Tobias and Bob, I have always pretty much been by myself during my twenty three years of exploration. And I love it! And it is dead easy in Yemen! The difference is that it gives you ample time to observe and understand things better. You see and notice all the details you otherwise always loose and it is, of course, much better of you want to practice the Arabic words hopefully picked up during the lessons. And for the first I really enjoyed the combination of the strong calls from the muezzins all around my neighbor at the Tahrir Square, the cramped restaurant, the gazing and smiles from all passer by´s, gee, there´s so many characters here and the feeling of satisfaction I have is enormous regarding me having such an opportunity to be able to experience Sanaa´s old City at this time of my life.

I feel very priviliged indeed!

Please visit my main blog to read about all the preparations for the biggest of Expeditions!

Matam owner and salta expert -Ahmed