Read Online Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes by Victoria Clark - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Victoria Clark
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properties which were confiscated during the rule of the Marxist party [Marxists’ YSP]. And we see such an uproar now because we created comprehensive development in the south. This is because of our efforts in the south.’ 1 A few months later a government analysis of economic activity in the Aden area revealed the dismal reality behind his angry bluster: more than three-quarters of all investment projects in the area between 1992 and 2007 had either failed to materialise or been seriously delayed. Fifty per cent of potential investors cited lack of land as a main obstacle; 49 per cent blamed a lack of co-ordination between government departments; 47 per cent mentioned abandoning their plans after suffering intimidation; legal problems ranging from constant changes to the law to delays in granting judgments were serious obstacles; 12 per cent had not been able to afford the bribes demanded. 2
ON TWO FRONTS AT ONCE
The desperate voices of southerners clamouring to be released from union with Sanaa reached a crescendo in the spring of 2009 with the news that Tariq al-Fadhli had switched allegiances. In a clear break with his paymaster in Sanaa, he was openly championing independence for the south. Referring to a new state called not South Yemen but ‘South Arabia’, he was turning his back on his Yemeni identity and the ghost of the old PDRY to recall the stillborn ’Federation of South Arabia’ which the retreating British had tried to bring about, complete with its flag, its army and its national anthem. Addressing a mass of protestors waving old PDRY flags, at a mass rally in Zinjibar and in an interview with Aden’s al-Ayyam he boldly declared that united Yemen, President Salih’s proudest legacy, ‘was born deformed, grew up disabled and now is thankfully buried’. 9
I was not surprised to hear of his volte-face. If none of the Fadhlis I had met - not old Sultan Nasir, nor Ahmad, nor Tariq, nor Walid the mercenary - had actively denounced the union of the two Yemens, they had left me in little doubt of their dismay at its practical implementation. I vividly recalled Tariq’s ominous recital at our last meeting: ‘We came to the voice of the power, and we returned without any snakes even … And those who knew they already had their snakes clasped them closer.’ Suddenly, with Tariq championing the cause, the Southern Mobility Movement seemed to be acquiring what it had sorely lacked for the three years of its existence: a leader of charisma and energy, to say nothing of a reputation for bravery. On the other hand, that same jihadist background as well as his alliance with Salih in the 1994 war and his willingness to take Salih’s gold for the past fifteen years might count against him, not to mention complaints that he had sold a lot of tribal land to northerners. Ideally, the movement needed a leader without a jihadist, or a Marxist, or a Yemeni unionist, or an exile past, but with Yemen’s last Marxist leader, the Hadhrami Ali Salim al-Bidh who had recently removed from an exile in Oman to another in Austria also offering himself for the position, the choice of candidates seemed uncommonly limited. At around the same time, my companion in trouble at the Aden checkpoint, Dr al-Affifi, excitedly called me from Saudi Arabia late one night to inform me that members of his own mighty Yafai tribe had been badgering him to step into the breach. Some were claiming that no single leader of the movement had emerged, not for lack of discipline or decently trustworthy candidates, but because of a reasonable fear that such a leader would be assassinated - mostly likely in a ‘car accident’ - the instant he made himself known.
Nevertheless, Tariq al-Fadhli was in the forefront of the liveliest secessionist activities over the summer. Within days of his turncoating there was violence in Radfan over the siting of a new military checkpoint, but the Fadhli capital of Zinjibar was bristling with soldiers and more
ON TWO FRONTS AT ONCE
The desperate voices of southerners clamouring to be released from union with Sanaa reached a crescendo in the spring of 2009 with the news that Tariq al-Fadhli had switched allegiances. In a clear break with his paymaster in Sanaa, he was openly championing independence for the south. Referring to a new state called not South Yemen but ‘South Arabia’, he was turning his back on his Yemeni identity and the ghost of the old PDRY to recall the stillborn ’Federation of South Arabia’ which the retreating British had tried to bring about, complete with its flag, its army and its national anthem. Addressing a mass of protestors waving old PDRY flags, at a mass rally in Zinjibar and in an interview with Aden’s al-Ayyam he boldly declared that united Yemen, President Salih’s proudest legacy, ‘was born deformed, grew up disabled and now is thankfully buried’. 9
I was not surprised to hear of his volte-face. If none of the Fadhlis I had met - not old Sultan Nasir, nor Ahmad, nor Tariq, nor Walid the mercenary - had actively denounced the union of the two Yemens, they had left me in little doubt of their dismay at its practical implementation. I vividly recalled Tariq’s ominous recital at our last meeting: ‘We came to the voice of the power, and we returned without any snakes even … And those who knew they already had their snakes clasped them closer.’ Suddenly, with Tariq championing the cause, the Southern Mobility Movement seemed to be acquiring what it had sorely lacked for the three years of its existence: a leader of charisma and energy, to say nothing of a reputation for bravery. On the other hand, that same jihadist background as well as his alliance with Salih in the 1994 war and his willingness to take Salih’s gold for the past fifteen years might count against him, not to mention complaints that he had sold a lot of tribal land to northerners. Ideally, the movement needed a leader without a jihadist, or a Marxist, or a Yemeni unionist, or an exile past, but with Yemen’s last Marxist leader, the Hadhrami Ali Salim al-Bidh who had recently removed from an exile in Oman to another in Austria also offering himself for the position, the choice of candidates seemed uncommonly limited. At around the same time, my companion in trouble at the Aden checkpoint, Dr al-Affifi, excitedly called me from Saudi Arabia late one night to inform me that members of his own mighty Yafai tribe had been badgering him to step into the breach. Some were claiming that no single leader of the movement had emerged, not for lack of discipline or decently trustworthy candidates, but because of a reasonable fear that such a leader would be assassinated - mostly likely in a ‘car accident’ - the instant he made himself known.
Nevertheless, Tariq al-Fadhli was in the forefront of the liveliest secessionist activities over the summer. Within days of his turncoating there was violence in Radfan over the siting of a new military checkpoint, but the Fadhli capital of Zinjibar was bristling with soldiers and more
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