Anti-Government
Protests In Yemen Turn Bloody
September
20, 2011
Dozens
of anti-government protesters died in Yemen over the last two days after
loyalist security forces opened fire on the main square in the capital Sanaa.
Les Campbell, who runs the Middle East and North Africa programs at the
National Democratic Institute, talks to Steve Inskeep about the political
wrangling over the future of the country.
DAVID
GREENE, host: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David
Greene.
STEVE
INSKEEP, host: And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Let's
try to get some perspective on the excruciating events in Yemen this week.
According to witnesses, security forces have killed protestors and even killed
children. Dozens of people have been killed since Sunday. Les Campbell is
tracking those events from the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit
group that supports democracy abroad. He's a regular visitor to Yemen. He's in
our studios.
Good
morning.
LES
CAMPBELL: Good morning.
INSKEEP:
How have Yemenis ended up with another round of violence? I thought the
president was on his way out.
CAMPBELL:
Well, it's an amazing situation where the president was badly injured. Most
members of his government were injured at the same time in a bombing on their
mosque. The head of the Shura Council, who was standing beside the president at
the time, died of his injuries later. He's in Saudi Arabia. He has been since
June. And yet there's no transition in Yemen.
Since
that moment, two opposing forces basically, defected soldiers from the First
Armored Brigade, and the president's son, Ahmed Ali, have been in a standoff,
opposing trenches. And this week, the fighting started between those two forces
- tanks, mortars, heavy machine guns. And we've seen the casualties.
INSKEEP:
Even though the president himself, from Saudi Arabia, has appointed his vice
president to negotiate a transition of power, which is the latest of I don't
know how many discussions of transition, that's just not happening?
CAMPBELL:
Well, the president did issue a decree saying that the vice president could
talk, although from the opposition's point of view - and when I say opposition
that's a broad word. That could include the southern movement, the protesters
in the squares, the political opposition. From the opposition's point of view,
this is not really a negotiation. This is just another stalling tactic.
And
it's hard to say who fired the first shot. The protesters appear to have been
shelled at random. That's where you have the casualties of children of other
bystanders. But in the end, there are two military forces and there is really
no negotiation, although there is a representative of the U.N. and a
representative of the Gulf Cooperation countries in Sanaa right now
negotiating.
I
mean, the other, I suppose, sad irony of this is just when two negotiators,
international negotiators arrived, this fighting started. So it seems that no
one's that serious about moving forward.
INSKEEP:
And it's two armed groups at this point that are going after each other?
CAMPBELL:
Well, it's at least two in the capital. You have two very well-armed groups.
The president's son Ahmed Ali, his nephew, who also controls large numbers of
forces, what I think we'll call security forces for short, and then Ali Mohsen,
a commander, a general who commands a large military camp and many thousands of
soldiers. They have trenches right in the middle of the city. And they have
positions in the middle of the city.
INSKEEP:
Does the second guy, Ali Mohsen, count as a protest leader then or is a
defector from the ranks? What do you call him?
CAMPBELL:
The president calls him a defector. He has said that he's neutral and he's
sworn to protect the protesters. You know, the approximate cause of this week's
problems were that the protesters picked up from their square. They in a sense
were allowed to stay in a certain place in Sanaa, near the university. They
picked up and started to march toward the president's son's sort of holdout.
This
is what the, I think, what the government would say. And so they opened fire in
a defensive fashion. What Ali Mohsen, the rebel commander, would say is that
the security forces opened fire on the protesters and he's protecting them.
In
the end, there's no - there aren't two sides in Yemen. There're probably five
sides, and it's almost impossible to tell who's who.
INSKEEP:
Five sides and does that reflect divisions in the society? There are a lot of
different interest groups that could come down in different places and who fear
that their interests could be affected here.
CAMPBELL:
It's always been a difficult country to govern. Almost impossible. And you have
a secessionist movement. You have a political opposition. You have Arab Spring
protesters who simply want to move on and have a new government and a new
future. And it's - they're not fighting each other. But the president, who's
been there for a long time, is refusing to step down. But more importantly,
he's refusing to allow a transition to something new. And what Yemen
desperately needs is something new.
INSKEEP:
Refusing to allow a transition, even as he says to talk, says to work out a
transition?
CAMPBELL:
Refusing to allow anyone to even really discuss a transfer of power, even
though he's not even in the country, and even though the country so desperately
needs to move on.
INSKEEP:
Les Campbell of the National Democratic Institute is a regular visitor to
Yemen, where there have been dozens of deaths in continuing violence this week
