Hillary Clinton paid a surprise five-hour visit to Yemen on Tuesday en route from the Emirates – the first vist by a US secretary of state for more than 20 years.
A good deal of the media interest focused on her fall as she boarded the plane to leave but since her departure...
Blog archive: Yemen
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13th January 2011
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2nd January 2011Yemen's parliament has begun debating constitutional changeswhich, among other things, would allow President Salih to continue in power indefinitely. The presidency is currently limited to two seven-year terms – meaning that Salih must leave office in 2013. Salih has already been in power...
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21st December 2010It has emerged that the four people attacked in Sana'a last week (and described rather vaguely by the US embassy as "foreign residents" of Yemen) were in fact working for the CIA. Their vehicle, a Toyota Hilux pickup truck, had stopped near the Pizzaiola restaurant in the Hadda...
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20th December 2010Yemen's southern separatists kidnapped an army officer near Habilayn (Lahej province) at the weekend – apparently as a bargaining ploy for the release of prisoners. The officer, identified by the Yemen Post as Major Muhammad al-Khawlani and by AFP as Captain Mohammed Ali...
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18th December 2010As many as eight soldiers are reported killed in two separate incidents in southern Yemen. Arriving on three motorbikes and in two minibuses, a group of armed men attacked a military checkpoint in the Shahara area of Zinjibar (Abyan province) around 4.30am on Friday with machineguns, grenades...
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13th December 2010A total of seven Yemeni soldiers, including an army major, weretaken hostage by southern separatists in two incidents on Saturday and Sunday. The kidnappers are apparently seeking to pressurise the authorities after a 25-year-old man, Fares Adbullah Saleh, was sentenced to death...
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6th December 2010Fifty Yemeni members of parliament have signed a petition calling on Rashad al Alimi, the deputy prime minister for defence and security, to explain himself after apparently lying to parliament about American airstrikes in Yemen that killed dozens of civilians. According to a Wikileaks...
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4th December 2010A batch of US embassy cables relating to Yemen emerged yesterday, courtesy of Wikileaks. I have linked them below, in chronological order. The New York Times has a commentary on them here, as does the Guardian (here and here). The content isn't earth-shattering but it does provide...
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29th November 2010One of the new Wikileaks documents records a 90-minute meetingon January 4 this year between David Petraeus, commander of Centcom, and the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Salih. Some interesting points: 1. Salih repeatedly asked for 12 armed helicopters ("a topic that he would...
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27th November 2010Just two days after a car bomb killed 17 or more Houthi supporters during a Shia religious festival in Yemen, a second car bomb attacked mourners attending a Houthi funeral yesterday. Reports of casualties vary wildly, from two including the suicide bomber (AFP) to 40 or more (...
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25th November 2010An explosion said to be from a car bomb killed at least 17 people in the far north of Yemen on Wednesday, according to numerousreports. The bomb targeted a procession of Houthi supporters celebrating the Eid al-Ghadir holiday (a Shia festival) in the Zaher district of al-Jawf province...
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24th November 2010The popular Egyptian preacher and televangelist, Amr Khaled, has arrived in Yemen for a government-sponsored "hearts and minds" campaign against al-Qaeda. This could be an important development if, as the Yemen Observer suggests, it marks the start of a concerted effort to...
