Only Fools Rush Into Yemen


By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch
January 11, 2010


Protestors are walking confidently down a street a street in the southern Yemeni port of Aden when there is a rattle of gunfire as the security services shoot into the crowd and people run panic-stricken seeking cover. A man in a check shirt is left lying face down in the dust in the empty street, a stream of blood flowing from a bullet wound in his head.

In northern Yemen government tanks and artillery pound the mountains as they try to dislodge Shia rebels holding positions among the mountain crags. Plumes of white smoke rise from exploding shells. Tribesmen not in uniform fighting on the government side sit behind their heavy machine guns and spray the hillsides with fire. A few miles away on a dusty piece of flat ground thousands of refugees driven from their homes by the war cower in small over-crowded tents.

Nobody paid much attention in the West to violent incidents like these in Yemen last year, though both of those described above were recorded on film. The mounting crisis in the country only attracted notice when a Nigerian student is revealed to have been “trainedâ€