Yemen, one of the great civilisations of the Islamic world, has always been at the hub of the Arabian Peninsula. Mentioned by name and blessed in Hadith, this rich and fertile land rose to prominence in 632 A.D. during the tenure of Iranian governor Badhan, whose leadership inspired 20,000 new Muslims from Sana’a, Taizz and Zabid to volunteer for the fledging Caliphate of Abu Bakr (ra). Home to the grand dynasties of Najahid, Zaidi, Sulayhid, Mamluk, Ayyubid, Ottoman, Rasulid, Tahirid and Kathirid: Yemen, under Umar ibn Rasul (1229–1250), saw a massive influx of students and scholars who arrived to attend over 200 schools and the world renowned Zabid University. An organised, professional army also managed to stem the tide of European terrorism in the 16th–17th centuries; safeguarding Yemen’s shores to repel the Portuguese armada and discourage an invasion by the British Empire.
But a power vacuum after the long and successful rule of Imam Al Mutawakkil (1644–1676) saw small separatist movements spring up around the country. Petty squabbles, promoted and exacerbated by the British, soon became protracted schisms that foreign invaders would exploit to the point of armed conflict. And so, as Yemen crumbled along tribal & sectarian lines, it was only a matter of time before her strategically vital port of Aden fell into British-Rothschild hands.
By 1919, World War I had hacked Yemen to pieces; with lacertilian schemer T.E. Lawrence weaving a web of deception not dissimilar to the con he’d pulled in Palestine months earlier: i.e. England would use the brave, but far too trusting, Yemeni Arabs to fight the Ottoman Turks on their behalf (which they did), and in return, England would leave Yemen to the Yemenis (which they didn’t). The British, eager to plant a stooge and rape the Sultanate dry, imposed their king and were soon in receipt of the region’s abundant crude oil supplies and natural wealth. The British-Rothschild backed monarchy and its supporters grew rich and powerful, as ordinary Yemenis struggled to survive in an ever-deteriorating state of poverty and squalor.
Yemen’s first revolution began on 4th June 1944-1948: The British backed puppet king was promptly deposed, but the people’s victory was short lived. As his successor, armed by the British-Rothschild cartel, mounted an aggressive countercoup that devastated the ancient capital of Sana’a and re-imposed colonial rule.
Another revolution was sparked off in 1961, with the assassination of the British backed king and a series of street battles that became the opening salvos of a near decade long civil war. Having lost Iran to their American acomplices in ’53 and humiliated by Egypt’s revolutionary leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Suez Crisis four years earlier, the British government would do all they could to maintain a stranglehold on Yemen for their Rothschild overlords. And so, replicating tactics used by the British army’s notorious ‘Black & Tan’ regiment in 1920s Ireland; they committed a catalogue of heinous crimes against the Yemeni people: The Empire’s campaign of terror saw them randomly kidnap and detain citizens, close down Trade Unions, ban the Yemeni worker’s newspaper and open fire on TUC strikers at a civil rights demonstration on the 24th September 1962. Britain’s dirty war soon spread to the South towards Aden, where troops massacred scores of Yemeni civilians as the RAF bombed towns and villages to protect U.K-Rothschild oil interests. The war raged on, with Arab freedom fighters making considerable gains against the ruthless, but increasingly beleaguered, British invaders.
By 1967, the Brits, after 128 years of bloody occupation, had finally had enough and retreated en-masse. Three years later; The Yemen Arab Republic was formally recognised by its belligerent neighbours in Saudi Arabia. Hero of the revolution; Qahtan ash-Shaabi became Yemeni president and the war, it seemed, was over.
Alas, by 1969; Yemeni plutocrats had overthrown ash-Shaabi and Yemen spent the next 11 years as a theatre for the Cold War paradigm: North Yemen (Saudi-Capitalist) and South Yemen (Russian-Communist) fought a number of pointless battles that only served to facilitate a series of military coups, foreign interventions, countercoups and assassinations.
In 1979, Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ex-military governor in Taizz, became President of Yemen and chalked up an initially well received, but ultimately despised, 34-year reign that would never have ended; had not the revolution forced him from office. Mr. Saleh, not unlike those Yemenis who squandered the victory of ‘67, all but signed away his nation’s sovereignty after Israel did 9/11.
Subserviently giving up Yemeni airspace for savage, U.S. drone terror attacks against his own people, burying the economy in a mountain of ever increasing, Rothschild owned debt. And turning Yemen into a quasi-vassal state; slavishly accepting American aid to bolster ‘Central Security Forces’ for domestic use in the U.S.-Israel’s fraudulent ‘war on terror’. A conflict so perverse, that Mr, Saleh often had to invoke that modern day ‘Operation Gladio’; ‘Al Qaida’, to persecute political opponents, keep the aid coming in and justify his participation in the scam.
By the time Wikileaks cables confirmed the Yemeni government’s collaboration with U.S.-Israeli terrorism, Mr. Saleh had no credibility left to lose. Even the sly, somewhat crass, revelation that he’d turn a blind eye to a whiskey smuggling cartel from Djibouti, provided “…it was good whiskey” wasn’t needed to incite Yemen’s orthodox Muslim population to rebel. In fact, Yemenis had come to expect such cringe-worthy asides from a corrupt, increasingly irrelevant, American lackey. And with bullet ridden bodies piling up long before Western puppet Tawakal Karman’s ‘Day of Rage’ on 2nd February 2011, a populist revolt was all but guaranteed. Simply put, the Yemenis were tired of it all; the corruption, the subservience to the U.S.-Israel and furious at how Mr. Saleh had continuously betrayed their trust to appease a handful of Ivy League carpetbaggers in Washington.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh would rule just long enough to see the Yemeni proletariat reject North-South machinations, defy calls to ally themselves to any tribal or sectarian front and witness the brutal, U.S. trained and armed ‘Central Security Forces’ routed by Ansar Al-Sharia Mujahidin in Zinjibar and Aden.
Isolated and left to whither on the vine, Yemen is an easy target for criminal regimes in the West: Invaded, destabilized and looted at will since the fall of the Ottoman Empire; today, Yemen stands on the brink of its most important revolution to date: The battle to reclaim her identity and re-establish the rule of law. But as washed up imperial powers desperately try and throttle every popular revolution from Tahrir Square to Wall Street. Protestors know all too well that whilst they may’ve survived the first onslaught; every small victory carried a heavy price, with over 1,870 Yemenis killed in the struggle, many shot dead by ‘Central Security Forces’ or bombed in U.S. drone terror attacks.
And yet the newfound focus and resolve of ordinary Arabs, represents an incredible tidal wave of defiance that boldly undermines U.S.-Israeli hegemony. One which provokes the skittish, Anglo-American-Israeli crime gang into making stupid moves like launching an entire fleet of terror drones to assassinate 31-year old Yemeni-American citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki or attempting to impose Saleh’s right-hand man; Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in any post-revolution government. But at the back of their minds, the Rothschild regimes always knew this day would come; that the people’s truth would extinguish their lies and how revolution is the physical manifestation of that truth: in words and gestures, action and intent. Soumaya Sharafia, a young protestor from Taizz, declares her compatriots will to resist in spite of all the setbacks: “Our revolution will not be taken away from us by the political parties or powerful people”, she states in a quiet but clear voice. “We’re the ones who’ll decide our future: This is the revolution of the people and the will of the people is divine inspiration”.
Ali Abdullah Saleh may have got the GGC brokered immunity deal he craved, but he and his ilk were judged in the court of public opinion, and found guilty as charged. The revolution may not have gone according to the hopes and wishes of the Yemni people. But if Yemen restores her link with the new MENA, abandons the restrictive edicts of tribalism, and stands with the Global South in opposition to the failed and convulsing U.S.-Israeli dogma. Then not only does this revolution mean more than the one in ‘48 but also represents an opportunity to make good on the gains of ‘67. Yemen may, at times, look like a revolution in turmoil, but courage in the midst of crisis will, God willing, transform a muted, somewhat disappointing end to a violent struggle into a vibrant, joyous and long term victory for the region.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian 
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
by Kashif Ahmed Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
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