Reuters)By Joseph Logan
BEIRUT
-Foreign governments should back secessionists who want to recreate
the vanished state of south Yemen, because it would crush the Islamist militants
who have taken over much of the region, a secessionist leader said on
Wednesday
In an interview late on Wednesday, Ali Salem al-Beidh, last president of the
socialist southern state whose 1990 union with the north crumbled into civil war
four years later, said the united Yemeni state now fighting al Qaeda-linked
Islamists was too dysfunctional to salvage.
"It's a collection of tribal, military, and security cliques fighting over
who'll hold power," Beidh said of the state led by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour
Hadi, who succeeded Ali Abdullah Saleh in February after a year of
unrest.
"They are not capable of building a democratic, civil state. The northern
mentality cannot live within a state, whereas the mentality of the south cannot
live without one."
Secessionist sentiment is rising in the south, where al Hiraak al Junuubi, a
loose secessionist movement, sprang up in 2006-7 around cashiered southern army
officers. It leads a protest campaign that security forces have countered with
force and, according to Hiraak activists, arrests and torture.
Beidh represents a hard line in the Hiraak which wants the south to be
recognised as the sovereign state it was before 1990 in talks over the future
disposition of Yemen. Others suggest 3-5 years of federal rule before a
referendum on separation.
Germany is involved in efforts
to coax southerners to take part in a national dialogue prescribed by the
Gulf-brokered deal that saw Saleh give up power. Those talks would address
southern grievances within the framework of a unified Yemen.
The uprising last year saw the military split into pro- and anti-Saleh
factions that fought each other and tribal militias, raising U.S. and Saudi
fears of civil war and a collapse of the state which would embolden the Yemeni
franchise of al Qaeda.
U.S. officials say they recently thwarted a plot by Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP) to bomb an airliner, the latest in a string of abortive attacks
the group has planned on U.S. and Saudi targets from Yemen since 2009.
Another group, Ansar al-Sharia, flies al Qaeda's flag over swathes of
southern Yemen it seized from government forces as the uprising gained force
last year, and in March routed Yemeni troops attempting to retake them.
IRAN, AMONG OTHERS, WELCOME TO HELP
Its advance drew charges that Saleh - long a key to U.S. "counter-terrorism"
strategy - had ceded territory to create an enemy he would be needed to fight.
Beidh cited the use of Islamists against the south in the civil war as proof of
a long-standing relationship.
"This force doesn't just threaten us; it threatens neighbouring countries and
shipping in the Arabian Sea and any aspiration to civilisation," he
said.
"We want international and regional powers to wake up to this fact and back
us in confronting al Qaeda, to deliver our country from this plague," he said.
"With a little international support we could finish off al Qaeda."
Beidh, who has been in exile in Germany and Oman since Saleh's troops crushed
southern forces in the civil war, said Hiraak forces were playing a role among
regional militia now fighting Ansar al-Sharia in southern Abyan
province.
Hadi's government has launched an offensive against Ansar al-Sharia in Abyan,
with some participation by military trainers from the United States, which has
accelerated its campaign of assassinations by drone strike since Hadi took
office.
Beidh acknowledged splits in the southern movement, but said there was
consensus on the goal of resurrecting a state which once had relatively strong
institutions and better standards of education and development than most Arab
countries.
"Ninety percent of southerners, whatever their political affiliations, are in
agreement about getting back their state, not secession, because we offered it
up voluntarily in service of a greater project, and have been occupied since,"
he said.
He said he was open to support from the region to advance that cause,
including from Iran, which the United States has
accused of meddling in southern Yemen to expand its influence.
"Iran is just one of the regional countries, and not the only one present (in
Yemen). There's a relationship and interaction with all of them," he
said.
"We welcome anyone who is willing to cooperate with us, and prefer that our
brothers in neighbouring countries, who know us and are the closest to us take
the initiative in saving us from this backward occupation."
(Editing by Andrew
Roche)
ليست هناك تعليقات :
إرسال تعليق