Yemen Tribesmen Sign Ceasefire With Government After Violence
May 27, 2011, 9:07 PM EDTBy Donna Abu-Nasr and Mohammed Hatem
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Sadiq al-Ahmar, leader of Yemen’s most influential Hasid tribe, said he reached a cease-fire agreement with the government to end a gun battle in a suburb of the capital that left dozens dead.
Al-Ahmar told thousands of people gathered today in Sana’a that the cease-fire was brokered through tribal mediation. He didn’t give further details.
“It seems the agreement is working,” Mohammed al- Mutawakil, a leader in the opposition coalition known as Joint Meeting Parties, said in a telephone interview. He said that under the truce, both the government and al-Ahmar will pull their armed forces out of Hasaba, a district in northern Sana’a, where the worst of the fighting has taken place since May 23.
The announcement came as hundreds of thousands demonstrated in response to a call by opposition leaders for peaceful rallies today that will underscore their opposition to the kind of violence that has gripped the capital this week. In the southern city of Taiz, demonstrators -- including thousands of women -- chanted: “No to civil war. The people want the regime to fall. Our revolution is peaceful.”
Sporadic shooting yesterday followed gun battles that pitted security forces against members of the Hashid tribe. Abdulkawi al-Qaisi, al-Ahmar’s office manager, said the tribal leader had been defending himself from government attack and was willing to stop fighting provided that security forces and other pro-government gunmen withdraw from around his house.
GCC Peace Plan
The clashes, the most sustained violence since protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime began in January, followed the president’s refusal to sign a Gulf Cooperation Council-brokered accord that provides for him to step down within 30 days. The opposition and Saleh’s supporters have accused each other of attempting to ignite a civil war.
Fifteen members of the Nihm tribe were killed in clashes with Republican Guards led by a son of Saleh, as they tried to prevent an army regiment from reaching Sana’a, according to the opposition website al-Sahwa.
Community groups should back a “peaceful revolution, thwarting attempts to trap Yemenis into fighting with each other,” the Joint Meeting Parties said late yesterday.
In a May 25 briefing with reporters, Saleh called the protests a rebellion against his rule. The president, whose term ends in 2013, has said he’s willing to hold early elections, a call the opposition has so far rejected. The Joint Meeting Parties, the official opposition, initially accepted the GCC plan, though activists who have been leading the street protests dismissed it, saying Saleh must quit immediately.
U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague said yesterday that the GCC plan “offers the chance for peaceful progress in Yemen” and urged Saleh to sign it. The U.S. and the U.K. have cut back staff at their embassies in Yemen amid the latest fighting.
--With assistance from Caroline Alexander in London, Vivian Salama in Beirut. Editors: Ben Holland, Philip Sanders, Karl Maier.
To contact the reporters on this story: Donna Abu Nasr in Sana’a at dabunasr@bloomberg.net. Mohammed Hatem in Taiz at mhatem1@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net.
