So what else happened in Yemen last week? A lot – and it’s quite troubling for the Yemeni people as well as American foreign policy objectives in this Arabian peninsular state and the region.

To begin, new clashes between Yemeni soldiers and the Houthi rebels in the north – the most recent evidence that a truce signed between the two parties in February may be fraying. As part of this military jockeying, both sides are seizing schools in the Sa’ada region – parts of which remain inaccessible to the United Nations and humanitarian organizations. These worrying reports come as the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that hundreds of thousands of people continue to suffer from the effects of the last round of fighting.

Moving to the south, political tensions continue to fester. On Thursday, Yemen’s deputy prime minister for internal affairs escaped an assassination attempt, after an exchange of gunfire between his guards and armed militants. Two people also died when the military intervened to end a dispute over water rights. As this Reuters story points out, the incident underscores how a looming water crisis – Sana’a could be the world’s first capital to run dry because of a chronic shortage of ground water – could exacerbate existing and unresolved political grievances.  

On the human rights front, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Yemeni government to end its campaign of intimidation, violence, and politicized prosecutions against journalists in the wake of yet another prison sentence for a journalist. This appeal came after the Press and Publications court in the capital found the editor of Sana Press guilty of  “undermining national foundations, the revolution, and the republic” and sentenced him to one year in prison. Meanwhile, the United Nations Committee Against Torture urged Yemen – along with Syria and Jordan – on Friday to investigate what it called numerous and credible allegations that their police and prison authorities routinely tortured detainees. The ten independent experts of the committee also voiced concern about violence against women and children in Yemen.

Unfortunately in the media and in the policy conversations in Washington, these stories go barely mentioned. Human rights and poor governance complicate the messaging of our number one goal in Yemen: hunting down and destroying Al Qaeda and their associates. As such, I was grateful this week for Sheila Carapico’s piece at the Middle East Channel. Providing a different take than most, she writes:

Yemenis and Americans who once imagined that Barack Obama’s administration would pressure the country’s longtime ruler, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, to respect freedom of the press, stick to a regular elections schedule, respect human rights, and abide by the rules of war have had their hopes dashed. Washington has seemingly rewarded arbitrary arrests of journalists reporting from two domestic war zones, indefinite postponement of elections, brutal tactics against protesters as well as armed rebels, and a wave of heightened repression during the past 12 months in the name of counterterrorism. The United States seems to be backing the Saleh government with military assistance not only in its war against a few hundred al Qaeda militants, but also in its suppression of the popular uprising in the former South Yemen as well as the al-Huthi rebellion in the North. This short-term approach will only harm U.S. interests and values in the long run.

A few other analysts have also been beating this drum – but whether or not American policymakers are listening and developing a multi-faceted approach to Yemen, beyond a purely counter-terrorism prism, is not at all clear.

Is it just me or have the number of Yemen “experts” in the United States increased exponentially in the last two weeks? Before the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack, if you wanted daily analysis on Yemen, the Waq al Waq blog was one of the only reliable sources. Now its hard to keep track of the self-proclaimed experts popping up on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and across the media spectrum. Waq al Waq thankfully is now receiving the attention it deserves (they reported 3,000 hits today alone).

I am still scared, however, of the collective narrative being formed by all these other talking heads. Joe Lieberman led the way with the Yemen hysteria. Days after Christmas, he told Fox News: “Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.” Discussions about putting boots on the ground in Yemen, even if still very unlikely, are now appearing more and more frequently.

These “experts” though rarely mention the humanitarian crisis associated with the conflict in North Yemen between the Houthi rebels and the central government. Likewise, few commentators ever mention the human rights abuses committed by President Ali Abdallah Salih’s government – our partner in the war against Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula – in its efforts to silence dissent in South Yemen. Largely ignored, Human Rights Watch put out an extensive report on December 15, entitled “Yemen: End Harsh Repression in the South” that stated:

Based on over 80 interviews with victims in the southern Yemeni cities of Aden and Mukalla, the report finds that security forces used lethal force against unarmed demonstrators on at least six occasions. Over the past year the authorities arbitrarily arrested thousands of people for exercising their right to peaceful assembly, suspended independent media critical of government policies, and detained journalists and writers on spurious charges.

With an insurgency/counter-insurgency that has resulted in mass displacement of civilians and recurring secessionist problems, the interlocking crises in Yemen appear remarkably similar to those in Sudan and Somalia. The news coverage unfortunately in the American media on Yemen more closely resembles that of Somalia than Sudan. Al Qaeda and pirates make headlines; humanitarian crises, civilian casualties and displacement, root political causes, human rights, and gripping poverty are generally ignored or are of only peripheral interest.

As Greg at Waq al Waq writes:

The problem is not that Yemen was getting little attention – the problem is that Yemen only got attention when al-Qaeda was viewed as a threat in Yemen. The country received a great deal of attention in 2001, 2002 and 2003 but very little after that particularly in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. It was only in 2008 and 2009 when al-Qaeda was once again viewed as a threat by the US that aid to Yemen was increased once again. The lessons for the Yemeni government are clear.

Sudan, of course, is not in the headlines every day, nor is the coverage by the American media perfect. With that said, at least, when stories appear about Sudan, experts and journalists explore the human side of the conflicts and human rights abuses. This difference, no doubt, largely results from the presence of an active human rights advocacy movement for Darfur and Sudan in the United States. With the departure of Osman bin Laden from Sudan in the 1990s, the Al Qaeda threat from Sudan also became greatly diminished. So, while American foreign policy still aims to prevent Sudan from harboring terrorists, most of its attention can focus on other immediate challenges like ending the conflict in Darfur and preventing a return to war between North and South Sudan.

It is natural that Americans will care first and foremost about national security. The problem is that – despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have turned into labyrinthine nation-building projects – there is still very little appreciation for the complex array of factors involved in denying Al Qaeda a safe haven in dangerous places around the world. As Marc Lynch writes, there is still an inherent instinct to want to respond immediately to threats and “do something” – even if the repercussions could make the task of defeating Al Qaeda in the long-run more difficult.

It is incredibly challenging though to make the political case to Americans that “doing less” (i.e. doing things slowly and smartly) in Yemen or Somalia could actually be the preferred option. One small step forward in making this case though would be for the American media to focus more on the daily struggles of average people in Yemen or Somalia and less on the opinions of the countless security experts who may not even know a Yemeni or Somali. This change will not happen by itself though. Instead, human rights organizations and concerned citizens need to develop mechanisms to highlight these stories. To that end, linkages would need to be formed with civil society groups in the country and the diaspora outside.

These are just some initial thoughts on the matter and, therefore, I would be very interested to hear what others think. For those who want to read some of the best analysis thus far on what to do about Yemen, here are some useful links:

• The New York Times: Yemen’s Chaos Aids the Evolution of a Qaeda Cell
• Waq al Waq: What to do in Yemen: Five Basic Suggestions
• Joost Hiltermann: Yemen: Disorder on the Border
• Marc Lynch: Don’t Lose Perspective on Yemen
• Alex Thurston: Yemen, Somalia, and Al Qaeda