YEMEN’S UPRISING, now heading into its fifth month, looks set to come to a head in the coming days, amid rising tension across the country.
Protesters have stepped up their campaign in their growing frustration with President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s refusal to stand down, while security forces have used increased violence, leaving up to 20 dead in four cities since last Wednesday.
Announcing a 10-day “escalation plan” for marches, civil disobedience, strikes and the expanding of long-running tented sit-ins, yesterday protesters in the capital spread their campsite in the west of the city – already a mile square – to take Rabat Street, the scene of the first street battle between Saleh’s supporters and demonstrators back in February.
But the ultimate goal of the anti-government movement is a march on the presidential palace in Sana’a. Protesters have timetabled the potentially highly lethal operation for tomorrow in a bid to bring the long-running uprising to its conclusion.
“It will be the pinnacle of our revolution when we march on the palace,” said leading activist Sarah, who for security reasons did not want to give her full name. “It is the only way to force Saleh out if he won’t leave voluntarily.”
Any attempt to march the near two-mile distance from their tented encampment to Mr Saleh’s residence is expected to be met with extreme force from the army and elite military units.
Last week protesters in Sana’a – in what appeared to be a test run for this week – tried to march on key government buildings, but came under heavy and sustained gunfire from soldiers just a few hundred metres from the protest site of Change Square.
At least 13 activists were shot dead and hundreds more left with bullet wounds. A three-hour-long firefight followed between the two sides of the now divided army, as rebel soldiers of the First Armoured Division fought with the loyalist Central Security Forces.
“We have courage and the more we are attacked, the stronger and more determined we become to win this struggle,” said Sarah.
Mr Saleh has remained equally defiant. In an address on Friday to a mass rally of thousands of his supporters – a weekly event now in the capital – he vowed he would defend his position “with all our forces and by all means”, adding that the political opposition, the Joint Meeting Parties, was “playing with fire” in its support for the protest movement.
The spokesman for the JMP, Mohammed Qahtan, later told Al Arabiya television the president’s remarks amounted to a “declaration of war.” In a bid to ease the tension the secretary-general of the Gulf Co-operation Council, Abdullatif Zayani, returned to the capital, late on Saturday, for a three-day visit to try to revive a repeatedly stalled Gulf initiative that would see Mr Saleh step down and grant him immunity from prosecution.
But by yesterday evening there was no indication that any further progress had been made, in a deal that has all but collapsed.