Yemen:Rescue attempt that went tragically wrong
Yemeni Officials accuse Saudi Arabia of inciting trouble
29 December 1998

Mindful of the good treatment that 'guests'- the name given to hostages by tribesmen in the past, were well treated and went home with gifts and good memories, the ambassador thought that he had talked interior minister, Hussein Mohammed Arab out of mounting a rescue operation; he was wrong. 

British Foreign Office was accused of being complacent. Only on 20 December, Foreign Office advice to travellers heading for Yemen did not indicate danger, although advised caution. 

Western travellers are attracted to Yemen because of its history, fascinating geography, unusual buildings and its romantic mythology from Arabian nights and Queen Sheba. 
Diplomats in San'a have grown accustomed to kidnapping which became a multi-million dollar business for the tribes of the poorest country in the Arab world. The tribesmen demands grew from just asking for ransom money from oil companies whose employers were the first ' guests' in early 1990s, to trade-offs like cars, or improving communities or extending electricity to their villages. 

In the past three years kidnappers demanded building schools, community centres and improving their villages in exchange for releasing the hostages. Three BBC journalists found themselves '' guests'' in the hands of tribesmen for a whole week early this year. One kidnap incident last year was to promote a fellow-tribesman into a higher office in government. 

Tribal chiefs, traditionally at odd with the central government have always looked after the ' guests'-hostages. '' Too bad it's not possible to organise holidays like this, because it was fantastic,'' Giorgio Bonanomi, an Italian tourist who was held by tribesmen for five days in August this year told Italian journalists, showing them his gifts of traditional Jewellery and a dagger. 

This time things were getting out of hand, according to western diplomats in San'a, as this previously unknown group had crossed the traditional lines of Kidnapping. On Saturday 26 December, they attacked a pipe line that carries 150,000 bpd and damaged part of it. The act was seen by the government as a serious attempt to strangle the already weak economy. 

Unlike other countries in the region, the Islamists did not in the past - and unlikely at present - have a political base in Yemen, but they had some training camps financed by some Saudi interests - with encouragement of the Saudi Arabian government although they always deny it- dating back from fighting soviet presence in Afghanistan. 

It was the crack down on those militants early this year and the arrest of their leaders that prompted the latest kidnapping, according to a kidnappers' statement to the Yemeni News agency. 

The recent incidents also followed a few weeks of unrest. Roads on all sides of the capital, San'a, were cut when farmers and tribesmen took to the barricades in an apparently co-ordinated protest against fuel price increases in October. (cost of diesel fuel increased by 67% to 45 riyals (22 pence or 36 cents) gallon as part of an IMF/World Bank economic package). 

In October Sheikh Shaya Bakhtan of the Al Salim (Bakil) tribe seized four French tourists near Sa'ada, demanding 6 million riyals (£32,000 or $48,000) and vehicles as a ransom. A few days later in Marib province where the pipeline was attacked and this latest kidnapping took place, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Sa'ada of the Bin Zabyan tribe captured a British aid worker and demanded extending electricity and water projects to his territory. Near Dhamar, two Russian doctors and their wives were kidnapped by the Hada tribe, which was demanding the execution of four rapists. A few days earlier an American was abducted near  Sana'a and taken to Barat, in Bakil territory. 

Government officials were alarmed, as it was the first time that four separate incidents have occurred in a single month. Previously the most notable abduction spree was in the run-up to the 1994 war when the Bakil also disrupted fuel supplies in the north. 
Yemeni sources said they viewed the latest developments as another attempt by the Saudi Arabians - who financed and armed the separatist movement in the south in 1994 - to increase the pressure on Yemen. 

Yemeni foreign minister, Dr Abd al-Karim al-Iryani, claimed last month that the kidnappings were a Saudi plot. Whenever Yemen seeks closer relations with a western country, he said, one of their nationals is abducted. "A week after it was known that Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih would make his first official visit to London on 11 November, a Briton was kidnapped." 

As expected the Saudi ambassador to London Dr Ghazi el- Qusabi ridiculed the idea. However a history of antagonism and border clashes, as well a number of an usual coincidences sustain the conspiracy theory: the four French hostages were taken just before President Salih visited France, ten Italians were kidnapped before he visited Italy, and the four Russians just as Yemen was attempting to re-schedule its debts with Moscow. 

But the Saudis have a long-term strategy to destabilise Yemen and increase pressure on the poor neighbour for their own political and geographical ambitions including taking a slice of Yemen to open an access to the Indian Ocean, according to Yemeni officials. The view is shared by a number of western officials in Yemen. 

The undefined 1000 miles of frontier with Saudi Arabia has been a source of friction. Saudi Arabia occupies two Northern provinces of Yemen Osiran and Najran for over 60 years. While there are some disputes over islands in the Red Sea. 

In July, Saudi naval vessels shelled and occupied the Yemeni al-Quwaima island, which was retaken by Yemen in a counter attack two days later. 

Saudi Arabia was directly involved in the civil war that tore Yemen apart in the 1960's when the late Egyptian populist leader Colonel Nasser backed the 1963 coup of colonel Abdullah el-Sallal. Over 40,00 Egyptian troops were in Yemen. The war turned nasty as the Egyptians set a precedent by using poison gas for the first time in Arabia, while the Saudi royal family bribed tribes and financed British and European mercenaries to back the deposed Imam Ahmad el-Bader who kept Yemen in medieval times. 

The Saudis were alarmed in 1990 when the two Yemens formed a unity. The new nation of 16 millions with well equipped and battle hardened army - the Southern army was trained by the British while the Northern army was hardened by a six year civil war- would threaten their interests. 

Citing the sympathy of the San'a with Iraq in Persian Gulf war in 1991 as a en excuse, Saudi Arabia expelled overnight one million Yemeni workers who supported their families in Yemen causing economic havoc in Yemen. In the same year the United States cut the aid to Yemen for the same reason increasing the pressure on the poor economy. Then came the civil war, which many people in Yemen believe that trouble like the kidnapping and, started by Saudi money paid to tribesmen to cause mischief. 

As Saudis conduct their diplomacy by chequebooks, it is widely accepted in Yemen that Saudi interests - but the Saudi Mukhabart (intelligence) backs the operation - have paid various tribes to cause trouble in the past. Some Sheikhs have even boasted about receiving money from their Saudi cousins. Most abductions are attributed to the Bakil tribal grouping, which is traditionally at odds with the dominant Hashid, to which Sanhan - the president's own tribe- belongs. Those tribes are regarded as potential allies by Southern opposition groups who have lost the 1994 separatist /95 war. Yemeni officials accused the Saudi-backed Mowj of inciting those tribes to cause trouble. They said it has been the tactics of the Southern opposition front because the government has more qualms about suppressing disturbances in the north than in the south. 

The Saudis' long term strategy is to open a corridor to the Indian Ocean by pushing the Yemeni eastern borders with Oman by about 80 to 100 miles to the west. This would give Saudi Arabia a third shore on the Indian Ocean, in addition to its long shores on the Red Sea to the West and on the Persian Gulf to the East. Saudi oil exports to the Far-East goes via the straight of Hermuz in the southern Gulf, which was threatened with closure during the Iran Iraq war in 1980's. Another export and maritime rout to the southern seas taking oil to South Africa and South America is via the straits of Bab-Elmandab, controlled by Aden, while sailing to Europe goes via Suez Canal. 
Given the geography, a long shore on the Indian Ocean would free the Saudis from the worries of sailing through hostile straits and also give the Saudi navy a base on the open seas. 

The Saudis tried the idea of negotiating a corridor with Sultan Qaboos of Oman who turned it down. 

Saudi insider sources say that Riyadh might give the disputed oil rich provinces of Osiran and Najiran for the exchange of the desired opening to the Indian Ocean. 
Attempts by the Yemen to join the six nation Gulf Cupertino council, which the UAE and Oman welcome is always blocked by Saudi Arabia, which, experts say, will continue to put pressure in Yemen. Bad news for oil companies and travel agencies who stared investing in Yemen as kidnapping has become a useful political tool in the bizarre politics of Arabia and a business for the tribesmen. Yemen, with its fascinating geography, unusual architecture and culture as well as its mythological romantic history (its mountains were the setting for Arabian nights and the court of the Biblical queen Sheba) will continue to attract travellers.