Q&A - What is the reality of the rapprochement or rather the reconciliation between Saudi and Ali Abdullah Saleh?
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Answers to Questions
What is the reality of the rapprochement or rather the reconciliation between Saudi and Ali Abdullah Saleh?
Answer: The transformation we are witnessing in the relationship between Saudi and Ali Abdullah Saleh is not unprompted but rather part of America's agenda to fragment Yemen and abort any genuine popular undertaking which could undermine her strategic interests in the region. Hence, we must not forget that the military incursion of the Arab Alliance into Yemen was at the behest of America who had paved the way to Ansar Allah to seize the reins of power and expel the wing of Mansour Hadi from Sana'a.
The rapprochement between Saleh and Saudi is complementary to this plan which necessitated underpinning the role of the General People's Congress (GPC) - Mansour wing in its first phase - and weakening the role of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform. It is true that Saudi had declared war on Saleh and his ally al-Houthi, but this was part of the operation aimed at getting rid of the Yemeni Congregation in the north and shoring up the role of the separatists in the south. This is why the UAE had sponsored the Salafi groups in the southern governorates and turned them into a backup for the separatist dynamism under the leadership of Aden's former governor and chairman of the "Southern Transitional Council" Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, whereas Saudi adopted the General People's Congress - Mansour Hadi wing - without forsaking the Abdullah Saleh wing altogether.
And now, as the political and security conditions have moved in the direction America had wanted, the time has become ripe to activate the role of the GPC - Saleh wing anew and achieve reconciliation between him and the Mansour wing and its sponsor Saudi. As for al-Houthi, it is Iran who assumes its guardianship and orientation within the general context of America's plan in terms of fragmenting Yemen and through the secret cooperation between Iran and Saudi under the king Mohammed Bin Salman. Consequently, the UAE and Saudi have set about generating the arrangements to establish a host of understandings between the two wings of the GPC, to be a prelude to a political settlement in the north in the future culminated by a new government in which UAE-based Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh would be defence minister.
Media sources reported that a military delegation from the "Arab Alliance" met General Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh in mid-June 2017 in the UAE, without revealing the neither the nature nor the outline of the meeting; it was also reported that an Ansar Allah senior operative close to Abdullah Saleh Yusuf al-Fishi had visited Dhahran in southern Saudi. Within the framework of the campaign aimed at remarketing both wings of the GPC, the secretary of the information ministry in the Hadi government Najib Ghallab posted an article on Facebook in which he mentioned that "the GCP is still the Yemeni force most capable of acting to move away from the crisis that gets complicated day by day." He added: "As a party, the GCP does not harbour any animosity towards Saudi and the Gulf; it is in fact the most capable of parties to be fully in tune with the outlooks of the new security situation imposed by the current changes."
The reconciliation in Yemen between Saudi and the Ali Saleh wing fits in with the general policy America has been pursuing recently to revitalize the cronies of the so-called "counter-revolutionaries" in the region so that they may return to the political scene via the gates of reconciliation, such as Essebsi in Tunisia, Saif ul Islam in Libya and Saleh in Yemen. These cronies and their subordinates are the most eager to execute America's strategic plans as they hanker for the return of their spurious "glories" now that America and her allies have aborted the aspirations of the masses in the Islamic region for change and liberation after the tremendous suffering endured by the Ummah's children through the saga of the so-called "Arab Spring". People saw in the "Arab Spring" either liberation, change with devastating consequences, though neither change nor liberation were ever achieved, or safety from killing, displacement, destruction and betrayal; and with no light at the end of the tunnel, the Ummah, who had been persistently wronged by the Kuffar and their tools, almost accepted the lesser of the two evils.
As for Yemen in particular, the Saudi rulers and the rest of the Gulf States are extremely anxious of the popular dynamism in Yemen catching the imagination of the Gulf masses and of al-Houthi threat spreading to the "Shia" of the Gulf. Hence, and to avert this narrative, Saudi and the rest of the Gulf States are proceeding with the American plan to divide Yemen into three provinces of Sana'a, al-Mukalla and Aden. America, Saudi and the rest of the Gulf States could not find better than Ali Abdullah Saleh to achieve such plans once concordance between him and Mansour Hadi, al -Houthi and Aidarus al-Zoubaidi have been concluded and once the influence of the GCP has been neutralised.
3 Thil Hijjah 1438h
25 August 2017