SANAA, May 28, (Agencies): An informal ceasefire between President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s security forces and a tribal group brought a pause in fighting on Saturday after nearly a week of deadly clashes left Yemen close to civil war.
Fighting this week has killed some 115 people, prompted thousands of residents to flee Sanaa and raised the spectre of chaos that could benefit the Yemen-based branch of al-Qaeda and threaten adjacent Saudi Arabia, the world’s No. 1 oil exporter.
The latest violence, pitting Saleh loyalist forces against members of the powerful Hashed tribe led by Sadeq al-Ahmar, was the bloodiest since pro-democracy unrest erupted in January and was sparked by a Saleh refusal to sign a power transfer deal.
Tribal sources and residents said a tenuous calm prevailed in the capital’s northern district of Hasaba, the scene of heavy clashes this week for control of government buildings, and outside Sanaa, a city now divided between the sides.
A government official said mediated talks were planned aimed at reducing tensions and fighting had been suspended for the duration of the discussions.
A prominent think-tank, the International Crisis Group, said a broad, lasting ceasefire was needed immediately and should be part of a plan that leads to a transition of power.
“To prevent further escalation and loss of life, the most urgent step is for both sides to immediately accept a ceasefire mediated by Yemen’s statesmen and tribal leaders,” the ICG said in a “conflict risk alert” issued late on Friday.
Foreign states should be involved, it said, “but, given the deeply personal and tribal nature of the feud between the Salehs and al-Ahmars, it cannot be addressed effectively by international mediation or initiatives alone.”
Global powers have little sway in Yemen, where tribal allegiances are the most powerful element in a volatile social fabric and the fighting already appears to be playing out along tribal, quasi-feudal lines.
The political crisis has already cost the economy as much as $5 billion and immediate aid is needed to prevent a meltdown in the country with a nominal GDP of $31 billion, the country’s trade minister told Reuters.
“The economy should not be held hostage to the political crisis, because the situation is alarming,” Hisham Sharaf Abdalla said.
On Friday, Yemeni tribesmen said they had captured a military compound from elite troops loyal to the president 100 kms (60 miles) outside Sanaa, widening a conflict hitherto concentrated mainly in the capital near the home of Ahmar.
The fighting has overshadowed a largely peaceful protest movement that started months ago aimed at ending Saleh’s 33-year-long autocratic rule and inspired by the movements that brought down the long-standing leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.
Mediators have become exasperated with Saleh, saying he had repeatedly imposed new conditions each time a Gulf-led transition agreement was due for signing, most recently demanding a public signing ceremony.
Machinegun fire and explosions rattled Sanaa this week before clashes eased after mediation efforts. Ahmar’s fighters evacuated government ministry buildings they had grabbed in return for a ceasefire and troops quitting their area.
There was also an informal truce prevailing in a region northeast of Sanaa where tribes said on Friday said they had seized a military post.
Yemeni air force fighters had strafed those tribal fighters with bombs and broke the sound barrier in flights over Sanaa.
There are worries that impoverished Yemen, where some 40 percent of the country’s 23 million people live on less than $2 a day, could become a failed state located on a shipping lane through which 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.
In the south, dozens of armed men believed to be from al-Qaeda appeared to have full control of city of Zinjibar in the flashpoint province of Abyan on Saturday, a day after storming the city and chasing out security forces, residents said.
The United States and Saudi Arabia, both targets of foiled attacks by the Yemen wing of al-Qaeda, are concerned any spread of anarchy could embolden the militant group.
With the political strife, the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is likely to have more freedom to use a proven talent for daring bombing plots, analysts said.
“Given how distracted Saleh’s government is in its attempts to cling to power, AQAP has much more open space in which to operate at the moment,” said Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen.

Bahrain
The only way forward for Bahrain is through political reform rather than oppression of its Shiites and a heavy-handed crackdown, the head of its main Shiite opposition bloc said in an interview.
The opposition pulled its 18 MPs out of parliament — two of whom have been detained — in protest at violence against demonstrators.
Sheikh Ali Salman, who heads Al-Wefaq, the Sunni-ruled kingdom’s largest Shiite political group, said his movement was also not planning to take part in upcoming by-elections.
A “counter-revolution” has raised fears among Sunnis of the Shiite-led protest movement, the white-turbaned cleric said, while insisting on a civic state for both Muslim communities and not Iran-style clerical rule.
The government is now “definitely demanded to introduce serious reforms. What is also definite is that stability will not come through oppression,” said Salman, ahead of the lifting of emergency laws enforced in mid-March.
The Wefaq leader said “security (forces) will not bring the solution ... Without political reform, this bad situation will continue and there will not be real stability.”
If the authorities, widely criticised by rights groups for their heavy-handed clampdown on Shiites, continue with the same policies after the June 1 lifting of emergency law, the crisis will remain unchanged, he said.
“If the same mentality that runs the country now continues in the coming days ... this means that Bahrain will remain ‘ill,’” he said, insisting on a political solution.
“You have frightened the people with tanks, so you have to keep tanks around. This would be far from normal,” he said, warning that protesters were already returning to the streets in their villages.
The cleric led the political front of month-long protests on the streets that erupted in mid-February led by Shiite youth inspired by uprisings that toppled long-time strongmen in Tunisia and Egypt.
Banking on the unprecedented mass protest camped out at Manama’s Pearl roundabout, before it was raided in mid-March, Salman’s Wefaq and six other opposition groups raised the stakes, demanding a “real” constitutional monarchy.
Some demonstrators from the disenfranchised Shiite community called for the fall of the Al-Khalifa dynasty, sending shivers across the Sunni-ruled Arab monarchies of the Gulf wary of neighbouring Shiite Iran’s influence.
“We said: The people want to reform the regime. We did not raise the slogan of toppling the regime,” said Salman. “We conducted a survey among demonstrators, and the majority said they wanted a constitutional monarchy.”
But Salman, who led the Shiites to lift their boycott of elections and to take part in 2006 polls, since when Al-Wefaq (Accord in Arabic) has formed the largest parliamentary blocs, expressed disillusionment with the electoral process.
“The preliminary decision of the opposition is not to take part in the by-elections (in September). We will announce our final decision in the coming days,” he said.
“We have tried out participation (in parliament) and we did not manage to change a single law,” he said, pointing to the blocking powers of an upper chamber which is appointed by the king.
Leadership
Bahrain’s opposition must change its leadership for the divided Gulf Arab state to move on with political reconciliation after crushing a pro-democracy movement led by majority Shiites, a Sunni cleric said on Saturday.
Sheikh Abdullatif Al-Mahmoud said the democracy movement, which began in February when protesters inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt occupied a roundabout in Manama, had been hijacked by Shiite opposition leaders with a sectarian agenda who were in contact with Iran’s clerical leadership.
Mahmoud led a team of Sunni negotiators coordinating with Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa in talks with the opposition days before Saudi troops entered Bahrain to help the government break up the protest movement and arrest its leaders in mid-March.
He said Shiite leaders, headed by Sheikh Ali Salman, leader of the largest opposition group Wefaq, had overplayed their hand by trying to marginalise the royal family in the talks on political reform and accused them of taking orders from Iran — a familiar Sunni charge against group.
“We consider there to be three forces: the system (royal family), the Sunnis and the Shiites, and political and constitutional reform needs the consent of all of them,” he said in an interview.
“The problem is that the political Shiite movement has not conducted a reappraisal up to now. We don’t want to reject Shiites or their political groups,” he said.
“What is needed is that they reform themselves then present themselves again to society. In my view they will change their political leaderships, especially Wefaq.”
Twenty-one opposition leaders — seven of whom are abroad — are on trial in military court on charges of seeking to overthrow the government. Salman is not one of them, as the authorities have left senior Shiite clerics alone.