Journalist and political analyst, Aly El Kabbany in London, shared his thoughts on the current developments taking place in the Southwest Asian nation in an interview with Press TV. El Kabbany believes the process of democracy in the “failed state” of Yemen is not to achieve goals overnight, but it will prove fruitful in the long run.
The following is a rush transcript of the interview with El Kabbany:
Press TV: A lot of doctors have said nerve gas was used against the protesters. How significant an increase of violence and torture against the Yemeni people is that?
El Kabbany: We are really witnessing a new dictator of Yemen practicing the brutal ways which Gaddafi of Libya is using in killing his own people. This is not new for the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh. We saw before that he launched the war against the people of the south in the city of Adan and he crushed them.
They were the people who asked and called for the unification of Yemen, but he betrayed them and killed them. He also launched a war against the people in the north. The regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh had bloodied its hands even before this current uprising.
We are seeing really unprecedented protests against the brutal regime and heavy hands pushing Yemen into widespread violence as we are seeing in Libya. The guy is still stalling and not responding to the demands of the people who are now asking for a regime change.
Press TV: Yemen actually ratified the chemical weapons convention in 2000 and wanted to establish a panel to monitor chemical plants and punish violators. How come the international community now is not saying anything about this use of nerve gas if it has been used?
El Kabbany: We always notice the hypocrisy of the so-called international community, because it should be represented by the General Assembly of the United Nations, not only six or seven major powers of the world who are acting as the cowboy of the international community; not the Western powers who are practicing duplicity, double standards and hypocrisy.
They are all opportunist. They will come at the last minute to support the winning power. They are supporting and financing and supplying Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime with weapons.
Press TV: The people in the south have called for separation from the north for many years. But now many analysts say that is changing; that their demands are now moving from separation to unity, but without Saleh. Do you believe that?
El Kabbany: This is a big achievement of the revolution of Yemen. We are witnessing unity among the people of Yemen led by the youth. They are reflecting the same cries in Egypt and Tunisia for a unity of the people of Yemen against the regime.
This revolution stops the expansion of al-Qaeda in the fertile soil of Yemen. This is the biggest achievement of the youth revolution in Yemen; because, for the first time, we do not see the tribal division.
On the contrary, we see the national feelings of the Yemeni people unified under the same demand, which is the change of the regime and calling for a civil society and a democratic regime after the dictatorship that governed them for more than 32 years.
Press TV: President Saleh has announced plans for a new constitution that would guarantee the independence of the Yemeni parliament and judiciary, however he expressed doubts that the opposition would accept this. Do you think that he has probably realized finally what the people really want?
El Kabbany: The people of Yemen have had a long, bad experience with the regime of Saleh. They would never believe him practicing and implementing political reforms. He realized his past lies to his people in his previous speech and said his government would not be cheating the people again.
He knows that he has been cheating his people for many times. I think now he realizes that the resistance of the people will accept nothing but the fall of the corrupted regime that looted the wealth of the nation; exactly like what happened in Egypt, Tunisia and the entire Arab world.
His days are numbered and I think he knows that. The entire Arab people should support their Yemeni brothers, and the international community should also now act immediately to support the Yemeni people and protect them from a blood bath like the one the people of Libya are facing now.
Press TV: Considering Yemen's proximity to Saudi Arabia and the anti-terrorism efforts of the United States in Yemen, do you think these might be reasons for why the United States may not be speaking out as strongly against what is happening in Yemen?
El Kabbany: Absolutely; I think the American policy makers were shocked by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. The pace of events was so fast that they could not evaluate the situation. All those who are reading the Zionist press are saying that the Americans let down Ben Ali and Mubarak -- the main allies. So they (the United States) started to rethink and tried to support the regime.
And this was the call of Netanyahu that how come Mubarak could be stabbed in the back. He attacked United States President Obama by saying he did not have any experience in foreign policy. So the American policy makers are now rethinking their strategy.
They are trying to support the regime by cosmetic changes to improve the ugly faces, and we can see their policy now in Bahrain and Yemen; the former being the front door for the (Persian) Gulf oil-producing area and the latter the backyard of Saudi Arabia.
They are trying to support these regimes. But I think people would not be deceived again and they are adamant to achieve their demands and goals. The question is who supplied the Yemeni and Bahraini dictators with all these weapons and illegal nerve gas.
The answer is that the Western powers did it to help those regimes repress and crush any uprising. So while the situation in Egypt and Tunisia surprised them, they are now thinking about plans to absorb the people's anger and to try to prolong the process rather than making it as short as what happened in both Tunisia and Egypt. The people, I think, are wise enough to keep their demand of a regime change clear and precise.
The sooner we see an act from the American administration and Western powers in supporting the legitimate demands of the people, the better it will be, rather than having a chaos in Yemen, which may spread in the entire area.
One of the main reasons for this uprising is that the youth in the entire Arab world are having the same cries; the same demand; the same call, and we are witnessing unification on the Arab feeling among the new generation in the Arab world.
Press TV: How do you see the future and who do you think will replace Ali Abdullah Saleh? Are there chances for democracy?
El Kabbany: The problems of Yemen, I believe, are due to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled Yemen using the old British policy of divide and rule. So he is the one who was dividing the tribes; the opposition; the north and south, in order to weaken all the opposition so that he could rule. He is the real problem, not the revolution.
What happened in Egypt is the first step of a very long process. A revolution does not have a switch to go to democracy in one day, one week or one month. It is a long process. But it has to start with the first step.
The dictators used to manage to abolish all the political figures and any potential leaders and any person with popularity among the people. The media and the propaganda machine in these autocratic regimes concentrate on only one person, and let everyone feel if that one person disappears, a chaos will happen.
When a dictator falls, an organized chaos will always happen. But then the process of democracy will take its way. And people have to learn that democracy is a mechanism which makes the people rule themselves. They have to build the civil society, the trade unions, the political parties, and let this process take its time to achieve its demands and goals.
So, in a way, I am sure the situation in Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen will probably become worse before it gets better. But this is the process of rebuilding a society which has been corrupted, because even before the uprising in Yemen, the country faces many problems: the unsolved rebellion in the north, the southern separatist movement because of the oppression, al-Qaeda with its expanding operation.
Yemen could be described as a failed state. A failed state could not be rebuilt in a very short time, but I am sure with a democratic process, everything could be rebuilt in the right time.
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