I. Background

Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, with more than 40 percent of its 24 million people living below the poverty line.[1] The country is running out of water as well as oil, one of its few sources of foreign exchange and state revenue.[2] Several tribal areas serve as bases for the armed group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.[3]

Yemen was two separate countries until 1990. In 1962, an army coup ended centuries of rule by a Zaidi imamate, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR, or North Yemen). In 1967, the British protectorate known as the Federation of South Arabia achieved independence as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY, or South Yemen).

The leaders of North and South Yemen declared unity on May 22, 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of North Yemen since 1978, assumed the presidency of the newly created Republic of Yemen.[4] Political tensions led to a two-month civil war in 1994 that Saleh’s forces won.[5] In 2007, southerners, saying their economic and political grievances remained unaddressed, escalated a campaign for autonomy or separation.[6] From 2004 to 2010 in the northern governorate of Sa’da, government forces fought six rounds of armed conflict with rebels known as Huthis, who accused the government of political and religious discrimination.[7]

Popular discontent, already rising in response to widespread joblessness and rampant government corruption, soared in late 2010 after President Saleh proposed to amend electoral laws and the constitution so he could stand for reelection when his seventh term expired in 2013.[8] In January 2011, inspired by mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt, thousands of Yemenis took to the streets seeking to end President Saleh’s 33-year rule.

By February, the numbers of protesters had swelled to hundreds of thousands. Government forces—primarily the Central Security Forces (CSF) and Republican Guard, run at the time by the president’s nephew and son respectively—and pro-government gangs responded to the largely peaceful protests with excessive and lethal force, particularly in the capital, Sanaa, as well as Aden and Taizz.

Human Rights Watch has confirmed the deaths of 270 protesters and bystanders from February through December 2011 in attacks by Yemeni security forces and pro-government assailants during anti-Saleh demonstrations. Thousands were injured.[9]

Even as the protests remained overwhelmingly peaceful, armed clashes erupted in May 2011 between government forces and the opposition fighters of Yemeni elites vying for power. Those clashes rose to the level of a non-international armed conflict in which scores more civilians were killed, many in what appeared to be indiscriminate attacks in violation of international humanitarian law (the laws of war).[10]

On November 23, amid mounting domestic and international pressure to leave office, Saleh signed an accord brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and backed in most aspects by the United Nations Security Council, the United States, and the European Union, to transfer power to Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi over a three-month period. [11] In exchange, the accord promised Saleh and his aides immunity from prosecution for crimes during his presidency. [12] Membership in a national unity cabinet was split evenly between Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) party and its allies and the political opposition.

On January 21, 2012, Yemen’s parliament granted full immunity to Saleh and immunity from prosecution for any “political” crimes, with the exception of terrorist acts, to “those who worked” with him during his 33 years in office—language that is sweepingly broad.  The immunity law violates Yemen’s international legal obligations to prosecute those responsible for serious human rights violations.[13]

On February 21, Yemenis voted to appoint Hadi, the sole candidate, as a two-year interim president.[14]

Under a UN-facilitated “Implementing Mechanism” that serves as a transition blueprint, Hadi’s government is to bring security forces—including those run by former president Saleh’s relatives—under civilian command, pass a transitional justice law, draft a new constitution, reform the electoral and judicial systems, and hold general elections in 2014. The government is also to convene a national dialogue conference to address grievances by groups including the northern Huthi rebels and the southerners.[15]

Loyalists of former president Saleh, who remains in Yemen as head of the GPC, have resisted transition measures, sometimes with violence. In June 2012, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2051, threatening sanctions against those undermining the transition.[16]

In December 2012, President Hadi removed Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh, the former president’s nephew, from his position as chief of the Central Security Forces. He also abolished the Republican Guard and removed Brig. Gen. Ahmad Ali Saleh, the former president’s son, as commander of that unit.

At the same time, President Hadi abolished the powerful First Armored Division and removed the division’s commander, Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar.[17]  General al-Ahmar had defected with his troops to the side of the protesters following the March 18, 2011 attack described in this report.He is a longtime rival of Gen. Ahmad Ali Saleh and is closely aligned with the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, the country’s largest opposition party, which is commonly referred to as Islah.  However Hadi was expected to offer both Brig. Gen. Ahmad Ali Saleh and Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar new military positions.[18]