Hadi flexes his presidential muscles, while Saleh dances on the heads of snakes, observes Nasser Arrabyee The power of the new President of Yemen Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi is now facing a real test. Earlier this week he took a number of bold decisions on the way to reforming the army, security and local governments. The decisions included fired senior officials loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh including some of his relatives. First, was his half-brother Mohamed Saleh Al-Ahmar, commander of the air force, who defiantly fired back three conditions to be met before he hands over the main base of the air forces which happened to be adjacent to the country's main airport of the capital Sanaa. The commander Saleh's main condition as stated by his assistant, Abdullah Al-Basha, was that the rebel general Ali Muhsen should be fired before him or simultaneously with him. Before he defected to the Islamist opposition in March last year, the rebel general Ali Mohsen was the second most powerful man in the former regime. Now general Muhsen and the tribal leader Hamid Al-Ahmar and their party Islah, the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood, are doing their best to replace Ali Abdullah Saleh. They are pressuring President Hadi to fire the commander of the Republican Guards, Ahmed Ali, son of Saleh, and keep general Muhsen in his position or even promote him because he supported the revolution. Everybody in Yemen knows that the most difficult decisions for the new president are not taken yet. All decisions taken so far, despite being bold, were only to pave the way for firing the rebel general Mohsen. Likewise, everybody knows that the 72-year-old rebel general Mohsen would refuse any presidential decision sacking him without firing Saleh's son Ahmed before him or simultaneously with him. Although the US-backed and Saudi-sponsored deal of peaceful power transition did not put any condition that the new president should fire relatives of Saleh from the army and security forces, General Mohsen and his tribal and Islamist allies insist that he fire the son and nephews of Saleh. President Hadi is facing great pressure from the former president Saleh's party, which forms 50 per cent of the new unity government on one hand, and from the international community especially the Americans, to fire General Mohsen from his position as a commander of the first armoured division. Internally, Saleh's supporters and party consider General Mohsen the main reason for the crisis, saying he should have been fired immediately after Saleh handed over power to the elected president Hadi 25 February. The US and the international community want General Mohsen to be fired for his historic links with extremist Islamist groups like Al-Qaeda and Jihadists. General Mohsen is married to the sister of Tarek Al-Fadhli, one of the Jihadist leaders, based in Abyan now, who worked for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan for years in late 1980s. General Mohsen recruited more than 20,000 young men mostly from the Sanaa-based Al-Eman Islamic University during the period from January 2011 to January 2012. Al-Eman University is run by the extremist cleric Abdel-Majid Al-Zandani, who is officially accused by the US and UN of supporting global terrorism. The US spent millions and millions of dollars on training and equipping the Republican Guards, under the 38-year-old Ahmed Ali (Saleh's son), the Counter-terrorism Unit, under Yehia Saleh (Saleh's nephew), and the National Security Agency, under Ammar Saleh (yet another nephew). All these three professional commanders have been supposedly cooperating with the US in the war against Al-Qaeda. This week, the Republican Guards, the highly qualified and well-equipped army, said it would support the new elected President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi to implement the transitional period. The statement accused media loyal to rebel military and tribal leaders of launching media campaigns to deform the image of the RG, calling on the national unity government to review the media policy to serve the supreme national interests. On his part, the former president has turned to social, cultural and sporting activities after he became a normal citizen. In his house in the middle of the capital Sanaa, Saleh receives hundreds and sometimes thousands of his supporters and goes to important social occasions like weddings or paying tributes to those who lose dear ones. On Thursday, for instance, Saleh attended a wedding ceremony that was held in his own village Sanhan, where more than 40,000 tribesmen received him with traditional chants as a part of respecting an honoured guest. In Wadi Jabara, in Sanahan, about 40km to the east of Sanaa, thousands of gunmen were firing to the air when Saleh arrived to congratulate the three bridegrooms, sons of the tribal Sheikh Mohamed Hunaish. Firing into the air is a part of the traditional welcoming on such occasions. On the cultural side, Saleh now is writing his memoirs under the title "My Story With Snakes" in a very obvious reference to his famous quote: Ruling Yemen is like dancing on the heads of snakes. In the book, Saleh will write the untold stories, including the biggest snakes who were with him over his 33-year reign. The focus will be on the snakes who tried to bite him but failed to kill him, according to some of those around Saleh, in a clear reference to those who were behind the assassination attempt on 3 June. Saleh tells the story how he, as an orphan and son of a humble man, took power in 1978, and what was the role of his closest allies like general Ali Mohsen and tribal leader Abdullah Al-Ahmar and his sons, who betrayed him at the end of the day by trying to ride the wave of the so-called Arab Spring. The book will be in two parts: the first part will end up with Saleh officially handing over power and the flag of united Yemen to the newly elected president in an unprecedented ceremony and with Saleh leaving the Presidential Palace while the national anthem was being played. The second part will be written only when Saleh quits as a head of his party, the People's General Congress, which was founded by Saleh in 1982. For sporting activity, Saleh will return to his favourite Ahli Taiz Club, one of the largest and most important football clubs, where he was the honorary president in 1976 and 1977. Saleh attended matches between Ahli Taiz and Shab Sanaa teams when he was the military commander of Taiz from 1975-1978.
