Yemen 1st-Hand: "Government Is Not Strong, But People Are Not Liberated" (Fielding-Smith)
Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 7:11
At a protest in Aden, a young man holds the flag of the Southern Movement and the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen
In the space of 30 years, Aden has been a British colony, the capital of a Soviet-backed independent republic, part of a new united Yemen, and the headquarters of a shortlived breakaway state, before being over-run and looted by the unity government’s forces. Residents say the wildly volatile state of limbo they have been in for the past year and a half is more alarming than anything they’ve experienced before.
“The government is not strong, but the people are not liberated,” said Mohamed Ali Ahmed, who recently returned after nearly three decades away and is a veteran of the south’s breakaway war. “It’s a kind of chaos --- no one is controlling anything.”