Saturday Papers

The body of Muhammad Salih al-Hanashi, the Guantanamo detainee who committed suicide, has arrived back in Yemen and will be taken to Abyan where he will be buried. This article from News Yemen points out that he was held without charge since 2002 and that he was often on a hunger strike.

Yahya Muhammad ‘Abdullah Salih makes a rare appearance in the pan-Arab press talking about the importance of Yemeni-Saudi relations, following Salih’s recent trip to the Kingdom, which I neglected to cover. He also brushes off worries about secession, perhaps a bit too glibly. But unlike other members of the president’s inner circle, Yahya appears to be someone with both a patronage network of his own and the smarts to put such a network to good use. In fact, he along with a couple of other individuals were the subject of a paper I gave at MESA last year on the politics of succession in Yemen, which doesn’t mean much save that I think he is someone to watch.

In other news, I continue to make my way slowly through Sada al-Malahim in my spare moments and I hope to have some more to post here in the coming days.