More than a thousand young Yemenis fought with sticks and stones against a throng of pro-government enforcers in the middle of the capital, Sana’a, Wednesday, a furious drama that, for all its intensity, never spread beyond the single block where it began.
“There is no state! There is no state!” chanted the young Yemenis, most of them students from Sana’a University, down the street.
“No to terrorism!” the defenders of the government called in return, whacking the students with boards and hurling rocks into their ranks. “We support the president!”
Dozens of demonstrators were carried off bleeding and wounded.
The demonstration, the seventh in as many days against the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, unfolded along a two-hundred-yard stretch of Rabat Street in downtown Sana’a. It’s the heart of the city: Rabat Street bisects Sixteenth Street, which connects, among other things, the international airport to one of the president’s palaces. The anger that rose from the Yemeni students seemed to flow at one with that being felt in Tunisia, Egypt, and throughout the Middle East: a deep-seated frustration at a hidebound economic system that gives young people, even educated ones, few chances in life, and an ossified political system that thwarts any effort at change.
“There are no jobs here, and everyone can see that our government is corrupt,” said Ali Abdulohoom, a thirty-year-old university graduate who says he has been searching—unsuccessfully—for a job for three years. “The majority of the people no longer support this government—remember, the majority in this country are young people.”
After the demonstrations began last week, Saleh, now in his thirty-third year of power, promised he would leave office by 2013, and that his son would not replace him. Since then, he’s been summoning the country’s most important tribal leaders and politicians in order to buy himself more time. The students don’t want to wait any longer.
Yet what was perhaps most notable about the clashes is how limited they were. The protesters consumed the length of Rabat Street and a small piece of Sixteenth, enough that the traffic often stalled. But the protest never grew beyond that limited area, and they were never joined by ordinary Yemenis living nearby. The students in the streets said they were waiting for other Yemenis to join them, but that didn’t seem to be happening. A week into the protests, most of Yemen, so far, hardly seemed to be in the grips of a revolution.
“I support the students, but I’m not ready to join them yet,” Mahmoud Saman, whose house lies within view of the demonstration, said. “I would probably join in if it got a little bigger.”
Only days ago the Yemeni police used stun guns on some protestors, and on Wednesday they reportedly killed two protesters in the city of Aden. But in the streets of Sana’a on Wednesday, the police were almost nowhere to be found. Saleh appears to be gambling that the protests will burn themselves out. Until that happens, he seems happy to have his most physical supporters match the students in the streets.
“We are here to support our country, our president,” said Jamal Rajid, a partisan of the president. When I met Rajid, he was facing a long sea of protesters. His hands were chalky white from the rocks he’d been tossing all day into the crowd. Rajid said he had come to the rally unbidden, but others said that the president’s gangs were being paid.
At times, an air of unreality lingered over the clashes. Among the traffic slowed on Sixteenth Street was a line of S.U.V.s, which had been dolled up for a wedding. Restaurants within a stone’s throw of the marchers were still serving meals.
“Would you like to sit down and have lunch?” one Yemeni asked me with a smile.
Photograph: Mohammad Huwais/AFP/Getty Images.
