In one week, namely this week, clashes in Yemen, in which government forces confronted armed fighters, led to several deaths and dozens of wounded. Furthermore, news agencies reported two incident of exchanged gunfire, representing an example of the security situation during a normal week in Yemen. On Wednesday, a military force raided the house of Hassan Al-Aqili, accused of killing a high-ranking officer in an ambush, and wanted on suspicions of having links with the Al-Qaeda organization. Yet the wanted man fled before the military force, which was fought off by members of the Aqili tribe near Maarib, East of the capital. As victims fell from among the raiding force, the soldiers resorted to the use of heavy artillery, turning an operation to capture a wanted criminal into a battle between the central government and a Yemeni tribe, widening the circle of enemies of the authorities in Sanaa. Indeed, members of the tribe responded to this confrontation by blowing up a pipeline supplying oil from the Maarib governorate to the coast of the Red Sea. Circumstances have it that the raid coincided with revelations that unmanned US drones have used internationally banned weapons against a supposed gathering of Al-Qaeda members, but that the victims were civilians. This reveals at the same time that the price of such pursuits is paid by civilians, who will necessarily become biased towards the government's opponents, as was proven by a similar experience in Pakistan – with all that this involves in terms of shedding doubt on the ability of this method to cause damage to Al-Qaeda without arousing the animosity of ordinary citizens. On Thursday, the day which has become the customary weekly occasion for demonstrations by supporters of the Southern Movement, a military force fought off demonstrators in Al-Daleh, South of the country. The demonstration held this Thursday was characterized by feelings of anger and extreme tension, after six demonstrators had been killed on Monday by the fire of government forces during a protest. This means that the method of violent confrontation is being repeated on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis in dealing with the Southern protest movement, with all that this violence involves in terms of escalation from both sides and the widening gulf between supporters of the Southern Movement and the central government. Meanwhile, news agencies are reporting information about continuous tension and incidents that violate the ceasefire agreement in Saada between government forces and Houthi supporters. This indicates that the fire of the sixth war still lies dormant under the ash, and that the danger of slipping into wide-ranging confrontations still stands, as mutual accusations of violating the terms of the ceasefire continue to be leveled between the two sides – this especially as the Houtis were forced into the ceasefire, having had to submit to the government's conditions under military pressure and their failure to widen the scope of the war towards the East, and nothing else. In the height of the sixth war, Yemen's neighborhood, along with international capitals concerned with Yemen's affairs, moved in two directions: a growth direction through the donors' conference in London and subsequent executive meetings, and a security direction through assistance and cooperative agreements – in hopes that a growth step will stem the widening influence of extremism, which is taking place as a result of poverty and neglect, and that a security step will stop extremism in Yemen from returning to terrorist attacks that target the West on its home soil. Yet nothing on the ground has shown what would indicate that it is possible to achieve these goals, not just due to the donors' failure to implement their commitments and the lack of security capabilities to besiege extremism, but also and mainly due to the loss of a central political plan in dealing with this wide range of challenges and objections. It has become clear that violent confrontations, presidential pardons, obscure promises of growth plans and bribes to some local leaders are no longer sufficient in dealing with the situation in Yemen. It has become clear as well that, without resolving the roots of the objections, which are diverse and differ between one region and another, and without allowing those who are objecting to participate in decision-making and widening the circle of power, the predicament will only deepen. This is especially true as the country will be fertile soil for any major development regarding the Iranian nuclear crisis and for Tehran to make use of this weak side of the confrontation front, where it would use its obscure and dubious relations with domestic adversaries of Yemen's central government.
