War increasingly likely in Saleh’s restive Yemen

WHAT'S HAPPENED?VIOLENCE has exploded in the capital Sanaa after President Saleh's forces launched one of their bloodiest crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters since unrest began in January. Around 50 have been killed since Sunday, and the hospitals are overwhelmed with injured people.
 
Fighting erupted after protesters, who have been camped in the capital for several months, set off on a protest march and clashed with members of the regime-loyal Republican Guards.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?There have been fears of a full-out war ever since the powerful and well trained 1st Armored Division defected to the protesters' side in March. War would be a nightmare in a country with numerous armed tribes and groups, one of which is Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
 
The Republican Guards are headed up by Ahmed, Saleh's son, and according to the Associated Press, "have long been thought to be the regime's last line of defence". With the fighting now on their doorstep, this "could be the start of a final showdown," reports the agency.
 
Tom Finn, a freelance journalist based in Yemen, supports this view. "Most of those being treated in here are defected soldiers," he tweeted yesterday from a city hospital. "This is shifting from a crackdown on protesters to a military standoff."
 
It has been suggested that President Saleh is encouraging the unrest. Opposition groups have claimed that he is "intentionally allowing the militants to make inroads to dramatise the anarchy that would unfold if he were deposed," according to the LA Times.
 
For most Yemenis, the fighting is making their lives miserable. A third of the country's population - 7.5 million people - are going hungry, food and petrol prices are soaring and water is scarce.
 
WHAT NEXT?Reuters's Gulf correspondent Erika Solomon told NPR radio that although it had become "a kind of military confrontation," she believed that a full-on war "is something that [both sides] wanted to avoid, and I'm pretty sure they're going to be keen to try and step away from as soon as they can".
 
For Fatima, a Yemeni woman who spoke on BBC World Service earlier today, war would at least bring some sort of end to the nine-month-old conflict. "Maybe if the peaceful solution is not working, we are heading towards war and this will end everything, in either a bad or good way."
 
Despite Yemen's growing calls for outside help, the international community has so far been hesitant to insist on Saleh's departure. This is because many countries, especially America and Saudi Arabia, fear Islamic extremists taking control in his absence. ·