Wind of change in Yemen

By the BBC's Brian Barron

Within an hour of arriving in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, you sense that the mood here swings from the deeply apprehensive to the seething anti-Western feelings of fundamentalists, to the plainly surreal.

As you check into your hotel in the shadow of the ancient walled city, a warning from the American FBI about the risks of being in Yemen is handed over by the receptionist.

Even Yemen has been prodded into joining the search for the world's most wanted fugitives

The United States embassy is sealed off, protected by Yemeni militia behind sandbags. The residences of the British and other Western ambassadors are ringed by concrete barriers and carloads of armed police to deter any truck bombers.

It is impossible to escape the embrace of the secret police and their colleagues from other ministries. They are polite gentlemen with the power to eavesdrop on phone calls and to decide which of your e-mails reach their destinations.

Patchy reputation

They insist on the right to sit-in on all interviews. A local journalist engaged in a routine piece of research on our behalf - and for his own newspaper - about a Yemeni girl marrying Osama Bin Laden last year, ends up in jail.

I won't dwell on this lest it make the situation worse.

Only minutes into a routine interview with a parliamentary leader of the ruling party, he leaps to his feet and walks out, accusing me of interrogating him like an intelligence agent.

Welcome to Yemen, 2,000 miles from the bombs falling in Afghanistan, but emotionally much closer. The ancestral homeland of Osama Bin Laden - his father was born in Eastern Yemen and then moved to Saudi Arabia - Yemen has long held a patchy reputation for harbouring terrorists.

And yet despite the dispassionate reflections about a country I've periodically reported on for well over 30 years, there are encouraging signs.

Having chosen to back Saddam Hussein with disastrous consequences in the Gulf War a decade ago, Yemen now is holding firm to a discreet acceptance of the assault on the Taleban and Bin Laden.

There are cries of protest from students, many of whom hail him as an Arab hero. There are inflammatory sermons from imams in some mosques during Friday prayers.

But the regime, which rules through a complex system of democracy, tribal consensus and its ever vigilant security apparatus, has kept its nerve.

In the recent past, according to Western diplomats, the authorities seemed indifferent to the presence of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, so long as it behaved itself within Yemen.

Internal feuds

Many of the estimated 1,000 al-Qaeda supporters are Yemenis who fought with Bin Laden and the mujahadin against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

Yemeni connections with the shadowy world of espionage and terrorism have a long pedigree. In the 1970s and 80s, the ruling Marxists in southern Yemen - then running their own independent country - sanctioned training camps for terrorists with the help of communist East Germany's secret police.

This is yet another corner of the Arab world where internal feuds, conspiracies and assassinations have been the norm.

Add to that potent brew two extraordinary statistics. In a nation of 18 million people, there are 60 million firearms - a gun culture every bit as intense as that in Afghanistan.

The government's writ is tenuous in remote desert and mountain regions where some tribal leaders regard foreign diplomats and tourists as kidnap fodder to be ransomed for the highest price.

Bombing catalyts

The sad face of one Chinese victim stares from the front page of this week's Yemen Observer.

Inside are details of his kidnapper, a retired army colonel whose list of demands includes reinstatement to the active list, the return of his official car - and government jobs for 20 of his fellow tribesmen.

If past form is anything to go on, there's every chance that although Yemen's strongman, President Saleh, this month condemned kidnapping as terrorism, the retired colonel will win concessions and not be arrested.

Osama Bin Laden has been blamed for the attack on the USS Cole

Pressed to start disarming Yemen's tribesmen, the President, I'm told, indicated it was politically impossible.

Still, he's now steering Yemen on a course unimaginable in recent years. The catalyst was the bombing of an American warship in the southern port of Aden exactly12 months ago.

This is blamed on a Bin Laden terrorist cell that slipped into the country, with local back-up.

The incident couldn't be shrugged off and for a lengthy period drastic American retaliation was a Damocles sword hanging over the regime.

Commonsense prevailed, and the Yemenis delivered up at least six al -Qaeda suspects, whose trial is pending here.

Tourism collapsed

The tragedy in New York last month and unfolding American retribution means that this virtually destitute state has few options.

Without fanfare, it back the action while banning demonstrations and suppressing dissent. It has begun to rein in militant imams in the mosques.

Tourism has collapsed because Yemen today is not a safe place. But given the assassins and terrorists who found this a safe haven not so long ago, it's mildly reassuring to encounter a computerised immigration system as you leave Sanaa airport.

Even Yemen - for so long ambivalent about the men of violence - has been prodded into joining the search for the world's most wanted fugitives.