Saturday Papers

There isn’t much in the pan-Arab papers today with the exception of a small UPI piece in al-Quds al-Arabi denying that the 176 released prisoners have any link to al-Qaeda. Trey has an excerpt from al-Thawra with the official Yemeni take on the confusion.

The other news today seems to mostly be coming out of Abyan. This piece talks about a preacher in Ja’ar, a town that has long had a problem with Islamist militants, many of whom fought in Iraq. The preacher, Anwar al-Haj Salim, blames the government for all of the problems that have been visited upon his fine town. Not surprising, but not all that nice either considering how many of the young men from the region have recently went on the government’s payroll.

Another piece details the partial destruction of an already evacuated prison in Ja’ar, the subsequent clash and the raiding of medical warehouse. Finally, this piece from al-Nada’ talks about the cleansing of the area.

It should be noted that these two papers al-Ayyam and al-Nada’ have a strong inclination towards publishing rumors and half-truths especially about what is going on in Abyan and against the Islamist militants there. However, al-Nada’ was the first paper to publish news of the 160 men under Sami al-Dayan, who went on the government’s payroll back on January 21, and they have subsquently been proven correct. These three pieces, at least in their overall tone, seem to match up with what is going on in Abyan.