Yemen

SANAA, Yemen — For 33 years, a small photograph of President Ali Abdullah Saleh ran every day on the top left corner of the front page of al-Thawra, the government newspaper. On Feb. 1, a new editor aligned with Yemen's populist revolt removed the photo. The next day, armed tribesmen stormed the gates. Terrified journalists fled the building, leaving Saleh's loyalists in control of the paper. On Feb. 3, the president's image was back on the front page, in color, along with an apology.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court Wednesday to force the Obama administration to release legal and intelligence records related to the killing of three U.S. citizens in drone attacks in Yemen last year. The lawsuit , filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charged the Justice and Defense departments and the CIA with illegally failing to respond to requests made in October under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It cited public comments made by President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other officials in arguing that the government cannot credibly claim a secrecy defense.

The U.S. military launched an airstrike against Yemen's al-Qaeda affiliate early Tuesday, targeting an area of the country where the group is increasingly asserting its influence . At least a dozen people were killed in the strike, including insurgents from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — also known as AQAP — and local militants, according to some reports. Other accounts put the death toll at about half that number. Abdul Monem al-Fahtani, said to be a mid-level AQAP leader, was reportedly among the dead.

Images of rebellion have sprung up across this southern coastal city. The old flag of South Yemen is proudly displayed on cars, and graffiti calling for independence is sprayed on wall after wall. "Freedom for South. Aden Get Up," reads one message along a busy main road. Once mostly underground, a secessionist movement seeking to undo a 1990 pact that unified North and South Yemen is emerging from the shadows, emboldened by the populist uprising that has upended the country over the past year.

The Obama administration has approved Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh's request to enter the United States for medical treatment, clearing the way for a transfer of power in the strife-filled country. Saleh flew out of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, late Sunday and headed for a first stop in Oman, a Yemen spokesman said. It was not clear when he would arrive in the United States or how long he would stay here. Before leaving, Saleh asked his countrymen for forgiveness in a television address and said he planned to return home after surgery, in time for the swearing in of a presidential successor next month.

Sudarsan Raghavan's Jan. 9 front-page artice, " In Yemen, children pay the price of revolt ," exposed how Yemen's political upheaval and humanitarian crisis are harming children. It points out that rising poverty and displacement may result in more families marrying off young girls to ease financial pressures. More than half of girls in Yemen marry before age 18, and about 14 percent before age 15. In some rural areas, families marry off girls as young as 8. Last month Human Rights Watch published a report about child marriage based on interviews I conducted in Yemen.

ADEN, Yemen — Nazha Mohammed was pale and silent in her mother's arms, on the edge of listlessness. At 2 months old, she was one of the youngest children inside a high school where several hundred Yemenis have sought refuge from conflict. "There's no milk for her," explained her father, Mohammed Yahya. Yemen's populist uprising and the political crisis that followed have pushed the country to the brink of a humanitarian emergency, according to the United Nations and aid agencies.

In this remote, sun-blasted corner of southern Yemen, there's a battle raging that is as important to the United States as it is to this nation's beleaguered government. Each day, American-backed Yemeni forces engage in a grueling struggle to retake territory from militant Islamists — a conventional army pitted against a guerrilla militia with grand ambitions to stage an attack on U.S. soil. Each day, the soldiers feel increasingly besieged. "We are like an island in a sea of al-Qaeda," said Lt. Abdul Mohamed Saleh, standing at a checkpoint on a desolate highway that connects Zinjibar with the port city of Aden.

THE UNITED STATES and its allies have been working for months to remove Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh from the multi-sided, bloody and increasingly anarchic political conflict in his country. Until Mr. Saleh fully yields the autocratic power he has wielded for the last three decades, there won't be much chance of restoring order in a state that is becoming a key haven for al-Qaeda, much less of creating a new democratic order. So it is logical, on one level, that the Obama administration would be considering a request from Mr. Saleh that he be granted entry to the United States.

Christopher Boucek, 38, an authority on the Islamic world who had done research on Saudi Arabia and Yemen and was an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, died Nov. 2 at Reston Hospital Center. His wife, Marie Boucek, said he had a heart attack. He lived in Reston. Dr. Boucek first came to Washington in 1994 as an intern at the State Department. In the late 1990s, he worked with several D.C. organizations dealing with U.S.-Arab relations. He moved to Cairo in 2000 to edit an English-language newspaper and then returned to Washington as media analyst at the Saudi Embassy.