A Redaction

My post “So Long, Saleh!” requires a redaction. For one thing, the original news report indicated his injury was perhaps due to rocket fire, and I assumed this meant there had been combats between his forces and those of the armed  tribes. Not only was the report likely incorrect, but the assumption was too much.

Though fighting has continued, the tribes are nowhere near so close to controlling the situation as an injury to the opposition’s leading figure would have indicated. Instead the injury appears to have been inflicted by a hidden bomb, which any of the parties, or even a traitor, might have arranged to plant.

And so the situation is not so simple as I made it out to be – which is not to say it will not become or actually is becoming that simple. This is what has to be redacted.

The two parties, the tribes on the one hand and the students and their allies on the other, are not nearly “face-to-face” as I surmised. Saleh’s apparatus still stands between them as their common enemy. A sign that the parties are acting in concert to take advantage of Saleh’s absence would be favorable. Signs that they have begun to feel the lack of common interests that the class analysis indicates must exist would be unfavorable.

Similarly, the emergence of a strong man on the left would also be a favorable sign for the development of institutions based on revolutionary values. If a strong man emerged from the tribes, he would likely become to the nation what he is to his tribe: a strongman.