SANAA, Yemen – International sporting events can be a great way for a country to rehabilitate its image. For two weeks in 2008, for instance, the world focused not on China's treatment of Tibet or economic policies, but on its stunning Olympic facilities and the spirit of apolitical international competition. This summer, South Africa used the World Cup to put forward an image of an emerging "rainbow nation" unencumbered by racial tension or poverty. But compared with Yemen, which plans to host the Middle East's largest soccer tournament later this November, those countries had it easy.
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The international media generally only focuses on Yemen when it emerges as the source of an international terrorist plot, as it did in October after a failed attempt to send explosives in packages to the United States was traced back to the unstable Middle Eastern country and after the failed underwear bomber plot of last Christmas. But even when the world is not watching, shootouts at police checkpoints, attacks on oil pipelines, and assassinations of government officials are regular occurrences in Yemen's southeastern region, where the central government's control runs thin.
All this makes it doubly strange that on Nov. 22, six national soccer teams from across the Arabian Peninsula plus Iraq will arrive in the southern Yemeni governorates of Aden and Abyan -- the most unstable region of one of the world's most unstable countries -- to compete in the Gulf Cup of Nations, a two-week tournament sponsored by the Committee of Gulf Football Unions.
Although al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) -- the al Qaeda offshoot implicated in the recent "printer bomb" plot -- hasn't released a specific statement against the Gulf Cup yet, leaders of Yemen's burgeoning southern separatist movement have called on Gulf countries to boycott the event. "The situation in the south is an occupation, and the participation of these countries means recognition of the injustice perpetrated by the regime in Sanaa against the people of the south," said Abdo al-Matary, a separatist spokesperson, in a meeting with the Yemeni media. "How can there be an international game in light of the massacres committed? ... Do they want to play football on the blood of the south?"
Southern separatists say their region has been marginalized by Yemen's northern tribes, of which President Ali Abdullah Saleh is a member. Although they reject ties with AQAP, the southern separatists have attacked places and figures representing the central government. (Saleh has tried to make the case that the two militant groups are working together, but there's little evidence this is the case.)
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