Saada witnessed fierce conflict between the army and rebel fighters acting under the umbrella of the underground Believing Youth movement since last December after authorities accused rebels of attacking military and police posts in the area.

It’s been reported that some 42 soldiers have been killed and 81 were wounded in the conflict that broke out last December and is blamed on supporters of Abdul Malak al-Huthi from the Zaidi minority.

Hussein was killed in clashes with the army in September 2004.

The Zaidis are an offshoot of shae = (shiites) Islam dominant in northwestern Yemen, but form a minority in the mainly sene = (sunnis) country.

Authorities accuse the rebels of trying to overthrow the republican regime and establish an Islamic state. They also allege that rebels are receiving support from "foreign parties". And the Yemeni media pointed the finger of blamed at Iran and Libya, saying that government sources accuse them of financing the rebels.

But the charges of supporting the Believing Youth group were denied by both countries.

The rebels had rejected the current authorities who seized power in a 1962 coup known as the September 26 revolution, overthrowing a Zaidi imamate.

The recent sectarian unrest in Yemen, in which innocent people, many of whom were civilians who had nothing to do with the conflict, were killed, triggered greater fear in Iran.

The ISNA news agency reported that Ali Akbar Velayati, the influential advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that some elements were seeking to create sectarian strife there similar to Iraq.

"We are worried by the situation in Yemen as the elements which are trying to create division between shaes = (shiites) and senes = (sunnis) in Iraq are trying to do the same in Yemen," he said.

The recent fighting in Sa’ada shouldn’t reflect any real conflict between Yemen’s ethnic groups. In the wake of the current unrest in Yemen it’s important to have a look at the history and the ethnic division of Yemen, which has long been known for enjoying relative peace among the various religious sects living there.

The sene = (sunnis) (Shafe’i) and shae = (shiites) (Zaidi) constituencies that make up the majority of the Yemeni population have no historical record of tension or armed conflicts between them.

The government had already taken wise moves to contain the fighting, calling on the warning parties to resort to dialogue as it is the only right course to settle their differences and to prevent any radical beliefs from distorting the mostly moderate religious inclinations of most Yemenis.

The Islamic history has many examples where political regimes sought to encourage sectarian tensions by having some scholars introduce various tenets amongst followers of different sects, with the aim of scoring political goals, using the concept of "divide and rule", as this will ensure keeping people busy with trivial matters and shift their attention away from political thought, according to CommonSense.com.

The current unrest in Yemen is the third government crackdown since 2004 in Saada province, 240 kilometers north of the capital Sana'a, where anti-government shae = (shiites) rebels emerged as a small domestic protest against Yemeni policy. Rebel leaders denounce the government's ties with Washington and demand an end to its gradual shift to Western-style reforms.

The government claims its forces have emerged victorious from the latest conflict – since they seized control over the main rebel strongholds in the Razih and al-Shagaf areas of al-Naqa'ah, but the new leader of this shae = (shiites) rebels, threatens to widen the circle of armed conflict to areas outside Saada.

AJP and Agencies