A Struggle for Peace in a Place Where Fighting Never Ends

By David Finkel

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005; Page A01

SANAA, Yemen -- Word of the ambush of Sheik Rabea al-Okaimi came by cell phone. It was Rabea himself calling, late in the afternoon this past Sept. 11, from an isolated part of Yemen called Al Jawf. At the very time memorial services were underway in Washington and New York, an agitated man in Al Jawf was describing what happened a few hours before. He was in a car. He was cut off. There was a shootout. Two of the attackers were injured. He has to go, he said, he'll call back, and the telephone connection went dead.

The next day, he called again. Calmer, he said he was on his way to a meeting to help settle an escalating war between his tribe and a neighboring one when the attackers arrived in three cars. He and his guards dove into a ditch. The attackers bunkered themselves in another ditch. Both sides had Kalashnikov assault rifles. Bullets went back and forth for more than an hour. He thought the two men who were hit were severely wounded. "It's like American films," he said, "but it was real," and then the connection went dead again.