Down a dimly lit corridor, in the only burn-unit hospital in Yemen lie the severely burned bodies of Sultan Ahmed Mohammed and Nacer Mabkhout al-Sabooly. They’re conscious, but barely able to speak out loud. Sultan, tells me his name and mutters just one sentence before closing his eyes.

“The plane struck me,” he said.

I met the two last September. They were victims of an attack that officially never happened. At the hospital, Abdelrahman Barman, an attorney who runs the Yemeni human-rights organization Hood, that advocates for the rights of drone victims, explained to me how this mini-bus driver and his cousin from a rural town in Central Yemen ended up barely conscious in a hospital in Sanaa.

“There was a mini-bus full of 14 people, including a woman and her two children,” Barman said. “They were headed to the city. Two of the airplanes-without-pilots arrived, one of them came low enough that the passengers of the bus could see it, and it released the first missile. After it hit the car there were still some people alive, and then the second missile was launched and it killed everyone except three.

Immediately after the strike the Yemeni government announced that it had killed al-Qaeda militants. Families of the civilian victims, in coordination with Hood, threatened to bring the burned corpses of the victims – which included two children and their mother – to the presidential palace. Soon after, the Yemeni government changed its tone. An official from the President’s office called the strike an “accident.”

This was a rare confession by Yemeni officials. But the US government has never officially acknowledged its role in conducting any drone strikes in Yemen, much less disclosed how many civilians have been killed. But according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drones have killed more than 1,100 people in Yemen alone.

But no one’s really sure. “Yemenis feel that they’re no longer feel safe in their homes, roads and marketplaces,” said Ibrahim Qatabi, a Yemeni-American human rights activist and a legal worker with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

He said that while its difficult to know for sure the number of civilians killed, one thing is certain: the impact the program has had on life in general in places like Southern Yemen, where drone strikes can occur weekly, is profound.

“They (Yemenis) have the feeling that any of them can be killed at any given time for crimes they didn’t commit, that there’s no rule of law that can protect them. They feel unsafe,” Qatabi said.

Many critics of the US’ covert drone program say people in Yemen today live with a collective sense of insecurity, waiting for disaster to rain down on them from the heavens at any given time.

And that, said Naureen Shah, tears apart the fabric of society. She’s director of the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia University Law School, and author of a report called “The Civilian Impact of Drones.”

“People are afraid of sending their children out to go to school, they’re afraid of going outside and maybe engaging with the community because of that fear. There’s a deep psychological impact on people because of the sound of drones flying overhead,” Shah said.

Under international law, governments are supposed to investigate attacks that kill civilians. But because the drone program in Yemen doesn’t officially exist, the US doesn’t acknowledge the strikes. So, no drone strikes, no dead civilians, and no compensation to survivors or the families of victims.

As a result, Ibrahim Qatabi said Yemenis lash out, looking for justice.

“What happens usually if the tribe is strong enough they will block roads to main cities, prompting the government to send some sort of mediator or government official and tribal leaders to go and work out some deals with the families of the victims,” Qatabi said.

Qatabi said that oftentimes, tribes who never had any affiliation with Al-Qaeda or any animosity towards the United States, may attack US targets to avenge the killing of their family members. Many in Yemen say that the drone war is having the effect of creating more militants than it is killing.

That point is hotly contested in the halls of Washington. But Naureen Shah, of the Columbia University Law School, said what is certain is that in places where drones are used regularly, people believe the US views their lives as disposable.

“Because the program is not being acknowledged because there’s no recognition of the harm people come away with nothing,” she said. “We’re not just talking about losing the chance at compensation, but possibly offering some dignity and recognition to the families that have been left devastated.”

Nacer can relate. He’s the mini-bus driver who survived the September 2nd drone strike in Walid Rabiaa that killed 12 civilians. His legs were so badly burned in the strike that he can no longer drive, or earn a living.

I recently reached Nacer’s brother by phone in his village in Central Yemen, to see how the survivors were getting on with life. Ahmed al-Sabooly told me that the Yemeni government provided Nacer and Sultan with just enough money to travel to Egypt to get treatment for their injuries, but not much else has been done since then.

Thank God they are okay now,” Sabooly said. “In terms of their health, they survived, but they of course feel they have been oppressed. We still don’t know why they were targeted. It was a complete shock, and no one knows why this happened except for God.”

A person involved in criminal things should be afraid, he told me, but an innocent person shouldn’t have to live in fear like this.

Sara was born to Palestinian parents in Denmark. She went to school here, attended university in Copenhagen, and has worked for years as a school teacher in the heart of her home-town.

But for the past several years, Sara wakes up every day at dawn, kisses her husband and children goodbye, and begins her three hour commute from Malmo, Sweden, across the Oresund bridge to her school in Copenhagen. You see Sara lives in a self-imposed exile in Sweden.

“I was very sad about Denmark,” she said, “because how could they treat me like this?”

Denmark’s restrictive family reunification laws make it incredibly difficult for Danes to marry and live in Denmark with a non-European spouse. Prevented from living together in Copenhagen, Sara and her Jordanian husband moved to Sweden, where they had an easy time getting visas.

“I am well educated, I have never done anything against the law, I have always been straight. So, why do they treat people like us that way? Of that I was very angry, even colleagues at my work were like ‘how could they kick you out?’ That’s really, really sad,” she said.

In fact, Sara’s situation is not at all unique. Since the immigration law passed in 2002, the bridge connecting Copenhagen to Malmo has come to be known as the “love bridge.” More than 9,000 Danes are estimated to be living in the Malmo for exactly this reason.

Imam Pedersen, a member of the Muslim Council of Denmark, said he’s appalled by what he sees as his country’s attempt to keep out immigrants who are the spouses of Danish citizens.

“They were born in Denmark,” he said. “They’re raised in Denmark, but they’re classified as foreigners and they’re treated as such… And this I see as a major problem. We have a lot of people out there who feel they’re not being allowed to belong to any country.”

Pedersen said the issue is xenophobia, pure and simple. And he called the fear especially misguided, since a relatively small part of Denmark’s population – just 10 percent – is made up of immigrants.

“I think a lot of people are appalled by what has happened in Denmark because it is so much contrary to what we can call the Danish spirit for many decades. Then again there’s been a cleverly orchestrated, we can call it propaganda, that’s making people scared of the immigrants, of the foreigners, of the ‘aliens’ that have come into our country,” he said.

Alex Ahrendtsen is a member of Parliament from The Danish People’s Party, one of the most popular right-wing parties in Europe. Ahrendtsen said he has nothing against immigrants, per se. What he doesn’t appreciate is foreigners who move to Denmark but refuse to give up their old customs. And he said this is especially true when it comes to marriage, which is why the family reunification law is so important.

“It forces young people in Denmark to marry someone in their home countries,” he said,” to protect against the whole issue of forced marriages; and we don’t want that. So if we stick to our strict legislation on family reunification we also help young female, especially Muslim immigrants in Denmark to make it possible for them to chose their own husbands instead of their fathers and mothers,” Ahrendtsen said

He said he’s also incensed that Europe’s open borders policy forces Denmark to let almost anybody in.

And Ahrendtsen said the solution is not just tighter immigration policies in Denmark alone. He wants to end Europe’s open-border policy altogether.

But European Union lawmaker Cecilia Malmstrom said that would be a disaster for Denmark, and would mark an end to a unified Europe. She maintained the individual members of the EU need to tamp down the kind of rhetoric coming from right wing populist parties all across Europe.

“There is a climate today in many member states of nationalism, closing borders, xenophobia,” she said. “I can say it, the Commission can say it, the Parliament can repeat it, but it’s the local leaders the national leaders that have to stand up for the basic principles on which Europe is founded on.”

But Denmark for one doesn’t look like its any closer to enacting open immigration policies in line with EU standards.

And for Sara’s family, their state of dislocation may be permanent.

“Now we have settled and for us just to move back again it feels difficult,” Sara said. “When you have kids its like you’re bound, you feel its difficult to go back again, its like you have to begin again from zero.”

The Syrian National Council, the largest umbrella opposition group, has been calling for some time now for an international intervention that would include sending arms to the opposition in the country.

But in the midst of a conflict that seems to grow bloodier by the day, with the number of casualties nearing 10,000 – there is a burgeoning movement within Syria that believes the regime can be brought down without arms, and is committed to continuing the revolution using non-violent means alone.

Back in June, in the early days of the Syrian uprising, Ibrahim Kashoush, a resident of Hama – composed what came to be known as the anthem of the Syrian revolution.

The catchy song, “Come’on Bashar, Leave” spread across Syria, and spawned numerous imitations and remixes. Kashoush was reportedly killed by security forces in July, his throat slit and body dumped in a river. But if his killing was intended to scare – anyone off, it had the opposite effect.

Activists in Damascus stuffed cassette players and speakers with Kashoush’s song in black bags and dispersed them in garbage cans around the city – soon the anthem of the revolution was blaring from street corners around Damascus.

And around the country, other activists have been just as creative. From pouring red dye in fountains, to staging massive sit-ins, to handing out dates and roses to soldiers, they say non-violent resistance saves more lives, and in the end is more powerful.

“Peaceful resistance is a must; if we use weapons we will not be able to succeed as we do not have enough weapons or soldiers,” said Khalaf Ali Al-Khalaf, a Syrian activist from Aleppo. “The military option will increase people’s pain. Providing people with arms will only increase death. The opposition must convince those requesting arms that there is a different method of resistance. We are facing an unusual regime so we have to use unusual methods.”

I met Al-Khalaf in Istanbul along with a number of activists from around Syria actively working on the non-violent resistance movement there. Anmar is another activist. She’s from Damascus, but currently lives in Paris, and asked that we not use her last name for her protection. Anmar says, more than just saving lives, non-violent resistance is preserving the spirit of the Syrian Revolution.

“So if we are going to be violent we are going to be as cruel as this regime,” Anmar said. “How to act against this violence is to show that this violence is ridiculous, and it’s not fair… We have to obey all the time the rules – you can’t talk about this, you can’t talk about this, you are limited in a box, so one of the tactics is the artistic movement, and song is a very important thing. People like it.”

The hope is that non-violent protest will win over what the opposition believes to be the silent majority of Syrians – those in Damascus, Aleppo and other big cities, who agree with the cause but disagree with the current tactics, and who aren’t willing to risk their lives. Ammar says there are small acts of disobedience that anyone can do.

“What I usually work on is in Damascus, once people put lights on the windows and there was calls on Facebook saying on this day we’re going to light candles for the revolution,” Ammar said. “And people started to do it … We are trying all of the time to reach those people, like please what we want is to live together and be one part, and to build our country.”

Jwad Al-Khateeb, an activist from the town of Kamishlee and spokesman for the United Union of Free Syrian Students, says their goal is to stop business as usual in every university in the country. And so far they’ve succeeded in shutting down several, and are hoping the University of Damascus will be next.

“The revolution in Aleppo was actually ignited at the University first…then spread to the city,” Jwad Al-Khateeb said. “We’re working on other cities where the barrier of fear still hasn’t been broken, to start demonstrations from the universities. The Syrian people are dying, the least we can do is to stop going to class, to say the Universities will stop until the regime falls.”

More than just bringing down the regime of Bashar Al Assad, Syria’s non-violent activists believe that the goal of the revolution is to bring a new spirit of democracy and freedom to the country and that the tactics used in the revolution are just as important as the goal. But whether these activists can convince those calling for a military solution, that the regime can be toppled through non-violent means alone – is another question entirely.

“I know that people are scared for their lives and I know that this is very difficult… but I can say this now, that I am not violent, the regime is violent, so I can’t be in his shoes, I don’t want to be like him,” Anwar said. “So I have to create… we have to be more creative to work it out. It might take a long time, but a long time with saving lives, is better.”

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Ali Abdullah Saleh was in New York to get treatment for injuries he suffered during a bombing in Yemen last year. Saleh was forced to step down after that bombing, and after months of massive protests demanding his removal.

The United States allowed Saleh to go to New York for medical care, in an effort to help end the violence in Yemen. But many Yemeni-Americans opposed that move. They staged protests for weeks in front of the Ritz Carlton hotel in New York, where Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh was staying while he received treatment.

Their message was clear; Saleh, who presided over a crackdown against Arab Spring protesters in Yemen, should be prosecuted at The Hague.

Rabyaah Althaibani, who has family members back in Yemen who continue to protest in Change Square in Sana’a, said giving Saleh a refuge here was a bad move.

“It gives the wrong message to the region, to the revolutionaries in Yemen, these young men and women who have been in the streets for more than a year,” she said, “and the US is granting this murderer immunity, that’s crazy. This is the land of the free, home of the brave and here we are hosting dictators.”

This was not the first time the US has hosted an unpopular head of state whose country was in the midst of an uprising. The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, also stayed in New York for medical treatment. That was in October 1979 during the Iranian Revolution, which sought the Shah’s downfall.

Protesters in Iran were incensed at the US. A group of Iranian students eventually took over the American Embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage.

Gary Sick, now a professor at Columbia University, was a primary White House aide on Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. He said that when President Jimmy Carter was trying to decide whether to let the Shah into the US for treatment in the midst of the revolution, many members of his administration pleaded with him to do it.

“Jimmy Carter at the end of the session looked around the room and everybody, all his top advisers were saying, let the Shah come in,” Sick said, “and Carter said, well, okay I hear what you’re saying, so we’ll let him come in but what are you going to tell me when they take our people hostage in Tehran?”

The situation in Yemen might be even more galling to demonstrators. The US had always been a staunch supporter of Iran’s Shah, so allowing him in wasn’t terribly shocking. But the Obama administration has supported some Arab Spring demonstrators against their dictatorial leaders. In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria, the US has called for leaders to step down.

Charles Schmitz, a professor at Towson University and president of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, said US foreign policy on Yemen has been incoherent, but at the same time, the administration knows Ali Abdullah Saleh is a wily politician.

“The Saudis, the Europeans and the US wanted him out,” Schmitz said. “He sort of played their cards and turned the tables on them and said I’m going to go for a visit in the United States. He’s showing that he is a power, he’s being received by the superpower that tried to overthrow him, and they have to receive him as a head of state.”

No one really knows whether Saleh will frustrate US officials and return to Yemen to jockey for power with the new government there.

“The guy is really tricky and nobody knows what he’s going to do next,” said Gary Sick. “But a lot of Americans regard him as someone with a lot of blood on his hands, and a potential war criminal and the idea of giving him a nice cushy place to live for the rest of his life probably doesn’t appeal.”

With his departure late on Wednesday, Saleh’s already signaled that he doesn’t intend to just remain in New York.

Despite the US’s attempts to keep Saleh out of Yemen, he has announced that he plans to attend his successor’s inauguration in Sana’a next month.

What role, if any, the ousted president will play in Yemen’s new government, and whether the US will continue to go along, remains to be seen.

On Saturday, Karma will officially receive the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leyman Gbowee, both from Liberia. The three will be honored for “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

At 32, Karman is the youngest person ever to win the peace prize.

For years now, Karman has been one of Yemen’s leading grass-roots activists. She’s fought for the rights of women and freedom of speech. Last January, when the Arab Spring swept through the Middle East, Karman and a couple hundred students from Sana’a University began a sit-in at Yemen’s Change Square.

The government publicly slandered her, and Sana’a clerics blamed her for ruining the morality of women.

But within a few months, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in cities from Aden to Taiz had joined the demonstrations, calling for the overthrow of the regime.

Karman has been dubbed the “Mother of the Revolution,” and when she speaks, people listen.

At a recent protest in front of the United Nations in New York, Karman led a group of Yemenis in chants against the regime. Some came from across the country to see her.

Since being named a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Karman has travelled from Doha to Washington, DC, to generate international pressure on the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“I am here to tell the whole world, to tell the people who believe in freedom, my people in Yemen sleep in the street since nine months, this great people deserve freedom,” Karman said. “This is the thing that I will tell people here. Also I want to tell people in Sana’a that you are not alone, there are people here who care about your freedom and their role starts now.”

Saleh recently agreed to step down as president in exchange for immunity. Karman and her followers argue that’s not enough, because Saleh’s cronies – including his son and other family members – remain in power.

But some long-time Yemeni opposition leaders support the deal, and that’s created a rift in the anti-Saleh movement.

“The opposition parties, opposition leaders, were never the voice of the revolution,” said Raja Althaibani, a Yemeni-American who flew to Sana’a in May to join the youth revolution on the ground; she’s protested alongside Karman.

“The people who are signing the deal those are people who are looking for their own interest,” Althaibani said. “We’ve always seen clashes between the revolutionaries on the ground and those leaders. And the revolutionaries have always made it clear, they aren’t representative of who we are or our demands.”

This popular sentiment could have put Tawakul Karman at odds with demonstrators. While she’s been a leader of the youth movement since the start of the revolution, Karman is also a leading member in the Islah party, the country’s main Islamist opposition party.

Karman has been criticized for this dual role. But Althaibani said Karman has proved herself time and time again. Althaibani recalls one particular demonstration in Sana’a.

“I get a call saying Tawakul is leading the march, and the youth are behind them and we’re running there and then we hear shots,” Althaibani said. She said Karman was taken to a makeshift hospital, and then came right back.

“She put her life on the line and made enemies of every opposition leader at the Square,” Althaibani said.

Karman has criticized her party for going against the young demonstrators’ demands. She has also defied religious and cultural gender constraints to call her own party and the regime for underestimating the role woman have played in Yemen’s revolution.

“Now there is a new century, a new period, women aren’t just victim,” Karman said. “She can save lives, she can be revolution, she can step down the regimes and she can also build her country. So the bad image about women is finished. Now we start a new period.”

Unlike in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, the Syrian revolution is not being televised – but it is on YouTube.

A loose knit group of cyber activists made up of Syrian expats from around the world, have smuggled satellite phones, laptops, and high-definition video cameras into Syria and smuggled information and videos out.

Activists have even launched their own online news channel. They call it the Shaam News Network, after the Arabic name for the Levant region.

“Sham News Network was inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. A lot of the founders were from Daraa, the birthplace of the revolution, and our goal was to show the world what the regime was doing,” said Anas, whose last name we won’t use for security reasons.

Muna Jandal (Photo: Assia Boundaoui)

In addition to getting satellite phones smuggled into Syria, she’s one of the main curators and moderators for one of the most popular Syrian revolution websites. It gets more then 16 million visitors each month.

“We worked shifts, I had the nine to midnight shift,” Jondy said. Twitter is a big source of information, following SNC members, bloggers, they have links to what was going on. We had to post twice an hour. Fridays are particularly heavy days. Syria is literally the first virtual revolution. We know day to day in each city what exactly is happening, we’re seeing it on a daily basis despite the media ban, because the Syrian revolutionaries are making sure that everything gets out,” she said.

Jondy was born and raised in the US, but her father’s family is from Daraa. She says while she’s had little communication over the years with her family in Syria, things really hit home after a tragic event involving her uncle.

“So they show up to one of my uncle’s house and they came to take his 16 year old son and he was basically begging them, please don’t take him – he’s older he’s 70 year olds, he’s frail – and you know,” Jondy said. “Basically they just beat him, they took their guns and beat him on the head. And I don’t know, they really beat him bad until he was in a coma. Because he was saying to them ‘please my son leave him, I’m as old as your father, have some respect.’ So they just beat him.”

Jondy’s uncle was beaten to death by security forces, and she said his killing spurred her family to become even more active in the revolution. While her cousins back in Daraa are on the ground protesting, Jondy has taken up the role of online activist.

“The reality is that there’s these hundreds of thousands of people that are on the street, and they’re being attacked, they’re limited in what they can do and how they can organize,” Jondy said. “So there are all of these Syrian activists on the outside that are like we have mobility, we have the ability to speak to government representatives, we have the ability to provide finances, so to me the relationship is support of the revolution.”

Many expats have similar stories about the violence – and sometimes tragic death – of family members and activists at the hands of the regime’s security services. It puts into stark reality how relatively sheltered they are, operating from safety in the US.

Khalid Saleh lives in Dearborn, Michigan. He was appointed by the revolutionary council of his hometown of Deir Azzor to be one of their representatives.

“I think some of the activists working outside don’t necessarily feel the pain of the revolutionaries on the inside,” he pointed out. To them its like 10 people died today, 20 people died after. It’s a lot different for me when I talk to someone at night, and I try to call him in the morning and he is gone.”

And that’s why a lot of the activists – in and outside of Syria – keep their identities secret. Cyber activist Anas says he’s well aware of the danger the citizen journalists put themselves in every day to get him information.

“It wasn’t an easy commitment to commit and say okay I’m going to send you pictures and videos and tell you about what’s going on,” Anas admited. “At least 8 to 10 people lost their lives, some of them were captured and were on Syrian TV admitting their relationship with Shaam News Network.”

Despite this, Anas says the time for fear and anonymity is over. He says sharing his own identity openly for the first time is indicative of a turning point in the Syrian Revolution.

There’s a kitchen here and a library. There’s a charging station, a medical tent and even a tower streaming free WiFi. There’s also a fast-food restaurant that lets protesters use the bathroom; in Tahrir, it was KFC. On Wall Street, it’s the McDonalds across the street.

Of course there’s the movement itself. Just like in Egypt, many here wrote off the protesters at first, but they’ve remained, and their numbers are growing.

Still, there is one glaring difference between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Revolution of Tahrir Square, according to Ibrahim Abdullah.

“There was a clear goal: Al-shab yurid Isghat il nitham. ‘The people want to topple the regime’ – it was very, very clear what we wanted,” Abdullah said.

Yemeni-American Maryam Salem (Photo: Mohamed ElGohary)

“It’s like ‘we want a more fair tax system.’ This is not a good slogan. You need something that people can chant. You need something for people to rally around.”

Abdullah isn’t ready to join the protest here, but Yemeni-American Maryam Salem is. She was inspired by the ongoing revolution in her parents’ home country to become an organizer of Occupy Chicago. She came to New York to ask for activism tips at the daily general assembly meeting in Zuccotti Park.

“I wanted to go to Yemen so badly to join the revolution, but I obviously couldn’t. It’s too dangerous,” Salem said. “When they started here the first thing I thought is that we would be standing in solidarity with them.”

Salem said her activism here follows in a line from the ongoing revolution in Yemen and the Arab World. She pointed out that while her family members back in Yemen are protesting a corrupt regime, she’s protesting a corrupt economic system.

“It’s unfair that students have to graduate with such huge loans and in debt and then can’t find a job to pay them off.”

There’s another group that’s been a semi-permanent fixture at Occupy Wall Street – the street food vendors.

Khaled, an Egyptian-born food vendor in Manhattan (Photo: Mohamed ElGohary)

“This is something strange, that something like this could happen in America,” Khaled said. “They saw the Arab world rise up, and they organized this. It’s a beautiful thing.”

In the window of Khaled’s food-truck are the words, “From Tahrir Square Egypt to Liberty Park New York.” He said it’s a message to the protestors here – Egyptians are with you, our heart is with you.

Ibrahim Abdullah, the Egyptian-American who protested at Tahrir Square, said he’s just observing the Occupy movement for now. But he does have some advice: come up with a better slogan.

“Make it simple, stupid, keep it in four words. Get a chant that’s catchy enough,” he said, adding, “You need Egyptian marketers to come and fix this for you.