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Subject: The Wars in Yemen: More Complex than We're Being Told


> Left Margin
> 
> The Wars in Yemen: More Complex than We're Being Told
> 
> By Carl Bloice, BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
> Black Commentator
> January 7, 2010
> 
> http://www.blackcommentator.com/357/357_lm_yemen.php
> 
> It was one of those strange coincidences. First, there
> are news reports about the involvement of Saudi Arabia
> in attacking tribal rebels along the Saudi-Yemen
> border. Then, a young Nigerian somewhat mysteriously
> eludes security and tries to blow up and airliner
> heading into Detroit and it is said he was trained and
> equipped in Yemen. Next, the U.S. is bombing elements
> of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Undeniably it was a fortunate
> turn of events for the regime in Sana'a faced as it has
> been for some time with a separatist campaign in the
> south of the country and a growing insurgency in the
> north, both of which are domestic movements and not
> directed at the U.S. or any other foreign country.
> 
> One thing is clear. With Al Qaeda now in the picture
> and linked to an attempted physical attack on the U.S.,
> the Obama Administration, obsessively carrying on the
> "war against terrorism," has suddenly become enmeshed
> in still another civil war. That entanglement could
> last a long time and involve all kinds of consequences.
> And, don't think the U.S. just suddenly stumbled into
> the situation. Back in May, New York Times
> correspondent Robert Worth reported that the unrest in
> the country had "prompted an unusual statement of
> concern" (unrelated to any threat from Al Qaeda) by the
> U.S "affirming American support for a unified Yemen and
> urging all parties to "engage in dialogue to identify
> and address legitimate grievances."  That message was
> delivered last Saturday in person by Gen. David
> Petraeus, the U.S. military commander responsible for
> the Middle East, following which the Times noted that
> the Yemeni regime "is battling separatist movements and
> is eager to have the use of American technology."
> 
> Now the people at the Times apparently aren't reading
> their own back issues and go on blithely reporting as
> if that history has only just begun and it's pretty
> much all about Al Qaeda.
> 
> "The most recent round of violence began last Tuesday,
> when government troops established an additional
> checkpoint in the town of Radfan, in the southern Lahij
> Province," Worth wrote May 4, 2009. "Angry local men
> attacked the checkpoint, killing two soldiers and
> injuring others. In the days since, demonstrations and
> violence have broken out in other towns, with three
> people killed in gun battles on Sunday.
> 
> "In recent weeks, a number of political figures have
> begun openly demanding independence for the formerly
> socialist south, which was autonomous until the two
> Yemen's unified in 1990. A brief civil war in 1994 left
> many southerners resentful of the north, and in the
> past three years grievances have steadily grown. These
> have been fueled mostly by economic disparities and the
> demands of retired southern soldiers who said they had
> not been paid their pensions."
> 
> "Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon,
> Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan," Patrick Coburn wrote in
> The Independent (UK) last week. "But the arch-hawk
> Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee
> on Homeland Security, was happily confirming this week
> that the Green Berets and the US Special Forces are
> already there. He cited with approval an American
> official in Sana'a as telling him that, `Iraq was
> yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If you
> don't act pre-emptively Yemen will be tomorrow's war.'
> In practice pre-emptive strikes are likely to bring a
> US military entanglement in Yemen even closer."
> 
> "The US will get entangled because the Yemeni
> government will want to manipulate US action in its own
> interests and to preserve its wilting authority,"
> Coburn went on.  "It has long been trying to portray
> the Shia rebels in north Yemen as Iranian cats-paws in
> order to secure American and Saudi support. Al Qaeda in
> the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) probably only has a few
> hundred activists in Yemen, but the government of long
> time Yemeni President Ali Abdulah Salih will portray
> his diverse opponents as somehow linked to Al Qaeda.
> 
> "In Yemen the US will be intervening on one side in a
> country which is always in danger of sliding into a
> civil war. This has happened before. In Iraq the US was
> the supporter of the Shia Arabs and Kurds against the
> Sunni Arabs. In Afghanistan it is the ally of the
> Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara against the Pashtun
> community. Whatever the intentions of Washington, its
> participation in these civil conflicts destabilizes the
> country because one side becomes labeled as the
> quisling supporter of a foreign invader. Communal and
> nationalist antipathies combine to create a lethal
> blend."
> 
> Coburn didn't delve into the long history and U.S.
> involvement in Yemen and its collusion with Saudi
> Arabia in trying to shape events in that country.
> Actually, it's only the latest in the on-going saga
> that began during the Cold War. Washington and Riyadh
> team up to crush any left, secular or socialist
> movement or government, the Saudis provide the money,
> the U.S. comes through with arms, military training and
> logistical support and desperate or religiously driven
> young men are recruited for what they are told is holy
> war.
> 
> In the late 1980 I was in South Yemen, then known of as
> the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. It is
> stunningly beautiful territory, home of warm and
> engaging people. The leaders of the young socialist
> regime faced some of the same problems faced by the
> leaders in pre-Taliban Afghanistan and committed some
> similar colossal blunders, including violent intericine
> conflicts that set back the revolution. They were
> secularists in their orientation and knew well what
> they were up against. The same forces that gave rise to
> groups like Al Qaeda actively sought to undermine the
> PDRY.
> 
> In 1990, President Ali Abdullah Salish presided over
> the Arab League arranged union of North Yemen and the
> PDRY.  At the time the latter faced a situation similar
> to that of Cuba following the collapse of the Communist
> USSR. Salih "also welcomed tens of thousands of Arab
> fighters returning from the jihad against the Soviet
> Union in Afghanistan, many of whom had been barred from
> returning to their home countries," wrote Worth. "Four
> years later, when a brief civil war broke out, Mr. Sale
> sent those Islamist warriors to fight against the more
> secular south."
> 
> For the mujahedeen returning from Afghanistan in the
> early 1990s, the suppression of the godless South
> Yemeni was a logical continuation of their victorious
> war against the Soviets in the Hindu Kush," wrote
> Yassin Musharbash, Volker Windfuhr and Bernhard this
> week in Spiegel (Germany). "Even today, Afghanistan
> veterans have ties that reach as far as President
> Saleh's innermost circle. Sheik Abdulmajid al-Zindani,
> known as the "red sheik," is a former associate of bin
> Laden and is one of the most powerful people in Yemen."
> 
> "That was the start of a pragmatic relationship with
> the militants that would come to trouble Mr. Salih's
> alliance with the United States." wrote Worth in the
> Times. "After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, fearing
> that Yemen could become the target of an American
> invasion, he flew to Washington and promised President
> Bush that he would cooperate in the fight against
> terrorism. He rounded up thousands of jihadists who had
> fought in Afghanistan, and since then Yemen's new elite
> American-trained counterterrorism forces have captured
> and killed a number of militants."
> 
> At the same time, the Yemeni president angered his U.S.
> benefactors by refusing to go after, or pardoning,
> individuals deemed terrorists with who we had political
> ties. Like Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai he would
> resort to charging interference if pressed to hard from
> Washington.
> 
> The Shiite Houthi rebellion in the north of country
> grew stronger last year "and reached the margins of the
> capital." wrote Worth. "Now that policy of divide and
> rule appears to have run beyond his control. Some
> current and former government officials say the rebels
> have struck humiliating blows," he continued. "They
> have gained support among Yemeni tribes, and have
> bought weapons from the Yemeni military, which is said
> to have suffered desertions.
> 
> Enter al-Qaeda
> 
> We often see Yemen - like Afghanistan - referred to as
> "a desperately poor country."
> http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/clientside/3c9da62cQ2F5R
> iQ3FooQ60Q23oioSQ3BQ7BXoSAABSQ7BQ23Q3BQ3F That's a bit
> of an understatement. For a long time simply proving
> sufficient food for the population has been a problem,
> there is severe water shortage and the current global
> financial crisis has only worsened the situation. The
> unemployment rate last year was 35 percent. Nearly half
> of its 22 million people (median age: 16.5) live on $2
> a day. To make matters worse in 1990 when Yemen refused
> to join the war against Iraq, Saudi Arabia expelled
> 850,000 Yemeni workers in response.
> 
> According to the Observer (UK), the alleged underwear
> bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is said to have
> received Al-Qaida training at a camp run by Al Qaeda in
> the Arabian Peninsula, which has claimed responsibility
> for the failed attack, saying it was in retaliation for
> the US military support to the Yemen government. "But
> disentangling a hostile local population from the Al
> Qaeda fighters and leaders who have infiltrated the
> region will be a hugely difficult task," said the
> newspaper. "Senior Yemeni officials told the Observer
> that Al Qaeda had been successful at buying the loyalty
> of local people." "No one gets recruited free of
> charge. Al-Qaida come with resources to pay people,'
> said Abdel Karim Aryani, an adviser to President Ali
> Abdullah Saleh. "The religious appeal helps, but
> poverty is at the root of all Yemen's problems,
> including Al Qaeda."
> 
> Speaking to the Observer, the commander of Yemen's
> British- and US-trained counter-terrorism forces warned
> of the difficulties of attacking al-Qaida where it is
> hosted by local tribes. "Al Qaeda touch on very
> sensitive issues in tribal areas. They come in the name
> of God and religion and talk about Palestine and the
> occupation of Iraq and people sympathize with them,"
> 
> "What we are seeing is a pattern of franchises for Al
> Qaeda opening up," Riad Kahwaji, a Gulf security
> analyst in Dubai, told Aljazeera.
> 
> "These groups are emerging in these countries,
> operating on a common strategy which is: to engage the
> US and its allies in Europe and in the region, to open
> various fronts simultaneously - or one after the other
> - in a way to keep the US and their allies off
> balance," he said.
> 
> "It's a war of attrition."
> 
> "It is extraordinary to see the US begin to make the
> same mistakes in Yemen as it previously made in
> Afghanistan and Iraq," wrote Coburn. "What it is doing
> is much to Al Qaeda advantage. The real strength of Al
> Qaeda is not that it can `train' a fanatical Nigerian
> student to sew explosives into his underpants, but that
> it can provoke an exaggerated US response to every
> botched attack. Al Qaeda leaders openly admitted at the
> time of 9/11 that the aim of such operations is to
> provoke the US into direct military intervention in
> Muslim countries.
> 
> "In Yemen the US is walking into the Al Qaeda trap.
> Once there it will face the same dilemma it faces in
> Iraq and Afghanistan. It became impossible to exit
> these conflicts because the loss of face would be too
> great. Just as Washington saved banks and insurance
> giants from bankruptcy in 2008 because they were "too
> big to fail," so these wars become too important to
> lose because to do so would damage the US claim to be
> the sole superpower.
> 
> "In Iraq the US is getting out more easily than seemed
> likely at one stage because Washington has persuaded
> Americans that they won a non-existent success. The
> ultimate US exit from Afghanistan may eventually be
> along very similar lines. But the danger of claiming
> spurious victories is that such distortions of history
> make it impossible for the US to learn from past
> mistakes and instead it repeats them by fresh
> interventions in countries like Yemen."
> 
> "Preventing terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland has
> nothing to do with occupying vast tracts of land or
> winning the hearts and minds of backward villagers whom
> we falsely depict as surrogates of an evil empire, as
> we did in Vietnam and are now doing in Afghanistan,"
> wrote Robert Scheer in truthdig.com last week. "What is
> needed is smart police work to catch these highly
> mobile fanatics, and that begins with actually reading
> and then acting on the readily available intelligence
> data. It requires detectives with brains and not
> generals with firepower.
> 
> "The ballooning of the defense budget after 9/11 has
> proved a great boondoggle for the military-industrial
> complex, which suddenly found an excuse to build
> weapons and deploy conventional forces against a
> superpower enemy that no longer exists. But our stealth
> fighters and bombers designed to defeat Soviet defenses
> that were never built are a poor match against a
> terrorist's stealth underwear."
> 
> ________________________
> 
> BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice
> is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
> Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
> Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly
> worked for a healthcare union.
> 
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