سليم الجحافيمشرف عااام  سبحان الله وبحمده.....سبحان الله العظيم
عدد المساهمات : 1392
تاريخ التسجيل : 13/09/2009
 |  موضوع: The global reach of al Qaeda in Yemen became clear الخميس 4 فبراير - 2:52 | |
| | Undermining al Qaeda in Yemen; Should the US outsource its security to a war criminal? |
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|  by Jane Novak
The
global reach of al Qaeda in Yemen became clear when a Nigerian disciple
of the murder cult nearly blew up an airliner over Detroit. In
response, the Obama administration is strengthening its support for
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, one of the regions longest serving
dictators and one of the most corrupt.
President Obama said he hopes to communicate to “Muslims around the
world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery
and death, including the murder of fellow Muslims, while the United
States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” The hypocrisy
is stunning.
The
US administration is well aware that Saleh’s government is committing
atrocities against civilians that rise to the level of war crimes. In a
Darfur-like conflict in Sa’ada, northern Yemen, collective punishment
of Shiite civilians includes indiscriminate bombing and intentional
starvation. A former recruiter for Usama bin Laden leads the military
with the help of tribal militias, former Iraqi army officers and
foreign jihaddists. Over 200,000 are homeless from the war and largely
deprived of aid. When Oxfam warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe of
terrifying proportions,” the Yemeni Health Minister threatened to expel
the organization.
Journalists who report on the carnage are tried as
terrorists, like Abdulkarim al Khaiwani, or disappear like Mohammed al
Maqaleh, who reported an air strike that killed 87 war refugees in
September and hasn’t been seen since.
In south Yemen, police shot
and killed dozens of anti-government protesters since 2007. Thousands
were arrested. (Torture in Yemeni jails is brutal.) At a recent
demonstration, southerners raised the US flag like a distress signal
for rescue from tyranny. Funeral marches snake for miles along dusty
roads.
If bombed starving children, disappeared journalists and
bloody protesters aren’t enough for those who ascribe to the strongman
theory of Middle Eastern politics, there’s also Yemen’s consistent
duplicity on the terror issue.
President Saleh is a long time al
Qaeda appeaser who relies on militants as an essential base of support
and deploys terrorists as mercenaries. It’s no surprise Yemen’s al
Qaeda morphed intoa transnational threat or that its leadership
survived a recent spate of Yemeni air strikes. The surprise is that the
US is staking its security on President Saleh, the King of Spin. Saleh
promised to reform after the 2000 USS Cole bombing, the 2002 Limburgh
bombing and after qualifying for the Millennium Challenge Account in
2005. He said things were going to be different after the 2006 donor’s
conference and the 2008 US Embassy attack that killed 13. In Yemen, al
Qaeda is dubbed “the other face of the regime” in reference to the
multi-tiered enmeshment between the two. Officials covertly provide
training, transport and passports to jihaddists. When Yemen needs
fighters, it releases terrorists from jail and puts them on the payroll.
If
Obama’s goal is to push back on the terror threat from Yemen for a few
years, then Saleh’s messy air strikes, botched raids and half hearted
hunting may achieve some limited disruption. But at the root of Yemen’s
growing terror threat is elite, not popular, support for al Qaeda. In
1994’s civil war between north and south Yemen, Saleh used veterans of
bin Laden’s Afghan jihad to defeat the “Godless communists” in the
south. Some of these bin Laden loyalists are now military commanders,
governors and ambassadors.
Conventional wisdom holds that al Qaeda
fanatics could raise a small army in such a poverty stricken, rowdy and
largely illiterate country. Saudi money funds the spread of hard core
Salafismwhile most rural areas have no clean water, electricity or
medical services. Jobs go to government loyalists. But instead of
lining up as suicide bombers, Yemenis all over the country are
protesting for civil rights.
Yemen is not, as Maureen Dowd said, a
place “that breeds people who want to kill us.” Yemenis are a kind
hearted and courageous people. Last week, Women Journalists Without
Chains led the 31th weekly demonstration to support banned newspapers.
When ten Sana’a University professors, Academics against Corruption,
were fired for exposing massive theft, protesters took to the streets
in solidarity. In Aden, security forces strafed a peaceful sit-in at al
Ayyam Newspaper, an award winning independent banned in May. Police set
the offices on fire and arrested its editors, claiming they were
hunting al Qaeda.
The Yemeni people have their own narrative that
delegitimizes al Qaeda’s bloody imperialism. In Yemen, democracy is not
a dirty American word but a constitutional right denied by a thuggish
regime.
Despite the smiling assurances of Yemen’s legion of Baghdad
Bobs, Yemen’s government is a brutal mafia. The idea that has broad
resonance in Yemen is not the coming of the global caliphate, but the
coming of the democratic state.
What Yemen needs, if not a war
crimes tribunal, is a major crimes tribunal to purge corrupt officials
and foster governmental legitimacy. Yemen’s public funds and lands,
foreign aid and oil revenue were stolen by President Saleh and his
relatives for decades, while millions of children wither from
malnutrition and never attend school. Stability will be achieved when
the Yemeni oligarchy accounts for its crimes against the nation. Maybe
with amnesty, they’ll leave quietly and a caretaker government of
Yemeni technocrats can take the reins with little bloodshed. |
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