Blog Archives
What Comes Next
Turkey and the Arabs are ending a century of mutual alienation
A strange calm prevails on the Middle Eastern surface. Occasionally a wave breaks through from beneath – the killing of an Iranian scientist, a bomb targetting Hamas’s representative to Lebanon (which instead kills three Hizbullah men), a failed attack on Israeli diplomats travelling through Jordan – and psychological warfare rages, as usual, between Israel and Hizbullah, but the high drama seems to have shifted for now to the east, to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Arab world (with the obvious exception of Yemen) appears to be holding its breath, waiting for what comes next.
Iraq’s civil war is over. The Shia majority, after grievous provocation from takfiri terrorists, and after its own leaderhip made grievous mistakes, decisively defeated the Sunni minority. Baghdad is no longer a mixed city but one with a large Shia majority and with no-go zones for all sects. In their defeat, a large section of the Sunni resistance started working for their American enemy. They did so for reasons of self-preservation and in order to remove Wahhabi-nihilists from the fortresses which Sunni mistakes had allowed them to build.
The collapse of the national resistance into sectarian civil war was a tragedy for the region, the Arabs and the entire Muslim world. The fact that it was partly engineered by the occupier does not excuse the Arabs. Imperialists will exploit any weaknesses they find. This is in the natural way of things. It is the task of the imperialised to rectify these weaknesses in order to be victorious.
The sectarian horror has taken the wind out of Iraqi resistance. Those who fought the Americans in the past and who choose not to collaborate now have gone quiet. Moqtada Sadr, for instance, having lost control of the more thuggish elements of his Jaish al-Mahdi and therefore much of his mass popularity, has disappeared into the Qom seminaries. He will emerge at some point with Ayatullah status. What he does then will depend on what comes next, which is not at all clear.
Will the monthly round of bomb attacks reignite civil war? Will resistance mount again as Iraqis move against the permanent US megabases on their land? Will there be a further American withdrawal? And if so, what happens then? Might Saudi Arabia be committed to preventing a Shia-majority government from functioning, at any price? Would it fund and arm an anti-Shia militia more fully than it has done in the past? Its attempts to defeat the Iraqi Shia would fail, but they could spark a new war in which the Saudis face Iran by proxy or even, by a chain of mismanagement, directly. This could satisfy perverse American and Israeli strategists as much as the Iraq-Iran conflict did in the 80s.
The Saudis and Iranians may already be fighting by proxy in Yemen. Saudi military involvement in its southern neighbour is a public fact (the kingdom is heroically bombarding poverty-stricken villagers with its expensive American bombs). Its enemy is the rebellious Houthi tribe, Shias. The president of collapsing Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, preposterously tells us that the Houthis are armed by both Iran and al-Qa’ida. Saudi media describes the enemy as ‘Shia’. Iranian media describes ‘Wahhabi’ massacres. Meanwhile, Iranian pilgrims have stopped visiting Mecca until such time as the Saudi authorities guarantee their protection from intolerable Wahhabi mistreatment.
In Palestine nothing is resolved and nothing is in sight of resolution. With the cleavage between Gaza and the West Bank successfully engineered, with Gaza walled, starved and bombed, with the West Bank warned that it will suffer Gaza’s fate if it removes its collaborator government, the Palestinian liberation project is in desperate straits. For now the West Bank enjoys a somewhat improved economy and freedom of movement, quietly realises the two state dream is over, and waits. For now Gaza does its best to survive, and waits. For now.
The Gaza model applies to Lebanon too. The general message is that a future Israel-Hizbullah conflict will be ‘a hundred times worse’ in its effects on Lebanese civilians than the atrocious 2006 assault. Hizbullah is careful and quiet, but by most accounts even better dug in than it was four years ago. Lebanon, meanwhile, is more stable than it has been since the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. After Hizbullah called the bluff of Hariri junior and his Saudi-US-backed militia, and with the mediation of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the US have retreated to their traditional positions of influence in Lebanon. Saad Hariri has visited Damascus.
Syria has regained its strength. The Obama administration will continue to back Zionist expansion, has kept Bush-era anti-Syrian sanctions in place, and only yesterday appointed an ambassador to Damascus, but ‘regime change’ is no longer an American fantasy and, as noted above, a natural, non-militarised Syrian influence in Lebanon has been accepted. Syria’s position is again what it was under the late president Hafez al-Asad: Syria can not change the region on its own, but nobody can change the region without it.
The good news, and perhaps the what-comes-next, is Turkey.
When I lived in Turkey in the early nineties the country was surrounded by enemies. Now all of its neighbours are friends. Internal relations between Turks and Kurds are also much better than they were a few years ago. Both developments stem from a long-overdue dilution of Kemalist national chauvinism brought about by new social forces. These are the upwardly mobile Anatolian Islamic-democrats represented by Prime Minister Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. They aim to build an inclusive post-Ottoman society, and their economy is flourishing.
An intellectual associated with the Justice and Development Party told a friend of mine that the best things to happen to Middle Eastern Muslims in the 20th century had been Ataturk and Wahhabism, because both challenges – the militantly secularist and the sectarian literalist – had forced (and are forcing) Muslims to rethink their core values. Turkey’s Sufi-based Sunnism is an attractive model which could sap the appeal of Salafism in the ex-Ottoman Arab world. But the Turkish-led alliance that is emerging inludes the Shia world too. Turkey has defended Iran’s right to nuclear energy and, against American orders, is investing enthusiastically in the Iranian economy.
Turkey is engaging not only with Arabs but with Arab and Muslim interests too
Turkey and the Arabs are ending a century of mutual alienation. The late Ottoman state degenerated from a multicultural Muslim dominion into an empire on the European model in which nationalist Turks oppressed the Arab territories into stagnation. Arab nationalism flared in response. In what was a historical mistake – but perhaps a necessary one – in 1917 the Arabs accepted the help of the British to rid themselves of Turkish rule. The British promised an independent Arab state; what the Arabs got was the Sykes-Picot dismemberment of their homeland and the resulting irrevocably corrupt states system. Palestine was lost.
Ataturk defended the Turkish homeland from dismemberment and constructed a functioning European-style nation-state, but one run by the army. The governing ideology was fervently ethno-nationalist, precluding cooperation with non-Turks. Greeks fled to Greece while Greek Turks fled to Turkey. The Armenians had already been cleansed. Ataturk considered Turkey’s Arab and Persian neighbours to be degenerate oriental races. Official mythology taught that Turks had invented language and civilisation, that the ancient Sumerians were Turks, and that Turks had colonised India when the Indians lived in trees. Across the border in Syria, Baathist myths repeated these ideas in an Arab mirror.
The practical contention between the two countries was over Wilayat Iskenderoon, or Hatay in Turkish, which the French Mandate (mandated to guard Syria’s territorial unity) gave to Turkey in 1938 in return for a promise not to join Germany in a future war. Arab nationalists in Syria and elsewhere were outraged by the loss of ancient Antioch, of Iskenderoon, Syria’s major port, and of the green lands and markets around these cities. Syrian maps still show Wilayat Iskenderoon as part of Syria, although Syrians don’t resent the Turks like they resent the Israelis occupying the Golan. The Turks are old neighbours and they do not seek to drive out the Arabs. Now that the border is wide open, now that Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians can enter Turkey without a visa, now that Turkish-Syrian trade is burgeoning, Iskenderoon does not even feel so lost any more.
Syria gave up the Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, greatly reducing Turkish hostility. Syrian president Bashaar al-Asad and his wife Asma al-Akhras are popular figures in Turkey, and Turkish prime minister Erdogan is wildly popular in the Arab world, particularly after his public rebukes of Israel during the Gaza massacre.
The friendship with Syria shows that Turkey is engaging not only with Arabs but with Arab and Muslim interests too. Its hardening position in support of the Palestinians allows a voice of Muslim conscience to be heard in the international arena. This marks a change. The regional US-client regimes seem suddenly much less relevant, and the age of the ‘moderate camp’ versus ‘resistance front’ duality, which reigned a couple of years ago, has already passed.
Turkey has democratic stability on its side. Another military coup is highly unlikely, firstly because the miltary itself contains representatives of the new Turkish mood, and secondly because the army’s secularist hard-core would dash its hopes of moving further into the European Union’s embrace if it were to seize power. But it is Turkey’s slow realisation that the EU will never allow it to be a full member that has encouraged it to claim its place in Asia, where it belongs. In Asia it is admirably placed as the conduit of Iraqi, Iranian and Caspian Sea oil, as the bridge to Europe and Europe’s Muslims, and as a potential shield for the region against American attacks.
The Turkish-led alliance could prevent a fresh outbreak of war in Iraq. Turkey would make a sounder sponsor of Iraqi Sunni interests than Saudi Arabia, and could moderate Iranian influence in the country. An alliance is also essential for cross-border cooperation over water and fuel distribution as climate change and resource shortages loom across the region.
I have great hopes for the development of this alliance despite the potential weakness of Iran in the short to medium term (it is to be hoped that the Islamic Republic shows enough flexibility to adapt to some of the demands of its alienated portion), and despite the differences in the ruling ideologies – democratic-Islamist, theocratic, and Arabist – of its member states. In fact these differences are a good thing. They will discourage hasty leaps at union of the unthought type that Syria tried with Egypt in 1958.
What is necessary for the alliance’s growth is the long term stability of the relationship and an ongoing interchange of ideas along with people and goods. The alliance will represent Turks, Aryans and Arabs, and may eventually erase the imported nationalism which has so cursed us. It could be the first serious regional axis of the modern period, the first axis not organised by an imperial sponsor. Russia and China would be natural partners. A confident and informed power to ensure Middle Eastern rights and responsibilities would of course be in Europe’s interest too. Is it too much to hope that the emerging alliance will mark the end of Western dominance in the region? Could the alliance begin to fill the gaping hole left by the disappearance of the Caliphate?
Seven Principles for Effective International Engagement in Yemen
Yemen's military and policing approaches have resulted in numerous violations of international human rights
Allegations that the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda was behind the attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day 2009 have dramatically increased international attention to the threat of terrorism emanating from Yemen.
To be effective, international counterterrorism policy in Yemen should take into account the lessons from the response to al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan: military tactics such as airstrikes that cause high civilian casualties, and arbitrary arrests and abusive treatment of suspected militants undermine efforts to reduce local support for al Qaeda. The Yemeni government has engaged in all of these actions against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Second, engagement with Yemen must also address the serious human rights problems that have turned large segments of Yemeni society against the government, and thus reduced the government’s ability to fight terrorism effectively. Ongoing human rights violations by the state security forces (particularly the Central Security Forces, the Political Security Organization, and the National Security Organization), risk providing an even more fertile base of support for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Yemen’s most serious human rights violations arise in the context of two pressing internal conflicts-the government’s war with Huthi rebels in the north of the country, and its repression of a secessionist movement in the south. Officials have recently warned against “internationalizing” these two conflicts, but it would be a mistake if international efforts to assist the government ignored the grievances underlying those conflicts. Yemen’s military and policing approaches have resulted in numerous violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, which have alienated large segments of Yemeni society.
Most Yemenis do not see AQAP as a threat to them. They are more concerned about the government’s repressive practices and rampant corruption, as well as the lack of jobs for the country’s booming population, a looming water crisis, and rapidly depleting oil reserves, the main source of revenue, along with the conflicts in the north and south. Resolving the human rights grievances underlying those two conflicts and strengthening human rights protections generally is critical to creating a more stable government in Yemen and empowering it to address the country’s economic and development problems.
Recommendations to Yemen’s allies:
1. Increase development aid to Yemen, ensuring a cohesive strategy in collaboration with the appropriate UN agencies, and use aid to address human rights concerns that drive instability.
2. Support establishment in Yemen of a human rights monitoring mission by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights with a mandate to publicly report on human rights abuses by all parties to Yemen’s conflicts, and press the government of Yemen to cooperate in the establishment of such a mission.
3. Add effective human rights components to any bilateral aid for security forces, such as law enforcement and military training and equipment, including non-lethal methods of crowd control, respect for the laws of war, measures to combat torture, and internal accountability.
4. Stress the importance of an independent judiciary with the resources and competence to address accountability for human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and torture.
5. Urge the government to ensure that impartial humanitarian agencies have access to all places of detention in Yemen, and end the use of private or unauthorized detention sites.
6. Ensure that no assistance goes to units of security forces implicated in unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and other serious human rights abuses. Publicly speak out when such violations occur.
7. Assist the United States and Yemen in repatriating or resettling Yemenis held without charge at Guantanamo, including the 40 Yemenis that the US government has already cleared for release.
1. Do not turn Al Qaeda’s enemies into its friends
The lessons of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and myriad other internal conflicts is that armed militant groups thrive when the government does not enjoy the support of their people. This is particularly applicable in Yemen. Should the United States, European Union, and other international actors align themselves too closely with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, without squarely addressing the country’s broader political and economic problems -including serious human rights violations–AQAP will grow stronger, not weaker.
Countries working with the Yemeni government should recognize that many Yemenis see their government as a greater threat to their security than al Qaeda. Government repression has often targeted – and alienated – Yemenis who might otherwise be supportive of government efforts against AQAP.
For example, the Yemeni government’s five-year-old civil war against the Huthi movement of Zaidi Muslims in the north targets some of al Qaeda’s most ingrained foes. Zaidi religious leaders ruled Yemen for a millennium, until the republican revolution in 1962. Zaidi activists in the 1990s, under the leadership of the Huthi family, started a movement to counter the spread of Saudi-inspired and Yemeni government-supported Wahhabi influence in northern Yemen. In 2004, President Saleh reportedly tried to recruit jihadi fighters to help him fight the Huthi rebels.
Recurrent bouts of fighting in the north have displaced some 200,000 civilians as of January 2010. The government’s latest military campaign against the Huthis-launched in August 2009 under the name “Operation Scorched Earth”-has resulted in serious allegations of violations of international humanitarian law. Human Rights Watch researchers in northern Yemen in October 2009 gathered eyewitness accounts strongly suggesting indiscriminate government aerial bombing and artillery shelling, and the use of child soldiers, as well as Huthi laws-of-war violations.
Yemen’s southern secessionist movement, led by the mostly secular elites of the former Marxist southern state, has also traditionally been at odds ideologically with Islamist armed militants like al Qaeda. President Saleh, during the 1994 civil war with the south, deployed Islamist armed militants returned from Afghanistan to crush southern forces. Southern grievances from that time led to largely peaceful mass protests in the south starting in 2007, but the Saleh government’s brutal suppression of these protests – shooting unarmed protestors, denying injured protestors medical care, shutting opposition newspapers, silencing dissidents, and waves of arbitrary arrests – has alienated large swaths of the south from the government in the capital, San’a, further diminishing its influence. It also seems to have created a bond of shared victimhood that al Qaeda is exploiting.
Yemen’s allies should press President Saleh to put an end to his policies of repression in the north and south, and to address legitimate economic and political grievances in both regions. And international actors such as the US and EU must be seen as doing so by the Yemeni people, so that AQAP cannot paint Saleh’s allies as accomplices in serious human rights abuses, as it has already tried to do.
2. Learn from Pakistan
The US and EU’s uncritical partnership with Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharaf was mistaken and counterproductive. The US and EU have now placed increased emphasis on support for democratic institutions and the rule of law there rather than alignment with a single leader or exclusive reliance on the country’s armed forces. The same approach is needed in Yemen.
Yemen's allies should press President Saleh to put an end to his policies of repression in the north and south, and to address legitimate economic and political grievances
President Saleh now appears serious about addressing the security concerns posed by al Qaeda. Much like Pakistani leaders in the past, he has a long history of striking deals with armed Islamist groups that do not address human rights concerns, and rounding up hundreds of people on little or no evidence and jailing them for months or years without charge. Human Rights Watch interviewed the family of one young man who was illegally held for 18 months as a notorious al Qaeda member in a clear case of mistaken identity, and we learned of numerous men who were taken hostage by security forces in order to secure the surrender of their relatives.
Saleh’s government prosecutes terrorism suspects before a Specialized Criminal Court that do not meet international fair trial standards-defense lawyers report that they are often denied access to their clients’ files, and that judges ignore their complaints of forced confessions, torture and other serious violations of their clients’ rights.
Rather than go after top al Qaeda members, President Saleh has until recently directed his security forces to concentrate on his domestic political opponents (many of whom, as noted, are ideologically opposed to al Qaeda). Without significant pressure and vigilance, he is likely to exploit any new international support to intensify domestic repression. Indeed, on January 4, within days of President Barack Obama’s recent expressions of support for Saleh’s government, security forces opened fire on hundreds of protestors peacefully demanding the reopening of Yemen’s largest independent newspaper, Al-Ayyam. And on January 16, still under the spotlight of increased US and EU attention, a new Special Press Court sentenced Anisa ‘Uthman of the weekly Al-Wasat to three months in prison for an article that “offended” the president. Even before those two recent incidents, the intensity of the government’s crackdown on free expression since 2009 was unprecedented.
Yemen’s allies should not explicitly or implicitly give unqualified support for President Saleh’s government, but instead demand an end to torture, arbitrary arrests, and the government’s crackdown on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. They should ensure that foreign aid does not strengthen, and is not perceived as strengthening, the repressive apparatus of the state. Foreign diplomats and officials should meet with and express support for Yemeni journalists and civil society leaders, emphasizing the need for the government to respect and protect fundamental rights and the rule of law..
3. Civilian casualties hurt as much in Yemen as they do in Afghanistan
In Yemen, as in Afghanistan, civilian casualties incurred in fighting Islamist militants turn people who normally would not support groups such as al Qaeda against the government and against its backers. Following the US-assisted airstrikes on AQAP in Abyan on December 17, 2009, and in Shabwa on December 24, which reportedly claimed the lives of women and children, secular southern Yemeni activists closed ranks with armed Islamists and denounced the strikes as an attack on their movement.
The government sees air power as necessary against AQAP in parts of Yemen where ordinary law enforcement operations are not possible. But lack of a ground presence increases the risk of poor intelligence, and of local actors manipulating international forces. Airstrikes must be carried out in conformity with the laws of war and should only be used against legitimate military targets. US Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Tactical Directive stating the lessons learned from Afghanistan is just as germane for Yemen: “We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories – but suffering strategic defeats – by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.”
4. Internationalize the civilian effort
Countries already involved in Yemen should seek the assistance of states that could help promote greater respect for human rights by the Yemeni government. For instance, Saudi Arabia should be pressed to use its influence with San’a to help end human rights violations in the context of the northern and southern conflicts, while insisting on deeper United Nations and EU engagement. The international community should press Yemen to allow impartial humanitarian agencies access to all places of detention. The UN should deploy a country-wide human rights monitoring mission, with strong backing from the secretary-general, and bring its political and mediation resources to bear in resolving human rights grievances underlying the northern and southern conflicts that fuel instability in Yemen. The UN has significant experience in these sectors, and a direct UN role will be less controversial for the Yemeni government than a direct role for outside powers, especially the US and the UK that enjoy little support at present. Yemen’s allies should urge the UN to take on such a role, encourage UN participation in the London meeting on Yemen on January 27, and press the Yemeni government to accept its presence. They also should pledge funding for such a constructive UN involvement in Yemen.
5. Increase aid, but remember that resistance is driven by politics not poverty
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the US, EU and other donors will not win Yemenis’ trust if aid to Yemen is chiefly for military and security purposes. Development aid should increase to address the problems Yemenis face in their daily lives, to improve access to water, health, education, roads and jobs. At the same time, the “soft” side of international engagement will fail if it focuses exclusively on non-controversial social and economic issues, and avoids addressing the political grievances that drive opposition to government repression and fuel support for militancy.
International assistance should thus also focus on bringing an end to human rights violations and improving governance in Yemen. For example, donors should support law enforcement training and strengthening judicial accountability as part and parcel of its counter-terrorism engagement, especially for non-lethal methods of crowd control in dealing with the southern protests, and mechanisms to prevent and redress torture and to hold perpetrators accountable.
6. Yemen needs support
The international response to AQAP needs Yemeni cooperation, and the Saleh government will try to take advantage of that need to insist on cooperation on its terms. But the government also needs support. US aid to Yemen has doubled in recent years, and the EU has started to engage Yemen through its Instrument for Stability, a multi-pronged set of assistance measures, while upgrading its presence to a full-fledged delegation in 2009. US and EU financial aid remains meager compared to reported Saudi aid, and other Gulf country commitments. Yemen’s allies, especially Saudi Arabia, should work on a strategic vision on the need for a stable Yemen, and insist that strengthening the central government’s ability to provide for its population requires ending serious routine violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Saudi Arabia needs to recognize that its military engagement against the Huthi rebels has contributed to widespread displacement in the north, and that a UN monitoring presence in Yemen near the Saudi border could improve security for the civilian population.
The Yemeni government is struggling to control parts of its territory and seeks military and intelligence hardware against its internal foes, including the Huthi rebels, al Qaeda, and southern secessionists. It is running out of oil to finance its operations, and water to support its growing population. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 Ethiopian asylum seekers came to Yemen in 2009, adding to hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees already there. Yemen’s allies are in a strong bargaining position; they should offer assistance, but with hard conditions designed to address the problems discussed above. This is necessary not solely because Yemen’s allies have multiple goals–counterterrorism, human rights and development–that need to be taken into account. It is also important because absent improvements in governance and development, they will not achieve the security goal of countering al Qaeda.
7. Keeping Yemenis at Guantanamo gives al Qaeda a propaganda tool
In the aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day attack on an airliner bound for Detroit, the Obama administration suspended the planned repatriation of about 40 Yemenis from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. There are at least 88 Yemenis at Guantanamo, nearly half the current detainee population, and all but three are being held without charge. The failure to repatriate or resettle them remains the largest single obstacle to closing Guantanamo.
The Obama administration’s decision to suspend returns of Yemeni Guantanamo detainees to Yemen was understandable in light of the existing political climate in the US. But the attempted Christmas Day bombing did not fundamentally change what is at stake. As was the case a few months ago, repatriating or resettling Yemenis poses security risks but it is necessary for closing Guantanamo. And ending indefinite detention by closing Guantanamo remains imperative to US counterterrorism efforts.
Some Yemenis sent home may be open to recruitment by AQAP, especially if, like past returnees, they receive no support from the Yemeni government to rebuild their lives. But the US has already released thousands of detainees from its detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan with the same risk that some may join militant groups. By contrast, if the Yemenis remain in Guantanamo – and especially if Guantanamo becomes essentially a camp for Yemenis only- AQAP will be handed a glorious propaganda opportunity for recruitment.
A stronger overall US strategy towards Yemen should allow the Obama administration over the next several months to work with the Yemeni government on a plan to safely repatriate or resettle any detainees it does not charge, starting with those already cleared for release. That plan should include international assistance to help detainees reintegrate into society and make them less vulnerable to recruitment by militant groups. If necessary, Yemen or a third country could place restrictions on detainees’ movements to protect national security.
A Wise Strategy by Obama
By Bouthaina Shaaban – CounterPunch
What is happening today is a clear disregard to the life and blood of Muslims
In President Obama’s remarks on strengthening aviation intelligence and security in the wake of the incomplete bomb attack on board of an American airplane on Christmas, he pointed out more than once that US intelligence had sufficient information that al-Qaeda-related elements in Yemen intended to strike at the US and they recruited elements to do that. The information was sufficient “to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack. But our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list”. He then went on to talk about technical issues related to receiving information, analyzing it and then acting on the priorities, filling gaps and connecting lines from different directions.
In all that, Obama builds his remarks and treatments on two main premises whose veracity he did not question: the first is that somewhere, there are people who hate the United States and recruit people who hate it and plan to strike at its security; and those should be put on a no-fly list. The second remedy is intelligence in the seaports, airports and on the borders, and looking for more sophisticated devices and applying more strict measures against millions of travellers from 14 countries, who should be checked and screened in a manner close to humiliation in American airports.
The dangerous thing is that president Obama repeated president Bush’s words “we are at war with al-Qaeda”. I do not know if president Obama noticed that the number of countries has increased since the days of his predecessor. The war on Afghanistan was a war on al-Qaeda and the war on Iraq was a war on al-Qaeda, until they discovered that al-Qaeda has expanded to Pakistan. And today there is talk that it has expanded to Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria and may expand to other countries in the future.
Has the strategy declared by president Bush succeeded in reducing the threat of terrorism or has it spread it more widely? If it increased the spread of terrorism, as is clear from the number of the countries mentioned by the United States in its war with al-Qaeda, does that mean that there are other reasons preventing the success of this strategy, or is it the case that the strategy did not touch the core of the problem or provide the required remedy?
The question which should be put here: why do some people target the United States and recruit others, who have no relation to terrorism, against it? If the prosperity of the United States is the cause, there are other countries competing to be number one in terms of economic growth. Why do not these countries feel targeted like the United States? Nothing in Islam promotes hatred of a certain country or a certain people.
While president Obama was addressing a potential threat, he did not say a word about a cold blooded crime committed on Christmas, when Israel killed six young Palestinians in Nablus and three in Gaza, some of them in front of their wives and children; and they were all unarmed. Neither did he condemn the crimes Israel committed last year in Gaza. He has not heard of the Holocaust survivor and the demonstrators in Western countries who came to support the besieged people of Gaza but were prevented from entering Gaza. Centuries ago, Arabs said that “Justice is the foundation of all government” because the feeling of injustice and humiliation and the disregard for life and dignity will certainly generate anger and discontent. The right approach should be to focus on lifting the injustice resulting from occupation, colonial settlement and war.
How would Muslims feel when they sees one and a half million civilians besieged without food and medicine in a humiliating prison called Gaza and shelled daily by American-made warplanes, prevented from dignified life by Israel with Western support and armament. When Israel’s rulers and generals face trouble because of their crimes, the American veto is used to protect them; and sometimes or laws are changed in order to protect war criminals.
What is happening today is a clear disregard to the life and blood of Muslims, to the extent that crimes committed against them are not covered in Western media; and consequently the West does not really know what is happening in the Arab and Muslim worlds, because its sources come either from those who commit the crimes against them or from their accomplices.
Between the beginning and the middle of the 20th century, the United States was, in the minds of Arabs and Muslims, the land of freedom, human rights, democracy and the free press. That image was the product of president Wilson’s stance when in 1918 he called for an end to colonialism, and of president Eisenhower’s position when he demanded an end to the tripartite aggression (including Britain, France and Israel) against Egypt in 1956, and that of president Kennedy who denounced the wall in Berlin. So, how would the present American presidents fare if compared with such positions?
If president Obama’s remarks assume that there are those who are born to resent the United States, this assumption is wrong. But everybody knows that the United States used its veto more than 36 times in support of Israel so that it continues its crimes against Arabs in Palestine, south Lebanon and Gaza.
Whether some people like it or not, al-Aqsa mosque is the first place Muslims turned to in their prayers, and that Muslims and Christians used to go to pilgrimage to Jerusalem before the Israeli occupation; and the faithful throughout the world have been yearning, for the past forty years, to liberate it from a racist and destructive occupation. Millions of Muslims also know for sure that the countries drumming up war against Iran for the possibility of possessing nuclear weapons are the same countries which provided Israel with nuclear weapons and gave it the knowhow, equipment and uranium to become a nuclear state without signing the none proliferation treaty.
The discrepancy in the position towards a nuclear Israel compared with an Iran aspiring to possess peaceful nuclear energy is actually an expression of the different ways in which the West looks at Muslims and non-Muslims. All the wronged people see, hear and understand but are incapable of correcting the wrongs, and expect the United States to turn to deeds in order to vindicate what president Obama said on January 7, 2010, that the United States is with those looking for justice and progress.
If the US is with those looking for justice, the Palestinian people should be top on the list. Standing with this wronged people will certainly root out Muslims’ frustration and hopelessness. The Baker report was correct when it said that justice in Palestine was at the heart of all causes; and that achieving justice there is less costly and more effective in fighting resentment, violence, anger and frustration.
What is required is strategic thinking in order to create hope in broken souls that the superpower has returned to the path of supporting those demanding justice, freedom and human dignity. The domino of violence and terrorism is moving from one country to another, and facing it does not happen through intelligence but through strategy, by adopting moral principles in support of human dignity and people’s right to live free of occupation, discrimination, oppression, or humiliation. This could be the most important indicator for the achievement of security and safety not only for the American people but for the whole world.
US exaggerates Al-Qaeda Threat in Yemen
US exaggerates Al-Qaeda Threat in Yemen
US exaggerates Al-Qaeda Threat in YemenThe US exaggerates the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen as the group’s members are too few to turn it into a global threat, a report says.
The report in Le Figaro says that US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s remark regarding al-Qaeda being a threat to world security is an exaggeration.
According to the report, there are an estimated 200 to 300 alleged al-Qaeda members in southern Yemen.
The Yemeni president is seemingly playing up the threat to receive the utmost financial aid from an upcoming London meeting, according to Le Figaro.
Unlike the US and Britain, Le Figaro says France, Italy and Spain have been reluctant to join in the media hype.
The report has also criticized Saudi raids against Houthi fighters over the past months. It says the attacks have only worsened the war in northern Yemen.
Civilians have been the main victims of the all-out war which has been fueled by foreign military intervention in the poor Arab country.
The conflict in North Yemen began in 2004 between Sana’a and Houthi fighters. Relative peace had returned to the region until August 11, 2009 when the Yemeni army launched a major offensive, dubbed ‘Operation Scorched Earth’, against Sa’ada Province.
The government claims that the fighters, who are named after their leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, seek to restore the Shia imamate system, which was overthrown in a 1962 military coup.
The Houthis, however, say they are defending their people’s civil rights, which the government has undermined because of pressure from Saudi-backed Wahhabi extremists.
Shia citizens of Yemen form a clear majority in the north and make up approximately half of the overall population.
The United Nations, which according to its charter is set up “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” has failed to adopt any concrete measures to help end the bloody war.
