Yemen: The Latest U.S. Battleground

Stephen Zunes
Chair of Mid-Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco

Yemen: The Latest U.S. Battleground


The United States may be on the verge of involvement in yet another counterinsurgency war which, as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, may make a bad situation even worse. The attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight by a Nigerian man was apparently planned in Yemen. There were alleged ties between the perpetrator of the Ft. Hood massacre and a radical Yemeni cleric, and an ongoing U.S.-backed Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda have all focused U.S. attention on that country.

Yemen has almost as large a population as Saudi Arabia, but differently lacks much in the way of natural resources. What little oil the country has is rapidly being depleted. Indeed, Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per-capita income of less than $600 per year. More than 40 percent of the population is unemployed and the economic situation is increasingly deteriorating for most Yemenis as a result of a U.S.-backed structural adjustment program imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

The county is desperate for assistance in sustainable economic development. The vast majority of U.S. aid delivered to the country, however, has been in the form of military assets. The limited economic assistance made available has been of dubious effectiveness and has largely gone through corrupt government channels.

The United States has long been concerned about the presence of al-Qaeda operatives within Yemen's porous borders, particularly since the recent unification of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of the terrorist network. Thousands of Yemenis participated in the U.S.-supported anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan during the 1980s, becoming radicalized by the experience and developing links with Osama bin Laden, a Saudi whose father comes from a Yemeni family. Various tribal loyalties to bin Laden's family have led to some support within Yemen for the exiled al-Qaeda leader, even among those who do not necessarily support his reactionary interpretation of Islam or his terrorist tactics. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have served as migrant laborers in neighboring Saudi Arabia. There, exposure to the hardline Wahhabi interpretation of Islam dominant in that country combined with widespread repression and discrimination has led to further radicalization.

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Currently, hardcore al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen — many of whom are foreigners — probably number no more than 200. But they are joined by roughly 2,000 battle-hardened Yemeni militants who have served time in Iraq fighting U.S. occupation forces. The swelling of al-Qaeda's ranks by veterans of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Iraqi insurgency has led to the rise of a substantially larger and more extreme generation of fighters, who have ended the uneasy truce between Islamic militants and the Yemeni government.

Opponents of the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq correctly predicted that the inevitable insurgency would create a new generation of radical jihadists, comparable to the one that emerged following the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and its congressional supporters — including then-senators Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton — believed that a U.S. takeover of Iraq was more important than avoiding the risk of creating of a hotbed of anti-American terrorism. Ironically, President Obama is relying on Biden and Clinton — as well as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, another supporter of the U.S. invasion and occupation — to help us get out of this mess they helped create.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/yemen-the-latest-us-battl_b_416314.html

WWI was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian student. Other great wars have been touched off by similarly insignificant events like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Is the underpants bomber being used to plunge us into Armageddon?

We obviously destabilized it, according to this, in the article:
"the economic situation is increasingly deteriorating for most Yemenis as a result of a U.S.-backed structural adjustment program imposed by the International Monetary Fund."
According to some, John Perkins included, the IMF is used to bring a target country to its knees.

but what is the geo-political reason? Seaports? Part of the larger plan to control all of the Middle East?

Anyone got an idea?

In order to secure the IMF funds the target country must allow privatization of any valuable public assets such as power generation facilities and water companies. These things end up in the hands of global corporations which control the price of everything the people need to survive. Labor unions must be outlawed also. The citizens are turned into serfs.

Major union busting going on.
Fla. under Jeb sold Nestle Co. the rights to the Fla. aquifer for pennies a year.
And just today I read in the state paper that Ga. and Fla and Ala. governors are going to hold
"private" talks about water issues, no press, no public.

Shiver....

We need to look at who will profit from the incident, politically, financially, or both.

Dick Cheney, Halliburton and his other beloved oil companies would potentially profit. Cheney (along with many of his slimy Republican brethen) would love to politicize the incident and would have been far more successful at politicization had the Christmas day attempt succeeded in killing the 300 passengers. Had the explosive underwear plot been successful, the job of beating the war drums for an invasion of Yemen would have been made much easier. Such an invasion would mean that Cheney's beloved corporate rapists would stand to make major cash from war and reconstruction and, of course, the exploitation of the people and their resources.

Look at how well it worked in Iraq. Cheney and his corporate cronies are the big winners. With a success like Iraq under their belts, they're bound to try and repeat it.

don't have a clue whats going on within our country,we still have Chaney and his evil,ilk ( fox news,cnn,the forty clowns in the senate,the republican rats in the house,Rush and the rest of the ill informed citizens,the war racketeers are slowly but surely destroying this country before our very eyes.WAKEUP AMERICA.