Yemen official tells AP US troops not wanted
Once again USA has hell to pay for choosing its allies unwisely. USA has been supporting another corrupt tyranny in Yemen, choosing sides in a civil war, and finally there has been an attempt to retaliate, the attempt to bring down an airplane headed for Detroit on Christmas. This AP story is from Yahoo News
Yemen official tells AP US troops not wanted
By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 6, 5:46 pm ETSAN’A, Yemen – As Yemen becomes the new front in the war on terror, its leaders want this to be clear: It does not intend to become another Iraq or Afghanistan with thousands of U.S. troops on the ground.
Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi drew some red lines Wednesday in its burgeoning alliance with Washington against al-Qaida, telling The Associated Press that Yemen welcomes U.S. and foreign troops for training, intelligence and logistical support.
“But not in any other capacity,” he said, adding, “there is a lot of sensitivity” among Yemenis about foreign combat troops. He underlined that Yemeni forces would remain under Yemeni command, without any joint authority with the Americans.
Washington and San’a are still feeling out how far they can go in their newly intensified partnership against al-Qaida, whose fighters have dug roots into the mountains of this impoverished Arab nation and now, the Obama administration says, present a global threat.
Military personnel from the United States and other Western countries are already on the ground helping train Yemeni counterterror units and exchanging intelligence, and Washington and Britain are ramping up aid, pouring in tens of millions of dollars to build up the security forces.
Yemen’s government has been weakened by wars, poverty and its own misrule and corruption. Central authority barely extends beyond the capital, and heavily armed tribes control large areas. Many tribes are bitter toward San’a, and some give refuge to al-Qaida fighters.
The U.S. says the group in Yemen, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, trained and provided the explosive materials for the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up an American passenger jet heading to Detroit on Christmas Day. This week, the U.S. and other Western countries temporarily closed their embassies in San’a after threats of a terrorist attack surfaced. The move was criticized by al-Qirbi.
“It was the wrong decision actually,” he said of the closures Sunday and Monday. “Closing embassies in response to a threat plays into the hands of the terrorists.”
He was also critical of Obama’s decision to halt the release of Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay military prison, out of fear they could return to terror activities. The government “would like Yemenis to be handed over” and will prosecute any who committed crimes, al-Qirbi said.
Al-Qirbi said the U.S. should focus itself on building up Yemen’s own forces.
Mistrust of the United States is high among the population of 22 million, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh relies in part on support from Islamic conservatives — including some in the military — who may resist too close an alliance with the Americans against al-Qaida.
As a result, while Yemen has embraced U.S. help, Saleh is deeply wary of giving up too much authority or appearing to be a tool of Washington, a charge often leveled by extremists against Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“I’m sure that (the West’s) experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be very useful to learn from — that direct intervention complicates things,” he said.
Several hundred al-Qaida fighters are believed to be operating in Yemen, including foreign veterans of the Iraqi and Afghan wars and Yemenis drawn in by extremist ideology or anger at the Saleh government. Among the senior leadership are two Saudi militants released from Guantanamo several years ago.
Yemen carried out its biggest strikes in years against al-Qaida hideouts last month, and it has beefed up troops in al-Qaida strongholds around San’a and in outlying provinces.
But the strikes have also illustrated the sensitive nature of U.S. cooperation, amid media reports that U.S. cruise missiles or warplanes were used in the attacks. U.S. officials have not confirmed the reports, and Yemen says its air force — which has Russian-made MiG warplanes — carried out the strikes with U.S. intelligence help.
Earlier this week, al-Qirbi insisted there is no agreement allowing the American military to use cruise missiles, armed drones or warplanes on Yemeni territory, “and there is no proposal for such an agreement.”
A number of women, children and other civilians were reported killed in one of the strikes, a Dec. 17 attack on a suspected al-Qaida training camp. The deaths raised an outcry among Yemenis — and San’a fears the possibility of fueling sympathy for al-Qaida, as Afghan and Pakistani officials argue U.S. strikes have in their countries.
USA has learned nothing from its experiences in the war on terror. Obama seems to think USA has carte blanche to carry out the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. The rebels in Yemen pose a threat to US interests, so they are fair game. If USA had not been so eager to prop up friendly corrupt tyrannical regimes all over the world, it might not have made so many enemies. The policy is self-defeating, but nothing new in the annals of failed empires. The government in Yemen is comparable to the Karzai regime in Afghanistan, trying desperately to hold onto what little power it has with the covert aid of the puppet masters in Washington. The more involved USA gets, the more likely the government of Yemen will lose the civil war. In that case, is Obama prepared to take over the country? The way things are going, he will probably argue there is no choice, just as the war on Afghanistan he calls necessary, not a war of choice. Obama seems to believe USA has no choice but to destroy all havens for al Qaeda. Meanwhile, his policies, like those of Bush, are the best recruitment inducement imaginable. Until those policies change, the goal of Hillary Clinton to win hearts and minds through development aid will go nowhere.
We cannot stop terrorism or defeat the ideologies of violent extremism when hundreds of millions of young people see a future with no jobs, no hope, and no way ever to catch up to the developed world.
She is correct in that assessment, though there are other issues in play that are more relevant, such as the festering resentment of decades of US assistance to tyrannical corrupt regimes. As long as that continues, people will see right through the motives of development aid, and the blowback will only intensify.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Senator Carl Levin, a well respected Democrat, is calling for a war on the rebels in Yemen, which he calls a threat to US security. Never mind that US foreign policy is the biggest threat to US security imaginable. This story is from Reuters
This just goes to show once again, Republicans have no monopoly on warmongering. How did these Yemeni rebels become such a threat? Could it be they resent USA taking sides in their civil war? Or is it that anyone USA can call a militant Muslim is a proven threat now? Obama may not like the terminology Bush used, the global war on terror, but it appears he will make that terminology more apropos than Bush managed to, since Bush had only started two wars. He was on his way to starting a war with Pakistan, after being egged on by belligerent rhetoric from Obama during the campaign, but he approved relatively few drone attacks on Pakistan or other nations. It has been left to Obama to make the Bush vision a reality, to wage preemptive war on any group who could be construed as a threat. Bush might have gotten there, but got bogged down in Iraq, so his plans to subdue Iran, presumably the next target in his sights, never got off the ground.