US/1; ATTN: HST/1; HST/2 - MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS
[ed.note: Or, as US/1 used to say back in the day: Only at the butt-end of Arabia can you have a civil war between the North & the South (or as we below the Mason-Dixon Line like to refer to it as ‘the recent unpleasantness’) are the players in the West and the East, with the Westerners being the ‘Eastern’-backed faction (SovBLOC).
OR, as we always say in said such situations—Go figure...]
Yemen loses a president and America loses a friend June 08, 2011
By: David Silverberg
Back in 1986 the president of what was then South Yemen, Ali Nasir Muhammad Husani, called a Cabinet meeting.
The ministers sat down around a large conference table in the Cabinet room. Two presidential aides entered the room, one with a tray of tea cups, which he began serving to the ministers. The other had a briefcase, which he placed on the table and began looking inside, presumably for the papers necessary for the meeting.
But instead of papers, the aide with the briefcase brought out a submachine gun and began blasting the ministers around the table.
Those who weren’t killed in the first fusillade dove under the table. This being South Yemen, they all carried firearms, which they pulled from their pockets and sashes and they emerged from under the table, guns blazing. They then managed to blast their way out of the presidential palace and full-scale civil war ensued. This being the old days of the Cold War, and South Yemen being a communist country, the resulting bloodletting was the Soviet Union’s headache.
I remember monitoring this in a state of wonder; American Cabinet meetings just aren’t like that. But it was politics as usual for Yemen, which has been in a state of turmoil since it seems that humans settled this barren but strategic land and created one of the world’s original commercial hubs, Aden, around the rim of an ancient crater.
Now Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh has lit out for Saudi Arabia, injured by a rocket attack that reportedly burned 40 percent of his body, leaving his people in revolt, the tribes in arms and the country in turmoil. Except for the 32 years when he himself was in power, that means Yemen has pretty much returned to normal.
I don’t want to write this as a paean to Saleh; he definitely overstayed his welcome and he’s not exactly a shining example of enlightened governance. But he managed to unite North and South Yemen in 1990 in a non-communist union and put down a rebellion in 1994 when southerners tried to secede. He has actually been elected by popular vote three times, though each time by lopsided margins. He juggled fractious tribes, restive subordinates, fundamentalists and the poorest population in the Middle East. By Middle Eastern standards, and by the standards of Yemen’s past, his was relatively enlightened rule and Yemen was about as stable as it ever gets.
And Saleh was a friend of the United States. Some of this was necessity; the United States had no rivals of comparable wealth and power in the region and there was no more Soviet Union. But it was also because it was in Saleh’s interest to keep the Muslim extremists at bay. He was a secular ruler and if Osama Bin Laden’s jihad (and the Bin Laden family is originally from Yemen) succeeded, Saleh would have likely faced the sword—literally.
What was more, as Wikileaks revealed, Saleh was a US ally in its pursuit of Al Qaeda militants in Yemen, willing to claim Yemeni responsibility for bombings and drone attacks that were in fact conducted by the United States.
In the past Yemen was important because it commanded the entrance to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and thereby the Suez Canal. It still does that. But today it’s important to the United States and the West because it’s the home of the most serious and intractable Al Qaeda franchise, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), led by Anwar Al Awlaki, a real potential successor to Osama Bin Laden.
AQAP has some real traction in Yemen. It was disturbing to see that the cover story of the most recent Inspire magazine, the Al Qaeda digital publication, lauded “Operation of Abyan,” a successful Al Qaeda attack on a Yemini Army checkpoint.
No doubt Saleh’s departure represents a real liberation for the Yemeni people. It’s hard not to sympathize and wish them well. But of all the revolutions in the Arab Spring, if there’s any that could turn toward Islamist extremism it’s the one in Yemen.
We can only hope that whoever emerges as the leader in Yemen is neither a puppet of Al Qaeda nor an enemy of the United States.
In Yemen, that’s hoping for a great deal.
Comments
I normally do not respond to articles that reflect a great deal of ignorance on the part of the writer with regards to Yemen, as there are too many articles like this out there.
However, the title of this site, "insight and analysis for government decision makers," makes it a moral obligation to respond.
There is no evidence to suggest that Anwar Al Awlaki has any operational role in AQAP, let alone a leadership role. If you cared to enlighten yourself a little about the US's greatest threat, you would know that a veteran jihadist known as Nasser Al Wahaishi is considered the head of AQAP.
Yemen is an extremely diverse society, and one thing is for sure: their desire for political and social freedom is what unifies them, not Islamism, let alone extremist ideology. Yemenis stood up to oppression and misrule, nowhere in the revolution has there been rhetoric against Saleh's secular rule.
You call Saleh a friend of the US: just wait until the finer details of the operational history of this regime are revealed; Al Qaeda in Yemen would not have taken such a strong hold if Saleh didn't need them to squeeze support from the US and Europe as well as for his political balancing acts at home. This is a fact known to all Yemenis, but the US fails to admit that Saleh manipulated them as much as he manipulated his people.
AQAP consists of about 200 members (citing a high-level gov't official) and sympathizers not numbering more than a few thousand. The threat is overly exaggerated, thanks to Saleh and the fear mongering media.
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Award-winning Editor David Silverberg shares perspectives on current news in the homeland security arena and presents views of other expert commentators. He is the first-ever recipient of the "Journalism that Matters" award from the ASBPE and over the years has been the recipient of several editorial awards on behalf of HSToday. Comments on any of David's "Perspectives" are welcome. Read more on David...
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