Arming Yemen would play into al-Qa'ida's hands

[IndianaGreen]

Arming Yemen would play into al-Qa'ida's hands

An unpopular government, tribal fiefdoms and Western aid make it easy for al-Qa'ida to grow in this ravaged country on the Arabian peninsula

By Patrick Cockburn

Sunday, 10 January 2010

Protesters are walking confidently down a street in the southern Yemeni port of Aden when there is a rattle of gunfire as the security services shoot into the crowd and panic-stricken people run seeking cover. A man in a checked shirt is left lying face down in the dust in the empty street, a stream of blood flowing from a bullet wound in his head.

In northern Yemen, government tanks and artillery pound the mountains trying to dislodge Shia rebels holding positions among the crags. Plumes of white smoke rise from exploding shells. Tribesmen not in uniform fighting on the government side sit behind their heavy machine guns and spray the hillsides with fire. A few miles away on a dusty piece of flat ground, thousands of refugees driven from their homes by the war cower in small overcrowded tents.

Nobody in the West paid much attention to violent incidents like these in Yemen last year, though both of those described above were recorded on film. The mounting crisis in the country attracted notice only when a Nigerian student is revealed to have been "trained" in Yemen by al-Qa'ida to detonate explosives in his underpants on a plane heading for Detroit. But this botched attack has led to the US and Britain starting to become entangled in one of the more violent countries in the world.

The problems in Yemen are social, economic and political, and stretch back to the civil war in the 1960s. Yet Gordon Brown believes solutions can be found by holding a one day summit on Yemen to "tackle extremism".

The number of active members of al-Qa'ida in Yemen is small, only 200 to 300 lightly armed militants in a country of 22 million people estimated to own no fewer than 60 million weapons. Al-Qa'ida has room to operate because the central government's authority barely extends outside the cities and because it can ally itself with the many opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in office since the 1970s.

The power of al-Qa'ida is not its military expertise or sinister training camps in the mountains of Yemen. Rather, its strength is its ability to lure the US and Britain into commitments in dangerous countries such as Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, where the state is weak and its rule contested. It can do this because, in the wake of 9/11, the US instinctively overreacts to the most amateur and unsuccessful attack on the homeland.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/arming-yemen-would-play-into-alqaidas-hands-1863280.html

[yurbud]

1. fight al Qaeda without spending a penny

build schools, stop overthrowing democracies to carry water for oil companies, and stop giving the weapons of repression to the dictators in place, and al Qaeda will have a hard time recruiting.

[StarfarerBill]

2. Agreed.

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. USA "played into al-Qa'ida's hands" with its illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

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and al-Qa'ida' figured that's exactly what the USA would do.

So who's the smart ones here . . ? ? ?

[bemildred]

4. Well, OK, but the government of Yemen has its own concerns.

Which have little to do with our government-led witch hunts. They will take our money and arms and pursue their own interests, just like everyone else, and they don't really give a shit about al Qaeda.