In response to the failed Christmas
day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, US officials and the Obama
administration made a very public show of shifting their already turbo-charged
'war on terror' into overdrive.
Here in the US, officials -
aided by the corporate media - attempted to reassure a terror-weary
American public with nationally televised displays of stepped up screenings
at airports, increased numbers of air marshals on international flights
and the addition of hundreds of names to the CIA's 'terrorist watch
list.'
All but eclipsed by this 'security
sideshow' was the administration's accelerated military campaign
in the beautiful and impoverished little country of Yemen, located on
the southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula, where the would-be Christmas
bomber allegedly had "connections to Al Qaeda."
The Wall Street Journal recently
reported that "Yemen has become the international jihadi's destination
of choice from which to prepare, plot and launch future terror attacks,"
a claim that pretty much sums up the official US justification for its
new focus on Yemen. But, as fate would have it, Yemen has also become
the "destination of choice" for a lot of other people - including
war and climate refugees from the Horn of Africa.
The United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) reported in December that record numbers made the
perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen in 2009. The agency
says tens of thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians, "driven by desperation,"
traveled across the sea to escape civil war, political instability,
poverty, famine and drought in the Horn of Africa. The latest numbers
issued by the Ministry of the Interior report more than 1.8 million
refugees residing in Yemen. The UNHCR called this a "staggering increase"
over the number of people who arrived there in 2008.
An unharmonic convergence
of 'compounded emergencies'
Yemen's al-Wahda newspaper
reported in December that the country had received grant money for dealing
with disasters "that happened and could happen because of climate
change in these countries." While refugees view Yemen as their last
best hope for survival, the influx could not have come at a less opportune
time for one of the least developed countries in the world.
"Yemen is expected to face
negative impacts by climate change, including heat waves and torrential
rains that could badly affect main developmental sectors such as agriculture,
health and coasts," al-Wahda reported early this year.
At the same time, the country
is struggling to cope with a Shi'ite rebellion in the north and a
movement for autonomy in the south. And, by most accounts, Yemen's
capital, Sanaa, only has about ten years left before its own wells run
dry. "Yemen is set to be the first country in the world to run out
of water, providing a taste of the conflict and mass movement of populations
that may spread across the world if population growth outstrips natural
resources," wrote Judith Evans in an article published late last year
in the UK's TimesOnline.
"The situation in Yemen is
becoming increasingly complex as the country faces a series of compounded
emergencies," states the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) on its website. "Some 48% of households in Yemen are
food-insecure, and half of all children are chronically malnourished
... It is likely that these already alarming levels of chronic food
insecurity and malnutrition have only further deteriorated as a result
of the complex situation."
As if this weren't enough
for Yemenis to cope with, the UN recently reported that the conflict
in northern Yemen, combined with extreme drought has forced thousands
of Yemeni civilians to flee from that country.
US steps up military presence
When asked by People Magazine
in January what the US strategy in Yemen would be, President Obama answered
that he had "no intention of sending US boots on the ground in these
regions." But (at least in 'Pentagonese') "boots on the ground"
are one thing. Cruise missiles are another.
Only days before the narrowly
averted Christmas day bombing, network news stations - including
NBC and ABC - reported that Obama had "personally ordered" two cruise
missile attacks in Yemen. An article in the New York Times said the
US had given Yemeni forces military hardware and intelligence to carry
out the attack. A local Yemeni official told reporters that the missiles
had killed more civilians than Al Qaeda. Among the dead were 23 children
and 17 women. Such attacks may not qualify as "boots on the ground,"
but they're a far cry from the "nimble and precise" US strategy
described by Obama in December.
Although Yemeni leaders have
made it clear they do not want US forces on their soil, Pentagon sources
told the New York Times the US would spend more than $70 million there
over the next 18 months - mostly for special forces, to train and equip
Yemeni military and paramilitary forces. That number is more than double
previous US military aid levels there.
A
"wonderfully beautiful" place
Journalist Patrick Cockburn
calls Yemen: "a dangerous place ... wonderfully beautiful. "The
Yemenis are exceptionally hospitable, humorous, sociable and democratic,
infinitely preferable as company to the arrogant ignorant playboys of
the (rich regional) oil states," Cockburn recently wrote at his blog
site. On average, he writes, "Yemenis own three guns per person ...
including one or more automatic weapons, like an AK-47 as well as heavier
arms." Yemeni Professor Ahmed al-Kibsi once told a British reporter:
"Just as you have your tie, the Yemeni will carry his gun." As a
result, Cockburn says, "Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of
Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan."
One UN official recently told
reporters: "If they do not find a solution [in Yemen] ... fanatics
will find very fertile ground to recruit and develop their infrastructure."
"We don't need more guns
in this country," a Yemeni farmer told the Christian Science Monitor
in January. "This village needs a new water pump and we need new trees
that drink less water."
Slippery underpinnings of
US 'war on terror'
"Besides waging direct or
proxy wars on multiple fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia,
the Philippines, Sudan, Eastern Congo [and] elsewhere in Africa,"
writes Stephen Lendman, of the Center for Research on Globalization,
"Yemen is now a new front in America's 'war on terror' under
a president, who as a candidate, promised diplomacy, not conflict, if
elected."
Yet, when it comes to the 'war
on terror,' most Americans are (understandably) reluctant to
put President Obama in the same category as his predecessor - despite
the fact that both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have
effectively managed to exploit Americans' fear of terror to promote
the expansion of US military might across the globe.
Some, like author and researcher
F. William Engdahl, insist that the 'war on terror' is, and always
has been, more about protecting the free flow of oil than stemming the
tide of terrorism. "The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US
intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the
world's oil flows ... [using] claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising
from Yemen," writes Engdahl. "In addition, undeveloped petroleum
reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly
among the world's largest."
"Impending US military actions
in Yemen - strategically located on an important trading route linking
the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea - are directly linked
to US oil interests in Nigeria," wrote Ken Boyte in January at AllVoices.com.
He goes on to cite a feasibility study produced by the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in 1975 that identified Yemen as "a target for
invasion."
Still others report that recent
civil unrest within Yemen and on its borders has alarmed the oil thirsty
western powers, who fear a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Whatever the underlying reasons,
Americans are just beginning to feel the economic, social and political
consequences of having abdicated their power to incompetent and/or immoral
leaders. It doesn't take "boots on the ground" (in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen or anywhere else) to fire cruise missiles into
neighborhoods filled with women and children or to send unmanned drones
into villages, and hope they hit the desired mark. It doesn't take
brains, courage or good leadership skills either. What it does
is insure a self-perpetuating cycle of endless war. That may enrich
the military-technological complex for a minute, but it is guaranteed
to impoverish the rest of us for generations to come.