From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Jan 17 2010 - 06:38:16 EST
Exploring America's dangerous yen for Yemen
Published: Sunday, January 17, 2010
By Georgie Anne Geyer
Universal Press Syndicate
WASHINGTON - Several of us journalists - all either foreign correspondents
or former foreign correspondents - were sitting around last week discussing
American interests in countries such as Yemen and Somalia.
These two lands, and too many more increasingly like them, are not so much
"failed states" as "never-were states." Yemen, an ancient and beautiful land
that many centuries ago was the birthplace of the Arab peoples, has always
been a melange of warring tribes, only recently with a weak and hesitant
central government; Somalia was never so much a country as a society of
warring clans.
"What if we didn't do anything in countries like these," one of my friends
put forward at one point, "and just let fate take its course?"
"But then, al-Qaida could actually take over a state," another volunteered.
"It could become a state. And then what would we do?"
This outrageous probability was punctuated by a rare moment of silence. Then
another friend put forward an even more outrageous possibility.
"At least," he said, "we would know exactly where they were, and they would
be easy to attack in traditional military fashion." Another silence - dare I
say, shocked?
"And," he went on, "they would attack one another and demolish one another.
That is what has always happened throughout history."
Please understand, I am not putting forward such a suggestion as a solution
to our problems in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but it is surely worth
considering.
For one thing, our politicians and military seem to forget that we already
tried invasion once in Somalia - in the early '80s when we went in to "feed
the people" and soon withdrew in horror and shame when 18 of our finest men
were massacred by Somali clansmen. The country is now in total collapse, but
still Somalia keeps coming up in our diplomats' and military's thinking.
As to Yemen, no one who knows the country at all would ever - ever! - advise
getting militarily or otherwise entangled there on the ground. Already, the
tribal groups in Yemen are at war with one another, unsolved kidnappings of
foreigners have been the preferred manner of expressing oneself for years,
and anti-Americanism in Yemen is the highest in the entire Middle East.
Well-placed rumors already have al-Qaida uniting with the al-Houthi rebels
in the north, bordering the southernmost borders of Saudi Arabia, which
could in effect give the two groups their own state.
Our leaders say they know this. Gen. David Petraeus himself said last week
on CNN that we would not attempt to put "boots on the ground" in Yemen,
while President Obama was quoted similarly in an interview in People
magazine.
But, in fact, that is what is always said before we go in. And The
Washington Post reported only this weekend seeing American and British
military officers secretively training the Yemeni army.
Some saw the criminal absurdity of trying to reform and/or nation-build in
these countries many, many years ago - but the warnings were never heeded.
My friend and admired strategist Richard Friedman, president of the National
Strategy Forum, recalls how the late Morris Liebman, the famous lawyer and
American Bar Association strategist from Chicago, tried to advance the idea
of the threat of international Islamist terrorism in the early 1980s, but no
one in Washington was interested.
Today, he avers: "The estimated number of 5,000 active terrorists should be
the target. In developing a strategy to suppress (not totally defeat)
al-Qaida and its franchises, two factors need to be addressed: one, failed
states and, two, ungoverned spaces.
Yemen, Somalia and Mauritania are failed states, and ungoverned spaces are
located in virtually every remote valley throughout Central Asia. The
al-Qaida headquarters in Afghanistan can be moved readily to Yemen or
anywhere else in two suitcases and a bank account change of address.
"Time-phased withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan would result in saving
approximately $200 billion annually. A sliver of this money could be
allocated to enhancing counterterrorism, intelligence and police activities,
use of drones ... and targeted work against the bad guys."
Two other relevant points:
* The U.S. military announced recently the formation of a seasoned corps of
expert officers for the Afghan war as one of their highest priorities, but
it is, reports The New York Times, "off to a slow start, with too few
volunteers and a high-level warning to the armed services to steer better
candidates into the program."
This formation of a 912-member corps to work intensively on Afghanistan and
Pakistan issues for up to five years has had only 172 sign up to date,
largely because it would hurt their advancement.
My interpretation: The U.S. is not fit for imperialism, and what exactly is
wrong with that?
* The International Monetary Fund recently reported that the U.S. began this
century producing 32 percent of the world's gross domestic product and ended
the first decade producing 24 percent. "No nation in modern history, save
for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative
power in a single decade," Patrick Buchanan reported in his column in the
conservative Human Events.
My interpretation: The U.S. is being drained and destroyed by some of our
leaders' and our military's bent for imperialism, and much is wrong with
that.
All of this brings us back to the Yemens and the Somalias of the world, and
to Richard Friedman's final words on the subject: "There are 193 states in
the world. Approximately 150 of them are small and could become safe havens
for al-Qaida terrorist operations. The concepts of a global war on
terrorism, safe harbors, failed states, ungoverned spaces, affordability and
finite financial resources, plus a severely overstretched U.S. military,
suggests that the U.S. approach to international terrorism needs to be
recalibrated."
Amen.
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