In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of his least known and ultimately one of his most important speeches ever, \u201cBeyond Vietnam,\u201d in which he spoke out against the American war in Vietnam and against American empire in all its political, military and economic forms. In his speech, King endorsed the notion that America \u201cwas on the wrong side of a world revolution.\u201d Dr. King explained:<\/p>\n
During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”[1]<\/p>\n
This is the nature of war of today: during [Luther] King\u2019s time, the pretext for war was to stop the spread of Communism; today, it\u2019s done in the name of stopping the spread of terrorism. Terror has since time immemorial been a tactic used by states and governments to control populations. Al-Qaeda is no exception, as it was created and continues to largely function as a geopolitical extension of the covert apparatus of American empire. In short, al-Qaeda is an arm of the covert world of American intelligence agencies. In particular, the CIA, DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], US Special Forces, and multinational mercenary companies such as Blackwater [now Xe Services]. Where they go, al-Qaeda goes; where al-Qaeda goes, they accumulate; where they lay the groundwork, the American empire stands behind.[2]<\/p>\n
Yemen is perhaps an excellent example of America being on the \u201cwrong side of a world revolution,\u201d as the secret war in Yemen being exacerbated in the name of \u201cfighting al-Qaeda\u201d is in actuality, about the expansion and supremacy of American power in the region. It is about the suppression of natural democratic, local, revolutionary elements throughout the country seeking self-autonomy in changing the nation from its current despotic, authoritarian rule sympathetic to American interests, into a nation of their own choosing. It is about repressing struggles for liberation.<\/p>\n
This brings in the involvement of Saudi Arabia, itself interested in ensuring Yemen is a loyal neighbour; so they too must suppress indigenous movements within Yemen seeking autonomy, especially those that are Shi\u2019a Muslims, as the Saudi state is a strict Wahhabist Sunni Muslim regime. Shi\u2019as are primarily represented in the region through the state of Iran, Saudi Arabia\u2019s \u201cnatural\u201d enemy; both vying for influence in Iraq and both vying for influence in Yemen. Through this we see another key American imperial aim in this war, that of seeking to stir up a conflict with Iran, perhaps through a proxy-war within Yemen, or perhaps in hopes that the proxy war would expand into a regional war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, naturally drawing in Israel, Egypt and the United States. Finally, we have the strategic location of Yemen to consider, bridging one of the largest oil transport routes in the world, parallel to Somalia and the Horn of Africa (where America is waging another war, again on the \u201cwrong side of a world revolution\u201d).<\/p>\n
Just as American geopolitical strategists had chosen to favour Tutsis over Hutus in Central Africa in an effort to expand the American presence and business interests in the region; so too have American strategists chosen to favour a brand of radical Sunni Islam over the Shi\u2019a or moderate Sunnis, and thus they support oppressive Sunni governments (such as Saudi Arabia), and denounce Shi\u2019a governments as oppressive (such as Iran). Not to say that there is no oppression within Iran (there is oppression within all states everywhere in the world, Iran is no exception), but compared to Saudi Arabia, Iran is a bastion of freedom. Al-Qaeda is manifestly a significant facet of the pro-Wahhabist fundamentalist Sunni strategy of American imperialists. If they finance, train and arm the Sunni rebels or send in already-trained, armed and well-funded terrorists (commonly known as \u2018al-Qaeda\u2019 \u2013 the \u201cdatabase\u201d), then they create a counter to any other domestic opposition or regional Shi\u2019a dominance.<\/p>\n
This essay examines the American war in Yemen as a war of empire, as a war against the rising tide of people\u2019s movements and the \u201cglobal political awakening\u201d that is taking place around the world.<\/p>\n
Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Art of Empire<\/strong><\/p>\n To understand the current conflict in Yemen, as with all conflicts, we must go to history. To simply cast the conflict aside in the light of \u201cfighting al-Qaeda\u201d is a gross misrepresentation. Yemen\u2019s history is deeply entwined with that of Arab nationalist politics in the Middle East, adding to that a balance of imperial power in the region.<\/p>\n The location of modern Yemen is vital in the notion of Yemen\u2019s significance to imperial powers. Millennia ago, a settled civilization was established in the fertile south-west region of Arabia, and was \u201ccomprised by the kingdoms of Ma\u2019in, Saba, and Himyar.\u201d These kingdoms \u201cwere significant in the broader history of the Middle East, in part because of the long-distance trade links to India and the states at the top of the Red Sea.\u201d[3] When Islam arose:<\/p>\n Yemen became part of the Arab and Islamic worlds and contributed both militarily to the Islamic conquests and culturally to the mediaeval Islamic period. From the tenth century onward, Yemen … ceased to be part of the broader Islamic empires … [and] it was ruled by a succession of dynasties, controlling more or less of to-day\u2019s Yemeni territory. The last of these to control most of to-day\u2019s North and South were the Qasimis, who ruled in the mid-seventeenth century. In the early modern period, Yemen fell under various degrees of external influence and control \u2013 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Dutch and the Portuguese yielding to the Ottomans, and in the nineteenth century the Ottomans and the British dividing the country between them.[4]<\/p>\n When the Ottomans left in 1918, following their defeat in World War I, Zeidi Imam took over North Yemen, which was run by the Imams, while South Yemen was controlled by the British.[5] From the late eighteenth century, the British being the dominant power in the Arabian Peninsula, \u201csought to protect its imperial communications by entering into a series of treaties with the ruling shaykhs of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman and by bringing the strategic southern tip of the peninsula under direct British control as the Aden Protectorate [South Yemen].\u201d[6]<\/p>\n Various families competed for power in Arabia, with Abd al-Aziz Ibn Sa\u2019ud emerging victorious when in 1924 he exiled the previously imposed leader (supported by the British, but highly unpopular), Sharif Husayn. Britain quickly negotiated an agreement with Ibn Sa\u2019ud in 1927, called the Treaty of Jeddah, which \u201crecognized Ibn Sa\u2019ud as the sovereign king of the Hijaz and sultan of Najd and its dependencies; he, in turn, acknowledged Britain\u2019s special relationships with the coastal rulers [of the Arabian Peninsula] and pledged to respect their domains.\u201d In 1932, the state became known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.[7]<\/p>\n Following World War II, the United States became the single greatest superpower and it overtook the colonial possessions of the old European empires that collapsed prior to, during, and following World War II. In the Middle East:<\/p>\n New social and political forces emerged after 1945 to challenge the old elites and demand reform. Among them were pro-Soviet communist parties, but much more important and popular were radical nationalist movements and independent groups of young army officers determined to free their countries from lingering foreign control and chart a new course toward development and greater social justice.[8]<\/p>\n The Imams in North Yemen had begun laying claim to all of \u201cnatural Yemen,\u201d directly challenging British rule in the south. In the 1940s, \u201cthere began to develop political oppositions, to both the Imams in the North and the British in the South.\u201d The \u201cFree Yemeni\u201d movement in the North staged a failed coup in 1948 to free the North from the authoritarian rule of the Imams.[9]<\/p>\n Egypt saw the most significant upheavals in the immediate post-War years. In 1952, a group of junior military officers in the Egyptian Army orchestrated a bloodless coup in which they overthrew the Egyptian Monarchy and Colonel Abd al-Nasser took power, forming the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The RCC\u2019s primary political rival in Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood, so when an assassination attempt on Nasser took place in 1954, the RCC outlawed the Brotherhood, arrested thousands of its members and executed several of its leaders. Nasser was not only the primary progenitor of nationalism in the region, but he was considered the exalted leader of the pan-Arab movement for unity.<\/p>\n Nasser set up a Soviet arms deal in 1955, in which Egypt exchanged cotton for Soviet military equipment, which dealt Nasser an impressive propaganda effect among Arab peoples who saw it as a rebuff of the Anglo-American grip on Egypt. Nasser, meanwhile, had been attempting to construct a dam at Aswan, and sought funds to do so from the World Bank in 1955. The World Bank approved a loan package (designed by the British and Americans), which would have required Egypt to accept particular conditions of the loan. Nasser had not made a decision on the package, when, in July of 1956, America announced it was withdrawing the offer.[10]<\/p>\n On July 26, 1956, days following the loan withdrawal, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, giving Nasser incredible support across the Muslim and Arab worlds, as the Canal, \u201cbuilt with Egyptian labour but operated by a French company and used as the lifeline of the British Empire, had stood as a symbol of Western exploitation.\u201d[11] On October 29, 1956, Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt, and a UN-sponsored cease-fire was signed by Britain and France on November 6, following the condemnation of the attack by both the USSR and America. The Suez Crisis, an Egyptian military defeat, had become a political success for Nasser.[12]<\/p>\n In Yemen, the struggle of the Free Yemenis in the North waged on against both the rule of the Imams in the North and the British in the South. The Free Yemenis were largely influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt initially, but changed the rhetoric as the 1950s changed the dynamic of politics in the region, with the rise of Arab nationalism, and thus, \u201cthe predominant politics of the oppositions in North and South was nationalistic, involving support not only for the general goal of \u2018Arab unity\u2019 but also for \u2018Yemeni\u2019 unity.\u201d Following the failed coup in 1948, the opposition in the North was split between intellectuals and groups of officers. In 1962, the officers overthrew the Imams and proclaimed the \u201cYemen Arab Republic.\u201d[13]<\/p>\n When this took place in the North, opposition spread to the countryside in the South where a guerilla movement developed. Between 1963 and 1967, the guerilla movement became a powerful force competing for power in Aden and the countryside, and was split into two: a Nasser-influenced group and a more radical Marxist \u201cNational Liberation Front\u201d (NLF). Nasser inserted himself into the Yemeni civil war in 1962. The deposed Imam of Yemen had escaped to the mountains and rallied tribesmen to his cause, with significant support from powerful regional monarchs (and staunch American allies), Saudi Arabia and Jordan. So the new Yemeni regime turned to Nasser for assistance, and by 1965, close to 70,000 Egyptian troops were in Yemen fighting for the military regime in power. After several years of fighting rebels and traversing harsh terrain, Egypt withdrew in 1968.[14]<\/p>\n During the civil war, the British were still holding onto their protectorate in the South, and were still very much politically bruised by Nasser since the Suez Crisis. Thus, the British \u201cdevised a scheme with Israel\u2019s secret service, the Mossad, to aid the anti-Nasser forces in Yemen by supplying them with arms and financial help.\u201d This effort was aided by the CIA, as well as Saudi intelligence and the Iranian SAVAK.[15] Throughout the 1960s, the United States rapidly accelerated a program of military support for Saudi Arabia, which included a $400 million Anglo-American air defense program, military bases, infrastructure, \u201cand a $100 million U.S. program to supply Saudi Arabia with trucks and military transport vehicles.\u201d[16] The aim was to weaken Egypt and Nasser through a civil war in Yemen, with each side using various groups for their own geopolitical ambitions.<\/p>\n In 1967, the National Liberation Front (NLF) came to power in South Yemen, as the British left, and South Yemen became an independent state. Subsequently, North and South Yemen supported opposition movements within each other\u2019s territory. In 1972, the two sides briefly went to war with one another, when the North attempted to conquer the South with Saudi and Libyan support.[17] While Yemen\u2019s civil war had seen Yemen divided among itself, it had also become a regional conflict between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yet, when the radical Marxist NLF government came to power in South Yemen in 1967, the NLF had \u201cpledged its support for the overthrow of all the traditional monarchies in the Arabian Peninsula\u201d:<\/p>\n The Saudi regime thus faced two hostile Yemens, both of them with radical governments, both of them supported by the Soviet Union, and both of them committed to the establishment of republican forms of rule. [Saudi] King Faysal responded to this danger by mending fences with the northern Yemen Arab Republic and attempting to foment discord between it and the People\u2019s Republic of the south.[18]<\/p>\n The situation Saudi Arabia faced to its south created an impetus for the acceleration and growth of the Saudi armed forces. Thus, in the 1970s, \u201cthe Saudis allocated between 35 and 40 percent of their total annual revenues to defense and security expenditures.\u201d In 1970, the defense budget had increased to $2 billion; by 1976 it was $36 billion.[19]<\/p>\n In North Yemen, the radical left fought a guerilla war against the government from 1978 until 1982, with support from South Yemen. This movement in the North \u201csaw itself as the vanguard of a mass movement that would bring about unity through overthrowing the military and tribal forces dominating the country.\u201d[20] The North Yemen government was not centralized, and so lacked a strong measure of legitimacy. During the 1970s, the President \u201cpromoted closer ties with the South as part of an attempt to strengthen the central government.\u201d[21] Throughout the 1980s, closer ties between the two nations were sought, and \u201cunity\u201d committees were established, but with little if any success. Not until the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in 1989-1990 was progress on unity made, when \u201cthe internal weaknesses of both regimes led them to agree to enter a provisional unification,\u201d which occurred in May 1990.[22]<\/p>\n Each state thought that they could exploit the process of unification to exert their own authority over the other region. Thus, unity was \u201cnot a policy aimed at fusion but an instrument for inter-regime competition.\u201d[23] The North, in particular, \u201cbelieved it could impose its will on the South,\u201d following the 1993 elections and through the process of misleading negotiations. Eventually, this goal started to be realized, and \u201cYemeni unity was thus achieved by the successful imposition of the Northern regime\u2019s power on the South, in alliance with both Islamists in the North, and with dissident exiles from the South.\u201d[24]<\/p>\n However, these disagreements and problems \u201cled to a de facto split in the country in early 1994, followed at the end of April by an outright Northern attack on the South. On 7 July 1994 Northern forces entered Aden, thus effectively unifying the country under one regime for the first time in several centuries.\u201d[25]<\/p>\n Operation Scorched Earth<\/strong><\/p>\n During the 1994 civil war in Yemen, the North was aided in its war against the south by Wahhabist Sunni rebels (practicing the strict branch of Islam common to Saudi Arabia as well as al-Qaeda). Following the war and the success of the North, the government had granted the Wahhabis a stronger voice in the government. This is a major complaint of the Zaydis, a Shi\u2019a branch of Islam. The Zaydis had Saada as their main stronghold in the North, but were driven from power in the 1962 revolution, left to a region that remained undeveloped. Saudi Arabia drew increasingly worried about having a rebellious group of Shi\u2019a Islam fighters (the Houthi) so close to their border, with the potential to stir up groups within Saudi Arabia itself.[26]<\/p>\n In 2004, the Yemen government tried to arrest the leader, Hussein al-Houthi, a Zaydi religious leader, which sparked fighting and the leader was subsequently killed in an air strike, leaving the movement to be run by his brothers. In 2004, between 500-1000 people were killed in the fighting. In 2005, the fighting continued, and an estimated 1,500 people were killed. Fighting broke out again in 2007 between the government and the rebels, in which hundreds of people were killed.[27] In 2008, a Shi\u2019a mosque was bombed during prayer in the Northern stronghold of Saada, with the Yemen government blaming the Shi\u2019a rebels, who both denied responsibility and denounced the attack.[28] This spurred on further clashes between the government and the rebels, so that by late 2008, since the outbreak of fighting in 2004, between 3,700 and 5,500 \u201cmilitants and civilians\u201d had been killed in the fighting.[29]<\/p>\n In June of 2009, nine foreigners were kidnapped while having a picnic in Saada, \u201cthe bodies of three of them, a South Korean teacher and two German nurses were discovered. Five Germans, including three children and a Briton, are still missing and their status is unknown.\u201d It was never determined who was behind the kidnappings and murders, but the government blamed the Houthi rebels. The Houthis in turn blamed drug cartels in the region for the murders. Yemen was faced simultaneously with a secessionist movement in both the North and the South, and was reportedly facing a \u201cgreater threat from al-Qaeda,\u201d which had been a \u201cgrowing concern\u201d of the United States. In July of 2009, Gen. David Petraeus, CENTCOM Commander, \u201cand an accompanying delegation, flew to Yemen and met with [President] Saleh,\u201d at which one of the topics of discussion was \u201chow to better combat terrorism.\u201d In August of 2009, Yemen launched a military offensive against Houthi rebels in the North.[30]<\/p>\n This was Operation Scorched Earth, launched by the Yemen military on August 11, 2009. Troops, tanks and fighter aircraft were used in this Yemeni blitzkrieg against the Houthi and Zaydi in the North, with the President vowing to crack down with an \u201ciron fist.\u201d[31]<\/p>\n This led to a refugee crisis in which, by October 2009, over 55,000 people fled their homes due to the conflict.[32] In November, the rebels had a border fight with Saudi Arabia, killing a Saudi officer and injuring several others.[33] Saudi Arabian \u201cwarplanes and artillery bombarded a Shiite rebel stronghold,\u201d and Saudi Arabia and Yemen were \u201ccooperating and sharing intelligence in the fight.\u201d[34] Moroccan special forces trained in guerilla warfare were accompanying Saudi soldiers, and Morocco cut off relations with Iran, which was being accused of arming the Houthi rebels. Jordan also reportedly sent 2,000 of its own special forces to help Saudi Arabia.[35]<\/p>\n The American Empire in the Gulf of Aden and Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n What is America\u2019s particular interest in Yemen, and more broadly, in the region that encompasses the Gulf of Aden, over which Yemen rests at the pinnacle? The Gulf of Aden connects the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, with Yemen positioned directly across the water from Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea. The Gulf of Aden is a vital transport route for the shipment of Persian Gulf oil, forming \u201can essential oil transport route between Europe and the Far East.\u201d[36] Clearly, control of the major oil transport routes is a key strategic imperative of any global power; in this case, America. Yemen, situated beneath Saudi Arabia, positions itself as even more significant to American strategic initiatives, in securing their interests in the world\u2019s most oil-rich nation and key US ally. An American-friendly government in Yemen is a Saudi-friendly government.<\/p>\n Another key facet of American imperial strategy in the Gulf of Aden and Yemen regards the American imperial strategy in Africa. In 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the main policy-planning group of the US elite, published a Task Force Report on US strategy in Africa called, \u201cMore Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa.\u201d In the report, it was stated that:<\/p>\n Africa is becoming more important because of its growing role in supplying the world with oil, gas, and non-fuel minerals. Now supplying the United States with 15 percent of oil imports, Africa\u2019s production may double in the next decade, and its capacity for natural gas exports will grow even more. In the next decade, Africa could be supplying the United States with as much energy as the Middle East.[37]<\/p>\n The report stated that, \u201cThe United States is facing intense competition for energy and other natural resources in Africa,\u201d identifying India and primarily China as its main competitors \u201cin the search for these resources and for both economic and political influence on the continent.\u201d[38] In particular, \u201cChina presents a particularly important challenge to U.S. interests.\u201d[39]<\/p>\n Further, \u201cTo compete more effectively with China, the United States must provide more encouragement and support to well-performing African states, develop innovative means for U.S. companies to compete, give high-level attention to Africa, and engage China on those practices that conflict with U.S. interests.\u201d[40] In analyzing how the War on Terror had been brought to Africa, the report stated:<\/p>\n Post-9\/11, the U.S. counterterror approach to Africa has been led by the U.S. military: CENTCOM in the Horn; EUCOM in West, Central, and southern Africa; and the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). More quietly, U.S. intelligence cooperation with key states has expanded in parallel with the enlargement of the U.S. military\u2019s role.[41]<\/p>\n As the Guardian reported in June of 2005, \u201ca new \u2018scramble for Africa\u2019 is taking place among the world’s big powers, who are tapping into the continent for its oil and diamonds.\u201d A key facet of this is that \u201ccorporations from the US, France, Britain and China are competing to profit from the rulers of often chaotic and corrupt regimes.\u201d[42] In May of 2006, the Washington Post reported that in Somalia, the US has been \u201csecretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu.\u201d[43]<\/p>\n In December of 2006, Ethiopia, heavily backed and supported by the US, invaded and occupied Somalia, ousting the Islamist government. The US support for the operations was based upon the claims of Somalia being a breeding ground for terrorists and Al-Qaeda. However, this was has now turned into an insurgency. Wired Magazine reported in December of 2008 that, \u201cfor several years the U.S. military has fought a covert war in Somalia, using gunships, drones and Special Forces to break up suspected terror networks \u2013 and enlisting Ethiopia\u2019s aid in propping up a pro-U.S. \u2018transitional\u2019 government.\u201d[44] Again, another case of America being on the \u201cwrong side of a world revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ethiopian troops occupied Somalia for a couple years, and in January of 2009, the last Ethiopian troops left the capital city of Mogadishu. In 2007, the UN authorized an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia. In March of 2007, Ugandan military officials landed in Somalia. Essentially, what this has done is that the more overt Ethiopian occupation of Somalia has been replaced with a UN-mandated African Union occupation of the country, in which Ugandan troops make up the majority. Since Uganda is a proxy military state for the US in the region, the more overt US supported Ethiopian troops have been replaced by a more covert US-supported Ugandan contingent.<\/p>\n Africom<\/strong><\/p>\n In 2007, Newsweek reported that, \u201cAmerica is quietly expanding its fight against terror on the African front. Two years ago the United States set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with nine countries in central and western Africa. There is no permanent presence, but the hope is to generate support and suppress radicalism by both sharing U.S. weapons and tactics with friendly regimes and winning friends through a vast humanitarian program assembled by USAID, including well building and vocational training.\u201d The Pentagon announced the formation of a new military strategic command called \u201cAfricom\u201d (Africa Command), which \u201cwill integrate existing diplomatic, economic and humanitarian programs into a single strategic vision for Africa, bring more attention to long-ignored American intelligence-gathering and energy concerns on the continent, and elevate African interests to the same level of importance as those of Asia and the Middle East.\u201d[45]<\/p>\n The article gave brief mention to critics, saying that, \u201cnot surprisingly, the establishment of a major American base in Africa is inspiring new criticism from European and African critics of U.S. imperial overreach.\u201d Some claim it represents a \u201cmilitarization of U.S. Africa policy,\u201d which is not a stretch of the imagination, as the article pointed out, \u201cthe United States has identified the Sahel, a region stretching west from Eritrea across the broadest part of Africa, as the next critical zone in the War on Terror and started working with repressive governments in Chad and Algeria, among others, to further American interests there.\u201d[46] The article continued:<\/p>\n The problem is that, increasingly, African leaders appear not to want Africom. They see it as the next phase of the War on Terror\u2014a way to pursue jihadists inside Africa’s weak or failed states, which many U.S. officials have described as breeding grounds for terror. They worry that the flow of arms will overwhelm the flow of aid, and that U.S. counterterrorism will further destabilize a region already prone to civil wars.[47]<\/p>\n Ever since the 2007 US-supported air strikes and invasion of Somalia, piracy has been a significant issue in the waters off of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. In 2009, several major nations, including America, Britain and China, sent navy ships into Somali waters to combat the pirates who were negatively impacting trade through the region. As Johann Hari explained in the Independent:<\/p>\n In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since \u2013 and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.<\/p>\n Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died…<\/p>\n At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation \u2013 and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving… This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia \u2013 and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence”.[48]<\/p>\n In 2009, an American Navy commander suggested that the Somali pirates were in receivership of not only a great amount of sympathy from Yemeni people (while the government would help combat the piracy), but that \u201cprivate citizens in Yemen are selling weapons, fuel and supplies to Somali pirates. And maritime experts worry that pirates are increasingly able to find refuge along Yemen’s vast coast.\u201d Some Yemeni officials \u201csuggest the extensive international attention to piracy is just a pretext for big powers like the U.S. to gain control of the Gulf of Aden, a waterway through which millions of barrels of oil pass every day.\u201d One member of the Yemeni Parliament suggested that, \u201cWestern powers are allowing piracy to continue as a way to serve their own interests.\u201d[49]<\/p>\n Al-Qaeda in Yemen<\/strong><\/p>\n The current war in Yemen and US support for it is predicated on the basis of aiding Yemen in the fight against al-Qaeda. Said Ali al-Shihri was arrested by the Americans in 2001 in Afghanistan, and was promptly taken to Guantanamo Bay. The Americans released him into Saudi custody in 2007, and he \u201cpassed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.\u201d In other words, the US handed him over to Saudi Arabia, who enrolled him in a program for \u2018former jihadists\u2019, and then he became the second in command in Al-Qaeda in Yemen. As one American intelligence official stated, \u201che returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear.\u201d One Saudi security official had reported (on condition of anonymity) that, \u201cMr. Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia [in 2008] after finishing the rehabilitation program.\u201d[50]<\/p>\n In June of 2009, US officials were reporting that Al-Qaeda fighters were leaving Pakistan to go fight in Somalia and Yemen. The CIA, the Pentagon and the White House reported that Al-Qaeda groups in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia were \u201ccommunicating more frequently, and apparently trying to coordinate their actions.\u201d The CIA Director, Leon Panetta, said that, \u201cthe United States must prevent Al Qaeda from creating a new sanctuary in Yemen or Somalia.\u201d Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Brookings Institution, a major US policy think tank, \u201cI am very worried about growing safe havens in both Somalia and Yemen, specifically because we have seen Al Qaeda leadership, some leaders, start to flow to Yemen.\u201d[51] So the American national security establishment had refocused its efforts on Yemen. War seemed inevitable.<\/p>\n In the 1980s, millions of Yemeni men had worked in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sending remittances back home to Yemen. In 1991, in the lead-up to the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia viewed these migrant workers as a potential security threat, so they expelled 800,000 Yemeni workers back to Yemen, and henceforth, Yemeni labour was banned in Saudi Arabia. Saudi financed Wahhabi madrasas sprung up across Yemen, providing a place for the disenchanted and unemployed Yemeni Sunni population to find an outlet for their political and economic dislocation. President Saleh of Yemen had often used Yemeni Wahhabis \u201cto fight his domestic opponents \u2013 first the communists, then the Zaidis, and then the H[o]uthis.\u201d[52]<\/p>\n In August of 2009, as the Saudi assault on the Houthi rebels in the North was underway, a Houthi leader and brother to the slain former leader, Yahya al-Houthi, spoke to a Middle Eastern news agency. He was a former Yemeni Member of Parliament, who had fled to Libya, and subsequently sought political asylum in Germany. He told Press TV:<\/p>\n Saudi Arabia wants the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh to remain in power because he is meeting all the Saudi demands especially those related to terrorism. Yemen is now a main party in carrying out terrorist plots sponsored by Saudi Arabia, therefore it is important for Saudi Arabia to keep Ali Abdullah Saleh in power as the overthrow of his regime would lead to many big secrets being revealed. The regime in Saudi Arabia also supports the Wahhabi ideology and is trying to spread this ideology amongst our people in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is also suffering from internal problems which it wants to export to Yemen. Many members of al-Qaeda , Yemenis and non Yemenis, are now in Yemen. In recent months [Yemeni President] Ali Abdullah Saleh has taken many recruits of Al-Qaeda who were afraid of falling into the hands of their regimes in countries like Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. His plan was to use these fighters from al-Qaeda to battle the Houthis in Saada. A training camp was also erected for these terrorists which still exists today in the area of Waila. These members of al-Qaeda and also Baathist elements are now taking part in the fighting alongside the Yemeni army against the Houthis. The areas of Malahit and Hasana which the Houthis have taken control over were used to transfer weapons from Saudi Arabia to the terrorists. These areas are also where most of the terrorists’ plans are made.[53]<\/p>\n In other words, according to al-Houthi, Yemen (along with Saudi Arabia) are directly supporting the al-Qaeda contingent in Yemen in an effort to sow chaos (thus providing a pretext for the military assault), as well as aiding in the fight against the Houthis. In October, as the fighting raged on, it was reported that the Yemeni governor in the northern province had \u201csigned a deal\u201d with al-Qaeda, in which the government \u201cwould provide the militants with arms, budget and other military requirements to assist the Yemeni army against the Shia fighters.\u201d[54] Saudi Arabia remains, as it did throughout the entire history of the movement (since the 1980s), as the principle financier of al-Qaeda.[55]<\/p>\n In fact, in 2009, it was revealed that members of the Saudi royal family directly provide \u201cextensive financial support for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.\u201d The documents were revealed in a court case in which families of victims of the September 11th attacks were seeking to bring legal action against the Saudis for their financial support. The documents were leaked to their lawyers, and the US Justice Department stepped in (on behalf of the Saudis), and \u201chad the lawyers\u2019 copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.\u201d[56] Clearly, al-Qaeda is not an organization autonomous of Saudi financing.<\/p>\n The Southern Secessionist Movement<\/strong><\/p>\n Apart from simply the Houthis, the Saleh dictatorship seeks to suppress a Southern Yemeni secessionist movement seeking autonomy and liberation against the illegitimate central government. Since 2007, \u201csouthern Yemenis have been staging mass protests calling for reinstatement of southerners dismissed from the civil service and army, higher pensions, a fairer share of the country’s dwindling national wealth, and an end to corruption.\u201d The protests were met with \u201csevere repression by the security services, which seemed to only spur on the demand for secession by the south, where most of the country’s oil is located.\u201d[57] One Yemeni analyst stated that, \u201cIf there is one thing that will break the country, it\u2019s going to be the southern secession.\u201d One southern secessionist activist stated that Saleh\u2019s government was using the pretext of al-Qaeda and it\u2019s war on terror \u201cfor the liquidation of the southern movement,\u201d and that, \u201cthe southern movement is trying to continue the peaceful struggle. But the powers in Yemen have used excessive violence against peaceful protests.\u201d The government, for its part, has attempted to propagate the baseless claim that the southern secessionists have links with al-Qaeda.[58]<\/p>\n Interestingly, al-Qaeda\u2019s leader in Yemen, in a recorded statement, \u201cdeclared support for the Southern Movement, but Southern leaders have thus far rejected his endorsement.\u201d[59] In an interview with France24, former South Yemen President, Ali Salem al-Beidh, explained that, \u201cWe have nothing to do with al Qaeda, we have never been in contact with this organization. Our movement rejects terrorism, which in contrast thrives in the north of the country. President Ali Abdallah Saleh uses al Qaeda to scare westerners and the United States.\u201d[60] Saleh\u2019s government has committed several human rights abuses against the movement in the South, unlawfully and unjustly killing innocents during protests, with the military surrounding peaceful protests and opening fire.[61]<\/p>\n The \u201crapidly spreading\u201d protest movement in the South, explained the New York Times, \u201cnow threatens to turn into a violent insurgency if its demands are not met.\u201d While the leaders of the movement favour peaceful protest, the government\u2019s violent repression has made it so that \u201ctheir ability to control younger and more violent supporters is fraying.\u201d One southern leader stated, \u201cWe demand an independent southern republic, and we have the right to defend ourselves if they continue to kill us and imprison us.\u201d Again refuting claims that the movement is tried to al-Qaeda, the leaders \u201csay that they stand for law, tolerance and democracy, and that it is the north that has a history of using jihadists as proxy warriors.\u201d A major problem arises within the Southern movement in that it remains deeply divided, with no clear singular leadership, drawing from an array of people, from socialists to Islamists, \u201cwith wildly different goals and unresolved disputes.\u201d[62]<\/p>\n The Underwear Bomber<\/strong><\/p>\n On December 25, 2009, a 23-year old Nigerian-born man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, when he tried to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear. This incident, still shrouded in mystery, provided the excuse for American involvement in the conflict in Yemen, as it was reported that Farouk had been trained by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the newly-formed Saudi and Yemeni al-Qaeda group.<\/p>\n However, how Farouk managed to get on the plane, let alone past security with explosives on his person, is still an important question. After all, America knew about Farouk for up to two years prior to the incident, and even had him \u201con a list that includes people with known or suspected contact or ties to a terrorist or terrorist organization.\u201d[63] Britain\u2019s MI5 knew three years prior to the incident that Umar had connections with Islamic extremists in Britain.[64] Umar\u2019s father, a former Nigerian government minister and successful banker, had even warned the US Embassy in Nigeria of his son\u2019s extremist beliefs.[65] Umar even had a US entry visa, and when the State Department stepped in to have his visa revoked, \u201cintelligence officials asked [the State Department] not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.\u201d[66]<\/p>\n Suddenly, there was a flurry of reports from \u201crespected\u201d newspapers (such as the Washington Post and New York Times propaganda rags), that this \u201cfailure\u201d of following through with the intelligence that was available on Umar meant that a review of security was needed, both in terms of possibly expanding the \u201cwatch lists\u201d and in terms of expanding airport security, and proposing the use of body-scanners. Several politicians and news-rags were also calling for expanded military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.[67]<\/p>\n Interestingly, there were several reports of eyewitnesses on board the plane who contradict the official account of Umar\u2019s attempted terrorist act. An attorney on board the plane said that, \u201che saw another man come to the assistance of accused bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when he tried to board the airplane in Amsterdam without a passport.\u201d The attorney and his wife had both seen this incident. The wife, also a lawyer, stated, \u201cMy husband noticed two men walk up to the ticket counter lady. The only reason he noticed them is that he thought they were really a mismatched pair.\u201d She said that Umar \u201cwore older, scraggly clothing, but the man who was assisting him, who appeared to be of Indian descent, was dressed in what looked like an expensive suit and shoes.\u201d She recounted that the well-dressed man had told the ticket agent, \u201cWe need to get this man on the plane,\u201d and that, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have a passport.\u201d The ticket agent responded that no one was allowed to board the plane without a passport, to which the Indian man replied, \u201cWe do this all the time; he\u2019s from Sudan.\u201d[68] Yet no further information has come forward about this mysterious \u2018second man\u2019 who helped Umar board the plane. Nevertheless, the propaganda of this attempted terrorist \u2018attack\u2019 had taken effect, as people were again afraid of the menace of \u201cIslamic terror\u201d and \u201cal-Qaeda,\u201d and the U.S. got the pretext to justify its intervention in Yemen.<\/p>\n American Imperialism in Yemen<\/strong><\/p>\n While the \u2018Underwear Bomber\u2019 was used as a propaganda vehicle for supporting direct US military intervention in Yemen, covert US military involvement in Yemen had already been underway for some time (as well as British). In 2002, a mere six months following 9\/11, President Bush authorized the deployment of 100 US troop to Yemen \u201cto help train that nation’s military to fight terrorists.\u201d The troops \u201cwould consist predominantly of Special Forces, but could also include intelligence experts and other specialists. The main target would be Al Qaeda fighters who are hiding in Yemen.\u201d[69] In September of 2002, it was reported that the United States was deploying Special Forces and CIA agents into the Horn of Africa in an effort to combat al-Qaeda in Yemen, and \u201c800 US special forces have been moved to Djibouti, which faces Yemen.\u201d[70] In November of 2002, a CIA Predator drone (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle \u2013 UAV) launched an attack on an al-Qaeda target within Yemen, killing six suspected al-Qaeda members, one of whom was an American citizen.[71]<\/p>\n Prior to the \u2018Underwear Bomber\u2019 (as he has come to be known), the conflict in Yemen was primarily viewed as a civil war, and then with the participation of Saudi Arabia, as a regional Arab conflict. In September of 2009, it was reported that while the Yemeni government attempted to subdue a rebel Shi\u2019a army in the north (Houthi), a refugee crisis was emerging, and a wider conflict was erupting, which could \u201csuck the US into another sensitive conflict zone.\u201d Many observed that if the US manages to stay out of the war, \u201cthe conflict might be subsumed in a regional war by proxy,\u201d as in, through Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, further, was accusing Iran of supporting the Shi\u2019a rebels in northern Yemen, with both money and arms, but Saudi Arabia \u201chas produced no hard evidence.\u201d From the time the Saudi assault on northern Yemen began in August of 2009, between 25,000 and 100,000 Yemeni refugees were displaced. One top official with the World Food Program (WFP) stated that, \u201cWe’re not confronted with a humanitarian crisis, it’s becoming a humanitarian tragedy.\u201d[72]<\/p>\n A member of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said, \u201cthat the United States might be forced to intervene as the security situation worsened to prevent Yemen becoming a \u2018failed state\u2019.\u201d Further, \u201cthe country has been used as an al-Qaeda base before, and its strategic location between the oil supply routes of the Gulf and the piracy haven of Somalia means its stability is regarded as a key western interest.\u201d Thus, said the ICG analyst, \u201cYou might well see American advisers, maybe even some special troops, go in for special operations.\u201d President Obama declared in September of 2009 that, \u201cthe security of Yemen is vital for the security of the United States.\u201d[73]<\/p>\n In November of 2009, it was reported that a \u201cdelegation of military officers from Yemen arrived in the United States recently\u201d for training, of which the purpose \u201cwas to familiarize the Yemeni military officers with formal training programs currently in use by the United States Marine Corps. Support to Yemeni military officer training is likely to increase the effectiveness of [Yemen\u2019s] military force.\u201d[74] On December 13, 2009, (less than two weeks prior to the \u201cUnderwear Bomber\u201d incident), it was reported that, \u201cUS special forces have been sent to Yemen to train its army amid fears the unstable Arab state is becoming a strategically important base for al-Qaeda.\u201d[75]<\/p>\n It would appear, then, that the \u201cUnderwear Bomber\u201d incident arrived just in time for the United States to have an excuse to expand its war in the region. Without the propagandized attempted terrorist attack, the American public would not readily accept America\u2019s entry into yet another war. Questions might be asked about the nature of the war, such as the US supporting the government of Yemen in its suppression and oppression of its own people and the autonomous movements developing within Yemen seeking change. Whereas with a terrorist attack (or attempted, rather), and the convenient link to al-Qaeda, which suddenly was reported to be heavily represented in Yemen, Americans see their involvement in Yemen as a war against al-Qaeda, and a necessary one at that.<\/p>\n Two days after the \u201cUnderwear Bomber\u201d incident took place, the New York Times reported that, \u201cin the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.\u201d In 2008, \u201cthe Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country,\u201d and simultaneously, \u201csome of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics.\u201d Further:<\/p>\n The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.[76]<\/p>\n It was even reported that the US had been providing both intelligence and \u201cfire power\u201d to Yemen in its air strikes against \u201csuspected al-Qaeda targets\u201d throughout December, prior to the \u201cUnderwear Bomber.\u201d[77] The New York Times did its part to propagandize the al-Qaeda issue by stating that, \u201cal Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has rapidly evolved into an expanding and ambitious regional terrorist network thanks in part to a weakened, impoverished and distracted Yemeni government.\u201d[78] Naturally, the British were not far behind in supporting an imperialist campaign to crush indigenous movements for autonomy, directed against western-supported dictators. After all, the British have been doing this for centuries. Roughly one week following the attempted Detroit plane bomber story broke, it was reported that the UK sent counter-terrorist forces to Yemen, where they will train the Yemeni military \u201cand will assist in planning operations against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.\u201d The British media referred to Yemen as \u201cthe ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden,\u201d and had revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that:<\/p>\n Even before the attack, Britain quietly sent a military unit, believed to be about 30-strong and include members of the SAS, to train and mentor Yemeni forces in surveillance and strike operations, intelligence gathering, hostage rescue and interrogation techniques. It is understood that the detachment is being assisted by members of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.[79]<\/p>\n There further seems to be an effort to not only use al-Qaeda to advance US interests in the region, but also to draw a link to Iran, so as to further demonize Iran and even draw it into a regional war.<\/p>\n Pushing for a Proxy War With Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n Government officials in Yemen had been declaring that the greatest threat to Yemen\u2019s security comes not from al-Qaeda, but Iran, as they blame Iran \u201cfor fermenting the Shia rebellion,\u201d and the chairman of Yemen\u2019s national security agency stated that, \u201cthere are indeed signs, proof of Iranian interference.\u201d While these allegations are made without any proof, \u201cWestern diplomats claim it is probable that Iran is providing money or materiel to the group, as it has to Hizbollah in Lebanon.\u201d[80]<\/p>\n In November of 2009, when Saudi Arabia had stepped up its military campaign in Yemen, the New York Times reported that, \u201cthe border skirmish could lead to the realization of Saudi Arabia\u2019s worst fear: a proxy conflict with its archrival, Iran, on its doorstep.\u201d Quoting a Yemeni professor as saying that the Iran link to the Houthis was \u201ca myth,\u201d the Saudi assault against the Shi\u2019a group could provoke Iran to \u201cturn myth into reality\u201d:<\/p>\n A battle between the Arab world\u2019s leading Sunni power and Shiite Iran, even at one remove, could significantly elevate sectarian tensions across the region. Iran gained tremendous leverage over the Israeli-Palestinian problem by supporting the militant groups Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Hamas, in Gaza. Helping the Houthis, another guerrilla group with great staying power, could give them a way to put pressure on Saudi Arabia.[81]<\/p>\n However, even as the New York Times acknowledged, the idea that the Houthis are more religiously aligned to Iran than the Arab Gulf nations is a misnomer, as the Houthi religion of Zaydism \u201cis doctrinally closer to Sunnism than to mainstream Shiism.\u201d[82] However, facts take a back seat to war propaganda.<\/p>\n On December 18, 2009, roughly one week before the \u201cUnderwear Bomber,\u201d Time Magazine ran an article in which they reported on the claims of Yemen and Saudi Arabia that the Houthis \u201care receiving their funding, weapons and training from Iran in a bid to destabilize the region.\u201d While acknowledging that there is no evidence of Iranian involvement, the Time article was entitled, \u201cYemen’s Hidden War: Is Iran Causing Trouble?\u201d and the last sentence in the article wrote, \u201cAs for Iran \u2014 the only party that doesn’t seem to have any real involvement just yet \u2014 the time may soon be ripe to jump in.\u201d[83] The Washington Post carried an article entitled, \u201cYemen denounces Iran’s ‘interference’,\u201d yet only in the final paragraph of the article did they report, \u201cYemen has accused Iran of funneling arms and providing financial backing to the rebels, but the Yemeni government has not provided evidence to support the assertions. The rebels have insisted that they receive no support from Iran or any other foreign powers.\u201d[84]<\/p>\n Saudi and Yemeni media and government propaganda presented a view that Iran was extensively involved in the internal conflict in Yemen. Yemen had seized an Iranian ship which it claimed was transporting weapons to Houthi rebels, while Saudi papers reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps was training the Houthi rebels. Another Saudi media outlet \u201creported that a dozen Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon were killed during battles in October,\u201d and Saudi Arabia placed blame for the conflict on Iran, saying that \u201cthe insurgents are working for Tehran and [are] wanting to take their front to the Saudi border.\u201d[85]<\/p>\n While there has been no actual evidence of Iranian involvement put forward, the situation could become a self-fulfilling prophecy of the Saudis and Yemenis, in the sense that the more they accuse Iran of involvement, the more they demonize and publicly lambaste Iran, the more likely it is that Iran will be drawn into the conflict. If they are already the target of a campaign aimed at blaming their alleged involvement for creating the crisis, what do they have to lose from entering the conflict? Thus, Yemen could \u201cpossibly become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.\u201d Regardless of whether or not the Iranians are or will be physically involved in the conflict, it has resulted in a war of rhetoric between both Saudi Arabia and Iran, further inflaming tensions between the two nations.[86]<\/p>\n In January of 2010, General David Petraeus, commander of US Forces in the Middle East, said that, \u201cthe domestic conflict in Yemen could become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.\u201d He explained that, \u201cit is not a proxy war now, but has the potential to become one, and there may already have been some movement in that direction.\u201d[87]<\/p>\n There was even a pathetic attempt on the part of the Washington Times to link Iran to al-Qaeda.[88] Obviously, the Washington Times seemed to be blithely unaware of the fact that Iran is a Shi\u2019a dominated state, which is religiously and ideologically opposed to al-Qaeda, which practices a strict Wahhabist Sunni brand of Islam, as propagated and practiced by Saudi Arabia, a major regional antagonist of Iran\u2019s. To claim that there would be a link between Iran and al-Qaeda is simply to proclaim one\u2019s own ignorance. No wonder then, that Senator John McCain, while on the campaign trail for President in 2008, so often \u2018proclaimed his ignorance\u2019 by several times making the claim that Iran was supporting al-Qaeda.[89]<\/p>\n Could the United States be seeking to foment a wider war in the region? Could the civil war in Yemen be expanded into a proxy-war against Iran? Well, the United States (with the participation of several other NATO partners) fueled the proxy war in the last civil war, where the target was Nasserist Egypt. Could the US simply be employing the same strategy today as they were then, with simply a change of target? To understand this answer, we must look to the direct role played by the United States in the Yemeni civil war.<\/p>\n America Wages War on Yemen<\/strong><\/p>\n Over a week prior to the \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d fiasco, on December 16, 2009, the United States reportedly \u201cperpetrated an appalling massacre against citizens in the north of Yemen as it launched air raids on various populated areas, markets, refugee camps and villages along with Saudi warplane,\u201d according to the Houthi fighters. Over 120 people were reported to have been killed in the US bombing.[90] The Houthi rebels have even reported that U.S. fighter jets \u201chave launched 28 attacks on the northwestern province of Sa’ada.\u201d[91]<\/p>\n On December 21, 2009, days before the \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d pretext, ABC news reported that the US had begun launching cruise missile attacks in Yemen under the authorization of President Obama, and the French media reported on one such strike having massacred \u201c49 civilians, among them 23 children and 17 women.\u201d While the air strikes were reportedly undertaken to target al-Qaeda in Yemen, they took place in the south near where some of the leaders of the secessionist movement were reportedly living. These raids had been increasingly taking place, and as the New York Times reported, \u201cthe United States provided firepower, intelligence and other support to the government of Yemen as it carried out raids.\u201d[92]<\/p>\n Over 2009, the Pentagon supplied the Yemeni military with $70 million, effectively subsidizing their military (as they do with a plethora of nations worldwide, most notably Colombia, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia), in order for Yemen\u2019s military to be more able to crush the secessionist uprising in the South, the rebels in the North, and that pesky al-Qaeda which rears its head in any nation America seeks to conduct military operations in. As Newsweek reported in late December of 2009:<\/p>\n Over the past year U.S. and Yemeni interests have increasingly begun to align as Al Qaeda’s presence in the country has grown. “We started seeing a lot of foreign fighters coming in\u2014Saudis, Pakistanis,” says one Yemeni diplomatic source. Many of those have arrived (or returned) from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. As they have, the networks of militants have begun to launch quiet, pinpoint strikes on local Yemeni intelligence chiefs\u2014six or seven in the past several months alone. The government’s retaliatory raids were launched partly in response to those strikes… Government raids are almost certainly the products of close cooperation with the U.S.\u2014perhaps carried out by CIA-operated Predator drones launched from nearby Djibouti. A. A. Al-Eryani, a former Yemeni prime minister who advises the current president, says that there is “complete intelligence cooperation” with the U.S. on counterterrorism.[93]<\/p>\n In other words, as the US brought in key Pakistani and Saudi assets (who themselves make up both the financial and operational arms of al-Qaeda), al-Qaeda militants began to emerge and launch strikes against Yemen. Suddenly, then, a pretext for US military involvement in the nation is delivered in the guise of fighting the \u201cWar on Terror.\u201d Just as during the Cold War, the threat of \u2018Communism\u2019 was used to rally support for suppressing and waging war against national liberation movements all across the world, so now these movements are suppressed and waged war against under the guise of \u201cfighting terror.\u201d An odd \u2018irony\u2019 of history, then, that in order to \u201cfight terror,\u201d the West simply spreads it.<\/p>\n On December 29th, 2009, the Australian reported that, \u201cthe Americans have quietly opened a third, largely covert front against the al-Qa’ida terror network in Yemen, to combat a new generation of militants keen on transforming the country into a launching pad for jihad against the US, its Arab allies and Israel.\u201d Besides the blatant propagandizing in the opening sentence, the first part reveals the fact of a new \u2018secret war\u2019 that America is waging. The article explained that a year previous, \u201cCIA sent many of its top field operatives with counter-terrorism experience to the country, while some of the most secretive US special operations commandos began training Yemeni security forces in counter-terrorism tactics.\u201d[94]<\/p>\n As US Senator Joe Lieberman proclaimed, \u201cIraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act pre-emptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.\u201d Barbara Bodine, the former US Ambassador to Yemen, said that, \u201cI think it would be a major mistake to turn this into a third front, if Iraq and Afghanistan are somehow front number one and number two.\u201d She explained, \u201cIf we try to deal with this as an American security problem and dealt with by American military, we risk exacerbating the problem.\u201d She astutely observed the nature of occupational forces when she warned, \u201cIf we go in and make this our war … it is suddenly going to become a war against us and we will lose it.\u201d[95]<\/p>\n The United States took it upon itself to \u201cpress\u201d the Yemeni government \u2013 a hard-line oppressive dictatorship \u2013 to \u201ctoughen its approach.\u201d[96] In February of 2010, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates approved \u201cmore than doubling U.S. funding to train and equip Yemeni security forces to combat al Qaeda\u201d at a figure of $150 million, up from $67 million the previous year. However, \u201cthe sum does not include covert U.S. assistance for Yemen, which has quietly increased in recent months.\u201d U.S. CIA Director Leon Panetta, however, raised doubts as to whether Washington can count on Yemen in the long-term to fight al-Qaeda.[97] Covertly, the United States had increased \u2018assistance\u2019 to Yemen through U.S. Special Forces, the CIA and the National Security Agency, \u201csharing satellite and surveillance imagery, intercepted communications and other sensitive information to help Yemen pinpoint strikes against al Qaeda targets,\u201d[98] or at least what are said to be al-Qaeda targets, but usually end up as civilian casualties.<\/p>\n In April of 2010, it was announced that the Pentagon had implemented plans to \u201cboost U.S. military assistance to Yemen\u2019s special operations forces to lead an offensive targeting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,\u201d AQAP, providing roughly $34 million in \u201ctactical assistance\u201d to Yemen\u2019s special forces. A further $38 million will provide Yemen with military transport aircraft.[99]<\/p>\n As the United States has dramatically increased CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, killing thousands of innocent civilians,[100] in May of 2010, the United States announced that it had deployed drones to Yemen to target al-Qaeda.[101] In June of 2010, it was leaked that the U.S. \u201csecret war\u201d has expanded globally, as \u201cSpecial Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60\u201d at the beginning of 2009. As the Washington Post reported:<\/p>\n In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia… Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group… Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”<\/p>\n Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush’s administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.<\/p>\n “We have a lot more access,” a second military official said. “They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly.”<\/p>\n … Bush-era clashes between the Defense and State departments over Special Operations deployments have all but ceased. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as an independent force, approving in some countries Special Operations intelligence-gathering missions that were so secret that the U.S. ambassador was not told they were underway. But the close relationship between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is said to have smoothed out the process… In every place, Special Operations forces activities are coordinated with the U.S. ambassador and are under the operational control of the four-star regional commander.[102]<\/p>\n The British are also involved in supporting the conflict in Yemen. In July of 2010, the head of Yemen\u2019s Special Forces met with a British military delegation, in which \u201caspects of bilateral military cooperation between Yemen and the UK were discussed in addition to training, and ways to benefit from British military expertise to bolster the military and security capabilities of Yemen\u2019s armed forces.\u201d[103]<\/p>\n In May of 2010, an air strike took place, which was reported to have killed al-Qaeda militants, in \u201ca secret mission by the U.S. military.\u201d However, \u201cthe strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk al-Qaida members into giving up their fight.\u201d[104] As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, \u201cthat would be the equivalent of some foreign military force killing the lieutenant governor of an American state in an air strike.\u201d Further, the \u201cU.S. attacks have had no apparent impact on al-Qaida or on anyone else in Yemen, apart from its civilian population who have taken casualties in badly targeted attacks.\u201d Commenting on the fact that US Special Forces operations in Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Kenya, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan and Yemen, the reporter asks some important questions:<\/p>\n Why is Mr. Saleh our ally? Why are we killing innocent civilians in the back country of Yemen? Why are we stirring up the kind of trouble that can end up trashing Yemen the way we have trashed Iraq and Afghanistan? Does anyone believe for one minute that we are any safer for all that we are doing in those 12 countries — probably more — than we would be if we had normal, mutually respectful, mutually helpful relations with them?[105]<\/p>\n The questions are surprising to see being asked in the American media, as the rest of the corporate controlled media outlets simply report (without questioning) the government line, and explain that the U.S. has decided to expand the drone attacks in Yemen, which \u201cwould likely be modeled after the CIA’s covert drone campaign in Pakistan,\u201d and that the Obama \u201cadministration will mount a more intense targeted killing program in Yemen,\u201d without questioning who they are killing. As Glenn Greenwald of Salon Magazine pointed out:<\/p>\n There is anti-Americanism and radicalism in Yemen; therefore, to solve that problem, we’re going to bomb them more with flying killer robots, because nothing helps reduce anti-American sentiments like slaughtering civilians and dropping cluster bombs from the sky… And it’s therefore unsurprising that the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate [Obama] is rapidly becoming as disliked in the Muslim world as the prior U.S. President:\u00a0 what looks to five Norwegians sitting in Oslo to be a Man of Peace looks much different in the region where his bombs are falling, his hit squads deploying, his war commitments expanding, and his sky robots multiplying.[106]<\/p>\n In September of 2010, it was reported that the Pentagon was considering expanding Yemen\u2019s military \u2018assistance\u2019 to $1.2 billion over the next five years, but don\u2019t worry, \u201cthe US is also providing significant development and humanitarian assistance\u201d to Yemen.[107]<\/p>\n The \u2018Cleansing\u2019 of a Liberation Movement<\/strong><\/p>\n In September 2010, while the Obama administration\u2019s top counter-terrorism official, John Brennan, was in Yemen for talks with President Saleh, Yemeni security forces \u201claid siege\u201d to a town in the South, Hawta, \u201cwhere several dozen Qaeda militants were said to be holed up,\u201d which led to thousands of civilians being forced to flee, while the military, as the New York Times reported, \u201cwas intermittently shelling the town with tanks and artillery and firing on the jihadists from attack helicopters.\u201d As the article explained:<\/p>\n Hawta, in southern Yemen\u2019s mountainous Shabwa Province, is at the heart of the remote area east and south of the capital where Al Qaeda\u2019s regional arm has sought sanctuary. It is also just to the north of a major new liquid natural gas pipeline \u2014 a crucial resource in a country that is rapidly running out of oil and water \u2014 and Yemeni officials have voiced concern about the possibility that jihadists could rupture the line.[108]<\/p>\n In other words, the Yemeni government, under intense pressure and support from the United States, is laying siege to a town in the South \u2013 in the midst of a massive and growing secessionist movement \u2013 which represents the greatest threat to the stability of the staunch U.S.-ally, and which also happens to be home to natural gas reserves. But we are told that the siege is a fight against \u2018al-Qaeda\u2019. Meanwhile, civilians were being killed, and one fleeing family said that, \u201cthe troops did not spare any one from their fire over the past two days.\u201d[109] The reality of what is going on in the village is \u201chard to know,\u201d as NPR points out, \u201cbecause the government is banning any independent observers from going in there.\u201d As a reporter with NPR explained:<\/p>\n In fact, what the locals are saying is that this is a blood feud against the government. And that, in fact, these are local or armed tribesmen [i.e., Islamist forces such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula \u2013 AQAP] that are sort of fighting with the government. And that this is more about fighting or subduing the secessionist movement than it is about al-Qaida… The government says about 2,000 people have fled. But actually, the Yemen Red Crescent and other aid groups that have had some contact with the people on the ground there put the numbers much higher. They say about 12,000. And that would be about three-quarters of the town emptying out and running away.<\/p>\n And this has created a real problem, because this is a very poor area. And so the other villages in the area cannot really accommodate or absorb these refugees. And so, you have a lot of people, now, living outdoors without any water, food or tents or any sort of medical, ’cause one can assume that there are probably injuries, if not deaths. So it’s become a real humanitarian crisis.[110]<\/p>\n Yemen\u2019s government is not new to media censorship and obfuscation, as there have been \u201cdozens of extralegal abductions, politicised trials, illegal confiscations, writing bans, and censorship over the years. What’s particularly alarming is a recent legislative push to erect an elaborate legal facade to obscure repressive tactics.\u201d The government is also attempting to pass \u201ca repressive bill designed to regulate television, radio and online media. If passed, these changes would significantly reduce an already narrow margin for free expression.\u201d The government has even arrested, tortured and tried critical journalists as \u201csupporting al-Qaeda\u201d with absolutely no evidence.[111]<\/p>\n The \u201cFriends\u201d of Yemen: \u2018Democratic Imperialism\u2019 and NGOs as Modern Missionaries<\/strong><\/p>\n In January of 2010, a group of nations and organizations met in London to form the \u201cFriends of Yemen,\u201d which includes the United States, U.K., 20 other countries, as well as the UN, EU, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Arab League, World Bank and IMF. The purpose of the group was to coordinate foreign aid to Yemen, so that it coincides with military, economic and civil assistance aid programs, including forcing Yemen to cooperate with the conditions set by the IMF in order to receive foreign aid. The overall aid would be used to combat what the \u2018Friends\u2019 refer to as \u201cappalling indicators,\u201d which include \u201ca growing population, dwindling oil reserves, water shortages and political instability as the government battles Houthi insurgents in the north and secessionists in the south.\u201d[112]<\/p>\n In September of 2010, the Friends of Yemen met in New York to organize a plan for Yemen\u2019s foreign aid. As part of the package, Yemen has been forced to accept an IMF plan to increase taxes by 10% and to eliminate fuel subsidies.[113] At the meeting in New York, the UN reported that there are \u201c168,000 Somali refugees in Yemen, as well as 304,000 Yemeni civilians who continue to be displaced by the seven-month conflict between government forces and Houthis rebels which ended with a shaky truce in February.\u201d[114] The \u2018Friends\u2019 further encouraged \u201cprogress in the negotiations towards Yemen\u2019s accession to the World Trade Organisation, which they hoped would be concluded by the end of 2010,\u201d and while acknowledging that the proposed economic reforms would have an \u201cadverse impact on the poor,\u201d the Friends thus \u201ccommitted to provide additional support for social protection,\u201d as well as supporting the formation of national multi-party elections.[115]<\/p>\n At the \u2018Friends\u2019 meeting, the United States vowed to commit $67 million for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), \u201cto work in partnership with communities to directly address local needs.\u00a0 This includes health, education, and water projects; mobile health and veterinary clinics; and support for increasing the capacity of local governments to deliver essential services.\u201d Further plans include funneling millions of dollars through NGOs aimed at providing social services and \u2018poverty alleviation\u2019 programs.[116]<\/p>\n While sounding very pleasant and helpful, we must place the concept of promoting \u2018democratization\u2019 and the spread of NGOs in their proper geopolitical context. The fact that NGOs, \u2018democratization\u2019, economic programs under the direction of the IMF, and military assistance from the West are taking place at the same time is very significant, and not as contradictory as it might seem.<\/p>\n In Africa, the IMF and World Bank\u2019s \u201cStructural Adjustment Programs\u201d that deconstructed society to service illegitimate debts to Western banks had the effect of spreading poverty and effectively induced \u201csocial genocide.\u201d The national leaders became very rich, creating a tiny elite which was subservient to Western imperial interests. Western nations would arm the nation and use it as a proxy force in the region when necessary or help it in the oppression of its own people, in order to ensure the stability of their interests. The people of these various nations would protest, demonstrate, riot and rebel, so much so that between 1976 and 1992, there were 146 protests against IMF \u2018austerity measures\u2019 in 39 countries around the world.[117] Governments, in response, would generally resort to violence to suppress these demonstrations, with \u201cstrikes declared illegal, universities were closed, and trade unions, student organizations, popular organizations and political parties also became the target of repressive legislation or actions.\u201d[118] This essentially created a \u201ccrisis of legitimacy,\u201d where the economic \u2018reforms\u2019 were seen as destructive, where the political process was seen as corrupt, where the state oppressed and foreigners profited, while the people suffered. It didn\u2019t help the situation that it was often authoritarian governments introducing these economic reforms.[119]<\/p>\n In 1989, the World Bank concluded that the reason for the failure of \u2018structural adjustment\u2019 across Africa was not due to the destructive poverty-inducing nature of the reforms, but was do to the corrupt governments implementing them. Thus, it was a \u201ccrisis of governance.\u201d[120] The solution, in this sense, was to promote \u2018democratization\u2019, as in, a neoliberal concept of democracy. Africa had been experiencing a growth of democratic movements around the continent during the time of Structural Adjustment, which led the IFIs (International Financial Institutions) and Western nations to conclude that democratization and economic liberalization go hand-in-hand. In short, Structural Adjustment is \u2018inherently\u2019 democratic. The failure of this analysis was quite obvious: the pro-democracy movements that had arisen across Africa \u201creflect, to a significant extent, a popular reaction against the socially painful effects of structural adjustment.\u201d[121]<\/p>\n The \u2018democratization\u2019 movement is largely an effort to maintain \u2018stability\u2019 in the hegemony of the IMF\/World Bank and Western interests over Africa and other regions, as instead of rotating from one coup to another, there is a parliamentary democracy where you go from one party to another (who all accept the dominance of the West and the \u2018advice\u2019 of the IFIs), which produces a more \u2018stable\u2019 environment for Western interests, as it also has the effect of pacifying popular opposition under the guise of promoting democratic accountability. However, these are not true democracies (nor are those in the West), where you simply vote between competing factions of elites who are collectively co-opted by the same international financial elites. They impose the institutions of democracy (legislatures, political parties, judiciaries) \u201cwithout combining political democracy and social reform.\u201d Thus, these democracies are essentially stillborn (dead before they even exited), as \u201cformal democracy without social reform increases economic inequality and thereby intensifies unequal distribution of power in society.\u201d[122] As Noam Chomsky has argued, \u201cthe guardians of world order have sought to establish democracy in one sense of the term, while blocking it in a different sense.\u201d He argued that \u201cpower holders use democracy as justification for their power and as an ideological instrument for keeping the public quiescent and out of decision-making processes.\u201d[123]<\/p>\n Alison Ayers analyzes \u2018democratization\u2019 as a multi-faceted approach in Africa, entailing: multiparty elections, constitutionalism, the rule of law, a \u201cparticular conception of human rights,\u201d \u2018good governance\u2019, and an \u201cindependent civil society.\u201d[124] Multiparty elections comprise an occasional election in which people choose between competing factions of elites, while constitutionalism implies establishing a \u201cset of rules securing property rights, governing civil and commercial behaviour, and limiting the power of the state.\u201d[125] In promoting \u2018multiparty systems\u2019, \u201cthe dominant agents of the democratization project have established a veritable \u2018elections industry\u2019 comprising voter and civic education campaigns, party-building activities, and electoral assistance and monitoring.\u201d[126] The \u201cengineering of civil society\u201d has taken on an explicitly neo-liberal form, in which it focuses on the \u201cliberation of civil society\u201d from the state, and of which NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have come to play a decisive role. Western aid agencies heavily finance international and local NGOs (thus often negating the notion that they are non-governmental), with the World Bank exponentially increasing its support of NGOs (often through governments).[127]<\/p>\n In fact, NGOs have come to play a pivotal role in the modern imperial project, as they have been co-opted into a program of \u201cwelfare provision, a social initiative that could be more accurately described as a programme of social control.\u201d[128] The NGOs were used to respond to the social upheaval brought about by the age of \u2018Structural Adjustment\u2019, to provide a degree of social services that were formerly provided by the state. Thus, as the spread of Structural Adjustment increased throughout Africa, so too did the spread of Western NGOs. Western nations heavily support these supposed non-governmental organizations, with the U.S. transferring nearly 40 percent of its aid through NGOs.[129] They have become an essential aspect of the \u2018development\u2019 agenda in Africa, itself based upon a colonial mindset. Whereas in the formal colonial period at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Africans were considered \u201cuncivilized,\u201d and so colonialism in Africa was not about oppression and economic exploitation, but was rather a \u2018civilizing mission.\u2019 Today, Africa is not \u2018uncivilized\u2019 but rather, \u2018undeveloped\u2019, and so, just as the missionaries of the formal colonial period played a role in \u2018civilizing\u2019 Africa \u2013 in the vision of the West (akin to how God created man in \u2018his own image\u2019) \u2013 the NGOs of the new imperial era have come to Africa in a \u2018developing mission\u2019. The \u2018development\u2019 paradigm had the effect of sterilizing popular opposition, as it framed the problem in Africa not as one of \u2018emancipation\u2019 (from colonial and oppressive powers), but as a problem of \u2018poverty\u2019 and \u2018basic needs\u2019.[130] The role of NGOs in \u2018development\u2019:<\/p>\n Represents a continuity of the work of their precursors, the missionaries and voluntary organizations that cooperate in Europe\u2019s colonization and control of Africa. Today their work contributes marginally to the relief of poverty, but significantly to undermining the struggle of African people to emancipate themselves from economic, social and political oppression.[131]<\/p>\n There are further concerns to take into account in regards to \u2018democratization\u2019 and \u2018aid\u2019 through NGOs, not simply in the establishment of a system of lobotomizing resistance \u2013 preventing emancipation \u2013 and promoting the legitimization of the status quo powers (by treating the symptoms of poverty and oppression rather than the causes), but NGOs and \u2018democratization\u2019 often play a very covert role in imperialism, particularly through USAID (United States Agency for International Development) as well as a host of so-called Non-Governmental Organizations (which happen to be funded by the government), such as the National Endowment for Democracy. These organizations are effectively able to organize opposition to a national ruler, create a parallel media system, provide activist training and funding to covertly orchestrate a \u201csoft power\u201d coup, in which it is seen as a \u201cdemocratic revolution\u201d or a \u201cpeaceful revolution,\u201d often following contested elections. This is done to create the illusion that these are popular people\u2019s movements elevating leaders of \u201cchange\u201d, but which simply are leaders that are subservient to Western imperial interests. Often, the CIA itself operates through such agencies covertly.<\/p>\n In South Vietnam for example, USAID provided cover for the CIA so extensively, \u201cthat the two became almost synonymous.\u201d[132] In the 1980s, during the largest CIA covert operation in history, funding the Afghan Mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union, the CIA and USAID worked very closely, coordinating their efforts, as \u201cthe United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.\u201d The textbooks, made in America at the University of Nebraska with tens of millions of dollars of financing from USAID, taught children \u201cto count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines,\u201d and while USAID dropped funding for the program in 1994, the books continued in circulation, even after the Taliban came to power in 1996, and \u201cprivate humanitarian groups paid for continued re-printings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops.\u201d[133] The entire program was coordinated with the CIA.[134]<\/p>\n The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is another particularly covert imperial force, a NGO that gets all it\u2019s funding from the US government, and about which U.S. Congressman Ron Paul explained eloquently:<\/p>\n The misnamed National Endowment for Democracy is nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad. What the NED does in foreign countries … would be rightly illegal in the United States. The NED injects \u2018soft money’ into the domestic elections of foreign countries in favor of one party or the other.<\/p>\n Imagine what a couple of hundred thousand dollars will do to assist a politician or political party in a relatively poor country abroad. It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections \u2018promoting democracy.’ How would Americans feel if the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China? Would this be viewed as a democratic development?[135]<\/p>\n The NED and a host of other NGOs (backed by government funding), as well as private foundations, have implemented a \u201csoft power\u201d approach to implementing \u201cdemocratic regime change\u201d in countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, often aimed at replacing former Western puppet leaders with new puppet leaders to better promote imperial interests in the nations where they take place. This has occurred in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and many other countries.[136] An effort was undertaken to impose a similar \u201cdemocratic regime change\u201d with the CIA funneling $400 million for implementing this \u201csoft power\u201d strategy in Iran, resulting in the Iranian elections protests in the summer of 2009. While the strategy failed in its aims of \u201cregime change\u201d it mounted an incredibly successful international propaganda campaign, so much so that the world was lashing out against Iran for what the West claimed were fraudulent elections (but turned out to be free and fair elections), and at the same time, the Western media failed to cover a successful military coup in Honduras, in which the democratically elected President was kidnapped and sent to a foreign country, while the subsequent dictatorship brutally repressed people\u2019s protests and demonstrations, with the new regime all the while being supported by the United States.[137]<\/p>\n From this we can see that the \u201cFriends of Yemen\u201d promoting democratization and \u201cgood governance\u201d in Yemen serves Western imperial ambitions. In the very least, it is designed to stifle and ultimately lobotomize organic, indigenous liberation, self-determination, and autonomy movements, while the same Western nations militarily arm and support the oppressive government in its repression of these people. It seems that for the time being, America has chosen to support the current Yemeni dictatorship, propping it up to crush its own people and their struggles for liberation. Simultaneously, America and the West are preparing themselves for a long-term strategy of \u201cdemocratization,\u201d in which they may have to replace Saleh and the current regime with a new client regime to secure American interests and hegemony in the region.<\/p>\n In this context we may view the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), a program of the U.S. State Department aimed at supporting \u201creforms\u201d in the Middle East and North Africa, in which they support international and local NGOs, educational institutions, local governments and private businesses to implement projects designed to directly engage and invest in the people of the region. MEPI has completed roughly 28 programs in Yemen alone, with roughly seven grants ongoing, aimed at organizing journalists, \u2018human rights\u2019 activists, improving the Parliamentary process, improving political participation, promoting women\u2019s \u2018empowerment\u2019, and \u201craising democratic awareness.\u201d[138]<\/p>\n The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is also active in Yemen, funding and running programs aimed at promoting \u201ccivic and human rights awareness,\u201d facilitating \u201cthe free flow of independent news information to Yemenis on issues related to social, political, and economic growth of the country and to build the capacity of journalists to effectively monitor and report on human rights issues,\u201d as well as identifying \u201cthe political needs and concerns of women, and to push political parties to adopt women\u2019s issues in their party platforms.\u201d One program of the NED includes nearly $200,000 of funding for the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). According to their website, CIPE \u201cstrengthens democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. CIPE is one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy,\u201d and is also an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.[139] The $184,000 grant to CIPE from the NED is to \u201cfacilitate access to information and analysis about economic reform,\u201d which will include producing \u201cthirty 20-30 minute radio programs on economic reform in Yemen and sponsor economic reform pages in two independent newspapers,\u201d in order to \u201cempower Yemenis to participate in the democratic and economic reform process.\u201d[140] However, considering the group promotes \u201cprivate enterprise\u201d and is affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the \u201cinformation and analysis\u201d about economic reform is more likely to be misinformation and propaganda. In total, the NED is operating roughly 13 programs in Yemen at the moment.[141]<\/p>\n USAID\u2019s programs in Yemen aim at taking the \u201cmissionary position\u201d in addressing some of the symptoms of conflict, deprivation, disenfranchisement, and oppression, without allowing the people to seek emancipation and liberation. These programs includes a \u201cnew three-year Responsive Governance Project [which] aims to strengthen government institutions, support reforms including decentralization, and improve the delivery of public services while encouraging more citizen participation in the political process,\u201d as well as \u201cthe Community Livelihoods Project that is focusing on improving agriculture and increasing employment opportunities in highly vulnerable communities, especially for youth.\u201d Other programs aim at promoting education, health care, and \u2018peace and security.\u2019[142]<\/p>\n So, while the U.S. government uses the IMF to wreck the economy of Yemen, spreading poverty and dismantling health care, social services and education; the U.S. simultaneously funds and arms the Yemeni dictatorship to repress the people rising up against their economic, social and political conditions; yet, again simultaneously, the United States \u2013 through USAID and various other \u201cdemocratization\u201d programs \u2013 aims to alleviate some of the social repercussions to maintain stability of their interests. Imperialism has an economic facet (the IMF), a political facet (military-intelligence support), and a social facet (NGOs and \u2018democratization\u2019).<\/p>\n Thus we also see the significance in that while the CIA expands its operations in Yemen (in support of the dictatorship), the current CIA Director holds doubts about \u201cwhether Washington can count on Yemen in the long-term to fight al Qaeda, citing internal unrest that threatens to destabilize the government and break up the country, along with growing anti-American sentiment.\u201d[143] This is made all the more interesting to take into account that the CIA Director announced that the CIA will be expanding its use of under-cover assets through a variety of unofficial organizations \u2013 such as corporations or other organizations.[144]<\/p>\n War, Empire, and \u201cPerception Management\u201d: Propaganda Creates \u2018Cultural Schizophrenia\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n So who exactly is the US supporting in Yemen? Ali Abdullah Saleh has been in power since 1978, first ruling North Yemen, and subsequently ruling all of Yemen. Saleh has managed to remain the ruler of a \u2018united\u2019 Yemen by \u201cclamping down on the press, concentrating military and economic power in the hands of friends and family and winning elections by suspiciously high margins.\u201d Time Magazine reported that Saleh described ruling Yemen as \u201cdancing on the heads of snakes.\u201d Saleh, however, can hardly act as if he rules a \u2018united\u2019 Yemen, when \u201ctwo-thirds of the country is in the hands of either separatist groups or local tribes.\u201d Further:<\/p>\n Yemen’s most volatile regions are among those hardest hit by drought and government neglect \u2014 are at the heart of most of those conflicts, especially the war between the government and Shi’ite rebels, known as Houthis, that is being waged in the northern province of Sa’ada.[145]<\/p>\n The significance of this piece of information, located in the Time article, which was otherwise propagandistic of the \u201cfight against al-Qaeda,\u201d is that it acknowledges that the key to Yemen\u2019s issues today is the legitimacy of the central government\u2019s rule over the people of Yemen. The essential issue is that this is about people\u2019s rights to govern themselves, to not be oppressed, not be murdered, nor economically devoured by international capital and national industrial interests. Our nations and our media call these people \u201cterrorists\u201d; our intelligence agencies sponsor \u2018terrorists\u2019 in these nations, who kill these people, and then we use that as an excuse to send in the military to kill more of these people. We support an illegitimate government, an oppressive and brutal dictator who vowed to crack down with an \u201ciron fist\u201d in August of 2009. His subsequent \u201ciron fist\u201d created \u201ca humanitarian tragedy,\u201d where by September over 25,000 people had become refugees,[146] by October 2009, over 55,000 people fled their homes due to the conflict.[147] These are the people the West is helping the Yemeni dictator kill. And not only him, but Saudi Arabia is helping, as are Pakistan and Jordan, three other nations subservient to American interests, and whose militaries are \u2018American made\u2019. Saudi Arabia especially, as it seeks to prevent the spread of the Shi\u2019a resistance, which to the illegitimate state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, combined with several other resistant and oppressed groups, could create the political, economic and social conditions for revolution. No wonder then, that the United States is planning to undertake the largest arms deal in American history with Saudi Arabia, valued at $60 billion, which \u201cis aimed at establishing air superiority over rival Iran while also addressing weaknesses bared in border fighting with Yemeni rebels.\u201d[148]<\/p>\n A state seeks only its own survival and growth in power; that is the nature of all states. This is why nation-states are naturally inclined to forgo competition for power with the economic sphere, and simply merge interests and elite social structures. It is in their interest for both survival and growth in power.<\/p>\n Our oppressive and illegitimate nation-states seek to aid in the oppression of other peoples in other places, and increasingly so at home. However, it is through the media that this massive collective wave of ignorance and \u2018cultural schizophrenia\u2019 takes place. This is why most in the west see the world, blissfully unaware of its realities. The media leads the people through that old wardrobe into the land of Narnia: the media\u2019s \u2018perception management\u2019 of the world is nothing but a \u2018fantasy\u2019. A good example of this \u2018fantasy world\u2019 is located in a Time Magazine article. It wrote:<\/p>\n On Dec. 17 and 24, joint Yemeni-U.S. strikes against purported AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] training camps took place and killed more than 60 militants, U.S. intelligence officials claimed.[149]<\/p>\n The attack, in reality, killed 52 people, more than half of them being women and children, in which a US missile armed with cluster ammunition was used, with both the Yemeni and American governments claiming the target was an al-Qaeda training camp. The cruise missile was designed to be fired from a warship or submarine, and was filled with \u201ccluster munitions which spray steel fragments for 150 meters along with burning zirconium for igniting buildings.\u201d However, \u201cthe Yemeni government does not possess cruise missiles, which are part of the arsenal of US Navy vessels patrolling off the Horn of Africa and in the Arabian Sea.\u201d[150] The missiles were \u201claunched on direct presidential orders.\u201d[151]<\/p>\n Our governments kill these people and call them \u201cmilitants\u201d and \u201cterrorists,\u201d our media repeat the accusation with no dissent. War is like no other situation that can lead to the growth of the state. War is the ultimate organizing principle in society, for with war powers, a nation can build, destroy, grow, oppress, control, expand, consume, corrupt and continue. As this power grows, so too does the power of all the other various major spheres of influence over humanity, such as the media and the academics. We can add to that the scientific and technological elite, who help to create the conditions, understanding, technology, and means of expanding power and controlling the masses so that today we have unmanned aerial vehicles called \u201cPredator Drones\u201d flying over Yemen killing innocent civilians, while the drones are operated from American military bases in Florida. America has been doing the exact same thing in Pakistan at a much more significant rate and for a much longer period of time (and most rapidly accelerated under the Obama administration of \u2018change\u2019).<\/p>\n This \u2018invisible empire\u2019 is managed through \u2018perception management\u2019 \u2013 propaganda \u2013 which infects all spheres of social power structures, but which is arguably most prominent and powerful in the media. This creates among western citizens, and most particularly among Americans, a type of \u2018cultural schizophrenia\u2019 in which the \u2018mind of the nation\u2019 (how the majority of people view their nation and their world) is so contrary to the reality of that nation and the world around it, that it creates a nation or a people \u2018of two minds\u2019, holding both the fantasy world of those who encompass it, and the hard-bitten reality of global power structures and systems.<\/p>\n This \u2018cultural schizophrenia\u2019 is most emblematic in the United States, where the majority of those within it view it as a force for good in the world, spreading freedom, democracy and \u2018free markets\u2019 around the world; while the reality is so different, that the majority of the rest of the world view the United States as a force for spreading fear, war, economic exploitation and power. This is the view, especially, of those to whom the United States has attempted to spread \u201cfreedom and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n This has slightly changed in the context of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d, which has allowed for flowery rhetoric about democratic rights and liberty to subside beside the urgency of \u201cfighting terror.\u201d Around the world, people were rejecting the \u201cliberal democratic\u201d project in replacing the dictatorships of the 70s \u2013 90s with [neo]liberal democratic governments, which were democratic only so much as they created political powers and held usually corrupt elections in which various power factions would compete for the authority to plunder the nation in cooperation with international corporations, financial institutions and western governments. Democracy in the \u2018Third World\u2019 had essentially proven itself a farce, and people\u2019s movements were increasing. The \u201cwar on terror\u201d has subsequently fiercely mobilized the American military (and its NATO cohorts), vastly increased its scope, operations, abilities and entanglements; and created the political conditions for the nation to rapidly accelerate the use of its military apparatus around the world, something which the American people would not support without what is perceived to be a good reason. After all, they will largely be the ones forced to fight and partake in these wars.<\/p>\n And so we come back to Yemen. As Martin Luther King said in 1967, \u201cWe are on the wrong side of a world revolution.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n [1]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rev. Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City: [2]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrew Gavin Marshall, The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA\u2019s Drug-Running Terrorists and the \u201cArc of Crisis\u201d, Global Research, 5 September 2010: [3]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, eds., Rethinking Arab Nationalism in the Arab Middle East. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), page 30<\/p>\n [4]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [5]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 31.<\/p>\n [6]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 William L Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Westview Press, 2004), page 231<\/p>\n [7]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, pages 231-232<\/p>\n [8]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), page 116<\/p>\n [9]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, Op Cit, page 31<\/p>\n [10]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 William L. Cleveland, op cit, pages 310-311<\/p>\n [11]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 311.<\/p>\n [12]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 312.<\/p>\n [13]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, op cit, page 31.<\/p>\n [14]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 William L. Cleveland, op cit, page 315<\/p>\n [15]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil\u2019s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. (New York: Owl Books, 2005), pages 140-141<\/p>\n [16]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 142.<\/p>\n [17]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, op cit, page 32.<\/p>\n [18]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 William L Cleveland, op cit, page 455.<\/p>\n [19]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, pages 455-456.<\/p>\n [20]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, op cit, page 40.<\/p>\n [21]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 39.<\/p>\n [22]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 32.<\/p>\n [23]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 38.<\/p>\n [24]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 39.<\/p>\n [25]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 32.<\/p>\n [26]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Profile: Yemen’s Houthi fighters, Al Jazeera, August 12, 2009: [27]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ploughshares, Armed Conflicts Report: Yemen, January 2009: [28]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Deadly blast strikes Yemen mosque, BBC, May 2, 2008: [29]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ploughshares, Armed Conflicts Report: Yemen, January 2009: [30]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mohammed Jamjoom, Yemen lays out truce terms to rebel fighters, CNN, August 13, 2009: [31]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yemen targets northern fighters, Al-Jazeera, August 12, 2009: [32]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yemen denies warplane shot down, Al-Jazeera, October 2, 2009: [33]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yemen rebels ‘seize Saudi area’, BBC, November 4, 2009: [34]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saudis still bombing us, Yemen rebels say, MSNBC, November 7, 2009: [35]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mohammed Al-Amrani, Moroccan, Jordanian Soldiers Fight along Saudi Troops, Yemen Gazette, December 5, 2009: [36]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ESA, Earth from Space: The Gulf of Aden \u2013 the gateway to Persian oil. European Space Agency: April 13, 2006: [37]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anthony Lake and Christine Todd Whitman, More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa. The Council on Foreign Relations, 2005: page 32<\/p>\n [38]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [39]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 33.<\/p>\n [40]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 48.<\/p>\n [41]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 81.<\/p>\n [42]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 David Leigh and David Pallister, Revealed: the new scramble for Africa. The Guardian: June 1, 2005: [43]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Emily Wax and Karen DeYoung, U.S. Secretly Backing Warlords in Somalia. The Washington Post: May 17, 2006: [44]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 David Axe, U.S. Losing \u2018Secret\u2019 War in Somalia. Wired, December 30, 2008: [45]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Scott Johnson, The Next Battlefront. Newsweek: September 17, 2007: [46]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [47]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [48]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Johann Hari, You are being lied to about pirates. The Independent, January 5, 2009: [49]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kelly McEvers, In Anti-Piracy Fight, Yemen May Be Part Of Problem. NPR, May 8, 2009: [50]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ROBERT F. WORTH, Freed by the U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief. The New York Times: January 22, 2009: [51]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER, Some in Qaeda Leave Pakistan for Somalia and Yemen. The New York Times, June 11, 2009: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/12\/world\/12terror.html<\/a><\/p>\n [52]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mai Yamani, Yemen, haven for jihadis. The Guardian, May 25, 2009: [53]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saudi, al-Qaeda support Yemen crackdown on Shias, Press TV, August 29, 2009: [54]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yemeni gov,deal with al-Qaeda to crush Shia fighters, Shebastan News Agency, October 28, 2009: [55]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Josh Meyer, Saudis faulted for funding terror. The Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2008: [56]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ERIC LICHTBLAU, Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists. The New York Times: June 23, 2009: [57]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Daniel Schwartz, Al-Qaeda is almost the least of Yemen’s problems, CBC News, 29 January 2010: [58]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrew England, Gunmen attack Yemen security office, The Financial Times, 14 July 2010: [59]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stephen Day, The Political Challenge of Yemen’s Southern Movement, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2010: http:\/\/www.carnegieendowment.org\/publications\/index.cfm?fa=view&id=40411<\/a><\/p>\n [60]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘The Southern Movement has nothing to do with al Qaeda’, France24, 3 August 2010: [61]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Human Rights Watch alert over Yemen ‘climate of fear’, BBC News, 15 December 2009: [62]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert F. Worth, In Yemen\u2019s South, Protests Could Cause More Instability, The New York Times, 27 February 2010: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/28\/world\/middleeast\/28yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n [63]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Eileen Sullivan, US officials knew name of terror suspect who tried to blow up airliner in Detroit. AP, December 26, 2009: [64]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 David Leppard and Dan McDougall, MI5 knew of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab\u2019s UK extremist links. The Times, 3 January 2010: http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/uk\/article6973954.ece<\/a><\/p>\n [65]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Father of Terror Suspect Reportedly Warned U.S. About Son. Fox News, December 26, 2009: [66]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Current TV, Terror suspect kept visa to avoid tipping off larger investigation. The Detroit News, February 3, 2010: [67]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Karen DeYoung and Michael Leahy, Uninvestigated terrorism warning about Detroit suspect called not unusual. The Washington Post, December 28, 2009: http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/12\/27\/AR2009122700279.html<\/a>; ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, Questions on Why Suspect Wasn\u2019t Stopped. The New York Times, December 27, 2009: [68]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paul Egan, Atty. Says He Saw Man Try to Help Nigerian on Flight Without a Passport. The Detroit News, December 29, 2009: [69]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MICHAEL R. GORDON and JAMES DAO, U.S. Broadens Terror Fight, Readying Troops for Yemen. The New York Times, March 2, 2002: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/03\/02\/world\/nation-challenged-military-us-broadens-terror-fight-readying-troops-for-yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n [70]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Duncan Campbell and Brian Whitaker, US elite force gets ready for Yemen raid. The Guardian, 19 September 2002: http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2002\/sep\/19\/duncancampbell.brianwhitaker<\/a><\/p>\n [71]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dana Priest, U.S. Citizen Among Those Killed In Yemen Predator Missile Strike. The Washington Post, November 8, 2002: [72]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Richard Spencer, US risks being sucked into Yemen civil war. The Telegraph, 10 September 2009: [73]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Richard Spencer, US risks being sucked into Yemen civil war. The Telegraph, 10 September 2009: [74]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gunnery Sgt. Christian Harding, Yemen military observes Marine training. United States Central Command, 3 November 2009: [75]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Damien McElroy, US special forces train Yemen army as Arab state becomes al-Qaeda ‘reserve base’. The Telegraph, 13 December 2009: http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/6803120\/US-special-forces-train-Yemen-army-as-Arab-state-becomes-al-Qaeda-reserve-base.html<\/a><\/p>\n [76]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH, U.S. Widens Terror War to Yemen, a Qaeda Bastion. The New York Times, 27 December 2009: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/28\/world\/middleeast\/28yemen.html?_r=1<\/a><\/p>\n [77]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [78]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Steven Erlanger, Yemen\u2019s Chaos Aids the Evolution of a Qaeda Cell. The New York Times, 2 January 2010: [79]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sean Rayment, et. al., Detroit terror attack: Britain sends counter-terrorist forces to Yemen. The Telegraph, 3 January 2010: http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/6924502\/Detroit-terror-attack-Britain-sends-counter-terrorist-forces-to-Yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n [80]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Damien McElroy, US special forces train Yemen army as Arab state becomes al-Qaeda ‘reserve base’. The Telegraph, 13 December 2009: http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/6803120\/US-special-forces-train-Yemen-army-as-Arab-state-becomes-al-Qaeda-reserve-base.html<\/a><\/p>\n [81]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert F. Worth, Saudis\u2019 Efforts to Swat Rebels From Yemen Risk Inflaming Larger Conflict. The New York Times, 12 November 2009: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/13\/world\/middleeast\/13saudi.html<\/a><\/p>\n [82]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [83]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Abigail Hauslohner, Yemen’s Hidden War: Is Iran Causing Trouble? Time Magazine, 18 December 2009: [84]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sudarsan Raghavan, Yemen denounces Iran’s ‘interference’. The Washington Post, 12 November 2009: [85]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Olivier Guitta, Iran and Saudi Arabia drawn to Yemen. Asia Times Online, 11 November 2009: [86]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meris Lutz, YEMEN: Raging insurgency exacerbates tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Los Angeles Times Blog, 13 November 2009: http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/babylonbeyond\/2009\/11\/yemen-internal-fighting-threatens-to-descend-into-regional-conflict.html<\/a><\/p>\n [87]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Al Pessin, US General Says Yemen Could Become Iran-Saudi Proxy War. VoA, 22 January 2010: [88]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 EDITORIAL: Iran’s al Qaeda connection in Yemen, The Washington Times, 6 January 2010: [89]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sam Stein, McCain Repeats Iran-Al Qaeda Gaffe Yet Again. Huffington Post, 19 March 2008: [90]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert Taylor, US bombs Yemen, kills 120, just another day in the life of an empire. The Examiner, 16 December 2009: [91]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘US fighter jets attack Yemeni fighters’, Press TV, 14 December 2009: [92]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paul Woodward, US-backed raid killed 49 Yemeni civilians, officials said. The National, 21 December 2009: [93]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kevin Peraino, Friends for Now. Newsweek, 29 December 2009: [94]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Agencies, US fighting covert war against terror in Yemen. The Australian, 29 December 2009: [95]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Michelle Shephard, Yemen: Terror threat? U.S. ally? Nearly failed state? Toronto Star, 2 January 2010: [96]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, U.S. increases efforts to boost security in Yemen amid increasing terror threat, The Washington post, 20 January 2010: http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/01\/19\/AR2010011904604.html<\/a><\/p>\n [97]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Adam Entous, Gates backs big boost in U.S. military aid to Yemen, 22 February 2010: [98]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Adam Entous, U.S. gives Yemen key intelligence to strike al Qaeda, Reuters, 27 January 2010: [99]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Adam Entous, Pentagon to boost Yemen’s special operations forces, Reuters, 20 April 2010: [100]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Salman Siddiqui, Drone attacks hit all-time high, The Express Tribune, 27 September 2010: [101]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Con Coughlin and Philip Sherwell, American drones deployed to target Yemeni terrorist, The Telegraph, 2 May 2010: http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/7663661\/American-drones-deployed-to-target-Yemeni-terrorist.html<\/a><\/p>\n [102]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, U.S. ‘secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role, The Washington Post, 4 June 2010: http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/06\/03\/AR2010060304965.html<\/a><\/p>\n [103]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mohammed Al-Amrani, Special Forces Commander Meets UK Military Delegation, Yemen Gazette, 10 July 2010: [104]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI AND ROBERT F. WORTH, Veil lifts on covert action in Yemen, The New York Times, 14 August 2010: http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/nationworld\/2012625717_covertwar15.html<\/a><\/p>\n [105]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dan Simpson, The U.S. spreads the misery to Yemen, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 18 August 2010: [106]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Glenn Greenwald, An exciting new Muslim country to drone attack, Salon, 25 August 2010: [107]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AFP, US looks at bolstering funding for Yemeni military, The Jordan Times, 3 September 2010: [108]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert F. Worth, Yemen Military Attacks Town It Says Is Militant Hide-Out, The New York Times, 21 September 2010: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/09\/22\/world\/middleeast\/22yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n [109]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yemen civilians killed in ‘al-Qaeda hunt’, Press TV, 21 September 2010: [110]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and Steve Inskeep, Civilians Flee From Battle In Southern Yemen, NPR, 24 September 2010: [111]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mohamed Abdel Dayem, Yemen’s veneer of legality, The Guardian, 29 September 2010: [112]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mark Landler, As Nations Meet, Clinton Urges Yemen to Prove Itself Worthy of Aid, The New York Times, 27 January 2010: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/28\/world\/asia\/28diplo.html<\/a><\/p>\n [113]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Brian Whitaker, Can Yemen’s friends really help? The Guardian, 20 September 2010: [114]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Reinl, Friends of Yemen discuss extremist threat, The National, 26 September 2010: [115]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ministerial Meeting of Friends of Yemen, Joint statement from the Ministerial Meeting of the Friends of Yemen, British Commonwealth Office, 24 September 2010: http:\/\/www.fco.gov.uk\/en\/news\/latest-news\/?view=PressS&id=22916622<\/a><\/p>\n [116]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Aaron W. Jost, A Comprehensive Approach to Yemen, The White House Blog, 24 September 2010: [117]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Firoze Manji and Carl O\u2019Coill, \u201cThe Missionary Position: NGOs and Development in Africa,\u201d International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 3, (2002), p. 578<\/p>\n [118]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [119]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ernest Harsch, \u201cStructural Adjustment and Africa’s Democracy Movements,\u201d Africa Today, Vol. 40, No. 4, (1993), p. 14<\/p>\n [120]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 10.<\/p>\n [121]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 12.<\/p>\n [122]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Barry Gills and Joel Rocamora, \u201cLow Intensity Democracy,\u201d Third World Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3, (1992), p. 502<\/p>\n [123]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 503.<\/p>\n [124]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alison J. Ayers, \u201cDemystifying Democratisation: The Global Constitution of (Neo)liberal Polities in Africa,\u201d Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2, (2006), p. 323<\/p>\n [125]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 325.<\/p>\n [126]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 326.<\/p>\n [127]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 329-331.<\/p>\n [128]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Firoze Manji and Carl O\u2019Coill, op cit, page 579.<\/p>\n [129]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 580.<\/p>\n [130]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, pages 574-575.<\/p>\n [131]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid, page 568.<\/p>\n [132]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jeff Stein, CIA chief promises spies ‘new cover\u2019 for secret ops, Washington Post Blog \u2013 SpyTalk, 26 April 2010: [133]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad, The Washington Post, 23 March 2002: [134]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Carol Off, Back to school in Afghanistan, CBC, 6 May 2002: [135]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Harley Sorensen, NED’s feel-good name belies its corrupt intent, The San Francisco Chronicle, 17 November 2003: [136]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrew Gavin Marshall, Colour-Coded Revolutions and the Origins of World War III, Global Research, 3 November 2009: [137]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrew Gavin Marshall, A New World War for a New World Order, Global Research, 17 December 2009: [138]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MEPI, Ongoing MEPI Local Grants \u2013 Yemen, Middle East Partnership Initiative, Accessed October 2010: [139]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CIPE, Who We Are, Center for International Private Enterprise: [140]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 NED, Country Profile \u2013 Yemen, The National Endowment for Democracy, Accessed October 2010: [141]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n [142]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 USAID, Yemen, United States Agency for International Development: [143]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Adam Entous, Gates backs big boost in U.S. military aid to Yemen, Reuters, 22 February 2010: [144]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jeff Stein, CIA chief promises spies ‘new cover\u2019 for secret ops, Washington Post Blog \u2013 SpyTalk, 26 April 2010: [145]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrew Lee Butters, Yemen: The Most Fragile Ally. Time Magazine, 7 January 2010: [146]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Richard Spencer, US risks being sucked into Yemen civil war. The Telegraph, 10 September 2009: [147]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yemen denies warplane shot down, Al-Jazeera, October 2, 2009: [148]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paul Handley, Huge Saudi arms deal aimed at Iran, Yemen troubles: analysts, AFP, 12 September 2010: http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/afp\/article\/ALeqM5jxlLTtu2Ccx7EsT_qH_tPhukgKCA<\/a><\/p>\n [149]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrew Lee Butters, Yemen: The Most Fragile Ally. Time Magazine, 7 January 2010: [150]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kim Sengupta, US cruise missile parts found in Yemeni village where 52 died, The Independent, 7 June 2010: [151]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gilbert Mercier, Yemen: US Strikes Used Cluster Bombs And Killed 41 Civilians. NewsJunkiePost, 7 June 2010: ___________________________<\/p>\n Andrew Gavin Marshall<\/em> is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).\u00a0 He is co-editor, with Michel Chossudovsky, of the recent book, “<\/em>The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century,” <\/em><\/a>available to order at <\/em>Globalresearch.ca<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.hartford-hwp.com\/archives\/45a\/058.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/index.php?context=va&aid=20907<\/a>; Empire, Energy and Al-Qaeda: The Anglo-American Terror Network, Global Research, 8 September 2010:
\nhttp:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/index.php?context=va&aid=20944<\/a>; 9\/11 and America\u2019s Secret Terror Campaign, Global Research, 10 September 2010:
\nhttp:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/index.php?context=va&aid=20975<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/english.aljazeera.net\/news\/middleeast\/2009\/08\/200981294214604934.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.ploughshares.ca\/libraries\/ACRText\/ACR-Yemen.htm#Status<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/7379929.stm<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.ploughshares.ca\/libraries\/ACRText\/ACR-Yemen.htm#Status<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2009\/WORLD\/meast\/08\/13\/yemen.truce\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/english.aljazeera.net\/news\/middleeast\/2009\/08\/200981262048170260.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/english.aljazeera.net\/news\/middleeast\/2009\/10\/2009102103834822778.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/8341875.stm<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/33755909\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.yemengazette.com\/topnews\/politics\/524-moroccan-jordanian-soldiers-fight-along-saudi-troops.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.esa.int\/esaEO\/SEMWOXNFGLE_index_0.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uk\/2005\/jun\/01\/g8.development<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/05\/16\/AR2006051601625.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.wired.com\/dangerroom\/2008\/12\/us-losing-sec-1\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/id\/40797<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/opinion\/commentators\/johann-hari\/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=103904390<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/01\/23\/world\/middleeast\/23yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2009\/may\/25\/yemen-jihadi-guantanamo-saudi-arabia<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/edition.presstv.ir\/detail\/104778.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.shabestan.net\/en\/pages\/?cid=2720<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2008\/apr\/02\/nation\/na-terror2<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/24\/world\/middleeast\/24saudi.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/world\/story\/2010\/01\/28\/f-indepth-yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/e66c91a8-8f1b-11df-a4de-00144feab49a.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20100308-southern-movemen-al-qaeda-yemen-southern-mobility-movement-secession<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/8413271.stm<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.news889.com\/news\/world\/article\/11645–ap-source-us-officials-knew-name-of-terror-suspect-who-tried-to-blow-up-airliner-in-detroit<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/2009\/12\/26\/father-terror-suspect-reportedly-warned-son-1857952999\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/current.com\/news\/92056789_terror-suspect-kept-visa-to-avoid-tipping-off-larger-investigation-detnews-com-the-detroit-news.htm<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/28\/us\/28terror.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.ticklethewire.com\/2009\/12\/29\/atty-says-he-saw-man-try-to-help-nigerian-on-flight-without-a-passport\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/tech.mit.edu\/V122\/N54\/long4-54.54w.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/6162617\/US-risks-being-sucked-into-Yemen-civil-war.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/6162617\/US-risks-being-sucked-into-Yemen-civil-war.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.centcom.mil\/news\/yemen-military-observes-marine-training<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/03\/world\/middleeast\/03yemen.html?pagewanted=1<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/world\/article\/0,8599,1947623,00.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/11\/11\/AR2009111126674.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.atimes.com\/atimes\/Middle_East\/KK11Ak01.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.voanews.com\/english\/news\/US-General-Says-Yemen-Could-Become-Iran-Saudi-Proxy-War-82427857.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2010\/jan\/06\/irans-al-qaeda-connection-in-yemen\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2008\/03\/19\/mccain-repeats-iranal-qae_n_92349.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.examiner.com\/sunset-district-libertarian-in-san-francisco\/us-bombs-yemen-kills-120-just-another-day-the-life-of-an-empire<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/edition.presstv.ir\/detail\/113687.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.thenational.ae\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20091221\/GLOBALBRIEFING\/912219995\/1009\/FOREIGN?template=globalbriefing<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2009\/12\/28\/friends-for-now.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/news\/world\/us-fighting-covert-war-against-terror-in-yemen\/story-e6frg6so-1225814224061<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/insight\/article\/744948–yemen-terror-threat-u-s-ally-nearly-failed-state<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE61L4L120100222<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE60Q5KA20100127<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE63J32A20100420<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/tribune.com.pk\/story\/54883\/drone-attacks-hit-all-time-high\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.yemengazette.com\/lastweek\/morenewsx1\/677-special-forces-commander-meets-uk-military-delegation.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/pg\/10230\/1080682-374.stm<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/opinion\/glenn_greenwald\/2010\/08\/25\/yemen<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.jordantimes.com\/index.php?news=29747<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.presstv.ir\/detail\/143318.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=130093677<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2010\/sep\/29\/yemen-press-repression-veneer-legality<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2010\/sep\/20\/friends-of-yemen<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.thenational.ae\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20100926\/FOREIGN\/100929723\/1011<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/blog\/2010\/09\/24\/a-comprehensive-approach-yemen<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/spy-talk\/2010\/04\/cia_chief_promises_spies_new_a.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/ac2\/wp-dyn\/A5339-2002Mar22?language=printer<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/background\/afghanistan\/schools.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/gate\/archive\/2003\/11\/17\/hsorensen.DTL<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/index.php?context=va&aid=15767<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/index.php?context=va&aid=16535<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.abudhabi.mepi.state.gov\/abstracts\/yemen.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.cipe.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.ned.org\/where-we-work\/middle-east-and-northern-africa\/yemen<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.usaid.gov\/locations\/middle_east\/countries\/yemen\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE61L4L120100222<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/spy-talk\/2010\/04\/cia_chief_promises_spies_new_a.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/world\/article\/0,8599,1952142,00.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/yemen\/6162617\/US-risks-being-sucked-into-Yemen-civil-war.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/english.aljazeera.net\/news\/middleeast\/2009\/10\/2009102103834822778.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/world\/article\/0,8599,1952142,00.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/middle-east\/us-cruise-missile-parts-found-in-yemeni-village-where-52-died-1993253.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/newsjunkiepost.com\/2010\/06\/07\/yemen-us-strikes-used-cluster-bombs-and-killed-41-civilians\/<\/a><\/p>\n