[News] Billion-dollar Obama rocks Yemen

Tue Apr 5 18:17:50 EDT 2011

Billion-dollar Obama rocks Yemen
By Pepe Escobar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD06Ak01.html

Go, go, you coward; you are an American agent
- Protesters chanting in Sana'a, March 24

So far no R2P ("responsibility to protect"). No United Nations 
resolution. No no-fly zone. No "coalition of the willing". No 
Tomahawks. No Predator drones. No C-130 gun ships. No humanitarian 
imperialism.

Yet so far, protesters are being killed; a dictator refuses to step 
THE ROVING EYE
Billion-dollar Obama rocks Yemen
By Pepe Escobar

To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click 
<http://atimes.com/atimes/others/Pepe2011.html>here.

Go, go, you coward; you are an American agent
- Protesters chanting in Sana'a, March 24

So far no R2P ("responsibility to protect"). No United Nations 
resolution. No no-fly zone. No "coalition of the willing". No 
Tomahawks. No Predator drones. No C-130 gun ships. No humanitarian 
imperialism.

Yet so far, protesters are being killed; a dictator refuses to step 
down; al-Qaeda is thriving, and in the open; counter-insurgency 
rolls; there's a lot of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the 
ground; and civil war looms. Welcome to the curious case of 
not-fit-for-humanitarian-imperialism Yemen.

United States President Barack Obama's mantra on Libya is that 
"Muammar Gaddafi must go". Pentagon supremo Robert Gates, asked about 
the Yemeni Gaddafi, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, answered, with a 
straight face, that Washington had no opinion, because it does not 
interfere in internal affairs of other countries.

The evidence points otherwise. The first African-American president - 
a Nobel Peace Prize laureate - now also holds the dubious distinction 
of being the only American president to launch a war on an African 
nation. He has also launched his re-election campaign, which is bound 
to gobble up a cool US$1 billion.

Meanwhile, Saleh kept killing his own people, and injuring hundreds - 
like in the southwestern city of Taizz this Monday. Obama had to do 
something, so he has "quietly shifted positions", in the quaint words 
of the New York Times; the new mantra is "Saleh must go". Contorted 
rhetoric suggests Washington now wants Saleh to go because it has 
come to the conclusion that his days in power are gone, even though 
for over two months, killing spree included, he enjoyed full US backing.

Our cunning bastard
Yemen festers with George W Bush-era special forces-led 
counter-terrorism - widely expanded under Obama. Saleh is the local 
contractor. The target is bogeyman al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula 
(AQAP), which is hit by frequent bursts of "kinetic military action" 
(in White House speak). "Collateral damage" may have reached the low hundreds.

A March 2011 Glevum Stability Assessment found out that no less than 
96% of Yemenis believe "the West is at war with Islam"; only 4% 
approve of the US "war on terror" chapter in their lands; and a 
majority regards AQAP as involved in "self-defense". Yet as far as 
Washington is concerned, the only thing that matters in Yemen is 
counter-terrorism - not what the locals think.

There are at least 60 million lethal weapons in Yemen. Yet the Yemeni 
youth uprising has been a model of pacifism. Saleh, truthful to the 
standard Arab dictator script, branded them "drug dealers", money 
launderers and a "small minority".

North Yemen and South Yemen were united in 1994. Saleh delegates 
control over much of Yemen to tribal sheikhs whose loyalty is dodgy, 
to say the least. Saud Arabia runs riot, buying everyone in sight and 
bankrolling the influence of hardcore Wahhabism. AQAP is just a minor 
detail in a complex political landscape.

In the north, Zeydi Shi'ites are fighting for autonomy. Saleh's 
tactics are to massively bomb their villages, displace hundreds of 
thousands of civilians, and then attack them. No, no one will slap 
him with a no-fly zone for it. In the south a peaceful secessionist 
movement struggling for more equality has been savagely crushed. Some 
of its members went the guerrilla way.

Saleh has been very clever into instrumentalizing AQAP against his 
domestic enemies, while using the AQAP threat to extort weapons, 
intelligence and hundreds of million of dollars from the Americans. 
It worked, up to now. Obama ramped up "military assistance" for Yemen 
from $67 million in 2009 to $150 million in 2010.

WikiLeaks widely exposed dirty deals between Washington and Saleh - 
including General David Petraeus lying to Yemenis about who was 
killing Yemeni civilians during the "war on terror". But unlike 
demonized terrorist/rehab/thug Gaddafi, Saleh is one of "our 
bastards". He's cunning enough to smash Zeydis, southern Yemenis, 
journalists and peaceful student protesters instead of smashing his 
golden egg, AQAP.

Now that Obama hinted he must go, bets can be made on a scenario of 
the CIA using AQAP against Saleh. Target: to balkanize Yemen. This is 
where the legacy of Said al-Shihri comes in - a Saudi freed from 
Guantanamo sent to Yemen by the Bush administration, and killed on 
February 12; as well as the influence of American-born Anwar Awlaki, 
a classic CIA double agent.

The CIA is already instrumentalizing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb 
(AQIM) in Libya; with or without Gaddafi in power as part of a 
balkanized Libya, AQIM is already a destabilizing factor in the big 
picture. The modus operandi is the same: the CIA/Pentagon use the 
al-Qaeda specter to justify the endless war on terror, be it in 
northern Africa or in the Arabic Peninsula.

For its part, the House of Saud has been fighting tooth and nail for 
Saleh to stay; he is as much a House of Saud lackey as the 
al-Khalifas in Bahrain. But without support from the Obama 
administration, the best the House of Saud can hope for is the usual 
"stability" and "smooth transition of power" - as in yet one more 
Saudi Arabia-friendly General. Saudi Arabia wants a "smooth" military 
coup. They would not be exactly displeased with hard line commander 
Major General Ali Mohsin Saleh Ahmar as the new leader.

After waves of political, ministerial, ambassadorial and military 
defections either Saleh goes or there's civil war (true to script, he 
says there won't be civil war only if he stays). The new government 
in Sana'a has installed a state of emergency. Saleh may last a while 
longer - as he counts on the Republican Guard, Special Forces and 
internal security, led by his son and nephews.
As for the opposition party coalition, the Joint Meeting Parties 
(JMP), it now poses as a true representative of the masses protesting 
in the streets when they have always been court jesters. The fact is 
Yemeni power elites have co-opted the peaceful revolution. What will 
be precluded is a real road to democracy, what the people in the 
streets of Yemen have been fighting - and dying - for.

The protests in Yemen started on February 11 with less than 200 
Sana'a university students and young activists and only two women. 
Then the Zeydi in the north pledged their cooperation, and the 
secessionists in the south stopped their demonstrations and started 
calling for suqut al nidham ("the fall of the regime") - the rallying 
call across the Arab world.

As Yemeni political scientist Abdulghani al Iryani told Nir Rosen, 
"We've never had real street mobilizations ... Before Tunisia the 
opposition had a demonstration of 200. After Tunisia they came in the 
thousands. After Egypt it became an avalanche. There is a new 
appreciation of collective power. What the formal political 
establishment could not do, to bring the people together, the youth 
protest has succeeded in doing." Their key demands remain 
constitutional reform and a new electoral law.

And what about al-Qaeda?
The sprawling US "war on terror" industry - corporate media included 
- considers it as deadly as a Star Wars plot, unfolding in this 
ultimate Orientalist dream, the "dangerous deserts and mountains of Yemen".

Yet AQAP is a joke. Its record of "success" is a failed underwear 
bomb and a package bomb that, well, bombed. Saleh himself knows they 
are a joke - an absolutely marginal movement not only in Yemen but 
all across the Middle East. The real reason the US is in Yemen is 
because the country is supremely strategic - bordering the Red Sea, 
the Gulf of Aden and Saudi Arabia, the key crossroads between the 
Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

The vicious 2011 Arab counter-revolution keeps working its mysterious 
ways. Turkey and the BRIC countries are perplexed that the US is now 
arming the AQIM-infested "rebels" - and may be showering them with 
juicy bits of the $32 billion in frozen Libyan government assets, 
plus a share in upcoming oil sales.

Talk about a hot Club Med. Under the Bush administration, al-Qaeda 
was used as the perfect excuse for bombing and preemptive wars. Now, 
under Obama, al-Qaeda - as in AQIM and AQAP - is being used in the 
balkanization of selected nations, facilitating the breakdown along 
tribal, sectarian and criminal lines.

The ghost of Osama bin Laden continues to pull a Cheshire cat. The 
al-Qaeda franchise is booming like never before. It may even be back 
in the game in its original status - as a CIA guerrilla army. There's 
no war like an endless war.

Pepe Escobar is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim>Globalistan: 
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 
2007) and 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>Red 
Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, 
just out, is 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1>Obama 
does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com.

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