Advice to US & Britain: How Not to Approach Yemen

Amidst the escalation of the "War on Terror" at home and abroad not only in the aftermath of the failed attempt at an explosion on a US-bound airliner but also in President Obama's escalation in Afghanistan (see his 2 December speech, which mentions Yemen), the small country on the Arabian Peninsula has become the next projected theatre for American and British intervention. Rami Khouri, one of the sharpest observers and analysts of Middle Eastern affairs, offers a caution:

When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared a few days ago that the United Kingdom and the United States would soon convene a special summit on “stabilizing” Yemen in order to reduce the threat of terrorismemanating from there, I cried in my heart for Yemen. My fears were exacerbated when I read the following day that the US’ top military commander in the region had visited Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to offer support, and pledged more financial and military assistance to defeat the growing presence of Al-Qaeda’s operation in the Arabian Peninsula that is domiciled in Yemen.

The idea that Yemen has suddenly become a “terror problem” country and that the US and UK can lead it to greener pastures is symptomatic of the collective policy failures that have seen the world today suffer so widely from problems of political violence and terrorism. Conferences in London and shipments of American arms and money will not solve the problem. The Anglo-Americans clearly lack the ability or will to come to terms with the full dimensions of terrorism and its genesis. A starting point in that direction would be to grasp that terrorism traumatizes and harms four primary actors.

The first is the terrorist himself. Most terrorists are reasonably smart and educated young men who have become crazy due to the circumstances of their lives and their societies’ political, economic and social conditions, including interactions with foreign armies.

The second is the society that breeds terrorists, including many in the Middle East. The disequilibria, disparities and distortions that plague those societies ultimately generate a handful of crazed men who become terrorists. Terrorists do not emerge from a vacuum. They emerge from terrorized societies.

The third target of terrorism comprises those innocent civilians who are attacked by terrorists, whether in Arab hotels, Pakistani markets, New York City skyscrapers, or London buses. The attacked societies are terrorized and traumatized by the criminality that assaults them, and they usually have no idea why they were attacked or what to do in response. They are truly the innocent victims who pay the highest price.

The fourth madness that often haunts the world of terrorism is the response of governments whose countries or citizens have been subjected to terror attacks. Terrorized, then crazed with anger and driven to seek revenge, governments in turn unleash their own immense military and police power to fight the terrorists and bring them to justice. This approach only rarely succeeds, and more often intensifies the first two problems above: local traditional societies around the developing world that are at the receiving end of Western powers’ might eventually become crazed, distorted, ravaged lands full of tyranny, corruption, instability, abuse of power, and violence, and those traumatized societies in turn eventually breed more of their own criminal terrorists who attack at home and abroad.

If we do not address these four dimensions of terrorism and its traumas, we will never resolve the problem.

Medieval Arabs used to say that “In Yemen, there is wisdom.” There is also much wisdom to be gleaned from Yemen today -- in particular by Anglo-American and other leaders who should understand more honestly how and why a country like Yemen comes to play a role in the global terrorism world. This starts with an integrated, honest analysis of the above four victims of terrorism, rather than by isolating only one of them -- Yemeni society -- and using the wrong tools to address it.

The network of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen is structurally linked with and organically emerges from the experience of militants, resistance fighters, terrorists and others who trained and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq --- sometimes fighting with Anglo-American assistance against a common foe, but sometimes fighting against the Anglo-Americans who were seen as foreign occupiers. This network has been building up in Yemen since the mid-1990s, but in fact Yemen’s instability and its emergence as a terrorists’ base goes much further back.

The British with their colonial history in the southern part of Yemen, along with other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, bear some historical responsibility for how things have turned out in our region in the past century. The wrecks that often masquerade as Arab modern states are fragile in many cases because they emerged from colonial rule (mostly French and British) in wildly unsustainable conditions, due to the double constraints of European colonialism and post-colonial policies: The combination of national boundaries that were highly artificial and thus created structurally unstable states, and then the advent of local rulers who were put in place by the retreating colonial powers, often lacked any serious indigenous legitimacy, and ultimately developed into, or gave way to, today‘s security states.

For the British now to convene a global summit to fix Yemen is akin to Tiger Woods offering an executive course in marriage fidelity. It is not a serious proposition. Fighting the modern scourge of political terrorism with the kind of intellectual terrorism that Gordon Brown offers will not work. If this is a joke, it is not funny. If this is serious, we are all in much deeper trouble than any of us could ever have imagined.

Comments

[Don Cox]

"Most terrorists are reasonably smart and educated young men who have become crazy due to the circumstances of their lives "

I disagree. I think they are smart and educated young men who have been seduced into a cult. I think they are the same kind of people who become Scientologists or Moonies. Smart, educated, well-meaning and rather naive.

It is just a matter of chance whether they get caught by a cult that steals all their money or by one that uses them as cannon fodder.

[Dave]

"The British with their colonial history in the southern part of Yemen, along with other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, bear some historical responsibility for how things have turned out in our region in the past century. The wrecks that often masquerade as Arab modern states are fragile in many cases because they emerged from colonial rule (mostly French and British) in wildly unsustainable conditions, due to the double constraints of European colonialism and post-colonial policies: The combination of national boundaries that were highly artificial and thus created structurally unstable states, and then the advent of local rulers who were put in place by the retreating colonial powers, often lacked any serious indigenous legitimacy, and ultimately developed into, or gave way to, today‘s security states."

*********

This is also true for Black Africa -- tribal conflicts, secession movements and blood baths. But the exportation of terrorism and theocratic elements has not approach the levels seen in the Middle East. There, it's piracy.

[Dave]

Quote -- Most terrorists are reasonably smart and educated young men who have become crazy due to the circumstances of their lives and their societies’ political, economic and social conditions, including interactions with foreign armies."

********

But what about Abdulmutallab?

[Barry]

With a name like that, I would go crazy

Barry

[Barry]

I must apologize for my rather flippant last post. But I do think it is a bit relevant , when considering the concept of "profiling" of potential terrorists/jihadis (and further considering the names of past terrorists), a name like Abdulmutallab does stand out considerably.

An interesting (but I dare say controversial) article on the Islamic Roots of terrorism http://bsimmons.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/the-islamic-roots-of-abdulmutallab%E2%80%99s-suicidal-odyssey-2/

Barry

[Dave]

"....local traditional societies around the developing world that are at the receiving end of Western powers’ might eventually become crazed, distorted, ravaged lands full of tyranny, corruption, instability, abuse of power, and violence, and those traumatized societies in turn eventually breed more of their own criminal terrorists who attack at home and abroad."

*********

But what about home-grown terror cells in Europe? Why do second and third generation European Muslims (those with little or no ties to the Arabian Penn. and S.E. Asia) commit acts of terror?

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-news-cartoonistarrest0101,0,6060812.story

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/22146212/detail.html

[Barry]

Dave

It's all about young men's sexual frustrations!! :)

Barry

[Barry]

It's all about the fact that they really enjoy their experiences in the west - but cannot reconcile their pleasurable lives with what they are told in the Mosques.

Similar things have happened in the past in the Christian world - eg the Puritans.

Just another aspect of The curse of Religion

[Dave]

But there was nothing akin to modern day terrorism in the Puritan era. Good article, by the way. Thanks for posting.

[ChrisE]

That's not because Puritanism was incapable of producing it- simply that modern day terrorism is (strangely enough) a part of the modern day world.

You can, however, see the strains of puritanism in modern terrorism. Ask the Irish. Perhaps even the Native Americans.

[Bill]

A good article but it misses a central motivator behind all of it--theology. The fact remains no other religious group whether colonized, impacted by foreign armies, or nasty foreign policy has produced with such frequency and magnitude the destruction what these Islamist fanatics have. If we were to use that logic we should be seeing Hindus, Animists, Christians, Buhhdists, or any number of ethnic groups resorting to terrorism. Yet we don't and this article clearly misses a central theme that the underlining motivator for these terrorists is the hegemony they believe Islam should have over all others. It's why you always hear about the imposition of Sharia and then the usual "Islam will conquer the world." The wars, Israeli Arab conflict, and Western foreign policy only act as catalysts to spurn them on. Just compare the writings of these Islamists fanatics to Islamic scripture and you will find they are quite similiar in their ideology.

The error of the world combating this is that we have often resorted to force when the battle should be shifted to the ideological front. The Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabis, Mullahs in Iran, the Deobandi school, and many others Islamist supremacist ideologies need to be tackled head on. It won't be easy because Islamic scripture clearly supports their supremacist thought of seeing Islam rule the world. For those doubting just read the Quran, a Hadith source(such as Buhkari), and the Sira for some perspective. After reading those like me I think you will find the root of the problem is theology and all the other events are just catalysts spurning them on. We have got to honest with ourselves and stop tripping over our multicultural political correct mindset and realize the other half of the equation is religious motivation. We have got to stop looking at Islam from our own cultural religious upbringing. Islam is a prescriptive religion that is governed by a set of transcendent laws good for all time--and one of those laws is they must fight until all religion is for Allah. Christianity on the other hand is a narrative religion following a golden rule of live and let live. Islam can not live and let live because it's central creed is the spread and domination of Islam over all other religions. Not all Muslims follow this but those controling the ideological thought of the Islamic world, the Islamists, do. Sadly until Islam goes through a reformation we are always going to have this problem. It is why today the evidence shows Islam, unlike any other religious group, is in open conflict with so many across the globe? Why--read Islamic scripture and it will become clear. While the West has demonstrated we have accepted Islam into our fold will Islam every trully accept us--actions today seem to indicate a resounding no! Puritanically speaking we must submit to Islam to achieve peace. Islam not does not mean peace it means submission.

Thx
Bill

[Dave]

"Islam is a prescriptive religion that is governed by a set of transcendent laws good for all time–and one of those laws is they must fight until all religion is for Allah."

******

That's a good point, Bill. The war stories found in the Old Testament are 'descriptive'. There was a time and place for them. The 'war verses' in the Koran are 'prescriptive'. These war verses transcend time and space. For Islam, it's an ongoing struggle.

The other point made in the article is that terrorists are educated, well read and informed individuals. This is true. Islamists show far greater command of the Koran and Islamic theology. This is why their radical interpretations of Islamic scripture and firey preachings go unchallenged in the Muslim world. Other Muslims will not spar with them.

[Barry]

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic Of Iran says this:

"the Constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the Revolution at home AND ABROAD. In particular, in the development of international relations, the Constitution will strive with other Islamic and popular movements TO PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE FORMATION OF A SINGLE WORLD COMMUNITY

And Samuel says that the US is Imperialistic. :)

Barry

[Bill]

Dave,

Yes the point of the Quran not being taken contextually is often missed by most in the West. They make the false assumption that the Quran is just like the bible and a narrative on how to live life. The Quran along with the Hadith is not a narrative but a complete set of rules saying what is permitted, not permitted, recomended or not rcomended on how an individual Muslim is to live his whole life. In Islam their is no seperation of government, culture, and personal life it's all wrapped up into one neat package governeded by Sharia. Knowing this it is quite ironic we use the term radical when in fact these "radical" Islamists are some of the most devote Muslims in the world. My issue with these folks is they wish to impose on all others their way of life regardless of what the other thinks. These are the same people who reject Universal Human rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. In addition to them Western liberal democracy is a no go to the because it's very essence "equality and freedom for all" directly contradicts Sharia. Failure to note this has and will lead us to more dead ends in the futre. People first need to know what their dealing with before tackling it. The Western world for the most part seems to still have it head stuck in the sand when dealing with the Islamic world.

Thx
Bill