Thursday, May 28, 2009

Yemen: From Bad to Worse?   [Fred Schwarz]

The last time we mentioned Yemen, President Obama and his crew were planning to send 97 Yemeni terrorists from Guantanamo back to their home country, where they would be taught good manners and released with a pat on the head.  Now even the hard-core transnationalists at the Department of Justice are starting to realize that this might not be a good idea.  In fact, the whole close-Gitmo thing may be delayed by a year or two while they cook up either (a) a plan to find enough states and foreign countries willing to take in hundreds of trained and fanatical terrorists from Yemen and elsewhere, or (b) an excuse for why Obama’s campaign pledge and executive order to shut the place down have become inoperative.

Once that’s done, all they have to do is explain why militant Islamists who are moved to the general prison population won’t simply recruit more terrorists there (as was done in the recent Bronx bombing plot, for example).  They can also tell us how the terrorists will be better off in American prisons that are often brutal and gang-ridden, instead of in an all-Muslim facility where their safety is ensured and their religious practices are scrupulously indulged.

The Yemenis, as the biggest bloc of terrorists at Guantanamo, were a major factor in the decision not to rush the prison’s closing.  What made the administration change its mind?  Nothing much that’s new, just the internal conflicts that have been simmering in Yemen for decades.  Those conflicts are now starting to bubble to the surface, and the situation is looking shaky enough that not even Obama’s true believers can ignore them.

As often happens, the separatist movement in Yemen has been fueled by a general disintegration of society.  As Jane Novak, the doughty Yemen watcher, writes:

Somali pirates hide their mother ships in Yemen’s waters. NATO Commander, Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, said the pirates receive “a lot of the logistical supplies” from Yemen. Pirates say they receive information on ship location from Yemeni collaborators.

The U.N. committee that monitors the arms embargo on Somalia found Yemen to be the primary source of illegal arms and ammunition. Yemen’s inability to stem the large-scale arms trafficking is “a key obstacle to the restoration of peace and security to Somalia,” the panel determined.

Weapons are also smuggled to Saudi Arabia and Gaza. Yemen, the poorest nation in the Middle East, spends a third of its budget on the military. President Saleh inked a billion-dollar weapons deal with Russia in February.

Narcotics from Pakistan, Iran and Syria, including millions of Keptagon tablets and tons of hashish, enter Yemen and flood the Gulf States. Yemeni children are sold to beg in Saudi Arabia and have their kidney’s harvested in Egypt. In some border villages, one third of children are missing.

The biggest danger sign is that Ali Salem al-Beidh — the former Soviet stooge and later vice president who briefly led an independent South Yemen during the 1994 civil war and has lived quietly in exile ever since — has returned to politics and claimed leadership of the separatist Southern Movement.  Yemen’s tensions have been growing for some time, and are not confined to the south; lately they have gotten violent.  Issues include ethnic grievances, pervasive government corruption, a growing Islamist influence, and a general lack of the necessities of civilized life.

Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of the fissiparous nation, has long been America’s best friend in the struggle, though he is widely believed to have cooperated with al-Qaeda terrorists. Better a dodgy strongman than another Somalia, it is thought, especially in this fertile ground for extremists; and if Saleh can take those Yemeni detainees off our hands and get them working for him, so much the better, the odd leveled village and suppressed opposition group aside.

But if Saleh can’t hold Yemen together, there’s no reason to support him, and it looks increasingly likely that he can’t.  Earlier this month, U.S.-brokered peace negotiations began in Cairo, though no one but the diplomacy-loving Americans places much faith in them.  Oh, and did I mention that oil revenues are down 74 percent compared with the same period last year?  That won’t improve anyone’s disposition.

The understandably cranky editor of the Yemen Post takes a plague-on-both-your-houses approach:

The government of Yemen has not been able to give its people even the essentials of modern life, like electricity or water. Every day, the electricity turns off for at least 6 hours in the capital Sana’a, and water services have seen a decrease since the beginning of the year. . . . People today in Yemen live a life close to that of some poor countries in Africa, even though it is located in one of the richest places on the planet.

Ali Salim Al-Beedth, the former vice president of Yemen, and leader of the south announced last week that southern Yemen must be separated. In my opinion, the reason why he announced that was because he has either gotten too old and is saying things for no reason, or that he was bored in his old home in Oman and wanted more action in his life.

Whatever the reason for him was, President Saleh will help him if he does not stop corruption and give the people the biggest portion of the cake.

Most Yemenis would settle for a little peace and quiet and a manageable level of corruption, but the prospects for achieving even that modest goal are not good.  One thing is for sure:  The situation would not be improved by adding 97 more trained and rested terrorists to the mix.  Yemen is yet another situation where Obama and his handlers are slowly learning the harsh differences between running for office and running a country.

05/28 04:28 PMShare