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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1/. A very pale shade of
green in Iran </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>2/. How the Taliban
pressed bin Laden </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>3/. Yemen, the new
Waziristan </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>4/. US keeps its eye
on al-Qaeda in Yemen </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>-------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><STRONG>A very pale shade of green in Iran
<BR><BR></STRONG>"Where were the Greens of Tehran? 1. On the Internet reading
about the Trojan horse plan; 2. On YouTube learning about the 'action'; 3.
Chatting online in the afternoon about where to meet in the morning." - Iranian
blogger Alireza Rezaie. <BR><BR>"To ignore the democrats and fail to support
them in clear and strong terms would be a sign of poor political judgment ..." -
Amir Taheri, Wall Street Journal. <BR><BR>Iran's "democrats" (the Greens) were
deafeningly silent as Iran celebrated the 31st anniversary of its revolution
last week. Those actually in Tehran for the occasion saw hardly any sign of
them. The reason, according to Taheri, is that the clerical "regime" is being
replaced by a military dictatorship. (US Secretary of State <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD2><U><FONT color=#009900>Hillary Clinton</FONT></U></SPAN> apparently
reads Taheri: she has taken now to parroting his "military dictatorship". But
it's not smart to believe Taheri, as explained below.) <BR><BR>Taheri writes
that "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] controlled Tehran with the
help of tens of thousands of club-wielding street fighters shipped in from all
over the country ... For the first time, the <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD4><U><FONT color=#009900>regime</FONT></U></SPAN> had to transform
Tehran into a sealed citadel [creating] an atmosphere of war in the divided
city." <BR><BR>Taheri adds: "With the Internet shut down and foreign radio
broadcasts jammed, the regime imposed its own version of events." Try telling
that to the blogger quoted above, who managed to post his comments on a popular
Iranian website. Taheri might also care to tell us where he got his information.
<BR><BR>Not content with the foregoing hyperbole, Taheri tells us, mystifyingly,
"An opposition attempt at storming the Evin Prison, where more than 3,000
dissidents are being tortured, did not materialize. The would-be liberators
failed to break a ring of steel the IRGC threw around the sprawling compound."
(So ... was there an attempt or not? Or was this the only way to get "torture"
into this porridge?) <BR><BR>Taheri has been trying to convince American readers
for a long time that popular opposition is burgeoning in Iran and all that's
needed to topple the "regime" is a push by Washington. This is the same "expert
commentator" who told us about the "regime's" plan to force Jews to wear colored
badges, a piece of disinformation quickly withdrawn with much embarrassment by
its publishers. (See </FONT></FONT><A
href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE24Ak03.html"><FONT face=Arial
size=2>Yellow journalism and chicken hawks</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>,
Asia Times Online, May 24, 2006.) <BR><BR>Apparently, Taheri is still color
blind, and astonishingly still lecturing Americans about political judgment and
democracy, albeit in the Murdoch media. We thought democracy had something to do
with <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD3><U><FONT color=#009900>government by the
people</FONT></U></SPAN>, not by a small minority abetted by an outside power.
The rudderless Green leadership, for its part, has not enough democratic
gumption even to abjure clerical rule. <BR><BR>The people of Iran, meanwhile,
celebrated the anniversary of the revolution that ousted the epitome of
dictators, the US-backed Shah of Iran. And the "<SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD1><U><FONT color=#009900>Trojan horse</FONT></U></SPAN>" - Greens who
would infiltrate the crowds wearing ordinary clothes before shedding them to
reveal their true colors - remained a cyber-concept with a digital "nay".
<BR><BR><I><B>Allen Quicke</B> is Editor of atimes.net</I> <BR><BR>(Copyright
2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
about </FONT><A
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</DIV>
<DIV>---------------------</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><STRONG><FONT size=4>How the Taliban pressed
bin Laden</FONT></STRONG> <BR>By Gareth Porter <BR><BR>WASHINGTON - Evidence now
available from various sources, including recently declassified United States
State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad
Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from
carrying out any plots against the United States. <BR><BR>The evidence
contradicts claims by top officials of the Barack Obama administration that
Mullah Omar was complicit in bin Laden's involvement in the al-Qaeda plot to
carry out the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. It
also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting
that they have little interest in al-Qaeda's global jihadi aims. <BR>A primary
source on the <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD2><U><FONT color=#009900>relationship
between</FONT></U></SPAN> bin <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD3><U><FONT
color=#009900>Laden</FONT></U></SPAN> and Mullah Omar before 9/11 is a detailed
<SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD12><U><FONT color=#009900>personal
account</FONT></U></SPAN> provided by Egyptian jihadi Abu'l Walid al-Masri and
published on Arabic-language jihadist websites in 1997. <BR><BR>Al-Masri had a
unique knowledge of the subject because he worked closely with both bin Laden
and the Taliban during the period. He was a member of bin Laden's Arab <SPAN
class=IL_AD id=IL_AD7><U><FONT color=#009900>entourage</FONT></U></SPAN> in
<SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD5><U><FONT
color=#009900>Afghanistan</FONT></U></SPAN>, but became much more sympathetic to
<SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD8><U><FONT color=#009900>the Afghan</FONT></U></SPAN>
cause than bin Laden and other al-Qaeda officials from 1998 through 2001.
<BR><BR>The first published English-language report on al-Masri's account,
however, was an article in the January issue of the CTC Sentinal, the journal of
the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, by Vahid Brown, a fellow at
the CTC. <BR>Mullah Omar's willingness to allow bin Laden to remain in
Afghanistan was conditioned from the beginning, according to al-Masri's account,
on two prohibitions on his activities: bin Laden was forbidden to talk to the
media without the consent of the Taliban <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD6><U><FONT
color=#009900>regime</FONT></U></SPAN> or to make plans to attack US targets.
<BR><BR>Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil told Inter Press
Service in an interview that the regime "put bin Laden in Kandahar to control
him better". Kandahar remained the Taliban political headquarters after the
organization seized power in 1996. <BR>The August 1998 US cruise missile strikes
against training camps in Afghanistan run by bin Laden in retaliation for the
bombings of two US embassies in East Africa on August 7, 1998, appears to have
had a dramatic impact on Mullah Omar and the Taliban regime's policy toward bin
Laden. <BR><BR>Two days after the strike, Omar unexpectedly entered a phone
conversation between a <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD11><U><FONT color=#009900>State
Department</FONT></U></SPAN> official and one of his aides, and told the US
official he was unaware of any evidence that bin Laden "had engaged in or
planned terrorist acts while on Afghan soil". The Taliban leader said he was
"open to dialogue" with <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD10><U><FONT color=#009900>the
United</FONT></U></SPAN> States and asked for evidence of bin Laden's
involvement, according to the State Department cable reporting the conversation.
<BR><BR>Only three weeks after Omar asked for evidence against bin Laden, the
al-Qaeda leader sought to allay Taliban suspicions by appearing to accept the
prohibition by Mullah Omar against planning any actions against the United
States. <BR>"There is an opinion among the Taliban that we should not move from
within Afghanistan against any other state," bin Laden said in an interview with
al-Jazeera. "This was the decision of the Commander of the Faithful, as is
known." <BR>Mullah Omar had taken the title "Commander of the Faithful", the
term used by some Muslim caliphs in the past to claim to be "leader of the
Muslims", in April 1996, five months before Kabul fell to Taliban forces.
<BR><BR>During September and October 1998, the Taliban regime apparently sought
to position itself to turn bin Laden over to the Saudi government as part of a
deal by getting a ruling by the Afghan Supreme Court that he was guilty of the
embassy bombings. <BR><BR>In a conversation with the US charge in Islamabad on
November 28, 1998, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Omar's spokesman and chief adviser on
foreign affairs, referred to a previous Taliban request to the United States for
evidence of bin Laden's guilt to be examined by the Afghan Supreme Court,
according to the US diplomat's report to the State Department. <BR>Muttawakil
said the United States had provided "some papers and a <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD9><U><FONT color=#009900>video cassette</FONT></U></SPAN>". but he
complained that the video had contained nothing new and had therefore not been
submitted to the Supreme Court. He told the charge that the court had ruled that
none of the evidence that had been presented warranted the conviction of bin
Laden. <BR>Muttawakil said the court trial approach had "not worked" but
suggested that the Taliban regime was now carrying out a strategy to "restrict
[bin Laden's] activities in such a way that he would decide to leave of his own
volition." <BR><BR>On February 10, 1999, the Taliban sent a group of 10 officers
to replace bin Laden's own bodyguards, touching off an exchange of gunfire,
according to a New York Times story of March 4, 1999. Three days later,
bodyguards working for Taliban intelligence and Foreign Affairs Ministry
personnel took control of bin Laden's compound near Kandahar and took away his
<SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD4><U><FONT color=#009900>satellite
telephone</FONT></U></SPAN>, according to the US and Taliban sources cited by
the Times. <BR><BR>Taliban official Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, who was then in the
Taliban embassy in Pakistan, confirmed that the 10 Taliban bodyguards had been
provided to bin Laden to "supervise him and observe that he will not contact any
foreigner or use any communication system in Afghanistan", according to the
Times story. <BR><BR>The pressure on bin Laden in 1999 also extended to threats
to eliminate al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. An e-mail to bin Laden
from two leading Arab jihadis in Afghanistan in July 1999, later found on a
laptop previously belonging to al-Qaeda and purchased by the <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD1><U><FONT color=#009900>Wall Street Journal</FONT></U></SPAN>, referred
to "problems between you and the Leader of the Faithful" as a "crisis". <BR>The
e-mail, published in an article by Alan Cullison in the September 2004 issue of
The Atlantic, said: "Talk about closing down the camps has spread." The message
even suggested that the jihadis feared the Taliban regime could go so far as to
"kick them out" of Afghanistan. <BR><BR>In the face of new Taliban hostility,
bin Laden sought to convince Mullah Omar that he had given his personal
allegiance to Omar as a Muslim. In April 2001, bin Laden referred publicly to
having sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful".
<BR><BR>But al-Masri recalls that bin Laden had refused to personally swear such
an oath of allegiance to Omar in 1998-99, and had asked al-Masri himself to give
the oath to Omar in his stead. Al-Masri suggests that bin Laden deliberately
avoided giving the oath of allegiance to Omar personally so that he would be
able to argue within the Arab jihadi community that he was not bound by Omar's
strictures on his activities. <BR>Even in summer 2001, as the Taliban regime
became increasingly dependent on foreign jihadi troop contingents, including
Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps, for its defense against the military
advances of the Northern Alliance, Mullah Omar found yet another way to express
his unhappiness with bin Laden's presence. <BR><BR>After a series of clashes
between al-Qaeda forces and those of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU),
the Taliban leader intervened to give overall control of foreign volunteer
forces to Tahir Yuldash of the IMU, according to a blog post last October by
Leah Farrall, an Australian specialist on jihadi politics in Afghanistan.
<BR><BR>In late January, Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for US Defense Secretary
Robert Gates, suggested that the United States could not negotiate with Mullah
Omar because he has "the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands", implying
that he had knowingly allowed bin Laden's planning of the 9/11 attacks.
<BR><BR><I><B>Gareth Porter</B> is an investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest
book,</I> Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in
Vietnam, <I>was published in 2006.</I> <BR><BR>(Inter Press
Service)</FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>-----------------------------</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><STRONG><FONT size=4>Yemen, the new
Waziristan</FONT></STRONG> <BR>By Pepe Escobar <BR><BR>Like an ever-profitable
horror B-movie franchise, the al-Qaeda myth simply refuses to die.
<BR><BR>United States intelligence has now focused its lasers on the alleged 300
al-Qaeda jihadis concealed in Yemen's craggy, rural Maarib province - as much as
the Pentagon has deployed infinite might to find those maximum 100 prowling the
Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. <BR>But wait. Didn't top US intelligence officials
recently swear on their government paychecks that it's all but "certain" that
this sinister, multifaceted hydra with sleeper cells all over the planet -
"al-Qaeda" - will attack inside the US within the next six months? <BR>What is
more likely is that these neo-jihadis will never come from<BR><BR>Yemen or the
Waziristan tribal areas in Pakistan or the whole AfPak tribal belt for that
matter. And they will not be native, pious Sunnis from <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD5><U><FONT color=#009900>Saudi Arabia</FONT></U></SPAN> or Egypt either.
They will have at best a vague connection to some Middle Eastern
dictatorship/petro-monarchy. They will certainly be young, ultra-globalized and
passionately, perversely addicted to a fantasy - the <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD6><U><FONT color=#009900>virtual</FONT></U></SPAN> <I>ummah</I> (Muslim
community). <BR>Their <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD3><U><FONT color=#009900>life
journey</FONT></U></SPAN> will certainly have evolved as in a triangulation.
Many will have moved from their <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD7><U><FONT
color=#009900>home</FONT></U></SPAN> country to live in a <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD2><U><FONT color=#009900>Western country</FONT></U></SPAN> - or even
have been born there; and that's where they will have honed their yearning to
join jihad in a third country. <BR><BR><B>Like characters in a
novel</B><BR>Neo-jihadis may eventually - but not necessarily - go to Yemen or
the Waziristans only after they have made the conceptual leap from idealizing
the <I>ummah</I> on the Internet to actually feeling the irresistible urge to
act on the ground. <BR><BR>Whenever this happens, they have already broken
communication with their families. This is the pattern followed by virtually
every neo-jihadi - from Dhiren Barot (who planned to bomb the <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD1><U><FONT color=#009900>New York Stock Exchange</FONT></U></SPAN>) to
the shy underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. They are all living
exercises in deterritorialization. It's all virtual - especially their idea or
vision of Islam itself. It's all very individualistic - no orchestration by a
sinister "al-Qaeda" network. And it's all done in English - the lingua franca of
<SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD9><U><FONT color=#009900>global
communication</FONT></U></SPAN> - not Arabic. Welcome to the age of the virtual
jihadi nomad. In earlier times, these would have been characters in a Fyodor
Dostoevsky or Albert Camus novel. <BR><BR>As for the motivations of "al-Qaeda",
Olivier Roy, professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy,
and a top global scholar of terrorism, argues that al-Qaeda "does not have a
political strategy of establishing an Islamic state". But he insists al-Qaeda's
global enemy is the West - not local regimes. That's not true; al-Qaeda, the
historic leadership, treats local regimes as US lackeys, thus they should be
toppled. It's not their priority; a hefty case can be made that "al-Qaeda" is
nothing but a dissidence (or a "rogue" arm) of Saudi intelligence, considering
the very close relationship between Osama bin Laden and wily Prince Turki bin
Faisal, the former director general of Saudi intelligence. <BR><BR>Unlike Roy's
assessment, al-Qaeda's fight has nothing to do with Che Guevara's in the 1960s.
Al-Qaeda is certainly not about ideology - but about an idea/flame that seduces,
as Roy puts it, "the lonely avenger, the hero, who can redeem a life he is not
happy with by achieving fame while escaping a world where he finds no room". But
that could also be a portrait of John Lennon's murderer. <BR>American
intelligence is unlikely to consider these subtleties. The multi-billionaire
machine is still hostage to the outdated notion of "territory". So it's
automatic to have the Pentagon dispatch its might to fight "al-Qaeda" in Yemen
and in the Waziristans. They will find nothing but ghosts. <BR><BR>Iraq, AfPak
and now Yemen have been granted by Washington the same holy trinity of building
"development" and "governance", and counter-terrorism, which in practice means
governance hijacked by Beltway-conceptualized counter-terrorism. No wonder this
recipe was a failure in Afghanistan and will be a failure in Yemen. <BR><BR>The
Yemeni theater will feature yet another deadly mix of counter-insurgency as
applied by the Israelis in Gaza and West Bank and the Americans in AfPak. What
happened in the AfPak tribal belt is enlightening. The power of hardcore locals
- the Pakistani Taliban - was greatly enhanced; and "al-Qaeda" jihadis quietly
left the building, spawning a mini-global migration. The same will happen in
Yemen. <BR>All this is tragically farcical. Obama has done a George W Bush in
Afghanistan, branding the al-Qaeda ghost to justify Washington's "soft" invasion
of Yemen. The government of US-aligned President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana'a
accuses the Huthis of being linked to both al-Qaeda (Wahhabi radicals who
consider Shi'ites as worse than the plague) and Iran (Shi'ites who abhor
al-Qaeda). It doesn't matter whether this is utter nonsense. Sooner or later,
Washington will inevitably brand the Huthis as "terrorists" - just like every
resistance in Iraq was "terrorist", whether they were Sunni or Sadrists.
<BR><BR><B>And the Pentagon runs amok </B><BR>Tens of thousands of foreign
troops are bogged down in Afghanistan because <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD8><U><FONT color=#009900>the North Atlantic</FONT></U></SPAN> Treaty
Organization invoked its Article 5 collective defense provision in 2001 to fight
"al-Qaeda". Sooner rather than later, NATO will also hit Yemen. <BR><BR>As much
as oil is power, the good ol' "war on terror" - rebranded or not by the US - is
alive and kicking. Iraq, Afghanistan (then AfPak), Yemen, Somalia, these are all
cogs in the relentless full spectrum dominance machine, the real deal behind the
"war on terror" cover story, intimately linked to Washington's scramble to
control and/or monitor as many global sources of oil and gas as possible.
<BR><BR>And for a Pentagon already running amok, it is getting <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD4><U><FONT color=#009900>deeper and deeper</FONT></U></SPAN> into this
key stretch of the "arc of instability", from North Africa to the Persian Gulf,
and at the same time instilling the flames of a new Cold War between Saudi
Arabia and Iran. Blessed are those "al-Qaeda" virtual jihadi nomads.
<BR><BR><I><B>Pepe Escobar</B> is the author of</I> </FONT></FONT><A
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim"><FONT
face=Arial size=2>Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into
Liquid War</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2> (Nimble Books, 2007) and </FONT><A
href="http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898"><FONT
face=Arial size=2>Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the
surge</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>. His new book, just out, is </FONT><A
href="http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1"><FONT
face=Arial size=2>Obama does Globalistan</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>
(Nimble Books, 2009). <BR><BR><I>He may be reached at</I> pepeasia@yahoo.com.
<BR><BR>(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about </FONT><A
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>-----------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><STRONG><FONT size=4>US keeps its eye on
al-Qaeda in Yemen</FONT></STRONG> <BR>By Jim Lobe <BR><BR>The ceasefire
announced late last week between Yemen's government and Houthi rebels in the
northern part of the country is being greeted in the United States as an
important initial step towards stabilizing the Arab world's poorest country and
reversing advances by al-Qaeda's affiliate there. <BR><BR>Washington wants the
government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh to make the battle against al-Qaeda
on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which was allegedly behind the aborted bombing
of a US commercial airliner on Christmas Day, its top security priority. It is
providing tens of millions of dollars in training, arms and other assistance for
that purpose. <BR><BR>It is also pushing Saleh to focus more on fighting
corruption and promoting economic development, although it is
supplying</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>significantly less aid in those areas. <BR>Indeed,
the imbalance between <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD10><U><FONT color=#009900>US
military</FONT></U></SPAN> and non-military aid has been a source of severe
frustration for many specialists in the US who have long warned that extremism
<SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD7><U><FONT color=#009900>in Yemen</FONT></U></SPAN>
cannot be rooted out in the <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD9><U><FONT
color=#009900>absence</FONT></U></SPAN> of far-reaching political and economic
reforms. <BR>"Under currently discussed budget requests, military and <SPAN
class=IL_AD id=IL_AD8><U><FONT color=#009900>security</FONT></U></SPAN>
assistance greatly exceeds <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD6><U><FONT
color=#009900>humanitarian aid</FONT></U></SPAN>," noted Christian Boucek, an
expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD5><U><FONT color=#009900>Peace</FONT></U></SPAN>, who nonetheless
described the ceasefire as "very welcome". <BR><BR>"While there is an immediate
counter-terrorism imperative in Yemen, this planned framework does not
adequately address the long-term systemic challenges to Yemeni security and
stability. It is not AQAP that will lead to state failure or state collapse in
Yemen," he added. <BR>United States <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD4><U><FONT
color=#009900>Secretary of State</FONT></U></SPAN> <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD2><U><FONT color=#009900>Hillary Clinton</FONT></U></SPAN> on Monday
hailed the still-shaky four-day-old ceasefire during a visit to Qatar, the first
stop in a brief Gulf tour that will also feature talks with King Abdullah and
other top officials in <SPAN class=IL_AD id=IL_AD3><U><FONT color=#009900>Saudi
Arabia</FONT></U></SPAN> that will reportedly be focused mainly on Iran.
<BR>"The United States welcomes the ceasefire in the conflict between the
government of Yemen and the Houthi rebels," she said in a statement released by
the State Department. <BR><BR>"We understand that a mediation commission
representing all parties is monitoring compliance with the terms of the
ceasefire and beginning the urgent process of reconciliation and reconstruction
needed to bring this conflict to a permanent end," the statement noted.
<BR><BR>It added that Washington "remains concerned about the humanitarian
situation in the area, including the approximately 250,000 Yemenis displaced by
the fighting". <BR><BR>Clinton is likely to bring the same message to her hosts
in Riyadh who, at US$2 billion a year, constitute Yemen's top aid donor by far.
<BR>Saudi Arabia, which has accused Iran of supporting the Houthis, who belong
to a Shi'ite sect called Zaidism, became involved in the fighting last November
after rebel forces reportedly crossed the frontier, killed a border guard and
briefly occupied the area. <BR>Despite a fierce three-month counter-offensive,
the Houthis killed more than 130 Saudi troops and captured at least five others,
one of who was handed over on Monday. <BR><BR>The Houthi rebellion has been
widely seen as a costly distraction for Yemen's government and armed forces
that, in Washington's view, should be more focused on destroying AQAP, which was
created last year by the consolidation of separate al-Qaeda affiliates in Saudi
Arabia and Yemen. <BR><BR>Al-Qaeda in Yemen had been largely decimated, with the
help of US military and intelligence assistance, between December 2000, when it
killed 17 US sailors in an attack on the <I>USS Cole</I> anchored off Aden, and
2003. <BR><BR>But following a notorious jailbreak in 2006 it re-emerged as a
significantly stronger force due to the influx of Saudi recruits and other
veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and success in building alliances with
some of Yemen's powerful and conservative Sunni tribes, notably in the southern
and eastern parts of the country. <BR>Al-Qaeda has also taken advantage of
growing secessionist sentiment in the south where tensions with the central
government have been on the rise for some time. <BR>AQAP's strength and global
ambition were brought home to the US by the attempted Christmas bombing carried
out by a Nigerian national reportedly trained and equipped by the group in
Yemen. <BR><BR>Reports that a US Army major had been in contact with a
Yemen-based Yemeni-American cleric linked to AQAP before carrying out a shooting
spree at a Texas army base that killed 13 soldiers last November has added to
the notion that Yemen has become a top priority in what the George W Bush
administration called the "global war on terrorism". <BR><BR>In fact, Obama, who
last month ruled out the use of US forces in any direct combat role in Yemen,
had already been steadily increasing security assistance - much of it covert -
to Yemen's security forces since he took office. <BR>In December, Yemeni forces
carried out a series of lethal raids against AQAP targets. They were backed by
US intelligence, equipment and "firepower", a word which many analysts
interpreted as meaning drone or cruise-missiles strikes, although Sana'a has
strenuously denied that claim while Washington has refused further comment.
<BR>The administration plans to nearly triple security assistance to Yemen -
from $67 million last year to $190 million in 2010. <BR><BR>As part of what its
top Near East official, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Policy
Jeffrey Feltman, this month called a "new, more holistic Yemen policy", the
administration is also committed to increasing economic and development
assistance. <BR>But that the non-security aid - $121 million over the next three
years - pales in comparison to the counter-terrorist budget, particularly given
the enormity of the long-term development challenges facing Yemen. These include
steadily diminishing oil revenues - its main source of <SPAN class=IL_AD
id=IL_AD1><U><FONT color=#009900>foreign exchange</FONT></U></SPAN> - and
rapidly depleting water supplies. <BR><BR>"It's easier to do the hard [military]
stuff, [but] achieving a balance is key," Michael Doran, a top Gulf expert at
the National Security Council under Bush, told a conference on Yemen at the
Bipartisan Policy Center this month. <BR>"There's a tremendous imbalance between
the military and the political," he noted, adding that it will likely continue.
<BR><BR>"Are we making the same mistake again [in] giving too much support to
the security institutions in Yemen?" asked retired General Mark Kimmitt, who
served in top State Department and Pentagon Near East posts under Bush, at the
same forum. <BR><BR>(Inter Press Service)</FONT> </DIV>
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