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December 26, 2015
Making Sense of the Mess in Yemen
By Michael Curtis
Comments 31
In August 2014 the U.S. State Department ordered all nonessential U.S. personnel to leave the capital of Yemen for fear of terrorist attacks. A month later, on September 10, 2014, President Barack Obama declared that Yemen was a success story in the war on terror. He claimed that the “strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us… is one we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for some years.”
No such claim was made at the United Nations Security Council meeting on December 22, 2015 when another resolution, following many similar ones, called for an immediate and unconditional end to violence, the careless and indiscriminate bombings of civilians in the ongoing civil war, and the increasing Islamist terrorism in Yemen.
It is unlikely in the near future that any unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the country can be established. The country is a complicated mess with two capitals because of the variety of forces involved in the fighting. The Houthi rebels, who control about half of the country, are loyal to former President Saleh and have a capital, Sanaa, of their own. The Houthis, Shiites, are close to and are aided by Iran, and have continued to intensify their military action against the government regime. Even more menacing is their slogan, “Death to America, death to Israel, curses to the Jews, and victory to Islam.”
Saudi Arabia with a coalition of nine countries and the armies of the Gulf Emirates, fearing Shiite power, support the present President Hadi who rules from the other capital, Aden. The two dominant Islamist terrorists, al-Qaeda and ISIS, the Islamic State, compete for influence.
Yemen, once called “Arabia Felix” is one of the saddest stories in the world. A country about the size of the state of Nebraska, and a population of 26 million, it is the poorest country in the Middle East, with a per capita income of $1,500 a year, an importer of most of its food, and with declining oil and water resources. Barely half the county is literate, but the vast majority are said to be high on khat, the green leaf narcotic, on which more money is spent than on food.
The fundamental problem for Yemen, the Middle East, and the United States is that it is not really composed of a people or a nation, but a divided area and population. The area was long divided between control by the Ottoman Empire and the UK. It only became one kingdom in 1962 but the separated again in 1994. Its population, 99 per cent Muslim, is 55 per cent Sunni living in the south and southeast and 45 per cent Shia, mostly the Zaidi sect of Shia in the north and northwest with a sprinkling of Hindus, 3,000 Christians and 100 Jews.
The country is the scene of an increasingly bitter and cruel war between the feeble government forces helped by Saudi Arabia, which has been supported in this effort by the United States with military assets and intelligence, and the promise of an arms deal worth $129 million, and the Houthi insurgents who captured its capital Sanaa in September 2014. It dissolved the existing parliament, put the president and his cabinet under house arrest for a time. They claim authority over the territory they have captured and set up an alternative polity, a transitional revolutionary council. The president fled to Aden and war between those loyal to him and the rebels began.
As a result, at least 5,700 have been killed, and schools, health facilities, and hospitals have been destroyed. As the meeting of the UN Security Council on December 22, 2015, called to prepare the way for peace negotiations, made clear, it is “our friends” the Saudis who have inflicted most of the casualties and damage.
However, the Houthi rebels have been using an arsenal of weapons, including ballistic missiles, which have been intercepted by the Saudi Patriot missile batteries.
Yemen is important for two reasons. One is its strategic position, and the use made of it by terrorists. Whoever controls Yemen can threaten two points: the Gulf of Aden, Bab al Mandab, which connects to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal; and the Gulf of Hawf and the Straits of Hormuz. The other is that has become an outsource of Islamist terrorism since a former group of al-Qaeda was present in the 1990s.
For the U.S., the turmoil in Yemen is a dilemma not only because of the indiscriminate behavior of the Saudis, which is needed to settle the war in Iraq and Syria, and the ruthlessness of the Houthis. For years Yemen has fed foreign fighters into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Above all, it is important in the necessary fight against Islamist terrorism, because both al-Qaeda and ISIS are present in the area and in the fighting.
At the moment, al-Qaeda, more specially AQAP (a-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) is the more dominant of the two, being strong in the eastern province, including its capital, the port Mukalla. It was founded in January 2009 by Nasir al-Wuhayshi, secretary of Osama bin Laden for a number of years, who as killed by a drone strike in June 2015. Its most notorious member is Ibrahim al-Wuhayshi, the chief bomb-maker, who has been responsible for a number of plots, including the Christmas Day 2009 underwear bomber plot, and who used his own brother as a suicide bomber. AQAP has been linked to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, and may have been implicated in the massacre at Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015.
ISIS is prominent in a number of provinces in the south and center of Yemen, and competes with AQAP for influence. In November 2015, ISIS claimed responsibility for attacks on government army positions in southeast Yemen, but the army itself claimed al Qaeda for the attack, near Shibam. It should be a concern of UNESCO that the terrorist group controls this area, which includes a world heritage site of high-rise mud brick buildings popularly known as Manhattan in the Desert.
The complex set of parties in Yemen makes it confusing. Who’s on first? Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, is carrying on a jihad against Shiites, Houthis, and others. Houthis are linked to Hizb’allah in Lebanon. but ISIS has carried out a number of attacks on the Houthis, including bombing a mosque in Sanaa.
Meanwhile the group known as al-Islah, a Yemenite Sunni Islamist group, essentially a coalition of tribesmen and religious elements, founded in September 1990 but divided on key issues seeks reform on the basis of Islamic principles and teachings. It stems from the Islamic Front, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, funded by Saudi Arabia to fight Marxist groups present at that time. However, the groups appear to take a neutral stand in the struggle against Shia and has been blackballed since 2014 by Saudi Arabia.
The civil war has already brought in non-Muslims. A former Australian senior army officer is now commander of the UAE Presidential Guard of 5,000 soldiers, a military unit that reports directly to Abu Dhai Crown Prince al-Nahyan, commander of the UAE armed forces. The U.S. has been involved in the training of the unit that has played a key role in restoring Hadi to power, and in recapturing the port city of Aden in July 2015. The unit has probably been more important than Saudi Arabia in the fight against ISIS.
Yemen is another issue in which the Obama administration must play a role in order to prevent the increase in support for al Qaeda and ISIS, and the use of Yemen to spread the Islamist threat. It is evident today that the Gulf states are troubled by the rapid decline in the price of oil that has cost them more than $360 billion in oil exports. Yet even if it is necessary for them to retrench at this point, it is even more important that the Gulf Cooperation Council attempt to end the costly war and oppose the Islamist threat in Yemen. That is the role of the Obama administration, to encourage and press the GCC to do this.
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December 27, 2015
America has jumped from the Middle East frying pan into the fire
By Ted Belman
Comments 1
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration struggled to define the enemy and to decide how to defeat it. Even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and the Saudis were involved in the planning and financing of the attack, President Bush allowed the Saudis to fly out of the country in the next 24 hours when all other air traffic had been shut down.
No doubt that Bush had decided to maintain good relations with the Arabs, and Saudi Arabia particularly, just as the US had done for half a century. This policy led Bush to say on Sept 17, 2011 to the Islamic world, “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war,” in a speech as sycophantic as any President Obama has ever delivered.
On a different policy tack, Bush said on the evening of 9/11, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
On Sept 20/11 Bush spoke to the Joint Houses Congress emphasizing both tacks:
The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.
…any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
And so began the bifurcation of Islam into the peaceful Muslims on the one hand and the radicals who hijacked the religion on the other.
Gareth Porter, national security policy analyst, wrote in 2008:
Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.
Feith's account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.
Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states by "aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism". [emphasis added] (snip)
Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.”
Bush had not approved the explicit aim of regime change in Iran, Syria and four other countries proposed by Rumsfeld.
The Iraq war was not going well by 2006 so Bush appointed the prestigious Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker to assess the situation. The Report released in 2007 concluded that assessing stability was “elusive” and the situation was "deteriorating," recommended, inter alia, “that all of Iraq's neighbors (including Iran and Syria) must be included in an external diplomatic effort to stabilize” Iraq. Bush decided not to follow the recommendations and instead, to back the surge as advocated by General Patraeus and Sen John McCain. It met with considerable success.
The IRG went outside its mandate to pontificate, without analysis or explanation, that the Arab/Israeli conflict is “inextricably linked” to the situation in Iraq and that:
…there must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by, and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians (those who accept Israel’s right to exist), and Syria.
It offered no suggestion of how any of the final status issues would be resolved or why there should be any expectation that the Palestinians can or will give up their irredentist views on borders, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem.
In January 2009, President Obama was inaugurated. One of his first calls to foreign leaders was to President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, to whom he vowed to engage immediately in pursuit of a permanent Arab-Israeli settlement.
Thus Obama was following the recommendations of the ISG, which Bush declined to embrace. He argued as Baker did that the Arab-Israeli conflict was inextricably linked to the Middle East and proceeded to not only force negotiations on Israel but to put his weight behind the ’67 lines as the future border subject to swaps and the division of Jerusalem. He also disavowed the Bush letter of ‘04 in which Bush recognized that the settlement blocs would remain with Israel and that the conflict would be settled according to UN Security Council Resolution 242. He went so far as to force Israel to freeze construction east of the ‘67 lines, including in Jerusalem which Israel had annexed three decades earlier. All previous administrations had allowed for normal growth in settlements within their approved borders.
By December 2011 Obama fulfilled another campaign promise to withdraw the remaining US troops from Iraq. The vacuum created undid the achievements of the surge and allowed for the rise and dominance of ISIS.
Obama also turned to Rumsfeld’s plan of regime change, which Bush declined to endorse. What Rumsfeld had in mind was to support the opposition in each country and help them depose the dictators. What Obama decided to do was to replace the dictators who were secular with the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamists.
Remember that Rumsfeld proposed his plan before the victory in Iraq turned sour. What was learned was that there is no unified opposition and no desire for democracy. Obama ignored this lesson and believed that the Muslim Brotherhood could impose itself on all the opposition thereby creating stability.
In December 2003, Libya renounced its possession of weapons of mass destruction, decommissioning its chemical and nuclear weapons programs. It also paid reparations for the downing of the Pan American plane over Lockerbie. Gaddafi also abandoned terrorism. As a result relations with the U.S. and the EU improved considerably. He managed to rule his country well and provide for his people.
Nevertheless Obama, together with Britain, France and Qatar, decided he had to be deposed. A trumped up charge of an impending massacre was sufficient to justify military action to remove his regime and ultimately bringing about his death. Libya has not returned to stability, as the various tribes keep fighting for turf. Yehudit Ronen in Middle East Quarterly reports:
Nor has the violent chaos stopped at Libya's borders. With groups tied to the global jihadist community stepping into the fray in strength, political-religious militancy and a sea of sophisticated weaponry has spilled over to Libya's African and Arab neighbors, with dramatic implications for Europe as well. Anti-Western terrorist organizations affiliated with the global jihadist community have been the chief beneficiaries of the turmoil, destabilizing bordering areas and, in turn, injecting strong doses of belligerence and terror back into Libya
Obama delivered a major speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in June 4/09, dubbed “A New Beginning, in which he favored the Muslim Brotherhood, which was a banned party in Egypt, over President Mubarak. A few months later he pressured Mubarak to step down and forced early elections, which favored the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mohammed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president in June 30/12. He lasted a year in office until the military, headed by Gen El Sisi, the man he put in charge, took over and arrested him and once again banned the party. This did not go down well with Obama, who was counting on the Muslim Brotherhood to rule the country. Obama is working to reinstate them somehow and is not supporting El Sisi, just as he didn’t support Mubarak. El Sisi then turned to Russia and Israel, further distancing America.
The third secular dictator that Obama decided to depose was Bashar al-Assad of Syria. At first the Obama administration tried to broker a peace deal between him and Israel. This effort was short-lived.
After the civil war in Syria started, Obama called for his ouster and promoted the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist, Erdogan, to lead the opposition. That did not go well. Erdogan, Obama’s “best friend,” started with a grandiose buildup and goals but has met one defeat after another. He is now excluded from any role in Syria or Iraq and has made Russia into an enemy. Obama is no longer at his side. And we stopped hearing from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Russia is now in charge and running the show in Syria. Obama has become a bit player. He is still mouthing platitudes in support of a peace process and a unified Syria. There is no way that Iran or Russia will agree to elections because the Alawites, who are the backbone of the Syrian regime, are only about 20% of the population. But they would agree to severing Alawite Syria from the rest. Russia wants to retain her naval base on the Mediterranean and her airfield nearby. Iran wants to keep Alawite Syria as an ally because the Alawites are Shiites and because it gives them a land connection to Hezb’allah who are also Shiites.
It remains to be seen what Russia and the US and the Sunnis will do with ISIS and whether Iraq is also broken up into three parts; one for the Kurds who already enjoy autonomy, one for the Shiites who represent 60% of the population and one for the Sunnis. Thus Sunni Iraq and Sunni Syria can get together if the parties agree.
Russia and Israel have cut a deal respecting each other’s sphere of influence in Syria.
Obama got the P5+1 to arrive at the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He then went all in to get Congress to accept the deal. By most accounts, the deal was a horrible idea even if honored by Iran. She will get the bomb in 13 years maximum. You will recall that the ISG recommended working with Iran to help solve the Iraq problem. That is exactly what Obama is doing.
In summary, then, Obama has been following the worst aspects of the recommendations of Rumsfeld and Baker though rejected by Bush. Bush wanted to retain an American military presence in Iraq. Obama withdrew completely. He also followed Bush’s lead in calling Islam a religion of peace and went one step further by refusing to identify the terrorists as Islamic. Bush contented himself with saying that the true Islam has been hijacked by the Islamists. Bush worked with the Saudis whereas Obama has thrown them under the bus and is engaging with Iran instead.
Bush promised to get rid of all terrorists and regimes that harbor them. Obama decided to take down Gadhafi, Mubarak and Assad to stop dictator-supported terrorism. But rather than support the opposition to replace them as Rumsfeld had proposed, he backed the Muslim Brotherhood, identified by Britain and others as an Islamic terrorist group. He ended up with chaos in Libya, the Egyptian army in control of Egypt, Russia now in charge of Assad, all of whom are threatened by ISIS and other Islamist groups who are fostering much more terrorism that the dictators ever did. He has put Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Sinai in the crosshairs of both Iran and ISIS. The Dictators didn’t plan to conquer the West. The Islamists do.
So far everything the Bush and Obama administrations have done has made it worse for the West. The US has not figured out who the enemy is nor how to deal with the threats.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Ted Belman is the editor of Israpundit
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December 27, 2015
Change in Iran is the sole solution to resolve Middle East crises, end terrorism
By Shahriar Kia
Comments 1
After the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris and the ensuing California shooting rampage, democratic societies are anxiously rushing to impose harsh measures and new anti-terrorism laws to erect a defensive shield in the face of terrorists and extremists. Although these actions aimed at preventing yet another catastrophe in Europe and America are necessary, they actually fall short. The most important step necessary to bring an end to attacks by terrorist groups is to focus on their roots and stopping the motivating force behind all the sectarian cultures seen in different shapes and forms, from ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Lebanese Hizb’allah and other ruthless and lethal groups that deviously act under the flag of Islam. The true solution to guarantee world security lies in completely annihilating the roots that allow the growth of this notorious sectarian mentality. Iranian opposition leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, with over three decades of experience in the fight against fundamentalism, said in a recent speech in Paris: “As long as the factories of cultural motivations continue to burn the midnight oil for terrorism in Syria, Iraq and Iran, the current threat from terrorist groups that have risen from religious powers against democracy and freedom will never bear any fruit.”
After witnessing vicious measures and fatwas issued by Iran’s mullahs, terrorist groups that have staged vicious attacks against innocent people in the past decade under the name of Islam are all religiously motivated in their crimes. In the past three decades over 100,000 political dissidents have to this day been horrifically massacred by the mullahs ruling Iran. Beheadings, amputating limbs, raping women, executions and hangings of dissidents, even pregnant women in Iran under the name of “moharebe” (enmity against God) are all the sources of motivation for ISIS, al-Qaeda and Shiite militants roaming in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and of course the crimes against innocent people in Paris and San Bernardino in California.
However, what has made the effectiveness and impact of the war against terrorism and fundamentalism more complicated, and resulting in the world completely forgetting about the roots of this crisis, is the newborn phenomenon called ISIS. Bashar Assad and the Iranian regime are profiting the most from ISIS’ atrocities, diverting all attention from the main epicenter of this problem and legitimizing the West’s failure in not supporting the democratic, moderate opposition in Syria and other countries.
The great divide in today’s Muslim world is not as some so conveniently argue as being between Shiite and Sunni, as if this is a battle that has gone for centuries. In fact, the great divide today is between Shiite and Sunni extremists faced against moderate Muslims who have a very different view of Islam on the other.
“…the United States must join forces with moderate Muslims, including Iranian dissidents, who can lead in the all-important ideological fight, promoting a tolerant interpretation of Islam that respects human rights, women’s rights, democracy, and the rule of law,” wrote Governor Tom Ridge, the first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in a recent article.
Some are heard backing cooperation with Bashar Assad and Tehran in the fight against ISIS, arguing that the international community needs a ground force such as that of Bashar Assad and the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards to fight ISIS. This is nothing but a deception and plot planned by Tehran and Damascus, and a childish understanding of the current crisis engulfing the Middle East and the fight against terrorism. One is reminded of Iran’s devious misinformation campaign regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that led to the 2003 U.S.-led campaign of invading Iraq, which itself is another long story. Anyhow, neither the Assad army -- whatever is left of it -- nor Iran’s IRGC are able to take on ISIS and destroy it. If there was actually such a potential the results would have been witnessed by now on the ground in Iraq and Syria.
The united fundamentalist front, with its heart beating in Tehran, is attempting to maintain ISIS and take full advantage of its atrocities in order to divert all public opinion from the root cause of this international dilemma. Reports confirm that Bashar Assad and former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki are closely associated to the Iranian regime. By releasing 2,000 prisoners – all senior al-Qaeda and ISIS commanders – they played a major role in the rise and growth of ISIS. The crackdown carried out by Iran-linked Shiite militias in Iraq targeting the country’s Sunni minority community paved the grounds for ISIS recruiting and boosted its growth efforts immensely.
Although there are differences in mentalities between Sunni and Shiite extremist groups, the roots of all such groups and the existing unit amongst Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist groups lie in Iran under the mullahs’ rule.
Therefore, the correct strategy in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism and extremism is to sack Bashar Assad from power and annihilate the front that has its capital and headquarters stationed in Iran. The regime in Iran must be evicted from Iraq and Syria. The very reasons behind the existence of ISIS are none other than the Iranian regime and Bashar Assad.
The most important necessity in the struggle against terrorism and extremism under the banner of Islam is for Muslims to play a role in the military, and of course the cultural scene to isolate this evil phenomenon.
“The NCRI has emerged as a powerful force for a values-based, mainstream, tolerant, non-violent Islam. A force that a lot of the non-Muslim world has been pleading for a long time. The civilized world needs you now more than ever,” Senator Joseph Lieberman said at a recent conference near Paris.
Without a doubt, the recently formed coalition of Islamic countries in support of democracy against fundamentalism must be supported and strengthened. Only through such a policy can the free world be successful in uprooting terrorism in the name of Islam, be it Sunni or Shiite.
Shahriar Kia is a press spokesman for Iranian opposition in Camp Liberty, Iraq, who advocates for a democratic, secular, nuclear-free Iran. He graduated from North Texas University. His Twitter handle is @shahriarkia
It seems that the U.S., without a Minuteman missile force, would make it easy -- in fact tempting -- for an adversary such as Russia to take out the entire U.S. strategic nuclear force in one or a series of very limited first strikes.