In his opinion piece, Daniel Varisco outlines his belief that Yemen is not a terrorist breeding ground, although recent news has seen quite a few terrorist plots coming from Yemen (including the Christmas underwear bomber, Anwar al-Awlaqi, an Islamic lecturer who has inspired Islamic terrorism against the West, and Ibrahim al-Asiri, the suspected mastermind behind the toner bombs planted on cargo planes coming from Yemen).
Varisco asserts that “the main reason Yemen is not becoming a major international terrorist base is that the Yemeni people have their own internal problems to resolve.” While this may be true, I am certain that the Yemeni people have the ability to multitask. He goes on to claim “Yemen could indeed become a terrorist haven if the United States continues to meddle in local politics and see international terrorists behind every bush.”
I completely disagree with this stance. While his assertion that the United States needs to make sure that it is not creating terrorists by being too overbearing is reasonable, I feel that the United States has a responsibility to American citizens and the rest of the world to ensure that preventable terrorist attacks do not occur. There is no such thing as being too cautious; recent plots have come out of Yemen, therefore the United States has reason to suspect that there are terrorist actions occurring in the country. It would be a travesty if the United States backed down from fighting terrorism and protecting Americans just because we are wary of being too imperious.
I think that Ali Abdullah Saleh is exaggerating the size and scope of al-qaeda in Yemen. I think he's using fear as a way to get military aid from the United States so as to secure his own strength throughout the country. Recently the United States committed to giving Yemen $250 million in military aid, (new helicopters and hummers). But the Yemeni government responded saying this wasn't sufficient to revamp their military. Yemeni officials commented that they were looking at figure more like 6 billion dollars so as to effectively root out al-qaeda ( that seems like overkill)
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with Professor Varisco, I also read an article recently about this topic on NY Times. I think the al-qaeda threat from Yemen is exaggerated. Yemen is very tribal, and I think that helps in protecting Yemen from becoming a breeding ground for al-qaeda. These tribal identities are very strong, the NY times article talks about how some tribes have actually pushed away al-qeada from their areas. This reminds me of what occurred in Iraq in 2005, with the Sunni Awakening movement which really helped the United States and reduced the violence against American troops.
So I think there are a lot of different aspects to this, its not just the Yemeni government fighting al-qadea. Not mention how there is southern secessionist movement, and houthis in the North.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/world/middleeast/04yemen.html?scp=7&sq=yemen%20military%20aid&st=cse