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FLASH 27 (3/12/02): Bush's "Second Stage" of War Poses Risks of Conflict from Yemen to Uzbekistan

By putting US troops to Yemen and Georgia as well as Iraq, President Bush is giving conspicuous implementation to his speech on March 11 about a "second stage of the war on terror." It is possible, as he clearly hopes, that someday historians will approve this bold new step into the untried fields of unilateralism. But there are also risks involved, risks that he did not address in his speech.

In the case of Yemen, the President said only that "We will help Yemeni forces with both training and equipment to prevent that land from becoming a haven for terrorists."

But it is the prediction of Stratfor.com (3/11/02) that this U.S. deployment may trigger attacks: "The United States plans to deploy up to 100 soldiers to Yemen to train local security forces and assist in Yemen's hunt for al Qaeda. But strong opposition to the presence of U.S. forces in the country remains, and the mission may trigger a surge in attacks against U.S. assets and personnel....

[Only four days later, on March 15, a man was detained after tossing concussion grenades at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, causing an explosion but no injuries.]

"Yemen, located on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is considered a likely refuge for al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan, and the U.S. mission is designed to deny them sanctuary there. However, opposition to a U.S. military presence remains high, even among members of the government. President Ali Abdallah Salih's decision to permit greater U.S. involvement in domestic military operations may prompt opponents to resort to violence against U.S. assets and personnel in the coming months....

"Yemen is more like the Wild West than a modern, industrial society. Firefights in the capital are common, much of the population carries weapons, arms smugglers and drug traffickers transit Yemen unmolested and the country serves as a networking base for militant groups from throughout the Middle East."

There have been signs in the past that Islamism, and even al-Qaeda, have their conbtacts inside the Yemen government. This emerged during the trial of members of the Islamic Army of Aden (IAA) for the fatal kidnapping of British and US tourists in December 1998. A witness testified that the lead terrorist, Abu Hassan, had made a telephone call to General Muhsin al-Ahmer, a relative of president Salih who was reported to have met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s (Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 183).

There is an Islamist opposition party, Islah, in President Salih's Congress. Islah leaders have been linked to bin Laden and have repeatedly condemned the U.S. military's presence. When the US was investigating the USS Cole bombing, the FBI was reportedly denied access to Sheik Abdul-Majeed al-Zindani, the leader of Islah's armed wing. Former deputy prime minister Abdul Wahab al-Anesi commented, "There was no justification for the Cole bombing....But the U.S. bears a great deal of responsibility for the incident for the way the U.S. deals with issues in the Middle East....The U.S. military presence is not liked....Since America is going to continue this policy, it will see a lot of things like this" (Bergen, 188-89).

Stratfor notes further that "the United States has several reasons to want to build on that relationship and expand its presence in Yemen. Beyond the immediate goal of denying al Qaeda a place to regroup, Washington also hopes to build a Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) facility on the Yemeni island of Socotra and secure access to strategic sea lanes in the Red and Arabian seas."

This is only one more sign of a long-range strategy: using the temporary al-Qaida crisis to consolidate a permanent US military presence in South and Central Asia, from Yemen to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Presumably this would lessen US dependence on its unreliable ally Saudi Arabia. But all of these new states are unstable, and the US troops in each one of them face the likelihood of being drawn into local armed comflict.

So far the Bush Administration has announced plans to send 100 US troops to train the Yemen military. But the WorldTribune.com quotes Arab diplomatic sources as saying that "200 to 400 American soldiers arrived in Sanaa over the last two weeks and are taking up positions in the northern and eastern parts of the country." This area includes the Hadramaut, a favored refuge of al-Qaeda elements for the past decade. As the State Department notes, it is also a region from which a Western oil consortium has been extracting oil since 1993.

Once again, as in Georgia, Iraq, Somalia, Central Asia, and elsewhere, Yemen is an area where oil, drugs, and terrorists are found together. As Stratfor reported last December 27, the Yemeni government has been looking for al-Qaeda terrorists in the Marib area along the border with Saudi Arabia. It added that "the Marib province is home to one of Yemen's largest oil fields and is a central locus of operations for the U.S.-based Hunt Oil Co. It is also known as one of the most lawless parts of the country, where kidnappings and attacks on oil infrastructure are common."

In a passage derided by the British journalist Peter Bergen (Holy War Inc., 32), the Swiss writer Richard Labeviere claimed that in Yemen Osama bin Laden "controls the principal routes of qat, the hallucinogenic leaf which is consumed in the Horn of Africa and the southern part of the Arabian peninsula." It is unclear to me why Bergen disbelieves this claim. Qat is the drug of preference in Somalia; while it has been alleged that many of the warlords in that country have networked with al-Qaeda, and support their armies by distributing qat.

In short it appears that Yemen has become yet another country where, thanks to the Bush Administration, US oil investments and organized drug-traffickers will now be joined by US soldiers under risk of attack. The President's lack of candor about these risks is just another sign of a growing credibility gap.