Thomas Gaist
One day after Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi announced his
resignation amidst the occupation of his government’s central facilities
and his private residence by Houthi militants, a chorus of voices from
the US political establishment and punditry are calling for expanded US
and NATO military operations across the Middle East and Africa.
The collapse of the Yemeni regime, which was previously sustained by
hundreds of millions in military aid flowing from Washington, represents
another major debacle for US imperialism in the Middle East. In the
face of popular hatred, the US relied on Hadi and his predecessor, Ali
Abdullah Saleh, to rubber-stamp authorization for drone missile strikes
and cover up the civilian death toll.
Yemen was previously upheld as a successful model of the Obama
administration’s “intelligence-driven, dynamic targeting,” strategy, in
which a relatively "lite" US military presence collaborates with local
forces to coordinate air strikes and special forces raids.
Now these methods have succeeded only in completing the implosion of
Yemeni society and the creation of a political situation in which the
major contending forces consist of a Shia militia aligned with Iran and
the local affiliate of Al Qaeda, with the country’s partition a real
possibility.
Remarks late this week from Obama administration officials,
legislators, and a small army of former military officials and security
experts made clear that together with the Charlie Hebdo attacks - now
commonly attributed to the Yemen based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
- the Houthi takeover is to serve as the pretext for new wars and
interventions directed against Iran and its regional allies and proxies
in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well as against extremist groups
including Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Yemen's Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, and Nigeria's Boko Haram.
The Houthis, a movement based in Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority, seized
power in part by successfully exploited hostility to the US drone war
and military presence in the country.
In the wake of Hadi’s ouster, the US military ordered emergency
deployments near Yemen in preparation for a range of contingencies. “We
are continuing to closely monitor the situation in Yemen,” a Pentagon
spokesman said Wednesday.
“The unrest in Yemen is a concern overall. The [USS] Iwo Jima and
[USS] Fort McHenry are on station, and between those two warships,
there’s enough combat power to respond to whatever contingency may come
up,” the US military spokesman said.
During remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos Friday, US
Secretary of State John Kerry and French President Francois Hollande
issued similar calls for a comprehensive expansion of NATO military and
intelligence operations throughout the Middle East and Africa.
Kerry cited numerous countries as prime targets for new Western
military incursions. “We must eliminate Daesh [ISIS], strengthen
Somalia, intensify our efforts in Nigeria, and strike at the tentacles
of al-Qaeda in Yemen, the Maghreb, and wherever else they appear,” Kerry
said.
Kerry also pointed to Central African Republic, Libya, and
Afghanistan as countries where new “long term” military interventions
had become necessary. The NATO powers must focus their operations on
“zones of greatest vulnerability,” including “the Horn of Africa,
segments of the Swahili coast, the area around Lake Chad, and certain
parts of the greater and south central Asian region,” Kerry said.
In high-flown rhetoric evoking an epochal struggle, Kerry compared
the fight against Islamic extremist groups to the US military campaign
against Nazi Germany, saying that Islamic State, Boko Haram, and similar
groups pose an existential threat to the US-dominated political order
established after World War II.
“This is a threat to the entire structure that we have worked so hard
to put in place since the end of World War II. It’s a threat to
nation-states. It is a threat to rule of law,” Kerry said.
The representative of US imperialism attributes to a handful of
Islamist militants the crisis of the capitalist nation-state system that
has arisen out of the contradictions of the capitalist system itself,
giving rise to a new era of militarist aggression and drive toward world
war.
Kerry also announced Friday that he will travel to Nigeria to confer
with officials there about further US involvement in the Nigerian
government’s war with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
Also speaking in Davos, French President Hollande vowed that France
will steadily escalate its already substantial military presence in
Africa. “In Africa, France is on the ground and it will continue to be
so more than ever before. It will be present to bring help to those
countries who are having to deal with the scourge of terrorism,”
Hollande said.
"I’m thinking of the Sahel, in particular, but also the situation in
Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad, who are under attack from Boko
Haram,” he said.
Kerry’s and Hollande’s remarks were accompanied by an appearance by
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who demanded that the Western
military alliance supply more aid to his government’s fight against
ISIS.
Numerous other voices from the US political and military elite argued
that the collapse of Yemen’s officially recognized government posed the
necessity for aggressive new US military action.
“AQAP is fresh off its attack on Paris and has grown since 2009 into
the most dangerous al-Qaeda affiliate in the world. It has attacked
Detroit and Chicago. It is dedicated to overthrowing the House of Saud,”
former CIA and Pentagon official Bruce Riedel wrote in Al Monitor.
US Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the Houthi coup in Yemen represents
“a big step forward for Al Qaeda” and a “win for Iran.” He repeated the
mantra that AQAP constitutes the “most toxic, most lethal Al Qaeda
affiliate.”
Royce praised the deposed Yemeni president for his collaboration in
the US drone war. “Hadi was particularly helpful to the US in assisting
us in targeting drone strikes against Al Qaeda” and was a “very close
ally and partner,” Royce said.
The “global jihadist threat” is “greater than at any time in our
history,” senior Defense Department official Michael Vickers said
Wednesday in remarks to the Atlantic Council.
“Attacks on the West in particular are very high on their list and
increasing in priority,” said Vickers, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for
intelligence.
“Few on the ground see anything but an Islamic State on the move,” the Wall Street Journal warned.
US counterterrorism policy in Yemen is “in tatters,” the Washington Post
reported. “If order and a friendly regime are not restored soon in
Yemen, the White House may be confronted with a difficult choice: keep
flying the drones even if they violate Yemeni sovereignty, or halt the
operations and ease up on al-Qaeda,” the Post argued.
Former US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche told the Post that the Houthi coup marked a turning point in US policy.
“I don’t think we’ll just want to continue running operations like we
have done the last several years,” Seche said, suggesting that a
considerably more aggressive intervention is on the agenda.
Meanwhile, an OxFam report published Friday found that Yemen faces a
“humanitarian disaster” that places “millions of lives at risk.” Some 50
percent of Yemenis require some form of humanitarian assistance, with
nearly a million children in the country subsisting on the verge of
starvation, OxFam found. Saudi Arabia, which provided much of the
funding for Yemen’s government, cut off most of its aid after the
Houthis seized control of the capital in September.
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