-Caveat Lector- US finds itself embroiled in Yemen: After the attack on USS Cole that left 19 American sailors dead, the US is trying to assert its ideals of democracy. Robin Allen reports Financial Times; Jun 14, 2001 By ROBIN ALLEN http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=010614001605&query=Robin+Allen When the giant Lockheed C-5 Galaxy landed at Aden's decrepit Khormaksar airport, disgorging US marines, FBI agents and their assorted vehicles, a local journalist said Yemenis understood "what it meant to be invaded by a superpower". Three days earlier - on October 12 last year - terrorists had attacked the American warship USS Cole as it was refuelling in Aden harbour, killing 19 US sailors and injuring more than 30. The US was in shock. Yemen waited. Far from cutting its losses, as some Yemenis hoped, the US dug in - deeper. Now, some analysts say the American presence amounts to its boldest and most hazardous attempt to date to assert its ideals of unity and democracy on to an impoverished Arab state. In 1994, when Yemen descended into civil war, the US was the only country to give unequivocal backing to President Ali Abdullah Saleh. After a nationwide referendum in 1990 led to the unification of conservative North Yemen with the once Marxist and Soviet-aligned South Yemen, secessionists in the south almost succeeded in tearing the new nation apart. The argument in Washington ran this way: in spite of what were perceived as past misdeeds, such as backing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Yemen had to be united to be viable. A fractured Yemen would have led to regional instability. "There is a genuine sense in Washington that if the US does not try to help Yemen, it will break up," says one western diplomat in the capital Sana'a. US involvement in Yemen was also about "supporting democracy - one of the few functioning, if sometimes stumbling, democracies in the entire region". Washington's support is not, by its own standards, particularly extensive, but for a country like Yemen - whose 19m people have an average annual income of less than Dollars 500 - it is considerable, both in material and moral terms. Grant aid, which did not exist four years ago, reached Dollars 50m last year. In addition, the US has consistently supported International Monetary Fund backing of several hundred million dollars over the past six years. There is also a small US military advisory team. But in Yemen, foreign involvement has a tradition of backfiring on both parties. Many Yemenis see history being repeated, with the Americans following the experience of the British who, after arriving in 1839, were gradually sucked into southern Yemen's ancient tribal rivalries until forced to withdraw in 1967. Yemen's mountains provide ideal refuge for Islamic extremists and militant Arab-Afghanis, some of them followers of Osama bin Laden. According to a former interior minister, more than 29,000 Arab-Afghanis came to Yemen to fight for the north in the civil war. The southern rebels, former Marxists until the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, are still regarded as un-Islamic. Many of these militants are still there, "guests" of the tribal sheikhs and Islamists who oppose Mr Saleh. Their kindred spirits took out the USS Cole. Some American commentators point to Mr Saleh's new cabinet, which, they say, reflects his commitment to domestic administrative and judicial reforms. Its members are young and educated, mostly in their 40s and with nine doctorate degrees among its 35 members, including the country's first woman minister. "They have real authority," says one commentator. But many Yemeni analysts are less sanguine. Mr Saleh's cabinet, they argue, is a mere shakshukah, a Yemeni-style scrambled eggs of previous cabinets, whose members do the president's bidding, or they give up and resign. Cabinet authority, they add, is further eroded by a dysfunctional civil service, undermined by widespread corruption and compromised by the US connection. Further aggravating matters are the scores of officially encouraged American non-governmental organisations, many of them with large numbers of women workers, who during the past two elections supervised Yemeni tribesmen on the finer points of voting. Yemen's Islamist opposition, the Islah (Reform) party, plays on all these weaknesses. Much of its support comes from the belief among many Yemenis that foreigners are behind the central government and its failure to provide basic social and economic services. The government, said one former minister, has two years to prove itself. But if reform efforts falter, and if the government then tries to rig votes at the next general elections, "we could see internal strife on the scale of 1994". Or worse, according to one Yemeni analyst, Yemen could become "another Algeria", where more than 100,000 people have been killed in civil strife in the last five years. "The president is at least trying," says one US analyst in Sana'a. "For our part, we have taken things as far as we can." That, Yemenis recall from their textbooks, is what the British said after they had signed the last of the 1,300 peace treaties in 1937 with the tribal chiefs who comprised the Aden Protectorate. On Saturday, the US embassy, citing terrorist threats, closed its premises to the public and sent home all non-essential staff and dependants. In Yemen, they say, it is more difficult to extricate yourself when you are already in deeper than you know. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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