-Caveat Lector- >From wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East What is happening in Yemen? Relations with Britain continue to worsen By Barbara Slaughter 27 January 1999 Relations between Britain and Yemen continue to deteriorate daily. On January 25, Yemen made an official request for the extradition of Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri, amidst claims that Britain had a long record of harbouring terrorist groups intent on destabilising the Yemeni government. The official Yemeni news agency said a letter from President Saleh addressed to Tony Blair "expresses the discontent of the Yemeni Government with the terrorist activities led by the terrorist Abu Hamza al- Masri and other people from British territory." This follows a month-long dispute over who was to blame for the deaths of three British and one Australian tourist in Yemen during an abortive rescue attempt. An examination of the events of the past month reads like a Le Carré novel. It raises more questions than answers over what has led to the recent antagonisms. On December 23 seven men were arrested, including three Britons of Pakistani origin. The Yemeni government claimed they were carrying plans to blow up a church, a hotel and the British consulate. They also say weapons, bomb-making equipment and terrorist training videos were found. Those arrested included Hamza-al-Masri's stepson and an Algerian who is engaged to his sister. His 17-year-son is still on the run. The men and their relatives have denied all charges. Confessions by three of those arrested are said to have been extracted under torture and have been withdrawn. Five days after the arrests, members of the Islamic Army kidnapped 16 Western tourists in Yemen. Within 24 hours, 200 government troops mounted an attack on the kidnappers' hideout and three Britons and an Australian were killed. This was severely criticised by the British authorities. In response the Yemeni government stated that the Islamic Army was allied with al-Masri and that Britain had prior knowledge of its plans. Britain denied this and a team of four Scotland Yard detectives and ten FBI agents was sent to Yemen to investigate the kidnapping. Within 24 hours the FBI declared that Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile accused by the US of masterminding the twin bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last August, was responsible. The trial of the kidnappers opened on January 13. It is impossible at this point to verify the conflicting versions of events presented by Yemen and Britain. No hard evidence has been produced to indicate that the arrested men were engaged in terrorist activity, or to back up the accusation of British collusion. Nevertheless, the tensions underlying these charges have their foundation in the constant imperialist interventions in the region. In this, moreover, Saudi Arabia has played a key role. Yemen incorporates the former British protectorate of Aden relinquished in 1967. With a population of 18 million, it is one of the world's poorest countries. The present regime dates back to 1990, when the People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen and the Yemen Arab Republic in the North, unified into a single state--in an attempt to attract the inward investment necessary to develop the oilfields on the border between the two areas. The old ruling parties in each region maintained their own armed forces, security services and bureaucratic structures. In the 1993 elections the General People's Congress, the party of the more populous North, ousted the previously Moscow-dominated Yemeni Socialist Party. Ever since, the country has been wracked by economic crisis. It was made to pay a heavy price for its refusal to support the US in the gulf war. After the war, Saudi Arabia expelled 800,000 Yemeni guest workers, severely affecting the country's balance of payments, and the US slashed its aid by 85 percent. In 1994 the crisis sharpened, with a 12 percent decline in the currency in one week. Conflicts between the leaderships of North and South reached breaking point, leading to heavy fighting between rival army units in April that year. Vice-president Ali Salim al-Bid, the former leader in the South, announced the secession of a new Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY), but his forces were defeated. He escaped to Saudi Arabia, which had supported him during the conflict. The economic crisis has worsened with the collapse of world prices for oil. The IMF, World Bank and European Union have approved loan and credit packages, but have insisted on a programme of restructuring. Subsidies on basic foodstuffs have been removed and prices of basic necessities like petrol, wheat, flour and cooking oil have risen by more than 50 percent since last June. This has provoked widespread opposition to the ruling regime. Last summer 250 people were killed in clashes between armed tribesmen and government forces. Much of this opposition has fallen under the leadership of rival fundamentalist groups, which are in turn open to outside manipulation. The Islamic Army, which staged the latest kidnapping, originated in South Yemen 15 years ago, in opposition to the Soviet-backed government. Many went on to fight the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the Afghan war ended, it is claimed that military training camps were set up in Yemen by an associate of Osama bin Laden. Though he has since been recast as a bogeyman by the US government in order to justify its activities in the Middle East, bin Laden was financed by the CIA during the Afghan war. During the Yemeni civil war the Islamic Jihad or "Afghanis" supported the northern army against what they called "the atheists" in the South. When the war ended in 1994, concessions were made in an attempt to neutralise them. The president renewed the hereditary landholdings of Tariqal-Fadhli, one of their leaders, and appointed him a member of his personal advisory body, called the consultative council. A force of between 8,000 and 10,000 militants were allowed to set up training camps near Ibb in the North and Mudiyah in Abyan province, where the recent shoot-out with government forces took place. Recently, under US pressure, the government arrested several individuals. According to the Financial Times, the Islamic Army is now financed from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, by members of the ruling families. This is partially motivated by a 64-year-old border dispute, but is also a way of pressurising the Yemeni government to be more compliant with US foreign policy in the gulf. The Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland last year provided the pretext for the Blair government to enact legislation enabling the conviction of those conspiring within Britain to commit terrorist offences anywhere in the world. Yet despite being anxious to maintain good relations with the oil-rich Arab states, the Labour government has taken no action against al-Masri's organisation. The security forces have been monitoring its activities for two years and say it has stayed within the law. This is what has led to charges that Britain is involved in or at least condones activities on behalf of Saudi Arabia against the Yemeni government. To complicate matters, Saudi Arabia has formally protested the presence in Britain of al-Masri. Britain's actions in the Middle East are decided according to its national interest. Following the Labour government's endorsement of the US bombing of the Sudan and Afghanistan, Defence Secretary George Robertson warned that if Britain's interests were threatened in any part of the world there would also be "a price to be paid". Yemen is in a strategic position at the base of the Arabian Peninsula, at the southeastern entrance to the Red Sea. If the government formed an alliance with Sudan and Eritrea, they could control oil and other commercial traffic through the Red Sea. This could also affect the access of British and American naval vessels to the Persian Gulf via the Mediterranean/Suez Canal. America is at present negotiating with the Yemeni government to lease facilities for its naval ships in the port of Aden. Despite recent bellicose noises, the Yemeni government is anxious to develop relations with both countries and earlier applied for membership of the Commonwealth. Top of page Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1998-99 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq MI6 involved in spying against Iraq through UNSCOM By Julie Hyland 26 January 1999 An investigation by the Independent newspaper disclosed on Monday, January 25 that British secret intelligence agents worked as part of the United Nations teams of arms inspectors (UNSCOM) in Iraq. According to sources in Whitehall and at the UN in New York, British MI6 officers first infiltrated UNSCOM in 1991. The Independent quoted these sources as saying, "A number of officers were asked if they were interested in the posting--one officer joined for a period," and that additional officers were thought to have rotated through the teams. Spies were drawn from the intelligence services in Britain, as well as the US and Israel. Acting on the disclosures, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker was to table a series of questions on MI6 involvement in UNSCOM to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Defence Secretary George Robertson. Baker said that he would be "very, very angry if the independence and integrity of the UNSCOM was compromised in this way. To include MI6 and Ministry of Defence intelligence staff deliberately in the UN teams is to undermine the UN itself." The Foreign Office, which selects British members for UNSCOM, has so far refused to comment on the disclosures. It also refused to make available a list of the British weapons inspectors, claiming that such a list was not available. The Independent investigation follows revelations earlier this month that information passed to Washington by weapons inspectors had been used to identify targets in last month's British and American attacks on Iraq. Most controversial have been reports that the US supplied UNSCOM with an eavesdropping device to tap Iraqi officers' communications. Sources say the US demanded overall control of the machine and made sure all data received was shown only to experts from a narrow club of states. Those with full access reportedly came from just four countries--the US, Australia, New Zealand and Britain. Explicitly barred were countries opposed to military action, including Russia and France. The investigation again exposes the secretive activities of the UN's supposedly neutral body. It substantiates the Iraqi regime's charge that UNSCOM functioned as a covert intelligence gathering operation on behalf of US and British imperialism. Over its eight years of operation, UNSCOM built up an extensive apparatus involving some 100 personnel. In the course of its supposed search for "weapons of mass destruction", it had access to hundreds of sites--including many factories and laboratories unrelated to military purposes. It even demanded access to the headquarters of the ruling Baath party and Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. These searches enabled the gathering of sensitive political and military information on Iraq, which was then used by the US and Britain to select targets for bombing raids. Earlier this month sections of the American press revealed details of the how UNSCOM inspections provided a regular stream of information to the Pentagon and CIA. UNSCOM's demands for Iraq to prove the unprovable--i.e., that it does not possess anywhere in the country the capacity to produce biological and chemical weapons--provided the pretext for imperialist aggression. The US government even participated in drafting Richard Butler's December report on UNSCOM's inspection, which was used to justify the four-day bombing raids that began on December 16. UNSCOM's role ensured that economic sanctions against Iraq have remained in place since the 1990 gulf war. The arms inspectors must confirm that all suspected weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated before the sanctions can be lifted. At the end of last year Denis Halliday, the outgoing United Nations co-ordinator of the UN "oil for food" programme, reported that 4,000 to 5,000 Iraqi children were dying every month due to the impact of sanctions. But the embargo was maintained while UNSCOM extended its spying activities on behalf of their paymasters. See Also: UNSCOM-CIA revelations show how the American people were lied to about Iraq [9 January 1999] UN inspectors in Iraq helped spy for the CIA [7 January 1999] US-British attack on Iraq Blair is Clinton's sole international ally once again [19 December 1998] Top of page Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1998-99 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq UNSCOM-CIA revelations show how the American people were lied to about Iraq Comment by Martin McLaughlin 9 January 1999 Press reports over the past week have confirmed that the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the agency charged with carrying out weapons inspections in Iraq, has functioned as an instrument of US intelligence operations aimed at overthrowing or assassinating Saddam Hussein. Articles in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other publications have provided many details about the spying activities carried out by US agents working under UNSCOM cover. These agents installed electronic equipment at UNSCOM's facilities in Baghdad, which allowed them to monitor secret communications by Iraq's Special Republican Guards and Special Security Organization. These encrypted communications were relayed by satellite to the US National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, which analyzed the conversations to collect information on the movements of Saddam Hussein and other top Iraqi officials. Some of this information was used in the targeting for last month's US-British bombing raids on Iraq. These revelations completely contradict the picture of US-Iraq relations which has been presented by successive US governments and by the daily newspapers and television networks in the eight years since the Persian Gulf war. The American people have been lied to, not once or twice, but repeatedly and on a grand scale. The American public was told that Iraq was a "rogue state" threatening the world, which had to be subjected to an unprecedented regime of weapons inspection to insure that it carried out the demands of the United Nations that it dismantle its stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and its facilities for building such "weapons of mass destruction." In reality, most such weapons and facilities were destroyed in the gulf war and the remnants were disposed of within a few months. Subsequent years of inspections have not produced any evidence that Iraq either possesses more such weapons or is in the process of producing them. Iraqi officials bitterly protested the activities of UNSCOM, declaring that its personnel were intelligence agents working for the United States, Britain and Israel and that its activities were aimed, not at weapons monitoring, but at overthrowing the government of Iraq. These charges have now been confirmed, not only in the American press, but in the statements of Clinton administration officials, who have conceded that US intelligence agents worked undercover at UNSCOM and that data collected by UNSCOM was passed on to the intelligence services of--the United States, Britain and Israel! Iraq's alleged refusal to cooperate fully with UNSCOM was used repeatedly by the Clinton administration as the pretext to justify continuing the trade embargo, enforced by US and British military forces, which has wrecked the Iraqi economy and caused the premature deaths of as many as a million people, the majority of them children. The latest revelations demonstrate that the Iraqi government was resisting, not demands for weapons inspections, but demands that it expose the innermost workings of its military and intelligence commands to agents of its bitterest enemies, to which no sovereign state could agree. The exposure of American spying under UN cover is an indictment, not merely of the US intelligence services, but of the entire media and political establishment in the United States, which has uncritically parroted the lies and propaganda of the CIA and NSA. The daily newspapers and television networks played the role of cheerleaders for a confrontation with Iraq, criticizing the Clinton administration only for being insufficiently bellicose and postponing the much desired bombing of Baghdad. In specific cases the role of the press went beyond even that of echoing war propaganda. The Washington Post has admitted that it was in possession of key details of the US spy operation in Baghdad last October, but deliberately withheld them at the request of the CIA. This was not in order to keep the operation secret from the Iraqis--they were shouting about the CIA's role in UNSCOM from the rooftops. It was to keep the operation secret from the American people, so that they could continue to be deluded by Pentagon and CIA propaganda. The UNSCOM-CIA revelations are a powerful vindication of the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site throughout 1998. During the February crisis, when US military action was only forestalled by Kofi Annan's trip to Baghdad, the WSWS denounced the provocative role of UNSCOM. One item posted February 17 carried the headline "Inspectors or spies--is there a difference?" and noted press reports about the "unpublicized assistance" to UNSCOM from the American CIA and NSA. In August, when UNSCOM inspector and ex-Marine Scott Ritter resigned, denouncing Clinton's Iraq policy as insufficiently aggressive, the WSWS commented: "His revelations have, unwittingly, shattered the pretense that UNSCOM is a purely technical and purely neutral body of arms control experts, answerable only to the UN Security Council. By Ritter's own account, UNSCOM is an intensely political body that functions as an instrument of imperialist foreign policy, first and foremost, that of the United States." In December, in the midst of the four-day US-British air war on Iraq, the WSWS commented on criticism of UNSCOM's role by French, Russian and Chinese representatives at the UN Security Council, and noted that UNSCOM's activities were widely credited in the American press with making the bomb and cruise missile attacks more accurate and effective. We wrote: "These reports cast a new and sinister light on the activities of UNSCOM during the past year, when the agency's inspectors have focused their attention on surprise visits to so-called presidential sites within Iraq--that is, the various public buildings and residences set aside for the personal use of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The question is posed: were UNSCOM's operations dictated by the need of the Pentagon to gather intelligence on the movements of the Iraqi leader, so that he could be targeted for US attack?" It is a matter of record that the World Socialist Web Site told the truth to our American and international audience, while the American media, with all its vast resources, served as an accommodating stooge of the Pentagon and CIA. See Also: US war drive against Iraq Top of page Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. 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