Written by Jamie MacDonald
Following the dramatic bomb scare threat on Christmas Day, Yemen has been on every newscaster’s lips, and the country is now set squarely within the cross hairs of the United States as well as Middle Eastern powers.
In recent weeks it has quickly become a hotspot for what has been termed a new wave of terrorism. The threat is viewed as real enough, seeing the United States and Great Britain close their embassies in Yemen,
Yet while the world buttresses itself against yet another terror threat, and the United States and her supporters dance with ideas of intervention, serious questions arise as to why so sudden a shift is taking place towards this little known, backwater nation? Is the United States as well as her allies capable at wielding enough force and influence on another front?
Addressing the sudden shift towards Yemen is a difficult one; it has been a nation unto itself since the Roman Empire. It is a nation divided along both religious and tribal lines and one that has held tight to many ancient traditions. Yemen is also situated at a cross roads, between Africa and the Middle East. Due to this it has become a staging point for thousands of illegal African immigrants, moving north into the oil rich and economically sound nations of the Middle East and Europe.
A multitude of factors should have been some indication of Yemen’s importance much earlier on: her hold on tradition, the ease of which migrants have been moving through, and her current economic situation. Yet the fact of the matter is that much of the world’s knowledge of this nation has come in the past couple weeks. The first that I heard about this growing concern was in the Toronto Star nearly three months ago. They went so far as to interview Osama Bin Laden’s ex bodyguard and driver, a so called “reformed terrorist” who opened their eyes up to a Yemen that seemed to be a terror rehabilitation center, a nation where terrorists go to get well.
Yet that raises the question: if hundreds of terrorists are shipped into Yemen by the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United States to undergo some form of corrective work, does this not perhaps actually give terrorism a chance to ferment and grow within the country? While you may send drug addicts to a center, and many may get well again, there are still those that will relapse. If you send the most dangerous, fanatical and faithful into a nation to be fixed, some will of course come out new individuals, yet others with most certainly not; it is sadly the case that not all people can be won over and brought back. Some form of contingency should have been put in place, with someone realizing that this does present a considerable rise in the long run.
In terms of the ability of the United States and her allies to confront whatever challenges and threats Yemen may produce, the fact that the United States has had issue winning a war on two fronts, not to mention over the course of nearly nine years, the opening of a third and equally unpredictable front within Yemen would mark a dangerous point for a nation already spread thin and reeling from internal issues.
The threat that Yemen, and the radicals that use her borders as a base, is one that should have been realized and addressed much sooner. And while still very much dangerous situation, it must be dealt with in ways other than the traditional “war on terror.”
The Unites States is spread far to thin and this traditional model has yielded little in the way of results in the past decade.