The Untold Story of Yemen
By Ramzy Baroud
15 May 2014
A CNN news anchor read the news bulletin on May 8, “In Yemen today, the U.S. Embassy is closed to the public. Officials telling CNN there is credible information of a threat against western interests there.”
This is CNN’s Yemen. It is a Yemen that seems to exist for one single purpose, and nothing else: Maintain western, and by extension, U.S. interests in that part of the world. When these interests are threatened, only then does Yemen matter.
Every reference in that specifically tailored discourse serves a purpose. It is as if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) exists to justify U.S. military intervention and unending drone war. Last April, 63 Yemenis were reportedly killed in U.S. drone strikes allegedly targeting al-Qaeda. No credible verification of that claim is available and none of the victims have been identified. “Signature” drone strikes don’t require identification, we are told. It could take months, if not years, before rights groups shed light on the April killings, which are a continuation of a protracted drone war.
The western narrative of Yemen is unmistakable. It is driven by interests and little else. It is ultimately about control of strategic areas. Yemen’s access to major waterways — the Red Sea, Gulf of Eden and the Arabian Sea — and its close proximity to Africa and Somalia in particular, all point to unrivalled significance of Yemen to the U.S. and other western powers. In this narrative, Yemen is about oil and security. It is about the kind of “stability” that guarantees that the status quo concerned with western interests remain intact.
Little Was Known About Yemen
In fact, little was known about Yemen in the West before October 2000, when U.S. naval vessel U.S.S Cole was damaged in a suicide attack, killing 17 U.S. military men. The attack was later blamed on al-Qaeda, paving the way for the opportune narrative, which continues to define U.S. involvement in Yemen until this day.
The U.S. “war on terror” had in fact reached Yemen even before the war in Iraq was unleashed a few years later. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands were displaced. The people of that poor, divided, corruption-laden country were punished so severely for crimes they didn’t commit.
The reason that the “war in Yemen” has never morphed into a “war on Yemen” is because the ruling class of that country found a way to co-exist with the ever-prevalent U.S. interests, including their violent dimensions. Just as the U.S. began its military push against Yemen, then President Ali Abdullah Saleh introduced a referendum to modify the constitution in order to boost his (and his family’s) political power and extend his mandate.
Many Yemenis lost their lives protesting Saleh’s move. Washington, however, didn’t seem to mind. Saleh knew the price expected of him to ensure the barter. In November 2001, he made a highly choreographed visit to then U.S. President Bush in Washington, declaring that Yemen had officially joined the U.S. “war on terror.” The war in Yemen carried on for years, without mass protests in London and New York demanding an end to that war, as was the case in Iraq.
Despite the military hardware, the military strikes, the drone attacks and the piled bodies of rarely identified victims, the war simply didn’t exist, although the facts prove otherwise.
Yemen Is Rebellious And Proud
But intersecting with that Yemen, there is a Yemen that is poor, a Yemen that is rebellious and proud, and a Yemen that is marred in a civil war and seemingly endless division.
The popular consciousness of Yemen is simply astounding. How could a people of a country, so poor and so divided, command a level of mass mobilization that is hardly paralleled anywhere else?
This is the dissident and spirited Yemen. Its youth have turned political organization into a form of art. When they amassed their popular, non-violent forces in major Yemeni cities in January 2011, there seemed to be no force, however lethal, capable of removing them from the squares. Indeed, Saleh wholeheartedly tried, but the more he killed, the more committed to their non-violent resistance the Yemenis became, and the quicker their numbers multiplied.
This politically conscious Yemen overlaps with another one, a Yemen of shocking statistics. It is a country of 25 million, where 54 percent live below the poverty line and where unemployment among youth exceeds 60 percent (general unemployment stands at 40 percent according to recent government reports cited by Al Monitor). Millions of Yemenis are malnourished. Malnutrition levels are the second highest in the world. 4.5 million are food insecure. Nearly half of the country’s children suffer from stunted growth.
Yemen’s problems and failures are discussed based on other variables — corruption, poor governance and such. Millions of people are hungry, desperate and frightened by the complete lack of security.
Official Yemeni Discourse
The official Yemeni discourse is even more curious. Formed in November 2011, after Saleh handed powers to his deputy, now President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, the Yemeni government continues to speak of dialogue and reforms. The National Dialogue Conference concluded in Jan 2014 after 10 months of intense discussions. In February, a governmental committee approved the recommendation of turning Yemen into a federation of six regions. This is meant to be the first practical step toward a lasting political transition, but it is likely to inspire further divides where some southern parties are vying for complete secession from the north and are now organizing to defeat the government initiative.
But why are we too hesitant to tell the Yemeni story as it is, with all of its complexities and details? Are we intimidated by the sheer intricacy of the story? Or is it because we remember Yemen whenever it is convenient to do so?
Western media knows Yemen whenever al-Qaeda threatens western interests, or when angry tribesmen blow up an oil pipeline.
Throughout much of 2011, Arab media covered Yemen around the clock promoting an indiscriminate “Arab Spring” narrative, with little regard to the distinctiveness of the Yemeni story. When the spring didn’t deliver what it promised, Yemen was disowned and forgotten.
The odd thing is that there is only one Yemen and one Yemeni story. Until we realize this, Yemen shall continue to be divided into mini-stories and numerous narratives that hardly overlap in our news broadcasts, despite the fact that they always really do.
Palestinian-American journalist, author, editor, Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) taught Mass Communication at Australia's Curtin University of Technology, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle. Baroud's work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide and his books “His books “Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion” and “The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle” have received international recognition. Baroud’s third book, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story” narrates the story of the life of his family, used as a representation of millions of Palestinians in Diaspora, starting in the early 1940’s until the present time.
Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2014/05/15/The-untold-story-of-Yemen.html
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/the-untold-story-yemen/d/77024