How US Policy Helps Al Qaeda in Yemen

August 1, 2017

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/01/how-us-policy-helps-al-qaeda-in-yemen/

Exclusive: President Trump – like President Obama – is working at cross purposes in supposedly fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen while helping Saudi Arabia kill Al Qaeda’s chief Yemeni enemies, as Jonathan Marshall explains.

By Jonathan Marshall

In a world of bad actors, one of the “baddest” of all is the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which the CIA once branded “the most dangerous regional node in the global jihad.” It masterminded the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000; nearly blew up a U.S. passenger jet flying into Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009; brought down a UPS cargo plane in 2010; and sponsored the 2015 attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, killing 11 and wounding another 11.

All of which raises an embarrassing question: Why is the United States supporting AQAP’s main ally in Yemen, Saudi Arabia?

The respected news publication Middle East Eye reports that Abdulmajid al-Zindani, a Yemeni cleric, “veteran al-Qaeda supporter,” and “former spiritual adviser to Osama bin Laden,” has been operating freely in Saudi Arabia, even posting YouTube videos lauding the Saudi war in his home country.

Apparently no one in Riyadh cares that he’s been on the U.S. Treasury’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist List since 2004, identified as a recruiter for terrorist training camps and a key purchaser of weapons for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. Indeed, Zindani “has been warmly received by senior clerics and officials,” including one adviser to the Royal Court, according to Middle East Eye.

The publication’s sources further allege that “at least five Yemenis designated as terrorists by the U.S. Treasury have advised and coordinated Saudi operations in Yemen with allied forces on the ground.” One senior al-Qaeda supporter in Yemen, Nayif al-Qaysi, has been repeatedly interviewed in Saudi Arabia by fawning television stations. He served as governor of the Yemeni city of Bayda until late July.

Most bizarre of all, one notorious al-Qaeda fundraiser, who has lived in Saudi Arabia for nearly three years, turned up on a list of terrorists whom Saudi Arabia accused Qatar of harboring. Saudi Arabia and four other Arab states broke diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar in early June, in part over allegations that Doha supports extremists.

The Devastation of Yemen

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and other Arab allies have been laying waste to Yemen with logistic support from the United States. They are fighting to wrest control of the country from Houthi militants and their ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Riyadh aims to reinstate Saleh’s rival, President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, whose legal mandate ended in January 2015.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have died from the fighting, historic cities have been pulverized by criminal Saudi bombing raids, and more than 400,000 people have contracted deadly cholera. Almost two million children and millions more adults suffer from malnutrition owing to war-related disruptions of food supplies and a Saudi blockade of Yemen’s ports.

Suffering and chaos provide ideal breeding grounds for AQAP, which took control of a provincial capital and one of Yemen’s largest ports for many months. A special report last year by Reuters concluded that “the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, . . . backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago.”

Even the UAE newspaper The National conceded last month: “In the absence of a political resolution that addresses local grievances and builds and empowers a central state that can provide jobs and services, Al Qaeda has filled vacuums and its fighters have found a role, while a sectarian narrative that is promoted by the group has increasing traction.”

This matters not only because of AQAP’s potential threat to U.S. security, but because the only possible legal rationale for continued U.S. military involvement in Yemen is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which approves operations against al-Qaeda, not in support of its allies. Members of Congress are growing restive about such legal issues as U.S. tax dollars fund the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, with no end in sight.

Getting Stronger

AQAP has gained traction by taking advantage of growing local resentment toward U.S. and UAE counterterrorism operations that result in the murder or torture of suspects.

In a weird twist, typical of the war’s endlessly shifting alliances, AQAP has also joined pro-Saudi forces in bloody offensives to retake the southern city of Taiz from Houthi rebels.

“We fight along all Muslims in Yemen, together with different Islamic groups,” against the Houthis, said Qasim al-Rimi, the senior military commander of AQAP, this spring.

Although the United States put a $5 million price on al-Rimi’s head, Associated Press reported that his forces “regularly receive funds and weapons from the U.S.-backed Saudi led coalition.”

Ironically, just hours before U.S. commandos killed another prominent AQAP-linked tribal leader in late January (along with several children), that leader had arranged for the Saudi-backed coalition of President Hadi to pay his tribal fighters $60,000 to join in the fight against Houthi rebels.

No wonder the International Crisis Group recently reported that “The Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda is stronger than it has ever been,” and that AQAP “is thriving in an environment of state collapse, growing sectarianism, shifting alliances, security vacuums and a burgeoning war economy.” AQAP, it added, has “emerged arguably as the biggest winners of the failed political transition and civil war that followed.”

Targeting Islamist tribal leaders with more bombs, drones, and military raids — as the Trump administration seems inclined to do — will simply aggravate civilian suffering and strengthen AQAP’s political base. There’s only one way to dry up its support: the international community must demand a cease-fire, send foreign armies packing, promote a political settlement among all Yemeni stakeholders, and send food and medical aid to alleviate the population’s extraordinary suffering.

Jonathan Marshall is a regular contributor to Consortiumnews.com.

Oliver Stone Defends His Putin Interviews

July 31, 2017

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/31/oliver-stone-defends-his-putin-interviews/

Director Oliver Stone saw his four-part interviews with Russian President Putin as a way to give Americans a better understanding of a leader who has been demonized in the mainstream media, reports Dennis J Bernstein.

By Dennis J Bernstein

Not surprisingly, the U.S. mainstream media, which has obsessed over the Russia-gate “scandal” for months, is bashing director Oliver Stone for his four-part series of interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the grounds that Stone should have been tougher.

But Stone’s subtle and probing interviews of Putin — The Putin Interviews airing on Showtime — give the viewer a revealing inside look at the Russian leader, who is by all accounts extremely popular among Russians with approval ratings of around 80 percent.

I spoke with Stone at his Los Angeles offices on July 25th, soon after he was honored with the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award by Consortiumnews.com, hosted by award-winning investigative reporter, Robert Parry.

Stone also will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award “for his extraordinary contribution to the art of film” at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival in August.

Dennis Bernstein: Oliver Stone, how important was it for you to win the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award? Gary Webb, for those who don’t know, was the reporter who broke the story about the CIA’s relationship to drug traffickers.

Oliver Stone: Gary Webb was a hero of mine, as is Bob Parry. Bob has been with ConsortiumNews for many years. I met him when he was investigating the Iran-Contra affair back in the early 1990s.

DB: Of course, Gary Webb was shredded for the way in which he was able to document the end result of the CIA’s involvement with drug traffickers. For a moment he was lauded, but then he was very quickly run out of the trade.

OS: The Iran-Contra affair is a typical example of this country’s hypocrisy. It was a huge story and what Reagan did was impeachable. The mainstream press didn’t want another shake-up of the government after Nixon. There was never any proper investigation of that mess. When you hear this latest Russian hacking business, it makes you even angrier because the stuff that truly deserves to be is not investigated.

DB: Why did you choose to interview Putin at this time?

OS: While I was in Moscow talking to Edward Snowden a couple years back, I met with Mr. Putin and asked him about Snowden. He was very forthcoming and gave me his very sensible take on the whole affair. I thought it would be a good idea to continue the interviews, though I wasn’t sure he would cooperate. We did a series of four visits over two years, starting in June of 2015 and ending in February 2017. I am sure that if he had not been optimistic about the project he wouldn’t have continued. We would be in Moscow for just two or three days and it was difficult to see him for more than a couple hours at a time.

Of course, at the time, the 2016 election was supposed to be in the bag for Ms. Clinton. We went back in February to interview Putin about the election results, which became notorious. Our intention was to make a profile of a world leader who had been villainized by the United States in an almost cartoon fashion since 2006-2007. The fact that the election blossomed into this huge issue only added fuel to the fire. You’ve seen the criticism of the film in the mass media here.

DB: The corporate mainstream reporting on the Ukraine has been amazing.

OS: It is an historical inaccuracy. If you read the accounts at the time in the Washington Post and the New York Times, there was zero coverage from the other side. Reporters were dismissing these stories as conspiracy theories and this was “on the day of.” It was so evidently a coup, the Europeans knew it. Yet, in the United States, we seemed, as we often do, to be blissfully ignorant of the other side of the story.

We are looking for some justification for restarting the Cold War. It was almost as if we were back to confronting the Soviet Union again. We have been stalking Putin since he starting putting the economy back together again. Around 2004 you start to see the earliest criticism of him as a dictator and an embezzler, and so on.

And talk about meddling in elections, Putin was understated when he said that the United States was all over the Russian election in 2012. We have a clip of [Assistant] Secretary of State Victoria Nuland saying how we were trying to do all this good work in Russia, etc. We were blatantly interfering in their election. In 1996 we completely rigged the election for Yeltsin. He was so unpopular after four years in office that the communists were poised to take back the government. We arranged for him to get a gigantic loan from the IMF, among other things.

DB: What would you say were some of the most surprising moments in the Putin interviews?

OS: Well, already in the first interview we were discussing the very real threat of nuclear war. I asked about Clinton’s aggressive rhetoric and Putin said, well, we’re used to this from American political candidates. We heard it from Romney back in 2012. I think Putin assumed that Clinton was going to win the election. Trump’s name never came up. You know, Russian diplomats complain that the Americans talk to them like cowboys, like barbarians. From the perspective of other countries, we declare wars in our election campaigns.

Putin talked with me at length about nuclear parity. I don’t think most Americans realize that when Bush abrogated the non-proliferation treaty in 2001 we were removing one of the principal cornerstones of our national security. And then we put the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] in Poland and more recently in Romania.

In 2009 Obama announced that we would be spending trillions of dollars to modernize our nuclear arsenal, and now Trump declares that we are going to win the next war. It is frightening as hell to the Russians. Putin pointed out that they currently have one-tenth of our military budget. All kinds of horrors could be in store if the United States tries to press its advantage with nuclear weapons.

DB: Was it your intention in these interviews to try to humanize Putin, if not for US leaders, at least for the American people? To give them the sense that there is someone we can deal with, who we can step back from the brink with?

OS: I am sure that he was willing to speak to me, to a private citizen, to someone not in a position of political power, because he wanted to send a message to the American people. I am sure he was quite surprised that Showtime picked it up and disseminated it in our country as well as in Europe.

Putin is well aware that the media in this country never really brings across what he is trying to say. I have been very impressed with his speeches. For example, the theme of his 2007 Munich [Security Conference] speech is still very relevant. He saw what was going on in the world, with our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. That speech was never really reported here in the United States. It is disgraceful that we cannot take an important foreign leader seriously and report his own words.

DB: It seems this is the way you succeed in US journalism, by bashing so-called enemies as opposed to trying to understand them and articulate their position.

OS: Even in the depths of the Cold War, Khrushchev and later Brezhnev weren’t ridiculed on a personal level to the extent that Putin has been.

DB: Clearly we live in dangerous times, perhaps more dangerous than at the time of Cuban missile crisis.

OS: We’re seeing Europe begin to wake up and realize that NATO is not what it was proposed to be and that the United States is not such a great partner to have. Maybe the US is just interested in Europe as a buffer state between us and them. Maybe Europe is beginning to feel more like a hostage than an ally. If the United States cannot yield its superiority, it is going to be a very rocky road ahead for everyone.

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.