THE BASIC ABOUT THE REPUBLIC OF YEMEN

YEMEN has always been a wild and crazy place, I believe. My father went there

in the sixties to check it out for the New York Times, his employers at the time I remember he had a great and exciting time. As he was certainly a world traveler, it struck me that he was unusually intrigued by the place. He told me and my brother stories about how wild it was. He was blindfolded and taken at gun point to meet people in caves who gave him leaves of Quat, a plant that releases a strong stimulant (perhaps like cocaine?) that many Yemeni men chew all day long. He said he was rather scared the whole trip because very little was know about the unruly place then.

Today, in the New York Times, I was interested to read this by Glen Carey (Bloomberg News Dec. 29, 2009)

Yemen, home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, is the poorest country in the Arab world as well as a haven for Islamic jihadists.

(...and)

Yemen gained new attention in 2009 from American military officials, who are concerned about Al Qaeda’s efforts to set up a regional base there.

With fears growing of a resurgent Islamist extremism in ... Somalia and East Africa (a short distance away from Yemen, on the African mainland), administration officials and American lawmakers said

Yemen could become Al Qaeda’s next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization’s top leaders operate.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels. The White House is seeking to nurture enduring ties with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and prod him to combat the local Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian

Peninsula, even as his impoverished country grapples with seemingly intractable internal turmoil.

General Information on Yemen:

Official Name: Republic of Yemen

Capital: Sanaa (Current local time)

Government Type: Republic

Chief of State: Ali Abdallah Saleh, president

Population: 22.23 million

Area: 328,065 square miles; slightly larger than twice the size of Wyoming

Languages: Arabic

GDP Per Capita: $1,000

Year of Independence: 1990

Web site: Yemen parliament.com (In Arabic)

Sound familiar? It should. That has been the American way of fighting terrorist

insurgencies for years now. It does not work. Americans should understand the there is

no AL Qaeda hub, no one place the organization operates from. All of these poor

countries have populations ripe for the picking of desperate young people. These “terrible people” who want to kill us are just poor young boys (and girls) who cannot see a future for themselves in their homeland.

Jihadist organizations prey on them. We should protect them. Al Quaeda is everywhere they are.

Instead of millions of dollars spent on the ground fighting people we cannot

see, those funds should be used to shore up stable governments (governments the people want, not governments we fabricate like in Afghanistan) so that infrastructures of financial, health and educational systems can be built and populations can hope for progress and eventual prosperity in the future.

We should educate ourselves, also, about every single country in the world.

Everyone is a player, large or small. If we want to fight terrorrism, troops on the ground is not the way.

I’m just sayin’.