Yemenis wearing orange jumpsuits, similar to those worn by prisoners at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, hold a protest demanding the release of inmates on hunger strike, on April 16, 2013 outside the US embassy in Sana'a. (AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED HUWAIS)[/caption]The counter-terrorism partnership between Yemen and the United States of America dates back to the very dawn of Washington's war against Al-Qaeda in 2001, when then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh recognized he would have to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent his country being invaded by foreign troops seeking to combat Islamic militants.
President Saleh argued that he would require heavy financial and military assistance from his new ally. In exchange, Yemen promised to give the Pentagon an "all-access pass," including to its airspace and intelligence data.
As the US began to escalate its global anti-Islamist rhetoric, cracking down on terror activities and the infamous "axis of evil," Yemen became the victim of its government's zeal.
A decade on, and Yemenis are slowly waking up to the realities of America's war on terror—their territorial sovereignty has been violated by incessant drone strikes, their civilians have been left terrorized and fearful that their villages and lives could be destroyed by yet another American air strike, and their fellow nationals are being unfairly and illegally detained in Guantanamo Bay prison.
With more to lose it than it seems to gain, officials in post-Saleh Yemen are fast running out of arguments to justify their dysfunctional partnership with Washington. Outraged by Washington's refusal to repatriate Yemeni nationals from Guantanamo Bay prison even though they were cleared by a court of law, frustrated relatives have been staging a series of protests at the US embassy in Sana'a, bent on generating enough media attention to force the government into action.
At one recent protest, the elderly mother of detainee Hayal Al-Mithali cried out, "I am Hayal's mother, and I'm asking the people in the US to release my son. If you lost your son for one day or one week, how would you feel? I have lost my son for twelve years." Yemen as a nation has begun to wonder why its ally against terror, the US, has trampled on its citizens' inherent and inalienable rights, acting more as an oppressor than a partner.
Yemeni officials are also having a hard time reconciling the notion that Yemen needs to tackle Islamic extremism through a partnership with the US, with the death of its civilians and the illegal detention of its nationals abroad. If in the past Washington expected to be handed an terror "carte blanche," left free to invade Yemen's airspace as it pleased and violate citizens' civil rights if deemed necessary under Saleh, it will be surprised. Yemen today is unlikely to continue to tolerate this unquestioningly.
Some fifty-six Yemeni nationals are currently sitting in Guantanamo Bay despite having been discharged by a court, because a memorandum from President Barack Obama blocked their release. A majority of the detainees have been on hunger strike and since February. Kenneth Wainstein, a top national security official at the Justice Department in the Bush administration has called the situation "unsustainable."
Security and political analysts such as Jeremy Scahill and Gregory Johnsen have already warned against the political and social repercussions of such policies. The argument states that these policies are not only counter-productive, they are dangerous, because they directly play into Al-Qaeda’s rhetoric of imperialistic Western powers invading and oppressing Muslims.
While President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi has often expressed his desire to remain an American ally, he is finding out that after three decades of dictatorship and one revolution, Yemenis have learned a thing or two about self-determination and the exercise of their constitutional rights.
Faced with the daunting notion of political and judicial accountability, officials are now looking at changing the terms of their partnership with Washington, seeking to establish a more equal counter-terror strategy that would not only take into account Yemen's national interests but would remain within legal boundaries as well.
Speaking earlier this month before an American Senate subcommittee on the social and political repercussions of drone attacks in Yemen, Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemeni journalist and human rights activist, summed up his country's conundrum. He said: "For me, personally, it is deeply troubling, astonishing and challenging to reconcile that the very same hand that taught me English, awarded me scholarships and dramatically improved my life is the hand that droned my village, terrified my people and now makes it harder for them to believe the good things that I tell them about America and my American friends."
In the long run, if Yemen is to defeat Al-Qaeda, its government will have to put in place a strategy with broad public support. Relying on force exclusively is no longer a viable option; instead, Yemen and the US will need to find a new, less military-oriented, less intrusive way to tackle terror on the ground, aiming first at destroying Al-Qaeda’s ideology rather than its infrastructure.
