Report: West Failed in War on Terror Since It Prioritized Alliance with Arab Monarchies - Patrick Cockburn

AhlulBayt News Agency - The US, Britain and Saudi-led coalition intervention in Yemen has paved the way for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to create its own mini-state.

In an article written under the title of "Thanks to UK and US intervention, al-Qaeda now has a mini-state in Yemen. It's Iraq and Isis all over again", Patrick Cockburn, a veteran Middle East correspondent, criticizes the US and Britain for "self-inflicted failure in the war on terror". The article, published by UK-based Independent on 16 April, argues that, since 9/11, the West has failed to combat terrorism because they have given priority to retaining their alliance with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf monarchies.

"The US, Britain and regional allies led by Saudi Arabia have come together to intervene in another country [Yemen] with calamitous results," Cockburn says, adding "Instead of achieving their aims, they have produced chaos, ruining the lives of millions of people and creating ideal conditions for salafi-jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and Islamic State [ISIS terrorist group]."

The Saudi regime and its allies launched a relentless aggression against Yemen on March 26, 2015 with the stated objective of destroying the popular Ansarullah movement and restoring former Yemeni president to power, whose dysfunctional and unelected government had fled to Saudi Arabia.

The foreign-backed war on impoverished Arab state has left over 9,400 people dead, most of them civilians including thousands of women and children.

The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, markets, schools, factories and mosques.

According to veteran correspondent, "The real winners in this war are AQAP which has taken advantage of the collapse of central government to create its own mini-state. This now stretches for 340 miles – longer than the distance from London to Edinburgh – along the south coast of Yemen. AQAP, which the CIA once described as the most dangerous protagonist of “global jihad” in the world, today has an organised administration with its own tax revenues. "

"Unnoticed by the outside world, AQAP has been swiftly expanding its own statelet in Yemen in 2015/16, just as Isis did in western Iraq and eastern in Syria in 2013/14. Early last year, President Obama contemptuously described Isis as being like a junior basketball team that would never play in the big leagues. Likewise in Yemen, the American and British governments misjudged the degree to which AQAP would benefit from Operation Decisive Storm, the ill-chosen Saudi name for its military intervention that has proved predictably indecisive," he adds.

Touching on Saudi-led war's bitter repercussion for Yemen, Patrick Cockburn  cites UN as saying that 14.1 million Yemenis, 54 per cent of the population, have no access to health care, adding that "this is likely to be an underestimate."

"OXFAM estimates that 82 per cent of Yemen’s 21 million population are in need of humanitarian assistance."

He also goes on saying that "The disaster is not only humanitarian, but political, and does not only affect Yemen. As in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, foreign intervention energises and internationalises local difference as factions become the proxies of outside powers."

According to the Mideast expert, Saudi aggression on Yemen has also fueled sectarian disputes in the country between Shiites and Sunnis.

A point seldom given sufficient weight is that AQAP is expanding so fast, not because of its own strength, but because its opponents are so weak.

Rejecting Persian Gulf states-based media propaganda on Saudi-led coalition's victories in Yemen, Cockburn writes "The Saudi and [Persian] Gulf financed media often refer to pro-President Hadi forces as taking territory, but in reality the government-in-exile remains in Saudi Arabia. It recaptured the port city of Aden last summer, but its few officials who are there dare not leave their heavily-defended compound except by helicopter. Even where Saudi-backed fighters advance, they leave anarchy behind them, conditions in which the arrival of disciplined AQAP forces may be welcomed by local people."

"I have been struck, ever since the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003, by the extent to which their whole strategy depends on wishful thinking about the strength and popularity of their local ally who usually, on the contrary, is feared and hated. I seldom spoke to Afghans who truly supported the Taliban, but I was always impressed by the number who detested the Afghan government. Yet when one UN official stated publicly that the foreign powers fighting the Taliban, supposedly in support of the government, had “no local partner”, he was promptly fired."

"There was the same lethal pretence by Western powers in Libya and Syria that the rebels they backed represented the mass of the population and were capable of taking over from existing regimes. In reality, the weakening or destruction of central government created a power vacuum promptly filled by extreme jihadi groups," he stresses.

Cockburn also slams the West and mainstream media for turning blinds eye on Saudi's deadly offensive in Yemen.

"The dire consequences of the Saudi intervention and the rise of AQAP has been largely ignored by Western governments and media. Contrary to their grim-faced declarations about combating terrorism, the US and UK have opened the door to an al-Qaeda mini-state."

The Independent's correspondent warns that the West deliberate negligence on what is going on in the West Asia "will have an impact far beyond the Middle East because what makes the atrocities orchestrated by Isis in Paris and Brussels so difficult to stop is that they are organised and funded by a real administrative apparatus controlling its own territory. If one terrorist cell, local leader or bomb expert is eliminated, they can be replaced."

Finally he concludes that "As has happened repeatedly since 9/11, the US and countries like Britain fail to combat terrorism because they give priority to retaining their alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, even when their policies – as in Yemen – wreck a whole country and enable al Qaeda and Isis to use the chaos to establish safe havens".




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