By James M. Dorsey
With its winning of the bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar may face both its greatest challenge and biggest opportunity in positioning itself as a maverick regional peacemaker and agent of change.
Soccer constitutes for Middle Eastern regimes a double-edged sword. Only soccer commands the kind of deep-seated emotion evoked by Islam. And in a world of predominantly repressive regimes, soccer together with Islam provides the only public space for pent-up anger and frustration. Managing the national, ethnic, religious and social fault lines that soccer in the Middle East highlights could make cooling down football stadia in temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius the least of Qatar’s worries.
A look at the Gulf Cup that ended in Aden on Sunday as well as Middle Eastern soccer’s walk up to this year’s World Cup in South Africa tells all. To many residents of southern Yemen, which united with the north in 1990, the Gulf Cup highlighted the very reasons why southerners support cessation. It also highlighted the effect of political control of the game by regimes bent on retaining power. To southerners, Yemen’s national team represented the country’s most powerful government-aligned tribes rather than the nation. That sense was reinforced by the fact that southerners were virtually excluded from participation in the organization of the cup.
The picture is no better elsewhere in the Middle East where spectators in Lebanon have been barred from soccer games since the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; Palestinians can’t compete because of Israeli travel restrictions; Iran and Iraq’s performance has been hampered by political interference; players on Egypt’s national team have to prove not only their soccer skills but also their religious devotion; and Saudi players struggle to maintain international standards because the government discourages players from joining foreign clubs. The world’s most violent derby between Cairo archrivals Al Ahly and Zamalek constitutes an epic struggle over nationalism, class and escapism. Women’s soccer is a continuous fight for its existence in a chauvinist, male dominated world in which women playing the game is at best controversial and at worst blasphemous.
If anyone can rise to the challenge a World Cup in the Middle East poses, it is Qatar, a maverick oil-rich Gulf state that maintains close ties to Islamic radicals while hosting a US military base and has rewritten the Middle East’s heavily controlled media landscape with Al Jazeera’s often no-holds barred reporting. Qatar’s successful bid could prove to be with FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s help the monkey wrench that forces Middle Eastern rulers to recognize opportunities offered by sports to manage the region's many fault lines.
The Middle East is riper than ever for a contribution by Blatter, who has successfully imposed his will on notoriously intransigent Middle Eastern leaders seeking to control the game. Take Middle East peace for example. Blatter could engineer Israel’s return to playing World Cup qualifying games in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) against Middle Eastern teams rather than as it does against European squads in UEFA since the Arabs four decades ago forced its ouster from the AFC.
International tennis has paved the way for Blatter to force the issue. Three Israeli tennis players appeared this year at the ATP World Tour and World Tennis Association tournaments in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates despite the two countries’ formal ban on sports encounters with Israel and Israeli passport holders crossing their borders.
If Israel drew for example Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq, governments would be hard pressed to prevent their teams from playing. Stopping their teams would cost their squads valuable points and reduce, if not eliminate, their chances of reaching the Asian and World Cup finals.
The teams would face censure from FIFA, which in turn could spark riots as soccer did in Tehran in 1998 and 2001. So deep-seated is soccer passion that governments would be acting at their own peril and would likely conclude that they have no alternative but to allow their teams to play Israel. By doing so, they would effectively recognize the Jewish state and offer Middle Eastern soccer fans a picture of Israelis that differs substantially from widespread preconceptions.
Showing posts with label Yemen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yemen. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy Boomerangs in Yemen, Somalia
By James M. Dorsey
World Politics Review
U.S. and European efforts to stabilize Yemen and Somalia are boomeranging. Rather than weakening militants in both countries, Western counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies are fueling radicalism and turning wide swathes of the population against the West.
With little real effort to economically and politically stabilize the two countries, U.S. military and security support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the embattled head of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, exacerbates local fault lines and strengthens deep-seated anti-Americanism.
The backfiring of Western policies is compounded by a one-size-fits-all approach and a failure to address local grievances. To be sure, the Saleh and Ahmed governments are as much a part of the problem as they are part of the solution. This, and differences between the goals of Western nations and those of their regional allies, complicates efforts to embed security and military policy within initiatives to improve the population's economic lot and enhance good governance. Nonetheless, the incentive to get the policy right is compelling: Together Yemen and Somalia control key oil-export routes through the Gulf of Aden; mounting instability in both countries threatens regional stability in the oil-rich gulf and surrounding resource-rich African nations.
Western policy assumes that ungoverned spaces fuel instability and provide oxygen to al-Qaida's Yemeni affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and to al-Shabab in Somalia, rather than viewing both countries as territories with alternative power structures that, if properly engaged, could potentially further Western interests and undermine support for the militants. A recent Chatham House report (.pdf) concludes that "no amount of international support can compensate for the TFG's lack of internal legitimacy," a shortcoming clearly illustrated by the desertion of TFG military recruits to al-Shabab. By contrast, the emergence of stable forms of local government in Somalia based on reconciliation among clans calls into question assumptions that a lack of central-government control in Yemen must necessarily result in tribal safe havens for AQAP.
Western policy assumptions also fail to adequately distinguish between AQAP's global ambitions, which were demonstrated by the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner, with al-Shabab's continued focus on regional, rather than Western targets. For instance, al-Shabab's twin attacks in June on soccer fans in Kampala, which killed 74 people, were aimed to persuade Uganda to withdraw its troops from the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. Western policymakers also see Somali refugees as potential jihadist recruits, ignoring the fact that most of those who have fled the country did so to escape the Islamists.
The Obama administration earlier this year took a step toward expanding its regional focus beyond piracy to address the emergence of lucrative networks engaged in human trafficking as well as the smuggling of arms, drugs and fuel. To move against these networks, which often operate with the connivance of government and security officials, the administration imposed sanctions on Yemeni and Somali arms merchants with close government ties, coupled with increased efforts to strengthen the coast-guard capabilities of Yemen and Somaliland, a self-declared republic in northwest Somalia. Yet, such actions are likely to have limited effect as long as they fail to similarly align the interests of the Yemeni navy, controlled by the Defense Ministry, and the coast guard, reporting to the interior minister. They must also guarantee that these forces are complemented by an effective customs service and ensure that Somaliland anti-piracy efforts move beyond targeting only those activities that threaten the interests of government ministers.
The threat posed by misguided Western policy extends beyond the borders of Yemen and Somalia into their extensive diaspora communities. Yemenis and Somalis increasingly see the U.S. and Europe as aggressors seeking to exclude domestic actors, rather than enhancing their ability to resolve local issues and build a system that provides greater accountability. The Somali community in the United States is proving to be a fertile al-Shabab recruiting ground, while Somali-Americans constitute the largest contingent of U.S. nationals suspected of joining al-Qaida affiliates. Britain's MI5 Director-General Jonathan Evans warned last year that terrorist plots hatched in Somalia and Yemen pose an increasing threat to U.K. security.
Increasingly, Yemen and Somalia demonstrate the need for finding and supporting creative measures that involve the private sector and civic groups in efforts to deradicalize individuals and groups. Such measures do exist. One campaign backed by FIFA, soccer's world body, and local Somali businessmen has shown success at luring child soldiers away from the jihadists with a program whose slogan is "Put down the gun, pick up the ball."
Another key to a successful policy is to align Western interests and those of regional allies. In Yemen, a division of labor between the U.S. and the U.K. has emerged, whereby Washington focuses on security and London on economic issues. However, Saudi Arabia, Yemen's single largest donor, has no clear Yemen policy and simply wants to keep the country afloat. In their new book, "Yemen On the Brink," the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Marina Ottaway and Christopher Boucek caution, "Without strong pressure to address the systemic challenges facing the country, it is extremely doubtful that the Yemeni government will make any serious efforts to curb corruption, improve governance or address political grievances, which are directed against the government itself. As long as donors remain divided, there can be no such pressure on the government of Yemen."
International donors have already begun to use badly needed foreign assistance as leverage to force the Yemeni government to address the issues fueling radicalism. At a meeting earlier this year, they demanded that Yemen clearly explain how aid will be managed before monies are transferred. But such aid must also be coherently designed and integrated if it is to provide a perspective of change to significant chunks of the population and, with it, an alternative to militant Islam.
World Politics Review
U.S. and European efforts to stabilize Yemen and Somalia are boomeranging. Rather than weakening militants in both countries, Western counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies are fueling radicalism and turning wide swathes of the population against the West.
With little real effort to economically and politically stabilize the two countries, U.S. military and security support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the embattled head of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, exacerbates local fault lines and strengthens deep-seated anti-Americanism.
The backfiring of Western policies is compounded by a one-size-fits-all approach and a failure to address local grievances. To be sure, the Saleh and Ahmed governments are as much a part of the problem as they are part of the solution. This, and differences between the goals of Western nations and those of their regional allies, complicates efforts to embed security and military policy within initiatives to improve the population's economic lot and enhance good governance. Nonetheless, the incentive to get the policy right is compelling: Together Yemen and Somalia control key oil-export routes through the Gulf of Aden; mounting instability in both countries threatens regional stability in the oil-rich gulf and surrounding resource-rich African nations.
Western policy assumes that ungoverned spaces fuel instability and provide oxygen to al-Qaida's Yemeni affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and to al-Shabab in Somalia, rather than viewing both countries as territories with alternative power structures that, if properly engaged, could potentially further Western interests and undermine support for the militants. A recent Chatham House report (.pdf) concludes that "no amount of international support can compensate for the TFG's lack of internal legitimacy," a shortcoming clearly illustrated by the desertion of TFG military recruits to al-Shabab. By contrast, the emergence of stable forms of local government in Somalia based on reconciliation among clans calls into question assumptions that a lack of central-government control in Yemen must necessarily result in tribal safe havens for AQAP.
Western policy assumptions also fail to adequately distinguish between AQAP's global ambitions, which were demonstrated by the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner, with al-Shabab's continued focus on regional, rather than Western targets. For instance, al-Shabab's twin attacks in June on soccer fans in Kampala, which killed 74 people, were aimed to persuade Uganda to withdraw its troops from the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. Western policymakers also see Somali refugees as potential jihadist recruits, ignoring the fact that most of those who have fled the country did so to escape the Islamists.
The Obama administration earlier this year took a step toward expanding its regional focus beyond piracy to address the emergence of lucrative networks engaged in human trafficking as well as the smuggling of arms, drugs and fuel. To move against these networks, which often operate with the connivance of government and security officials, the administration imposed sanctions on Yemeni and Somali arms merchants with close government ties, coupled with increased efforts to strengthen the coast-guard capabilities of Yemen and Somaliland, a self-declared republic in northwest Somalia. Yet, such actions are likely to have limited effect as long as they fail to similarly align the interests of the Yemeni navy, controlled by the Defense Ministry, and the coast guard, reporting to the interior minister. They must also guarantee that these forces are complemented by an effective customs service and ensure that Somaliland anti-piracy efforts move beyond targeting only those activities that threaten the interests of government ministers.
The threat posed by misguided Western policy extends beyond the borders of Yemen and Somalia into their extensive diaspora communities. Yemenis and Somalis increasingly see the U.S. and Europe as aggressors seeking to exclude domestic actors, rather than enhancing their ability to resolve local issues and build a system that provides greater accountability. The Somali community in the United States is proving to be a fertile al-Shabab recruiting ground, while Somali-Americans constitute the largest contingent of U.S. nationals suspected of joining al-Qaida affiliates. Britain's MI5 Director-General Jonathan Evans warned last year that terrorist plots hatched in Somalia and Yemen pose an increasing threat to U.K. security.
Increasingly, Yemen and Somalia demonstrate the need for finding and supporting creative measures that involve the private sector and civic groups in efforts to deradicalize individuals and groups. Such measures do exist. One campaign backed by FIFA, soccer's world body, and local Somali businessmen has shown success at luring child soldiers away from the jihadists with a program whose slogan is "Put down the gun, pick up the ball."
Another key to a successful policy is to align Western interests and those of regional allies. In Yemen, a division of labor between the U.S. and the U.K. has emerged, whereby Washington focuses on security and London on economic issues. However, Saudi Arabia, Yemen's single largest donor, has no clear Yemen policy and simply wants to keep the country afloat. In their new book, "Yemen On the Brink," the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Marina Ottaway and Christopher Boucek caution, "Without strong pressure to address the systemic challenges facing the country, it is extremely doubtful that the Yemeni government will make any serious efforts to curb corruption, improve governance or address political grievances, which are directed against the government itself. As long as donors remain divided, there can be no such pressure on the government of Yemen."
International donors have already begun to use badly needed foreign assistance as leverage to force the Yemeni government to address the issues fueling radicalism. At a meeting earlier this year, they demanded that Yemen clearly explain how aid will be managed before monies are transferred. But such aid must also be coherently designed and integrated if it is to provide a perspective of change to significant chunks of the population and, with it, an alternative to militant Islam.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
U.S., Europe Press GCC States on Yemen Membership
By James M. Dorsey
World Politics Review
The United States and Europe are pressuring oil-rich members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GGC) to forge closer ties with Yemen in a bid to link the fight against al-Qaida to tangible economic benefits for the Arab world's poorest nation.
U.S. officials say the Obama administration recently conveyed to GCC leaders Yemen's reiteration of its 10-year-old request for GCC membership. The officials believe that U.S. and European endorsement of the request will prompt GCC leaders to respond more favorably when they meet in Abu Dhabi in December.
The U.S. and Europe are exerting pressure against the backdrop of an increasing number of attacks in Yemen on foreign diplomats and nationals. Suspected operatives of al-Qaida's Yemen-based affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), last week fired a rocket at a British embassy vehicle in the capital San'a. Employees of Austrian energy giant OMV were injured in a separate incident. The attacks on foreigners follow scores of incidents targeting Yemeni military and government officials. AQAP has killed some 100 Yemeni security and intelligence personnel in recent months in hit-and-run attacks launched by assassins on motorcycles using grenades and AK-47s.
The GCC's vested interest in ensuring stability in Yemen coupled with the Gulf's reliance for its security on the U.S. -- and to a lesser extent Europe -- militates in favor of the GCC moving beyond its repeated rejections of Yemen's aspirations. Gulf states, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, see their security threatened by AQAP as well as the Yemeni government's intermittent war against tribal rebels in the north and its fight with secessionists in the south.
The GCC, in a prelude to closer relations, has admitted Yemen to several of its institutions, including its councils of health, education, sports and culture ministers. GCC members also contribute substantially to funding of the Yemeni government's payroll. The GCC agreed last month at a meeting in New York of the Friends of Yemen, which groups 22 nations concerned about the growing strength of jihadists in the country, to open an office in San'a that would "help all donors to plan, coordinate and deliver assistance to Yemen more efficiently." GCC members have held back billions of dollars in aid pledged to Yemen because of concerns that the country would not be able to absorb the funds, and also due to widespread Yemeni corruption -- a weak argument for Gulf states that have transparency issues of their own.
A political marriage between the Gulf states and Yemen is likely to prove difficult for the conservative GCC members. In many ways, Yemen and the GCC states have little in common beyond geography and their Arab identity. Yemen is a republican democracy, at least in name, that ousted its royals in the 1960s; GCC members are all authoritarian monarchies that have forgotten that they once wallowed in the same abject poverty Yemen suffers today. Gulf leaders, particularly in Kuwait, have never really forgiven Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh for his support of Iraq during the 1990 Gulf War, in which U.S.-led forces reversed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Yemeni officials concede that in order to persuade the GCC, the government will have to improve the security situation, narrow the economic divide with the Gulf states and significantly reduce the country's addiction to qat, a plant stimulant consumed by a majority of Yemenis that is classified by the World Health Organization as a drug.
In lieu of granting Yemen full membership, the GCC is likely to look at ways of improving employment prospects for Yemenis. Yemen's economic problems were exacerbated in the early 1990s when Saudi Arabia expelled some 1 million Yemeni workers in retaliation for Yemen's support of Saddam. The expulsion deprived Yemen of badly needed remittances that were often invested into small and medium-sized enterprises that constitute the backbone of the Yemeni economy. GCC member states are discussing allowing Yemeni workers to return -- a move that segments of Gulf society, concerned about the high number of foreign, non-Arab workers in their countries, would welcome.
Twenty years on, many Yemeni workers lack the employment skills that Gulf states now require. One way GCC states may seek to compensate for that would be to grant Yemenis access to the same professional and technical training available to Gulf nationals. GCC states are also likely to fund job-creation programs in Yemen. A report commissioned by the Yemeni government recently estimated that Yemen needs to create 4 million new jobs in the next 10 years. A Saudi delegation visited Yemen this weekend as part of a project to develop Yemeni educational programs, prepare Yemeni trainers and help the government draft regulations for the Higher Yemeni Technical Institute, which is funded by the Islamic Development Bank and South Korea.
A recent report (.pdf) by a London School of Economics researcher suggested that stabilizing Yemen was a key GCC interest because the country's problems potentially foreshadow problems that could emerge elsewhere in the Gulf. "Yemen is the canary in the coal mine. It is an indication of what can go wrong when a country fails to develop political legitimacy and build a sustainable, productive non-oil economy," said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, the author of the report. "The challenges to government authority in southern and northern Yemen demonstrate how existing socio-economic discontent and regional marginalization can fracture and fragment social cohesion. Similar fissures and unequal patterns of access to resources exist in the GCC states and could become transmitters of conflict in the future."
The United States and Europe share GCC concerns about Yemen's lack of good governance. Getting the GCC to assume responsibility for helping Yemen ensure that its development aid is put to proper use will have the added advantage of focusing Gulf attention on transparency issues within the GCC itself.
World Politics Review
The United States and Europe are pressuring oil-rich members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GGC) to forge closer ties with Yemen in a bid to link the fight against al-Qaida to tangible economic benefits for the Arab world's poorest nation.
U.S. officials say the Obama administration recently conveyed to GCC leaders Yemen's reiteration of its 10-year-old request for GCC membership. The officials believe that U.S. and European endorsement of the request will prompt GCC leaders to respond more favorably when they meet in Abu Dhabi in December.
The U.S. and Europe are exerting pressure against the backdrop of an increasing number of attacks in Yemen on foreign diplomats and nationals. Suspected operatives of al-Qaida's Yemen-based affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), last week fired a rocket at a British embassy vehicle in the capital San'a. Employees of Austrian energy giant OMV were injured in a separate incident. The attacks on foreigners follow scores of incidents targeting Yemeni military and government officials. AQAP has killed some 100 Yemeni security and intelligence personnel in recent months in hit-and-run attacks launched by assassins on motorcycles using grenades and AK-47s.
The GCC's vested interest in ensuring stability in Yemen coupled with the Gulf's reliance for its security on the U.S. -- and to a lesser extent Europe -- militates in favor of the GCC moving beyond its repeated rejections of Yemen's aspirations. Gulf states, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, see their security threatened by AQAP as well as the Yemeni government's intermittent war against tribal rebels in the north and its fight with secessionists in the south.
The GCC, in a prelude to closer relations, has admitted Yemen to several of its institutions, including its councils of health, education, sports and culture ministers. GCC members also contribute substantially to funding of the Yemeni government's payroll. The GCC agreed last month at a meeting in New York of the Friends of Yemen, which groups 22 nations concerned about the growing strength of jihadists in the country, to open an office in San'a that would "help all donors to plan, coordinate and deliver assistance to Yemen more efficiently." GCC members have held back billions of dollars in aid pledged to Yemen because of concerns that the country would not be able to absorb the funds, and also due to widespread Yemeni corruption -- a weak argument for Gulf states that have transparency issues of their own.
A political marriage between the Gulf states and Yemen is likely to prove difficult for the conservative GCC members. In many ways, Yemen and the GCC states have little in common beyond geography and their Arab identity. Yemen is a republican democracy, at least in name, that ousted its royals in the 1960s; GCC members are all authoritarian monarchies that have forgotten that they once wallowed in the same abject poverty Yemen suffers today. Gulf leaders, particularly in Kuwait, have never really forgiven Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh for his support of Iraq during the 1990 Gulf War, in which U.S.-led forces reversed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Yemeni officials concede that in order to persuade the GCC, the government will have to improve the security situation, narrow the economic divide with the Gulf states and significantly reduce the country's addiction to qat, a plant stimulant consumed by a majority of Yemenis that is classified by the World Health Organization as a drug.
In lieu of granting Yemen full membership, the GCC is likely to look at ways of improving employment prospects for Yemenis. Yemen's economic problems were exacerbated in the early 1990s when Saudi Arabia expelled some 1 million Yemeni workers in retaliation for Yemen's support of Saddam. The expulsion deprived Yemen of badly needed remittances that were often invested into small and medium-sized enterprises that constitute the backbone of the Yemeni economy. GCC member states are discussing allowing Yemeni workers to return -- a move that segments of Gulf society, concerned about the high number of foreign, non-Arab workers in their countries, would welcome.
Twenty years on, many Yemeni workers lack the employment skills that Gulf states now require. One way GCC states may seek to compensate for that would be to grant Yemenis access to the same professional and technical training available to Gulf nationals. GCC states are also likely to fund job-creation programs in Yemen. A report commissioned by the Yemeni government recently estimated that Yemen needs to create 4 million new jobs in the next 10 years. A Saudi delegation visited Yemen this weekend as part of a project to develop Yemeni educational programs, prepare Yemeni trainers and help the government draft regulations for the Higher Yemeni Technical Institute, which is funded by the Islamic Development Bank and South Korea.
A recent report (.pdf) by a London School of Economics researcher suggested that stabilizing Yemen was a key GCC interest because the country's problems potentially foreshadow problems that could emerge elsewhere in the Gulf. "Yemen is the canary in the coal mine. It is an indication of what can go wrong when a country fails to develop political legitimacy and build a sustainable, productive non-oil economy," said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, the author of the report. "The challenges to government authority in southern and northern Yemen demonstrate how existing socio-economic discontent and regional marginalization can fracture and fragment social cohesion. Similar fissures and unequal patterns of access to resources exist in the GCC states and could become transmitters of conflict in the future."
The United States and Europe share GCC concerns about Yemen's lack of good governance. Getting the GCC to assume responsibility for helping Yemen ensure that its development aid is put to proper use will have the added advantage of focusing Gulf attention on transparency issues within the GCC itself.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Insurance Companies Plan Private Navy Against Piracy
Major London-based maritime insurers as well as shipping companies have joined forces to create a private security force that would shield vessels traversing the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Oceans.
The plan, spearheaded by Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT), comes as a new piracy season opens and amid fears that Islamist forces on both sides of the Red Sea is muscling in on what has become a lucrative business.
British officials said they would consider the creation of a private maritime security force favorably provided it worked closely with the international naval force in the region. Industry sources say the plan is being welcomed by the British and other governments because the international force does not have the resources to fully patrol an area the size of the Indian Ocean and because the British Navy potentially faces severe budget cuts as part of the government’s austerity measures.
The private force would consist of 20 patrol boats carrying armed personnel that would escort vessel and act as a rapid response unit in protection of shipping in the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. Industry sources estimated that establishing the force would cost Euros 12 million, but would substantially reduce insurance costs that currently range per voyage from Euros 60,000 to 360,000 for an large oil tanker as well as ransom payments. Ransom payments and associated costs have cost insurance companies approximately Euros 230 million in the last two years.
The plan, spearheaded by Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT), comes as a new piracy season opens and amid fears that Islamist forces on both sides of the Red Sea is muscling in on what has become a lucrative business.
British officials said they would consider the creation of a private maritime security force favorably provided it worked closely with the international naval force in the region. Industry sources say the plan is being welcomed by the British and other governments because the international force does not have the resources to fully patrol an area the size of the Indian Ocean and because the British Navy potentially faces severe budget cuts as part of the government’s austerity measures.
The private force would consist of 20 patrol boats carrying armed personnel that would escort vessel and act as a rapid response unit in protection of shipping in the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. Industry sources estimated that establishing the force would cost Euros 12 million, but would substantially reduce insurance costs that currently range per voyage from Euros 60,000 to 360,000 for an large oil tanker as well as ransom payments. Ransom payments and associated costs have cost insurance companies approximately Euros 230 million in the last two years.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Donors To Establish Development Fund For Yemen in Fight Against Al Qaeda
In the clearest recognition yet that Islamist militants in Yemen cannot be defeated by military means alone, the United States and its allies are set to create an international fund for development of the impoverished, conflict-ridden Arab nation. Donor countries, including the US, Britain, France and the Gulf states, are expected to launch the fund at a meeting in New York on September 24.
The fund comes as the US military is seeking $1.2 billion to strengthen Yemeni security forces over a five-year period. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin said earlier this month that the US sees the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda’s affiliate in the Gulf, as a priority. The US has this year allocated $300 million to Yemen, half of which, according to Benjamin, targets the “incubators for extremism” – poverty, weak governance and corruption.
The donors are also expected to discuss ways to stimulate a national dialogue between Yemen’s political forces in a bid to reduce nepotism, make its political system more inclusive, resolve an intermittent insurgency in the north and a growing separatist movement in the south and stem AQAP’s increasing strength.
To a large extent, change in Yemen will however depend on a change in Saudi policy towards Yemen. In many ways, Saudi Arabia, like the regime of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih itself, is as much part of the solution as it is part of the solution. The Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups the region’s six oil-rich states has already taken steps to build closer ties with Yemen. The GCC and Saudi Arabia in particular, could ease Yemen’s economic pain by agreeing on the free movement of labor in the region. This would reduce unemployment, increase the flow of remittances and stem illegal border crossings.
To counter the inward looking, xenophobic, conservative environment on which AQAP feeds, Saudi Arabia will however also have to strengthen the Yemeni government by halting the buying of tribal fealty at the expense of the government and controlling Saudi-funded missionary work that has significantly increased the influence of a militant, ascetic interpretation of Islam among Yemenis as well as among the large number of Somali refugees in the country.
The fund comes as the US military is seeking $1.2 billion to strengthen Yemeni security forces over a five-year period. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin said earlier this month that the US sees the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda’s affiliate in the Gulf, as a priority. The US has this year allocated $300 million to Yemen, half of which, according to Benjamin, targets the “incubators for extremism” – poverty, weak governance and corruption.
The donors are also expected to discuss ways to stimulate a national dialogue between Yemen’s political forces in a bid to reduce nepotism, make its political system more inclusive, resolve an intermittent insurgency in the north and a growing separatist movement in the south and stem AQAP’s increasing strength.
To a large extent, change in Yemen will however depend on a change in Saudi policy towards Yemen. In many ways, Saudi Arabia, like the regime of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih itself, is as much part of the solution as it is part of the solution. The Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups the region’s six oil-rich states has already taken steps to build closer ties with Yemen. The GCC and Saudi Arabia in particular, could ease Yemen’s economic pain by agreeing on the free movement of labor in the region. This would reduce unemployment, increase the flow of remittances and stem illegal border crossings.
To counter the inward looking, xenophobic, conservative environment on which AQAP feeds, Saudi Arabia will however also have to strengthen the Yemeni government by halting the buying of tribal fealty at the expense of the government and controlling Saudi-funded missionary work that has significantly increased the influence of a militant, ascetic interpretation of Islam among Yemenis as well as among the large number of Somali refugees in the country.
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