EDITORIAL

With one more Muslim nation, namely Yemen, coming under threat of either war or military strikes by a United States led by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Hussain Obama, it is time to think if all this mayhem points to a clash of civilization or directed at pulverization of the Muslim nations. An Iraq pounded into a rubble and an Afghanistan mashed into a dust bowl certainly were no match to the Western powers. An Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein may have verbally bamboozled the West. But when it came to military confrontation, they proved to be mere rhetoric. All that they might have been able to do was to engage in a wordy duel. Some elements might have felt encouraged to blast a few buses in London or Metro in Madrid. But nothing beyond that. West and its military prowess remains unchallenged.

But these insignificant warlords have goaded the West into churning up grandiose chimera of imminent threat to their democracy, prosperity and values. Militarist fantasies of the whole lobby of neo-cons has been reinforced to turn their private paranoia into a theory of 'clash between civilizations'. Needless to say that this paranoia has been the basis of the so called war on terror and at the base of all that tension and Western hatred against Islam and Muslim.

West, as it is now, seems impregnable as well as unconquerable. Every single major geo-political entity outside the West, viz India, China and Russia, seek in the West yardsticks to measure their own success. The Islamic world is much less powerful than even these entities. Some individuals could mount some outrages borne out of frustrations, but nothing to undermine the West. War against civilization is therefore inconceivable.

Seen against this backdrop, the outcry against Islam, and war hysteria against Muslims in the West seems absolutely absurd and totally orchestrated by the cartels of weapon manufacturers and doomsday prophets in league with think tanks and lobbyists. One smells in it a deliberate campaign to curb freedoms and liberties of individuals, groups, media and even the purveyors of oriental spirituality. Western bellicosity has therefore begun to undermine its own values, the cornerstone of its civilization. It threatens to push the West into fear, siege and security-obsession.

America's so called 'War on terror' is itching to make a foray into yet another inhospitable terrain, Yemen in the Arab peninsula. Having squandered $ 1.3 trillion and 4,000 and odd American soldiers on hugely fruitless pursuit of Al-Qaeda, a brainchild of its erstwhile protégé Osama Ben Laden, the United States is all likely to get entangled into a rugged land that miserably fails to qualify for a 'safe haven' for the militants. Yemen came into focus in October 2000 when US destroyer S. S. Cole was bombed by alleged Al-Qaeda members killing 17 American sailors. The latest episode of a Nigerian with alleged links to Al-Qaeda mentor Awalaki being apprehended after an abortive bid to bring down a Detroit-bound jet airliner have stocked the fears that the country may turn into Al-Qaeda's operational and training hub in a region close to lawless Horn of Africa. Perhaps these have prompted statements from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Criticism at home, mainly from the neo-conservative lobby spearheaded by former vice president Dick Cheney might be the reason for knee-jerk reaction on Yemen from the Secretary of the State. Dynamics of such a war in the Arabian peninsular have clearly not been taken into consideration. Yemen was nourished as the hatchery of extremism by the CIA in the 80s when thousands of Yemenis were recruited into 'Jihad being waged by Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts against the Russian infidels' in cahoots with the CIA in 1980s. Much of the returnees have swelled the ranks of militants against the Ali Abdullah Salih's authoritarian regime which has had only a tenuous hold over the rugged land divided into the tribal protectorates. They have been joined by the Saudi detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay. The twin influences have kept the pot of anger against the Americans boiling all these years. A nation that is in real danger of running out of its oil and water and provides no hope for gainful employment for the vast multitudes of jobless youth could only prove fertile for all extremist ideologies.

Instead of extending the war into yet another—and one of the poorest countries in the world at that—the Americans would need to look into the factors that fuel the rage against them in the Islamic world. With the terrible war in Afghanistan getting intractable, opening a new front in the Arabian peninsula is all likely to turn the Peninsula into yet another inexhaustible source of recruits to its cause.