Tunisian-Egyptian Democracy Spreads to Yemen, Algeria, Palestine, UAE, and Iran

Juan Cole concluded his article with the following paragraph.

US interests are affected by each of these. Algeria is a petroleum producer, and supplies are tight, increasing the value of stability in each of the OPEC countries. Bahrain has a bit of oil but its main importance is as a US naval base. Yemen is an object of anxiety about al-Qaeda, with which Saleh has been cooperating. Iran is a major target of US foreign policy angst and any significant change there will affect the tenor of the debate in Washington.

Contrary to what Washington tries to get us to believe through its corporate media extension, Washington is not really concerned about Al Qaeda in Yemen. Washington is working to help its puppet despotic regime in Yemen to stay in power for strategic reasons that aren't related to Al Qaeda and the reason is related to the shipment of oil, the Suez Canal, Gulf of Aden, etcetera. It's the geostrategic location of Yemen that concerns Washington.

The despotic regime in Yemen is not under threat from Al Qaeda. The people of Yemen want or demand a democratic government and the replacement of the present one. Washington fears the people of Yemen being successful. And this has been reported by analysts who understand the geostrategic importance of Yemen for Washington, but many westerners, Americans anyway, keep repeating the Washington line that the Washington extension media publishes.

"The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint"

by F. William Engdahl, Jan. 5, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=16786&context=va

Or read it at his Web site, Jan. 4, 2010.

http://oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Chokepoint_Yemen/chokepo...

I'll excerpt some of the latter, original copy of the article, but the whole of it should really be read.

(snip)

For some months the world has seen a steady escalation of US military involvement in Yemen, a dismally poor land adjacent to Saudi Arabia on its north, the Red Sea on its west, the Gulf of Aden on its south, opening to the Arabian Sea, overlooking another desolate land that has been in the headlines of late, Somalia. The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the world’s oil flows, Bab el-Mandab, and using the Somalia piracy incident, together with claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising from Yemen, to militarize one of the world’s most important oil transport routes. In addition, undeveloped petroleum reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly among the world’s largest.

(snip)

Some basic Yemen geopolitics

Before we can say much about the latest incident, it is useful to look more closely at the Yemen situation. Here several things stand out as peculiar when stacked against Washington’s claims about a resurgent Al Qaeda organization in the Arabian Peninsula.

(snip)

Soon after al-Fadhli joined the Southern Movement coalition, on April 28, 2009 protests in the southern Yemeni provinces of Lahj, Dalea and Hadramout intensified. There were demonstrations by tens of thousands of dismissed military personnel and civil servants demanding better pay and benefits, demonstrations that had been taking place in growing numbers since 2006. The April demonstrations included for the first time a public appearance by al-Fadhli. His appearance served to change a long moribund southern socialist movement into a broader nationalist campaign. It also galvanized President Saleh, who then called on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states for help, warning that the entire Arabian Peninsula would suffer the consequences.

Complicating the picture in what some call a failed state, in the north Saleh faces an al-Houthi Zaydi Shi’ite rebellion. ...

(snip)

What about al-Qaeda?

The picture that emerges is one of a desperate US-backed dictator, Yemen’s President Saleh, increasingly losing control after two decades as despotic ruler of the unified Yemen. Economic conditions in the country took a drastic downward slide in 2008 when world oil prices collapsed. Some 70% of the state revenues derive from Yemen’s oil sales. The central government of Saleh sits in former North Yemen in Sana’a, while the oil is in former South Yemen. Yet Saleh controls the oil revenue flows. Lack of oil revenue has made Saleh’s usual option of buying off opposition groups all but impossible.

(snip)

Al Qaeda in Yemen is apparently anathema to al-Fadhli and the enlarged mass-based Southern Movement. In an interview, al-Fadhli declared, “I have strong relations with all of the jihadists in the north and the south and everywhere, but not with al-Qaeda.”5 That has not hindered Saleh from claiming the Southern Movement and al Qaeda are one and the same, a convenient way to insure backing from Washington.

According to US intelligence reports, there are a grand total of perhaps 200 al Qaeda members in southern Yemen.6

Al-Fadhli gave an interview distancing himself from al Qaeda in May 2009, declaring, “We [in South Yemen] have been invaded 15 years ago and we are under a vicious occupation. So we are busy with our cause and we do not look at any other cause in the world. We want our independence and to put an end to this occupation.”7 Conveniently, the same day, al Qaeda made a large profile declaring its support for southern Yemen’s cause.

The curious emergence of a tiny but well-publicized al Qaeda in southern Yemen amid what observers call a broad-based popular-based Southern Movement front that eschews the radical global agenda of al Qaeda, serves to give the Pentagon a kind of casus belli to escalate US military operations in the strategic region.

Indeed, after declaring that the Yemen internal strife was Yemen’s own affair, President Obama ordered air strikes in Yemen. The Pentagon claimed its attacks on December 17 and 24 killed three key al Qaeda leaders but no evidence has yet proven this. Now the Christmas Day Detroit bomber drama gives new life to Washington’s “War on Terror” campaign in Yemen. Obama has now offered military assistance to the Saleh Yemen government.

Somali Pirates escalate as if on cue

As if on cue, at the same time CNN headlines broadcast new terror threats from Yemen, the long-running Somalia pirate attacks on commercial shipping in the same Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea across from southern Yemen escalated dramatically after having been reduced by multinational ship patrols.

(snip)

... The open question is, who is providing the Somali “pirates” with arms and logistics sufficient to elude international patrols from numerous nations?

(snip)

The Oil chokepoint and other oily affairs

The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. ...

Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el -Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean.

An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. ...

In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. ...

That's what Washington is up to. Al Qaeda is usual Washington balony used to deceive us if we're naive enough to still be deceived by this Washington bs.

The following article is short and worth fully reading, and it provides much better maps than the one or ones found in the above article.

"Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways
Securing US Control over Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden"

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Feb. 7, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17460

"Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene." (US Navy Geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayus Mahan (1840-1914))

(snip)

There are more relevant articles at GR that can be found using the Countries index that's linked in every page there.