Yemen’s Marshall Plan [Archives:2005/906/Opinion]
Raidan Abdulaziz Al-Saqqaf
[email protected]
Perhaps the last few years were the most peaceful in Yemen's modern history, except for the Bush-Saleh rampage on 'terror' and the Saada episode. This notion indicates that peace is an abnormality in Yemen which can't be easily sustained, as our masculine culture is one which endorses violence and war and considers them to be merits of manhood and power; this is evident in our language dialect, dress code, love for weapons, and loyalty for the tribe, faction, political party on the expense of the loyalty to the country.
In fact, Yemen is full of peace-challenged people who are willing to fight and commit massacres in order to sustain their views and interests, from your average minibus driver to the cop who shot him to the superior officer who denies the cop his monthly stipend. And now as economic, political and social pressures are escalating, the likelihood of armed conflict and a potential civil war is escalating, with military spending and the government-sponsored arm race, therefore any dispute will be 'crushed' instantly and painfully, and it will target specific locations of the country where the rising will be sparked from, evident from the discriminatory behavior of armed forces reaction after the last price hike, where some localities and cities experienced a harsher response from security forces compared to others.
Similarly, armed tribal forces have succeeded in changing government policy and got exclusive fuel subsidies and also forced the government to drop the petrol fuel price to the mass from 65 YR per liter to 60, while other civil forces and unarmed demonstrations were met with government tanks and excessive use of government forces, and Loyalist to Yemen [not party or tribal loyalist] were threatened, jailed, and made to suffer.
Yemenis are worried, neighbor countries are worried, even Somali refugees are worried: they have experienced the same scenario previously, and thus they desire to be relocated out of the country because they know and they feel that Yemen is doomed to become the new Somalia; unpublished press reports which include interviews with Somali refugees indicate that they are being underestimated and have systematically managed to undertake organized crime and burglary in order to survive, but mind you, if Yemen isn't able to sustain its own citizens through widespread corruption and crime, what about Somali refugees?
The Marshall plan of 1947 where the US helped war-torn Europe to recover had two objectives, the first was long-term humanitarian relief, and the second was to stop the communism spread. Similarly, our rich neighbours in the gulf region would eventually undertake such a plan, however, their second objective should be in making sure that there is a massive cultural change in the country which includes criminalizing war and changing the mindset of school-age pupils and most importantly making sure that peace-challenged people do not reach points of authority [again] and prosecute them as terrorists. Only a culture of peace is the remedy for Yemen, and only is it possible through a serious change of culture and social reform, doing this along will derive security, economic development, political stability and cultural prosperity, and will truly make Yemen a good global citizen.
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[archive-e:906-v:14-y:2005-d:2005-12-26-p:opinion]
