Friday 30 November 2018

Saudis Bloody Last Peaceful Region in Yemen with Deadly Attack on Peaceful Al-Mahrah Protesters


Saudi Arabia killed three peaceful demonstrators protesting the kingdom’s takeover of local natural resources in Yemen’s eastern province of al-Mahrah, threatening to bring the its bloody war to Yemen’s last relatively peaceful region.

by Ahmed Abdulkareem

AL-MAHRAH, YEMEN —  Three protesters were killed on November 14 when a Saudi armored vehicle raided a peaceful sit-in and fired live ammunition into crowds of demonstrators in the Tunnel District of Yemen’s eastern al-Mahrah province. The demonstrators were protesting the construction of a new Saudi military base near the Nashton seaport in Yemen’s al-Anfaq district.
“We gathered around the new military base in an attempt to stop its construction,” Masaud K.A, who participated in the protests, told MintPress. “The Saudi soldiers fired on us, killing Nasser Kalashat and two others.” The protest coincided with the one-year anniversary of Saudi forces entering the province.
Several months ago, residents in the al-Mahrah province organized their first peaceful sit-in rejecting Saudi policies in their country as well as the kingdom’s dominance over vital infrastructure in the area. Seventeen percent of petroleum imports to Yemen enter from Oman through a border crossing in al-Mahrah, which, along with the province’s seaport and airport, is under the control of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Local residents reject the build-up of Saudi troops in al-Mahrah, which has expanded recently with the construction of a number of military camps and new security checkpoints. ”Saudi Arabia has already set up their military bases in the province,” said Ali Salem al-Englizi, one of the leaders of the demonstrations, “but there is no need to because the Houthis haven’t come to al-Mahrah and we didn’t ask them to help keep us safe.”
Last week, additional Saudi soldiers along with tanks and artillery arrived at al-Ghaida, the administrative capital of al-Mahrah, without coordinating with local authorities, a Yemeni official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MintPress.
Over the weekend, hundreds of Saudi forces were deployed to newly built camps in the al-Ghaida Airport and the Nashton Port, as well as local oil-rich regions. Over 100 soldiers, along with armored military vehicles, were also deployed to the entrances leading to al-Ghaida, according to a Yemeni official and confirmed by al-Mahrah residents.
Residents of al-Mahrah say the military bases vary in size, some little more than 100 Saudi soldiers along with local mercenaries enclosed by fencing. Others, such as those seen in the Nashton port and al-Ghaida airport, are far more substantial and include heavy military equipment, a control center, and training facilities.
Saudi Arabia claims that its checkpoints and military bases in al-Mahrah are needed to combat arms and drug smuggling, but according to Ali bin Salem al-Huraizy, al-Mahrah’s former deputy governor, smuggling is just a pretext for a Saudi takeover of the province:
There is no smuggling in al-Mahrah, and no need for the Saudis; the military bases were built in residential areas, not in areas where smuggling would happen.”

Saudis bring violence to Yemen’s last peaceful place

Following the Saudi attack on the sit-in, violent clashes erupted in some places in al-Mahrah. Some protesters wrested weapons from the hands of Saudi troops and witnesses say more Saudi troops and mercenaries were deployed to the district and have continued to patrol the area.
“If we are being attacked we will respond as much as we can,” Amer Saad, the head of the peaceful sit-in committee in al-Mahrah told journalists. “We will not allow this place to be turned into a Saudi camp.”
In a statement issued on Friday, the leadership of the sit-in committee accused Saudi Arabia of trying to drag peaceful protests in the province towards violence, saying, “the Tunnels checkpoint incident was a challenge to the peaceful city and showed a desire to drag it towards chaos.”
Yemen analysts say the Saudi attack on peaceful protests threatens to bring violence to the relatively peaceful region. Al-Mahrah’s tribes held a meeting to discuss how to react to the killing of protesters, but many residents feel force may be needed to combat the Saudi aggression. Masaud K.A, a local resident of al-Mahrah, said: “We will not betray the blood of the protesters as the tribes of al-Mahrah are discussing how to react. Soon we will react in the proper way.”
Yemeni strategic and military expert Brigadier Abdullah al-Jafri expects the al-Mahrah protest to spark a diplomatic falling out between Oman and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia accuses Oman of inciting al-Mahrah residents to take part in demonstrations.
According to al-Jafri, the peaceful protests could turn into a full-fledged military resistance hearkening back to Yemen’s 1964 revolution in the south, which began in al-Mahrah and led to the creation of the Union of Workers Republic. The revolution spread across the restive southern province and ended with the expulsion of British occupiers from the south.

Undermining peaceful protests

In an effort to quell the protests, Saudi Arabia has stationed military forces at all entrances leading to al-Ghaida, and according to local residents, a curfew has been imposed in the city along with a crackdown that led to the arrest of local activists.
Protest leaders told MintPress that Saudi Arabia has also attempted to bribe them into giving up the sit-ins. Ali al-Hadhrami, a Yemeni political activist, confirmed that the bribes have been rejected and that protesters vow to continue their fight against what they see as a violation of Yemen’s sovereignty by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
As it has done in the Yemeni cities of Aden and Hadramout, local residents say that Saudi Arabia has tried to create parallel protest groups that engage in violence so they can justify a crackdown and undermine popular support for the sit-ins.

From peaceful protest to armed resistance

Al-Mahrah residents see the build-up of Saudi troops in a region that has remained largely immune to the broader war in Yemen as malign and colonial. The province is a largely peaceful area that has been mostly spared from Yemen’s three-year war. Moreover, local Yemeni forces stationed in al-Mahrah have typically shown unwavering support for the Saudi coalition.
“There are forces that are present in peaceful Socotra and al-Mahrah in numbers that can’t be fathomed,” Zaid al-Gharsi, a Yemeni journalist specializing in southern Yemen, told MintPress.  “There are illegitimate troops in these areas. Are Houthi forces being fought by the coalition here? The answer is a big no!”
Faced with growing local discontent, in June the Saudis promised to hand all bases and facilities in their control over to Yemeni forces and exit the al-Mahrah region within two months, but by November it was clear that the Saudis weren’t going anywhere. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia tried to set up four new military bases in Sayhut, but residents prevented them from doing so.
As a result of the continued Saudi expansion in the region, the leadership of the Al-Mahrah peaceful sit-in committee announced a new phase of escalation in Friday press conference, confirming that it will continue its activities rejecting the Saudi military presence. “We are here to say to Saudi Arabia that today we express our rejection in a peaceful way, tomorrow we will say it with our weapons.”

Saudis’ strategic interest

Despite the ongoing demonstrations, Saudi Arabia has continued to pursue its strategic interests in southern Yemen, including the construction of an oil shipping port in al-Mahrah on the coast of the Arabian Sea, a move rejected by al-Mahrah residents.
In late September, MintPress revealed that Saudi Arabia began construction on a pipeline in al-Mahrah that would allow the kingdom to transport oil directly to the Arabian Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. The new pipeline would allow the kingdom to export oil from its refineries through al-Mahrah and the Khareir district in the Rub’ al Khali Desert, the largest contiguous sand desert in the world, which lies in Yemen’s northeast.
Adding to the tension, the Saudis have significantly curtailed the areas in which local fishermen can operate under the pretext of combating smuggling, preventing them from fishing around the major port of Nashton. At 560 km long, al-Mahrah’s coastline is the longest of any province in Yemen.
Despite their support of the Saudi-led coalition and their being free from the presence of the Houthi resistance, Yemen’s southern provinces, including al-Mahrah and the strategic island of Socotra, have been fully controlled and managed by Saudi Arabia and UAE. They have peppered the region with permanent military bases — including on Yemen’s southern islands, such as Miyoun Island, which offers strategic control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Saudis oblivious to dangers and consequences

To fulfill its strategic interests in al-Mahrah, Saudi Arabia has adopted policies without a realistic reading of their dangers and consequences, according to Abaad Studies and Research Center, a Yemeni research center closely aligned with Saudi coalition allies in the country. As Saudi Arabia dismantles traditional social structures, ideological systems, and political parties, and militia alternatives have spontaneously emerged.
For example, the Saudi-led coalition has established highly trained and equipped Salafist paramilitary forces in al-Mahrah, dubbed the “Mahri Elite Force.” The group is modeled around other coalition-backed mercenary militants operating in Yemen, including the Hadhrami Elite militants in Hadhramaut province, the Shabwani Elite militants in Shabwa, and the Pioneer Security Belt militants (al-Hizam) brigades in Aden. These paramilitary forces operate outside of local authorities and are comprised of local tribes that have close ties to Saudi Arabia.
According to a statement from the peaceful sit-in committee, the Saudi military presence in al-Mahrah has essentially gutted the local security apparatus, especially with the presence of armed militias supported by Saudi Arabia, while the militias are weakening sovereign security forces.
Like many paramilitary forces created by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the Mahri Elite Force was formed from members of specific tribes, not on the basis of one national army for the country as a whole, exacerbating tribal differences, reviving the desire for revenge among tribes, and creating the desire for separate states.
Moreover, according to the Abaad Studies and Research Center, Saudi Arabia has supported the fragmentation of Yemen’s south to make it easier to control the country in the future through tools that are currently being created, including regional media, and partisan and political groups that have historical differences.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also using militias for reprisal against opponents, such as the burning of the headquarters of political parties and newspapers, the pursuit of activists, kidnapping and assassinations of resistance leaders, preachers, and parties who refuse to subject themselves to the coalition.
Former Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi visited al-Mahrah in August. Ostensibly, he was there to promote the launch of reconstruction projects in partnership with the Saudis, including building a water purification plant, power plant, and hospitals. After his visit to al-Mahrah, the Saudis constructed six new military bases across the province.
Top Photo | A Saudi-coalition soldier unslings his machine gun on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 2, 2018. Jon Gambrell | AP
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/saudis-bloody-last-peaceful-region-in-yemen-with-deadly-attack-on-peaceful-al-mahrah-protesters/252390/
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posted by Satish Sharma at 21:19 0 Comments

Awakening a sleeping lion: The US-China Cold War is upon us

Darius Shahtahmasebi is a New Zealand-based legal and political analyst, currently specializing in immigration, refugee and humanitarian law.
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Awakening a sleeping lion: The US-China Cold War is upon us
The US Navy littoral combat ship USS Coronado during Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training, May 11, 2017, South China Sea © Global Look Press / Deven Leigh Ellis

“China is a sleeping lion,” Napoleon Bonaparte said. “Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” A new Cold War is upon us, only this time the giant is no longer deep asleep; stirring as it begins to wake.
“China is leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage,” a recent summary of the 2018 US National Defense Strategy states.
“As China continues its economic and military ascendance, asserting power through an all-of-nation long-term strategy, it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future. The most far-reaching objective of this defense strategy is to set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression.”
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Interestingly enough, the Pacific region is a key location in which the US and China may eventually collide in an inevitable showdown, though the media appears to rarely focus on the topic. According to the National Defense Strategy, the Indo-Pacific region is number one in a three-region list of key areas the US will focus on competing in to “deter aggression.”
Just how much of a threat does China pose to Washington and its allies?
Well, if recent commentary is anything to go by, China is considered so much of a threat to the US and its allies in the Pacific region that Australia is lamenting its AUD$195 billion (US$143 billion) defense spending plan as being insufficient to combat China’s growing influence.
Australia and its regional allies became alarmed earlier this year when reports began emerging that China was seeking a strategic military base in Vanuatu. Both China and Vanuatu heavily disputed the claim, and the issue appeared to fall off the media radar relatively quickly when the story could not be further substantiated.
Then again, the Australian just recently reported that China has begun negotiating to fund the redevelopment of a coral-choked port in Samoa, a move which has only irked Australia even further due to its potential economic and strategic implications for both Canberra and Washington in the region.
According to the Australian:
“China’s involvement has raised red flags with military analyst­s, who warned that the port could lead to a ‘salient right through the heart’ of America’s defences in the South Pacific or threaten Australia’s east-coast trade routes to the US.”
Has anyone ever wondered why America needs defenses in the South Pacific, given the thousands of miles of water that lie between the US and the South Pacific?
Then again, in an effort to keep the US on its feet, earlier this month China managed to also cement a deal to build a multi-million dollar geostrategic port in Myanmar, in the Bay of Bengal.
While the US has up to 1,000 military bases worldwide, China currently only has one known base (in Djibouti, Africa). According to the Australian, some analysts worry that China will use the Djibouti example as a blueprint to turn the Samoan port into a base of its own and project its might into the South Pacific, though that would still be only two Chinese military bases up against approximately 1,000 US military bases.
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Let us not forget that, while unsubstantiated rumours of China’s expanding military empire continue to instil fear in the hearts of many, it is indeed, again, the US who is openly talking about the development of a joint naval base with Australia on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
Who is the threat here, again? The corporate media may never question if China, or any other country for that matter, see such an act as an unwelcome form of aggression, because the US has an inherent right to go where no one else goes. According to the mainstream media, 1,001 bases is not exactly a controversy, but the leap from one to two bases most certainly would be. Never mind that such a move by the US will push American military forces further south into the Pacific than they have been for decades, an action that appears on the face of it to be setting the stage for a global conflict, not reducing or deterring such a scenario.
As far as the US is concerned, China still poses the biggest threat to American hegemony, and despite its vast military expenditure and ubiquitous military presence across the globe, the US appears to be struggling in its strategy of containing China.
According to the recent report by the National Defense Strategy Commission, China is essentially on track to obtain peer military status with the US by the year 2050. The document said the US Department of Defense and the White House “have not yet articulated clear operational concepts for achieving U.S. security objectives in the face of ongoing competition and potential military confrontation with China and Russia.”
The report claims that the goals of the American war machine are to serve as a deterrence, but should deterrence fail, the objective is to be prepared to win the war. (How do you win a nuclear war with China, exactly?)
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Even mainstream commentators dispute the idea that China would ever resort to using nuclear weapons to coerce any other state, due to its “no first use policy” on nukes. With this in mind, the report still claims that China “is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbours while militarising features in the South China Sea.”
The document also makes it clear that the US has given up on its laughable claims to be concerned primarily in the fight against terrorism, and outright states that “inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national strategy.” Washington’s “long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia,” it admits, are the “principal priorities” of the US Department of Defense.
Donald Trump’s trade war with China also signals a greater shift towards a US-China Cold War 2.0scenario, and the stakes are even higher than we imagined.
The aim of the US appears to be to change China for good (if not its attitude, then its regime) and build a new international framework which still puts Washington’s interests above that of its adversaries. Successfully doing so requires the US to retain and promote its more traditional allies, something which seems somewhat questionable in the age of Trump.
In the meantime, Beijing announced this week that it is building its third aircraft carrier which will allegedly be “bigger and mightier” than its other two warships. The announcement seems to bear some resemblance to the matter at hand, namely that China is openly preparing its capability to operate far from its shores.
“Shouldn’t an important US foreign policy goal of the next couple of decades be regime change in China?” The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol asked his 411,000 followers on Twitter.
After failed regime change operations in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran, just to name a few, I think the answer to this question is quite clearly a resounding “no.”
But perhaps covert regime change operations of the kind seen in Iran in 1953 are completely off the table with regard to Washington’s approach to combating China. After all, the US is continuing its somewhat secretive Marine build-up in Australia not for regime change, but for preparation of a sinister military confrontation in the South China Sea.
Let’s face it, such a catastrophic scenario may be Washington’s only hope. The Chinese strategy is “long term” and “equally focused on using investment and trade as a tool of power projection,” asnoted by Washington-based global strategist, Jeffrey Borda. Just to illustrate one recent example, the Financial Times reported that European diplomats were fuming after the vice-president of Tonga was given precedence over European ministers at Shanghai’s import expo this month.
The US and its allies cannot compete with this type of diplomacy without making severe changes to itstreatment of smaller states. As one Australian commentator has observed, it is “shameful, of course, that Australia can only find the energy and interest to help upgrade PNG’s basic infrastructure under the goad of Chinese competition and US encouragement.”
It is for this very reason that the Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Duterte, has admitted that the South China Sea essentially belongs to China now and called on “America and everybody else to realize it.”
The US will never “realize it,” and is indeed preparing strategies to ensure that such a Chinese-led victory will never ensue.
While the long-term implications in this battle for hegemony are dangerous and more complex than most people are prepared to admit, the rest of us appear to be sleep-walking into what will eventually transform from a Cold War 2.0 into a global conflict of epic proportions.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

posted by Satish Sharma at 20:58 0 Comments

Asteroids, war, economic collapse! Is the world heading for imminent disaster?

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. Former Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News, he is author of the book, 'Midnight in the American Empire,' released in 2013.
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Asteroids, war, economic collapse! Is the world heading for imminent disaster?
© Global Look Press
Thanks to the internet, we are bombarded 24/7 with news of disasters and impending disasters, to the point of ennui. Are things really as bad as the media and Hollywood say? Or are we headed for a happy techno future?
The other evening, in search of some entertainment, I stumbled upon a film by Australian director John Hillcoat entitled, The Road (2009). This riveting post-apocalyptic drama focuses on the travails of a father and son as they set out on foot across a devastated American wasteland following some cataclysmic disaster.
What motivates the characters to persevere in their impossible journey, which presents them with every sort of imaginable and unimaginable nightmare, is simply the quest for survival. Why anyone would want to survive amid such total devastation is another question.
An interesting element of the film is that we are never told what caused so much destruction. All we know is that some overnight event turned America, and possibly the entire planet, into a scorched wasteland. Hillcoat plays on our modern fears that some uncontrollable event, either by force of nature or man-made, is lurking just around the corner, waiting to devour us. The media is certainly culpable for giving life to these fears.
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For example, it seems that every month or so NASA discovers some new asteroid or, worse, a gang of asteroids that will "just miss" hitting earth by millions of miles, sparing us yet again the fate of the dodo bird.
But if death by asteroid isn't your cup of tea, you may tremble at the thought of the supervolcano bubbling just below the surface in America's Midwest.
Known to scientists as the Yellowstone Caldera, America's largest volcanic system last blew its magna some 640,000 years ago. That 'super-eruption' was estimated to have been more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Scientists estimate the odds of another eruption at about 1 in 730,000, which is, by the way, about the chance of an asteroid collision.
Although the chances of such disasters actually happening are low, just the possibility that they could occur has gripped our collective imaginations. This dark, foreboding view of an unpredictable future is one that tends to dominate Western mentality. A quick glance at the sheer number of dystopian Hollywood productions over the years seems to validate the point.
The problem is that we have been conditioned to believe in the inevitability of an Orwellian future that it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or perhaps Hollywood and the media are serving as our collective conscience, so to speak, warning tinkering humans that we have pushed the boundaries of science and technology too far and are now risking severe consequences - much like the mythical character Prometheus, who was punished for stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to mortals.
And perhaps in no other field has mankind pushed the technological envelope further than on the battlefield.
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World War III, the final frontier?

If ever there was an event that could literally wipe out the planet in the blink of an eye, WWIII is it. As Albert Einstein once quipped, "I do not know with what weapons WWIII will be fought, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones." Such a grim prophecy may have thus far succeeded in cooling enthusiasm for a global conflict, but it has not thwarted the belief that, in the words of Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics by other means."
This type of thinking is no longer realistic unless we are willing to accept the gravest consequences.
Consider the dire situation in Syria, where about a dozen different players are now jockeying for position, to understand the incredibly high stakes involved. In one of the latest developments, a Russian reconnaissance plane was accidentally shot down by a Syrian missile as Israeli fighter jets were conducting an illicit raid on the sovereign Arab Republic. Further tragedy was averted, but the incident brought the overall climate in Syria to an even higher degree of uncertainty.
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In the past, nations had a tendency to rush into war with great gusto. However, the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the waning moments of WWII had a way of changing our minds on the subject. Yet, at the same time, that cruel lesson has done nothing to curb our willingness to stockpile enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy the planet many times over.
What is the answer to this deadly conundrum? The choice seems rather straightforward. Although it will be a tall order, especially given how much money is generated by military expenditure, political leaders must ultimately accept the fact that resorting to military means to resolve global issues is an extinct form of 'politics'. It is a paradox, but the awesome lethality of weapons of mass destruction has made war nearly impossible.
Either we accept this fact or understand that humans themselves, together with the planet and its other myriad life forms, will be extinct. It's the simplest choice of all, yet which country would be the first to surrender their weapons?

Capital breakdown

Not all events that result in catastrophe are related to 'acts of God' or military conflict. Consider our current relationship with the so-called 'free market.' Although many argue that this is the best system for organizing the economic affairs of countries, it is occasionally hit by violent downturns that can best be described as disastrous.
When such downturns do happen, as was the case with the 2008 financial crisis, it is the "too big to fail" banks and corporations that are generously bailed out by the government, while the average person is forced to sink or swim for land that seems nowhere in sight. This proving the aphorism that what we really have is 'socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.'
Recently, there has been a number of warning signals – including steep drops on Wall Street – that we are once again approaching dangerous times. Former Republican congressman Ron Paul, in a recent interview with CNBC, warned that a massive downturn is inevitable because the US economy is sitting on "the biggest bubble in the history of mankind."
Earlier, the investor Jim Rogers, pointing to the massive amount of debt in global markets, especially in the US, predicted that "When we have a bear market again, and we are going to have a bear market again, it will be the worst in our lifetime."
Although these two individuals may be wrong, there can be no doubt that another economic downturn will eventually happen again. So how should we prepare now for the inevitable? Given the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis, it seems imperative that the banks and corporations understand that the government will not be available to cover for their bad business practices.
Big bailouts for big business is not the answer. If companies understand that they will go belly up in the next crisis, they will behave more responsibly.
At the same time, assurances should be made to average citizens that they will not be left behind if and when the next downturn occurs. Since unemployment always increases as profits on Wall Street decreases, one way to deal with any future market meltdown is to ensure long-term unemployment and medical plans for those affected by any sudden shocks to the system.
Perhaps this is the best way to deal with the daily news of impending gloom and doom, which we see from a variety of places from the military battlefield, to the economic battlefield: Let the people know that not only are solutions being sought, but that their best interests are at heart.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

posted by Satish Sharma at 20:51 0 Comments