Aid to Saleh WILL be seen as boosting an autocratic ruler whose repression is strengthening the terrorists & pushing Yemen towards breakup

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We have gone that slippery road before ... many times and the results? By alphabetical order?McClatchy's, here

"President Barack Obama's decision to boost U.S. aid to Yemen to help the small Arabian Peninsula country fight al Qaida risks tying the U.S. more closely to an autocratic ruler whose repression of economic and political grievances is strengthening the terrorists and pushing his impoverished nation toward breakup.

"Any association with the (Yemeni) regime will only confirm al Qaida's narrative, which is that America is only interested in maintaining corrupt and despotic rulers and is not interested in the fate of Arabs and Muslims," warned Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor.

The State Department's latest international human rights report cited allegations that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime tortures and assassinates suspected opponents, operates secret prisons and muzzles independent media.Security forces run by Saleh's close relatives and reportedly advised by former officers of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard are accused of using "excessive force" against a four-year-old Shiite Muslim rebellion in north Yemen, uprooting thousands of civilians.

In the once independent south, meanwhile, a crackdown on what had been a peaceful movement against alleged political and economic marginalization has ignited demands for secession and violence.

A major risk for Obama, experts said, is that Yemenis, Saudis and others will be drawn in greater numbers to join al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the network's Yemen-based franchise, to fight the unpopular Saleh or stage attacks on his U.S. benefactor........

Forging closer ties with Saleh also risks costing Obama some of the goodwill he reclaimed for the U.S. when he vowed in a June speech in Cairo that he'd preside over "a new beginning" in U.S. relations with the Islamic world.

Senior Yemeni officials, apparently aware of the potential for a backlash, said they have limits on cooperation with Washington.

"As long as what the United States does is to support the Yemeni government and our counterterrorism units, and provide us logistical support, share intelligence information and communication systems, I don't think it will go against our objectives," Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al Kirbi told McClatchy in a telephone interview.

The U.S. military and the CIA, which work with Saleh's security services, are expected to redouble intelligence-sharing and operational support for Yemen's effort to eradicate al Qaida, forged by the network's Yemeni and Saudi branches a year ago.

Several experts, however, said that security forces that have received U.S. training to fight al Qaida have been deployed against the southern secessionists and northern Shiite Muslim rebels and used brutal tactics. ..........The Counter-Terrorism Unit, an elite contingent that's commanded by one of Saleh's nephews and received training from U.S. and British special forces, is among those that have been used in the south and north, Knights said..."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 4:46 AM