U.S. Seeks to Install Puppet Gov't in Somalia

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

US to Provide More Aid to African Union War in Somalia
'Our Efforts Are Aggressive and Have Intensified'
by Jason Ditz, July 20, 2010

The head of America's African Command (Africom) Gen. William Ward, has announced today that the United States is planning to dramatically escalate its level of assistance to the failing African Union occupation of Somalia.

The African Union has deployed some 6,300 troops from Uganda and Burundi to the nation in an attempt to prop up the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the self-proclaimed government of Somalia. Attention for the mission has grown considerably in recent weeks, following the attacks in Uganda's capital city by one of the militant groups fighting the AU troops.

Though the United States has occasionally deployed troops to Somalia, the bulk of its role in the endless international intervention in Somalia has come in the form of training and intelligence aid to the AU mission, and a massive number of weapons shipped to the self-proclaimed government.

US officials maintain the escalation of its role in Somalia has nothing to do with the Uganda attacks, but was already being discussed well before that. The new aid will apparently include more training and intelligence aid for the AU troops as well as additional weaponry for them.

The African Union's invasion force has come under considerable criticism for its behavior in Somalia, with a large number of incidents of AU troops attacking residential neighborhoods and killing innocent civilians. The US role in this AU mission will likely be just one more reason for resentment of the US meddling in the region.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/07/20/us-t ... n-somalia/

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

U.S. Aiding Somalia in Its Plan to Retake Its Capital
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN


MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Somali government is preparing a major offensive to take back this capital block by crumbling block, and it takes just a listen to the low growl of a small surveillance plane circling in the night sky overhead to know who is surreptitiously backing that effort.

Jehad Nga for The New York Times
Forces of the transitional government in Somalia control only a part of the capital, Mogadishu.
"It's the Americans," said Gen. Mohamed Gelle Kahiye, the new chief of Somalia's military, who said he recently shared plans about coming military operations with American advisers. "They're helping us."

That American assistance could be crucial to the effort by Somalia's government to finally reassert its control over the capital and bring a semblance of order to a country that has been steeped in anarchy for two decades. For the Americans, it is part of a counterterrorism strategy to deny a haven to Al Qaeda, which has found sanctuary for years in Somalia's chaos and has helped turn this country into a magnet for jihadists from around the world.

The United States is increasingly concerned about the link between Somalia and Yemen, a growing extremist hot spot, with fighters going back and forth across the Red Sea in what one Somali watcher described as an "Al Qaeda exchange program."

But it seems there has been a genuine shift in Somali policy, too, and the Americans have absorbed a Somali truth that eluded them for nearly 20 years: If Somalia is going to be stabilized, it is going to take Somalis.

"This is not an American offensive," said Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for Africa. "The U.S. military is not on the ground in Somalia. Full stop."

He added, "There are limits to outside engagement, and there has to be an enormous amount of local buy-in for this work."

Most of the American military assistance to the Somali government has been focused on training, or has been channeled through African Union peacekeepers. But that could change. An American official in Washington, who said he was not authorized to speak publicly, predicted that American covert forces would get involved if the offensive, which could begin in a few weeks, dislodged Qaeda terrorists.

"What you're likely to see is airstrikes and Special Ops moving in, hitting and getting out," the official said.

Over the past several months, American advisers have helped supervise the training of the Somali forces to be deployed in the offensive, though American officials said that this was part of a continuing program to "build the capacity" of the Somali military, and that there has been no increase in military aid for the coming operations.

The Americans have provided covert training to Somali intelligence officers, logistical support to the peacekeepers, fuel for the maneuvers, surveillance information about insurgent positions and money for bullets and guns.

Washington is also using its heft as the biggest supplier of humanitarian aid to Somalia to encourage private aid agencies to move quickly into "newly liberated areas" and deliver services like food and medicine to the beleaguered Somali people in an effort to make the government more popular.

Whenever Somalia has hit a turning point in the past, the United States has been there, sometimes openly, sometimes not.

In 1992, shortly after the central government imploded, Marines stormed ashore to help feed starving Somalis. In early 2006, when an Islamist alliance was poised to sweep the country, the C.I.A. teamed up with warlords to stop them, and when that backfired, the American military covertly supported an Ethiopian invasion.

Last summer, when Somalia's transitional government was nearly toppled by insurgents linked to Al Qaeda, the American government hastily shipped in millions of dollars of weapons.

Since then, the insurgents' imperative to retake the capital, and eventually other parts of the country, has grown, American officials say, as Al Qaeda has even considered relocating some of its leaders from Pakistan to here.

American officials said several high-ranking Qaeda agents were still active in Somalia, including Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, one of the suspected bombers of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, who is now believed to be building bombs for the Islamist insurgent group known as Al Shabab.

The Somali government has tried limited offensives before and has failed, leaving much of the country in the hands of Al Shabab, who have chopped off heads, banned music and brought a harsh and alien version of Islam to Somalia.

But officials say that this offensive, or at least the preparations for it, feels different. First, the government has the advantage of numbers, about 6,000 to 10,000 freshly trained troops, compared with about 5,000 on the side of Al Shabab and its allies.

In the past six months, Somalia has farmed out young men to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and even Sudan for military instruction and most are now back in the capital, waiting to fight. There are also about 5,000 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, with 1,700 more on their way, and they are expected to play a vital role in backing up advancing Somali forces.

The government is also better armed and equipped. Parked in neat rows behind Villa Somalia, the president's hilltop villa in the center of Mogadishu, are newly painted military trucks, tanks, armored personnel carriers and dozens of "technicals," pickup trucks with their windshields sawed off and a cannon riveted on the back of each one. The government also recently bought 10 Chevrolet ambulances.

There seems to be a qualitative difference, too. Somalia's forces are now led by General Gelle, a colonel in Somalia's army decades ago who most recently was an assistant manager at a McDonald's in Germany. He is known among Somali war veterans as one of the best Somali officers still alive.

Many Somalia observers are confident that the offensive will push back Al Shabab. The question is what will happen afterward. "To take you need force, to hold you need discipline," said Ahmed Abdisalam, a deputy prime minister in the last Somali government. "What's going to guarantee those troops don't turn on the population?"

Or turn on themselves: many Somalis worry the troops could split along clan lines, which is what brought down Somalia's government in 1991. One lingering criticism of Somalia's president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, is that he has been too holed up in Villa Somalia and has not engaged with local power brokers and played clan politics better.

Even though there is a new religious overlay to Somalia's civil war, with a moderate Islamist government battling fundamentalist Islamist insurgents, clan connections still matter and could spell success — or disaster.

That said, the government did recently strike a political agreement with a powerful moderate Islamist militia, which may join the offensive from the inland regions of the country. There has also been talk of a militia made up of Somali refugees living in Kenya advancing from the Kenyan side.

-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/world/africa/06somalia.html

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

The US meddling in the region is not new. US-backed military dictator Siad Barre's regime was overthrown 1991, the US then moves in 25,000 troops to install another puppet but fails miserably. The lying Americans claim they are only there to bring "democracy" and "aid" to the starving Somalis, which, of course, is bullshit.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O126-S ... vmntn.html

Somalia, U.S. Military Involvement in Somalia

Somalia, U.S. Military Involvement in. In 1988, civil war broke out in Somalia in East Africa. The dictator, Siad Barre, was expelled, but power remained divided among local leaders. In the capital of Mogadishu, Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed struggled for control; regional groups fought among themselves. In April 1992, the United Nations established the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM I), with a few unarmed troops and Mohamed Sahnoun, an Algerian diplomat, as political coordinator. Sahnoun established good relations with both sides but alienated UN headquarters and soon resigned. In July 1992, the secretary general estimated that 1 million Somali children were malnourished and another 4.5 million people urgently needed food aid. Under pressure from the media, members of Congress, and the international community, President George Bush decided to airlift food to Somalia in August. However, it was impossible to deliver sufficient quantities of food by air.

Troops of the United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) land ed in December 1992. UNITAF was a U.S. military operation, although troops from 30 countries were included; at its peak it numbered about 38,000 troops, of which 25,000 were American. Its mission was confined to relief; the United Nations would conduct political negotiations and prepare a force to replace it. UNITAF succeeded in stopping famine throughout the country within five months.

UNOSOM II had about the same troop strength but a more ambitious task: to establish a Somali government. Somali factions attacked UNOSOM troops, and the conflict escalated. U.S. Delta Force commandos and rangers were sent to Somalia to capture Aideed. Instead, on 3 October 1993, they were ambushed and lost eighteen men. Television cameras showed one of the dead Americans being dragged through the streets. The Clinton administration decided to negotiate with Aideed. U.S. troops were withdrawn, and the rest of the UN forces left Somalia in March 1995. The famine had been ended, but UN peacekeeping had been discredited in the United States.

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

The US tries to quash any legitimate Islamic nationalist or "leftist" movements wherever they are. Any movement in any country that seeks to use the resources of their country to benefit their people, instead of greedy US corporations, is demonized and then destroyed. The Taliban is one example. Islamic resistance groups fighting against oppressive US-backed dictatorial gov'ts are labelled "terrorists", "al qaeda", or "insurgents" and the US goes in. The US has been recently meddling in Yemen and claim the country is now a "hotbed" of "Al qaeda". How did they magically come to this revelation? These rebels are not Al Qaeda they are resistance groups fighting against the US-backed Yemen dictatorship which is oppressing them. The US falsely accuses the freedom fighters of being "terrorists", goes in, murders most of them along with thousands of civilians, and then claims it was for the "good of the Yemini people" that these "terrorists" are gone. Often times the US military, CIA and Mossad will carry out false-flag bombings in the region targeting civilians and then get the western media to blame it on the resistance groups to demonize them.

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

For instance. At the end of last year the US military massacred 60 Yemeni civilians, including women and children in air-strikes and then lied about the casualties and targets.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/ ... 7532.shtml

CBS News has confirmed that U.S. warplanes made airstrikes yesterday on suspected al Qaeda positions in Yemen.

Officials say the strikes were requested by the government of Yemen and were intended to head off terrorist attacks in that country. The targets might have included the U.S. Embassy. Yemeni officials say at least 34 militants were killed.

Witnesses, however, put the number killed at over 60 and said the dead were mostly civilians, including women and children, The New York Times reported in its online editions late Friday. They denied the target was an al Qaeda stronghold, and one provincial official said only 10 militant suspects died.

Shortly after this the US set-up patsy Umar Farouk Abdulmutalab in that hoaky "underwear bomber" incident to justify an open invasion of Yemen and get congressional support for action there. The CIA and US military were operating secretly in Yemen prior to that incident. Who knows how many civilians they actually killed since it just doesn't get reported in Western media.

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

This is the real reason why the US are in Yemen. Nationalist and anti-imperialist movements in the north and south are rising in Yemen. These movements threaten the US-puppet Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh's power and are thus a threat to US interests in the region. It is the same recurring script happening over and over again. The 'Bastions of freedom and democracy' once again prove themselves to be the greatest threat to democracy and stability everywhere in the world they have a presence.

http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan280210.htm

Yemen: USA Are Fighting Against Democracy, Not Against Al-Qaeda

Interview With Mohamed Hassan
By Gregoire Lalieu & Michel Collon

A pair of trousers catches fire in an aeroplane close to Detroit and missiles rain down on Yemen. Is this is what is called the butterfly effect? For Mohammed Hassan, the terrorist threat is only an excuse. Mohamed Hassan explains what is really at stake in Yemen: i.e. undermining democracy in the Gulf in order to keep control over its oil.

Since the failed attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight, Yemen has hit the headlines. It's there that the young Nigerian terrorist is supposed to have trained. How could this country, an ally of the US, become of refuge for al-Qaeda?

First of all we must note this phenomenon which is repeating itself: every time that a regime backed by Washington is threatened, then terrorists appear on the scene. In the case of Muslim countries, it's al-Qaeda that gets the blame. This phantom terrorist group always pops up where nationalist or anti-imperialist movements give trouble to puppets supported by the US. That's what's happening now in Yemen. This country is ruled by a corrupt regime that is allied to Washington. But it is threatened by resistance movements.

And lo and behold there appears a young Nigerian who boards a plane destined for Detroit bearing explosives. This presumed terrorist had been placed on surveillance lists from the time his father had warned the US authorities. In addition, the US has at its disposal all the latest military technology. With its satellites it can tell whether you are eating a tuna or chicken sandwich! This terrorism tale is a hodge podge that shows that the situation in Yemen is getting out of hand as far as the US is concerned and that its interests are in danger.

Why has Yemen become so important for Washington?

Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has been in power for 20 years. His regime is corrupt, but aligned politically with the United States. A resistance group in the north of the country and separatists in the south are threatening the stability of the government. If a revolutionary movement overthrows Saleh, that could have an impact over the whole region and give encouragement to the resistance fighting in other pro-imperialist states in the region. In particular, to those fighting the feudal regime of Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, when the fight with the northern resistance broke out in Yemen, the Arab League, under Egyptian leadership, immediately condemned the rebels and gave its support to the Yemeni government. We are still waiting for that League to condemn Israeli aggression against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The Gulf Cooperation Council, an organization devoted to western interests, made up of certain oil-producing countries, has also condemned the Yemeni resistance. For the US, which is at the height of recession, their Saudi colony must not be threatened by resistance movements. Saudi Arabia in fact provides a significant proportion of Washington's oil and constitutes a precious ally in the Gulf. If the region becomes unstable, that will have serious economic consequences for the US.

Who are the northern resistance fighters? What are their demands?

In the north of the country, the government has been facing for several years the armed resistance of the Houthis who get their name from the founder of their movement, Hussein Al-Houti. He himself died in battle four years ago and his brother has taken his place. Like the majority of Yemenis in the north, the Houthis are Zaydis. Islam is divided into several trends such as Sunni or Shia. These trends are divided in turn into different branches, Zaydiism being a branch of Shi'ism.

President Saleh is himself a Zaydi, but the Houthis don't recognise his authority. The fact is that Yemen is a very poor country. Its economy depends essentially on an agriculture which is in decline, some oil income, a bit of fishing, as well as international aid and money sent home by expatriates. On top of that, it is only a handful of people in the president's entourage who gets any benefit from the country's riches, while the general population is becoming poorer and poorer. The majority of Yemenis are aged under 30 but they have no hope for the future. Unemployment stood at 40% in 2009. The Houthis have questioned the government to as to the reason for the underdevelopment of the region, the lack of water and for problems of infrastructure. But President Saleh did not respond to their appeals. That is the basis on which the Houthis took up their armed struggle. Their headquarters is the town of Saada. This is most symbolic: it was in that town that more than 10 centuries ago the founder of Yemeni Zaydi'ism was based.

The fighting close to Saada is raging. It has caused several thousand people to become refugees, and the government is accusing Iran of supporting the rebels...

This accusation is false. Iran has a Shia majority, but Yemeni Zaydis, because of the way they pray and for other reasons, are in fact closer to the Sunnis. If the Houthi resistance has enough arms to carry on fighting for the next ten years, it is because it gets help from a part of the Yemeni army. In fact, many soldiers and officers are themselves also Zaydi. The struggles in the region have caused more than 150,000 people to become refugees and Zaydi soldiers can see how their brothers are suffering. Some of them are even joining the resistance.

President Saleh must therefore mobilise opportunist Sunnis in the army in order to combat the northern resistance. This cannot be done with impunity. This Zaydi president, who has already used his religious convictions to mobilize the population and the army, is today calling on Sunnis to defeat other Zaydis. Saleh is set to lose whatever support he had left in the north of the country.

And the south is demanding to secede! The Yemeni president really seems to be in a bad position.

It is essential to understand Yemeni history in order to understand what is happening today. In its present form the country came about as a result of the fusion in 1990 of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, in the south, with the Yemeni Arab Republic in the north. These two states had different histories.




The birth of the north dates back over 10 centuries to the time when Zaydis first arrived in Saada. But in 1962 a revolution broke out aimed at overthrowing the feudal regime and installing a republic. Nasser, the Egyptian president and defender of Arab independence, supported the revolutionary movement. For their part, the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran sent mercenaries to rescue the reactionary elements of the old feudal regime and to weaken Nasser. The conflict resulted in a terrible war in which more than 10,000 Egyptian soldiers lost their lives. Finally, the Republican government was not overthrown, but it was weakened by the conflict. It did not have the means to unleash a cultural revolution or completely to democratize the country, nor to industrialise it. Even though the Imam-king who led the country escaped to Saudi Arabia, a large part of North Yemen remains at the feudal stage.

What about the south?

South Yemen's history is quite different. It was colonized by the British in order to block expansion on the part of the French who had taken over Djibouti and on the part of the Russians who had spread up to central Asia. But it was also a question of the British maintaining their domination of the Persian Gulf and the strategic Straits of Hormuz. It is Great Britain that built the port of Aden in South Yemen. This town became very important for the British empire. One could say it was the Hong Kong or the Macao of the epoch. Many foreigners were sent to the region.

This is what the social pyramid looked like in this colonial society: at the top, the British colonials lorded it, followed by the Somali and Indian communities who acted as a sort of buffer against the lowest category, the Yemenis. It was a classic strategy from the British colonists: using one group of person against another one in order to protect themselves. By the way, all the people that Great-Britain used to see as dangerous for its Indian colony – such as nationalists or communists – were sent in exile in Aden.

As we have seen in Somalia, did these political prisoners influence developments in the region?

Certainly. Independence movements forced out the British colonists in 1967 and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was born the following year. It was governed by the Yemeni Socialist Party, which was a coalition of different progressive elements, inheritors in part of Aden's prisoners. You could find there communists, nationalists, liberals, and Ba'athists from Syria or Iraq. All these elements were united under the banner of the Socialist Party.

South Yemen thus became the most progressive Arab state in the region and knew its most flourishing years, with agrarian reform, equality of the sexes, etc. Nevertheless, the socialist party remained a mixture of several elements with diverse origins. The communists were the backbone of the party and gave it a certain amount of cohesion, but every time there was a need to face any major difficulty, the contradictions burst out into the open. Because of a lack of any industrial basis and the petty bourgeois character of the coalition, these contradictions ended up giving rise to assassinations. Members literally killed each other! As a result of this the party underwent three bloody internal revolts. The last one proved fatal. Most of the ideological leaders of the party were assassinated and the liberal wing took charge of the movement. It was therefore a very weak socialist party which was governing Yemen up to the time that the two Yemen were reunified in 1990. Even though both sides had had relatively different histories, the parties of both north and sourth had always supported unfiication of the country in their respective schedule.

Why was it necessary to wait until 1990 before the north and south united?

In the north the state had been very weak after the war. It was led by liberals who lacked any really revolutionary activities and were controlled by the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia in particular. The Saudi neighbour provided arms and money to the feudal class with a view to weakening the central government. For Saudi Arabia a tribal North Yemen was easier to control. The south became, on the contrary, a bastion of progressive ideas. At the height of the Cold War it was considered as an enemy of the region which had to be put in quarantine.

But in the early nineties things had changed. First of all, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War had ended. On top of that, the Yemeni Socialist Party was no longer much of a threat. Its ideological leaders had been wiped on in the third internal party revolt. For the countries of the region as well as for the strategic interests of the west, the unification of Yemen no longer represented a danger. Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been president of the Yemeni Arab Republic since 1978, took the leadership of the country. He is still in power today.

In 1990, Yemen was the only country, apart from Cuba, to oppose the Iraq war. 20 years later, while Castro is still holding out against the 'Yankees', Saleh has for his part lined up alongside the US in their war on terror. How can you explain this change?

The opposition to the war in Iraq was not the result of Saleh's policies, but of those of members of the former Yemeni socialist party who occupied various key positions in the new government. Nevertheless, even though the socialist party had always wanted unification of Yemen on a progressive basis, it had been too weakened by its internal revolt to be able to get its policies accepted in their entirety. On top of that, Saudi Arabia, a faithful ally of the US, made Yemen pay dearly for its position against the Iraq war. The Saudi regime expelled a million Yemeni workers who had enjoyed a special status entitling them to work on the other side of the frontier. This caused a severe economic crisis in Yemen, while at the same time sending a strong message to President Saleh. The latter revised his policy, becoming gradually the puppet of US imperialism that we know today.

And the southern progressives let him do?

Reunification was a big letdown for the southern leaders. They launched themselves into the process without a proper strategy. And, as we have seen, the Socialist Party was very weak. The centre of power gravitated in the north around President Saleh. The regime was corrupt, the expulsion of the Yemenis working in Saudi Arabia had created a major crisis and the economic situation was deteriorating.

All these factors led to the south demanding to secede in 1994. The separatists were supported by Saudi Arabia, which preferred its neighbour to be weak and divided, for various reasons. Firstly, because of the contradictions it had with its neighbour as to the course of the Saudi-Yemeni border: Yemen was in fact claiming certain areas situated in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, because a united Yemen with good leadership could cause problems for the feudal classes in Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia.

These tensions between north and south finally led to war. The Zaydi president mobilized the people of the north and the greater party of the army on the basis of their religious beliefs to fight against the Sunni-majority south. The separatists were beaten, which weakened still further the former members of the Socialist Party within the Yemeni government. This war finally offered the north, and Saleh, an opportunity to remove their dominant influence over military and political questions.

Fifteen years later, the south is again demanding separation. Do you think that president Saleh will be able to get away with it again?

Obviously, no. Saleh is facing problems at every turn. The south is demanding again a fair share of power after the corrupt government to all intents and purposes has restored the feudal order. For the southern Yemenis, who have a progressive history, this situation is unacceptable. And it isn't acceptable either for the Houthis in the north. In this case, President Saleh is unable to mobilise most of the population and army on the basis of their religioius beliefs. The Houthis are Zaydis too! The Houthi resistance has exposed the real policies of this government in a way no other strategy could have achieved in so short a time. The population is discovering what is really happening and discontent is growing stronger and stronger.

What are the reasons for the anger of the Yemeni people?

First and foremost, the social and economic situation. The regime has wealth while the people get poorer and poorer. There is also the fact that Yemen has become a bastion of US imperialism and Saleh had lined up alongside Washington in the war on terror. The Yemenis can see what is happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. For them it is a war against Muslims. Barack Hussein Obama may have a Muslim name and make all the speeches he likes, there are no other words to define this war.

On top of that, the Yemeni government is not even able to protect its citizens. After the September 11 attacks, some of them have been kidnapped and removed for no reason. This happened to an eminent Yemeni religious leader. When he was in the US visiting his son, he was arrested and sent to Guantánamo for no valid reason. After 6 years in detention, he was finally released. But he died three weeks later, because he became sick as a result of his imprisonment. This war on terror is really not accepted by the Yemeni people.

Finally, Saleh recognised the disputed frontier claimed by Saudi Arabia. He also authorised Saudi bombers to raid the region where the Houthi rebels are established. For the Yemenis this situation is unacceptable. Saleh is on an ejection seat. That is why he needs the support of the US which is raising the spectre of al Qaeda to be able to do what it likes in the country.

After Afghanistan and Iraq, is Yemen going to be the US's third front?

I think it already is. The US army has already sent missiles and special troops. It equally supplies a great deal of materiel to Yemen, but a good proportion of this goes over to the hands of the resistance because of the links the Zaydis have with the Yemeni army. It is six months since Saleh launched a major offensive against the Houthis. He has called for reinforcements from the Saudi Arabian and US armies. It wouldn't surprise me if Israel were soon to join the party. But in spite of everything, they are unable to overcome the Houthi resistance. The latter operates from a mountainous region, as do the Taliban. We know how difficult it is to combat rebels in such a terrain. Moreover, the Houthis have the arms to carry on fighting for a long time to come.

Is the US facing another defeat?

History does seem to repeat itself as far as the US is concerned. For all that this country is today led by a former Muslim, its policies have not changed. Obama's speeches are a lot like George Bush's: he promises to hunt down terrorists wherever they might be. Washington raises the spectre of al-Qaeda to fight rebels ensconced in Yemen's mountains? Bush did the same thing more than 8 years ago with regard to Afghanistan, and that war is still not over.

The thing is to know how long this is going to carry on. The historian Paul Kennedy has shown that the gap between the economic basis and military expansion was one of the principal factors in the decline of great empires. If the economy of a big power is running out of steam but its military expenses are increasing, this great power is condemned to fade and become very weak. That is the situation with the US today.

Mohamed Hassan is a specialist in geopolitics and the Arab world. Born in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), he participated in the student movements of the 1974 socialist revolution in his country. He studied political science in Egypt before specializing in public administration in Brussels. A diplomat for his country of birth during the 1990s, he has worked in Washington, Beijing and Brussels. Co-author of 'Iraq under the occupation' (EPO, 2003), he has also participated in producing works on Arab nationalism and the Islamic movements, and on Flemish nationalism. He is one of the greatest contemporary experts on the Arab and Muslim world.

Translation by Ella Rule for Lalkar