Senseless carnage (Mumbai, Iraq, New York, ... Jakarta): What purpose does all this blood spilling serve?

Hassan Al-Haifi (commonsense@yemen.net.ye)

It is hard to believe that after so many years and so much senseless bloodletting, that the people who are behind such gory displays of bloodshed and destruction, last manifested by the Jakarta Ritz-Carlton Hotel bombings, and the ongoing suicide or remote controlled bombings of Iraq have not seen that such attacks are first of all unholy, second of all frivolous and third of all self-defeating. Moreover, those who profess to regard such barbarity as being motivated by the unbending adherence to Jihad or the struggle for the sake of Islam or Allah are no more than ignoramuses, who have lost all spiritual sense of their religion and who do not have the faintest idea of the powerful and meaningful conscientiousness that the belief in the Almighty must encompass. In all respects, these fanatical misfits have become an element of social degradation and are more resourceful to those who may find it in their interest to hinder the progress of the Moslem communities of the world. It goes without saying that such gross misrepresentations of dogmatic belief keep the Moslem World out of touch with the true dictates that underscore the true moral implications in the rhythmic prose of the Holy Quran. This Salafi/Wahhabi unforgivable waste of human life is anathema to any spiritual attachment to the Devine, Whose attributes include the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Rejuvenator of the Dead, the Giver of Life, the Taker of Life, etc. Indeed, those who profess to be taking human life so recklessly are the real danger that confronts the God-fearing Nation of Islam that centrally extends from Mauritania to the Eastern periphery of the South Seas with sizable pockets spread throughout the world.

Having said that, it is safe to assume that most Moslems throughout the world have come to realize that this Saudi Arabian exported non-genuine rendition of Islam, with its obvious Wahhabi extremism and sadistic lust for blood is unacceptable notwithstanding the billions of US Dollars the Wahhabi Establishment has invested for disseminating this horrendous distortion of Islamic dogma. Yet the merciless killings go on, as if the Wahhabi Establishment actually wants Moslems as well as non – Moslems to continue to look upon them with fear, as if fear is their only means of acceptance among the truly God – fearing innocent believers of Allah, who stand helpless against the well organized and well resourced linchpins of the Wahhabi Establishment that are now well entrenched in most places of the world, in both the Moslem World and the non-Moslem World. The propagators and organizers of this vicious brutality count continuously count on considerable funding and guidance from the not so credible mentors of the Saudi Wahhabi Establishment.

If one looks back at the record of these unholy activities of largely innocent civilian deaths one is bound to confront an ugly background of bloody incidents starting some two hundred and fifty years ago (see this link for a well detailed history of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi), in particular this segment:

"Saudi sponsorship

Beginning in the last years of the 18th century Bin Saud and his heirs would spend the next 140 years mounting various military campaigns to seize control of Arabia and its outlying regions, before being attacked and defeated by Ottoman forces. The invasions were justified as the destruction of the villages of polytheists as authorized in the Qur’an, even though they were attacking fellow Muslims (see Beliefs below).

One of their most famous and controversial attacks was on Karbala in 1802 (1217 AH). There, according to a Wahhabi chronicler Uthman b. Abdullah b. Bishr:

“[Wahhabis] scaled the walls, entered the city ... and killed the majority of its people in the markets and in their homes. [They] destroyed the dome placed over the grave of al-Husayn [and took] whatever they found inside the dome and its surroundings.... the grille surrounding the tomb which was encrusted with emeralds, rubies, and other jewels.... different types of property, weapons, clothing, carpets, gold, silver, precious copies of the Qur’an.”[15]

Throughout their early history, the Wahhabi penchant for blood was manifested by the robbing of pilgrimage caravans going to Mecca sanctifying the lives of faithful Moslems as well as their property on account of their being non adherents (“infidels”) to the Wahhabi Creed, which they misguidingly represent as the only form of acceptable Islam, notwithstanding that the Prophet Mohammed (PBAUH) had forewarned that for the Moslems, Najd is “… where the devil’s horns emanate” and the fact that the Quran has warned of the real enemy of Islam being the hypocrites (those who claim adherence to Islam, with mainly surface dressing and nothing at the core of dogmatic belief).

Yemen Times Issue 1278 20 July 2009

In Yemen, "the Rich Get Richer …". How Long Can this Mayhem Continue?

The insistence of the governing regime in Sana'a to continue to deal with the various forms of opposition it is encountering, through the bloodthirsty military security apparatus of the regime being the only answer the government finds in dealing with the discontent being felt in the northern and southern governorates, defies explanation. After so many years in power, and so many trials and tribulations, President Ali Abdeulla Saleh and his most senior partners in the regime, who supposedly have gone out of their way to ensure the longevity of the presidency of Ali Abdulla Saleh, should start asking themselves to what do they owe this "lack of appreciation" by their ungrateful subjects? After all, aren't these officials working night and day looking after the interests of the Yemeni people? In the meanwhile, the icons of the regime have no qualms about how they take their share of the looting of public and even private property, which has mushroomed their wealth beyond any anyone's ability to measure such wealth, even if by the closest of staff to these icons of the regime. One is bound to be astounded by the ability of these unorthodox civil servants to manage so much personal wealth, while hardly finding enough time to tend to their public duties with the minimum reflection of any sense of responsibility they have for the welfare of this poor country of Yemen. As for the protection of the interests of the good citizens of this unfortunate land, that would not be within the context of the public service which they understand, as these icons have become the most likely perpetrators for which protection is needed. No one can deny that the visible assets these horrendously evil civil servants have collected are beyond anything that any of the most knowledgeable about public corruption would care to admit to knowing about, but if one also considers the laundered or invisible assets these people have squandered, the devil himself would claim Yemen's corruption to be the best that he has accomplished in this Earth, since God threw Adam out of paradise. This was attested to by several of Yemen's great late literary personalities, who were brave enough to echo their concerns about the plight of Yemen under what one of them called "the most corrupt regime in history" (Abdullah Baraddoni), not to mention the pleadings of many of them who urged the President in many public occasions to "feed them from hunger and secure them from fear" (Mohammed Ali Al-Rabadi ), as Allah has bestowed upon Himself to do for mankind.
There have been many efforts to try to get the regime in Yemen to see the light that the current situation is slowly getting the country to the abyss of despair, poor economic performance and unequal access to natural and public resources, not to mentions the rise of an ugly monopolistic commercial establishment that has been allowed to develop, which has closed the doors to any potential Yemeni citizen, who wishes to show some flair for commercial or financial enterprise (except of course for the elements of the regime, who have decided to make inroads into the world of "capital investment". It is safe to assume that such inroads to private enterprise come about through horrendous laundering schemes of stolen public assets, or embezzlement, or sheer open business enterprises that have sought to deliver honest seekers of meager livelihoods out of the way. Such vehicles include "investments" in mass transit for example, which has driven several independent taxi drivers and truck drivers out of the ability to provide livelihoods for their families . Having said that about these and other obviously suspicious enterprises, this observer has come to learn that the companies that "share" out the taxis to drivers who wish to operate the "company taxis" must pay the almost impossible sum of YR 5,000 per day to the company and the drivers must bear all the expenses etc., which would mean that the poor drivers would have to work from dawn to midnight to be able to eke out the funding needed to meet the formidable cost of living for their families. Some drivers have admitted to this observer that there are some days they are unable to achieve the needed revenue to meet these due daily payments, unless they include Friday, the Sabbath Day of the Moslems).
That is just one area in which senior officials from within the regime's closed family and tribal establishment have found niches for directing their "hard earned" capital towards the further exploitation of the people of Yemen in all their various walks of life. Then of course there are the glossy well organized "investment companies", such as petroleum service companies. These laundering enterprises work night and day to make sure that their monopolistic owners get their share of the meager oil wealth of Yemen. Accordingly most citizens have given up hope a long time ago that the petroleum resources and other natural resources of the land would provide a useful capital base that would launch Yemen towards promising equitable economic and social development, which most economic experts suggest is possible if Yemen enjoyed proper and ethical management of these resources, which are now depleting faster than the public servant hordes can scavenge them.

Yemen Times
Issue 1276
13 July 2009

In Yemen, One Finds An Abominable Security Situation

By Hassan Al-Haifi

No person in his right mind would like to see things return to the way they were back in the "Good old days" when sending the ـkfa, or special security police of the Imam to bring any disobedient citizen to justice was enough to bring anyone to their sweat. However, it goes without saying that the current security situation in Yemen certainly is at best not applaudable and in fact almost unbelievable. Surely, one can not help but wonder if the ineffectiveness of our highly elaborate and most of all expensive security budgets is still a poor match when compared to the ükfas of the Imam, who singlehandedly were able to drag any violator of public or political perpetrations back to the Court of the Imam without fail, or obstruction. The latter were armed only with a rifle and the uncontested authority of the Imam Ahmed, not to mention the charisma, which the Imam projected among his small security apparatus and the general subjects that pledged allegiance to the "crown" almost gladly, since they were assured the safety of adherence to law and the comfort of the prevalence of stable order throughout the land (Qadhi Abdullah Al-Shamahy, the late famous chronicler and well-known patriot, made note of this in many public interviews and in his historical writings).

Even the Imam's own troops could not help but fall prey to this feeling of general public acknowledgment of the Imam's ability to insure the safety and will being of his subjects. Muhsin Al-'Ainy is a former Prime Minister of Yemen on several occasions and is also a well known patriot of prominent standing among the revolutionary heroes, whose role in the struggle against the archaic monarchy of the Hamid Al-Din dynasty is without any doubt. The latter could not help but categorically admit in his memoirs, "Fifty Years UnderShifting Sands " that the attempted coup of 1955 against the Imam was not really inspired by a genuine desire to bring down the monarchy (two of the Imam's brothers were hurriedly recruited to join in the coup as a frantic effort to give the coup some hopeful public support). He relates that the coup actually began when some of the troops of the Imam (who then had already made Ta'ez the de facto capital of Yemen, as he made it his permanent abode) went around annoying some of the civilian residents of the Houban area of Ta'ez, who threatened to go and complain to the Imam of this annoyance. The fear of the Imam amongst the troops inspired them to seek the leadership of Ahmed Al-Thulaya to lead them to a coup against the Imam before the latter has a chance to take lawful action against the troops, who were behind the complaints echoed by the people of the Houban area. It goes without saying that the coup of 1955 was quickly and singlehandedly overturned by the Imam Ahmed in the matter of days and his Imamate was guaranteed for another seven years. His 2 brothers were subject to the same repressive justice that was meted out to the other attempted coup leaders, even to the astonishment of the Imam's son and then aspiring Crown Prince Mohammed Al-Badr (who became Imam for just 1 week after his father's death in September 1962). When the latter asked the late Yemeni literary personality, Ahmed Al-Shami how could his father have the nerve to execute his two brothers, the latter answered: "You should know your father by now. Would he accept anyone saying that he did not mete out the justice of law as expected of an Imam? No, your father insisted that people recognize him for the application of law against all, notwithstanding how close they were to him." The latter citation can also be found in the Memoirs of Ahmed Al-Shami "The Years of Turmoil".

The point to be made from all this is to show that the people of Yemen indeed have the right to see the equal application of law on all citizens, not to mention the accountability of all public officials who failed to abide by the most basic of public service ordnances and ethics.

While taking note of the above, one should not be surprised at the apparent lack of disrespect at the almost total disregard for the most basic standards of public service, which one sees by the most senior of public officials and military brass and thus it is easy to understand that in such a venue, all kinds of lawlessness would be allowed to characterize this once peaceful land under the most despotic of regimes (the Imamic regime and the colonial rule of Aden and the former South Arabian Protectorates). No one is calling for the return of Imamic rule, but surely the people of Yemen cannot be expected to stand in abeyance while they see the application of Law nowhere near the senior officials, who are getting away with the most heinous of public crimes and literally getting away with murder, as they placate the foreign forces that are now more than beginning to have a dominating effect on directing the political directions the country proceeds on, not to mention their refusal to leave the Treasury and public property intact. The reliance on the motto that the "public be damned" should never be expected to guarantee the longevity of any regime.