A Respite or a Durable Blessing: A Peace for the Yemeni People?

Yes, it seems quite now for a change in Sa'ada Governorate after six months of mainly guns doing the talking and undertakers operating ceaselessly, having to try to cater to human flesh that has lost its fine intricate and delicate engineering. For the undertakers this makes an already not so dazzling source of livelihood much harder to stomach even for the most hardened professional caretaker of human forms that have lost their meaningful contents and raison d'être – their souls. The mostly untimely passing away of all these souls that needlessly consummated their allotted time in this world much earlier than their bearers or even their killers might have earnestly pursued. Most of the parting human beings who lost their lives in the Sixth Round of a war that should not have had a Round I in the first place, were folks, whose death would most likely not have a determining factor on the outcome of the war anyway. But then the ugly thing about wars is that most of the casualties are never even asked why they should have to die so prematurely. In fact they do not have people determining what coordinates they should be on when the deadly ordnance that ends their existence per deadly chance should happen to land just when they trek on those coordinates. Their doom is written at that moment and their destiny is decided by men, whom they have never met, let alone have the least admiration for. This war in Sa'ada has not only been a war for people, who only sought to be free from religious oppression. It was a war that most of the combatants on both sides of the dogmatic divide would have preferred not to have started by the men who took on their leadership by bad fate more than by freedom of choice of the constituency. Ironically, when one views the leadership of the leading parties in the war, the people of Sa'ada were indeed fighting behind elected leaders, whereas the leaders behind dictating the orders for the firing of the most lethal ordnances were not freely elected at all. But then, one is not here trying to find the "right" side, if ever there was a right side in war; for the innocent dead there is never a right side. Life for them was the only right side. One is thus glad to see that the guns have for now stopped the talking and the leaders on both sides have betted on being able to win the hearts of people in more convincing ways than resorting to the gun that never won any heart for anyone. Needless to say, it is more likely that the end of the war may have come, because the more powerful player, who now decides the fate of the world at large, indeed found this war to be disturbingly unreal in their chess game of international conflict. Perhaps, the regime in Sana'a and perhaps their mentors in Riyadh failed to see that it is impossible for a country like Yemen, with its entire limited means to engage in three senseless wars at the same time! In fact, Yemen can't afford to engage in any war and the people of Yemen are already tired of thirty years of almost relentless warfare for a myriad of causes, none of which have brought the Yemeni people any clue as to when the country will ever see the light of day. In the arithmetic of war, in such a situation the main factors are power, greed and lack of faith in God and in the right of people to live in peace, so they can tend to the more urgent needs of fulfilling the needs of hungry children; hungry for food and hungry for learning! Wars do not solve the problem of feeding those hungry children, when the farmers that father those children are denied the most essential ingredients for producing their food and the access to the markets that will buy the output of one's labor. Wars will not help solve the problem of 55% of children in basic school age (whose number is now in the millions!) not being enrolled in schools at all, because there are neither enough schools or teachers, or even care for their future by those who should work night and day to try to remedy this serious of social problems and not the problem of how you pray while facing Mecca. Somebody should tell Thomas Freidman of the New York Times of the real facts on the picture of education in Yemen, because he left with the impression that there were only 5% unenrolled and only 15,000 in number. He also left with the idea that if schools could be found for these wrong numbers, Al-Qaeda would not have a chance to grow in Yemen. He does not even realize that the people who bring war to Yemen are the very same people who bring Al-Qaeda to the surface in Yemen and elsewhere. Mr. Freidman hardly cared about what is going in Sa'ada during his visit to Yemen. His main interests were taken up by the dirty underwear of a dubious Nigerian son of a wealthy man, who simply was deprived from some of the wealth of his father, or who simply found easier paths to glory in life. Thanks to the other breed of war merchants, who find in displaced human minds a good opportunity to extract wealth and fame by sending the former to their death or prisons like Guantanamo, the people of Sa'ada are of little concern to writers like Freidman, who probably does not have the faintest idea why there is Al-Qaeda in the first place. The people of Sa'ada know and are apparently not willing to have these contractors of death dictate their lives. That is what the War in Sa'ada really all about, isn't it?

Yemen Times Isue 1336 February 15. 2015