Thalif Deen

WHEN Yemen refused to vote in support of a U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution against Iraq during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, a visibly angry U.S. delegate turned to the Yemeni diplomat and said: "That will be the last time you will ever vote against a U.S. resolution." Washington's subsequent retaliation, in the aftermath of that negative vote, was predictable.

The United States not only downgraded its relationship with Yemen but also cut off all military aid to a country once heavily armed with Soviet weapons.

But since that much-talked-about confrontation in the Security Council chamber, there has been a dramatic turnaround in the fluctuating love-hate relationship between the two countries.

And this week's aborted attempt to blow up a U.S. plane by a Nigerian student, with ties to a terrorist group in Yemen, has brought the political spotlight back on a country which is proud of its gun culture.

Yemen reportedly has over 60 million handguns and small arms spread over a population of some 21 million people.

Yehya al-Mutawakil, a former interior minister, was quoted as saying that everyone in Yemen is armed with handguns, while members of various tribes have gone upscale: they are armed with assault weapons, rocket launchers and submachine guns.

Ahmed al-Kibsi, a Yemeni professor, once told a British reporter: "Just as you have your tie, the Yemeni will carry his gun."

Between 2002 and 2008, Yemen received some 69 million dollars in U.S. military aid; and 496 Yemeni military personnel were trained under the International Military Education and Training programme (IMET).

William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New York-based New America Foundation, cites press reports to suggest that Washington will rapidly ramp up U.S. military aid to Yemen over the next 18 months.

The projected total, he said, is about 70 million dollars, or roughly the amount provided during the entire administration of former President George W. Bush.

"U.S. military aid to Yemen is a double-edged sword," Hartung told IPS.

On the one hand, the Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has participated in strikes against al Qaeda and al Qaeda-inspired groups within and around its borders.

On the other hand, he said, "The Yemeni government is one of the most unstable regimes in the world, and there is a danger that U.S. weapons and training could be turned against U.S. interests, if there is a change in government there."

The administration of President Barack Obama suspects that the so-called 'Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula', based in Yemen and which took responsibility for the attack on the U.S. airline on Christmas day, worked closely with the Nigerian would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

But administration officials have also expressed fears that Yemen is fast becoming a haven for al Qaeda terrorists, along with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United Nations has categorised Yemen as one of the 49 least developed countries (LDCs), describing it as one of the poorest of the world's poor.

A resource-starved country, Yemen is the only Middle Eastern nation that is an LDC, ranking 153 on the U.N.'s Human Development Index of 192 member states.

With one of the highest growth rates, Yemen's total population is expected to reach 40 million over the next two decades.

Poverty is widespread, according to the United Nations, with about 45 percent of the population living on less than two dollars a day.

When North and South Yemen buried their political differences back in May 1990 to become a single country - the Republic of Yemen - the merger was cynically described as "two poor countries becoming one poor country".

Currently, the United States provides funding for child survival and health, development assistance, and financing for narcotics control and anti-terrorism activities - besides military aid and military education and training.

The U.S. State Department says that U.S.-funded programmes will improve the capacity of the Yemeni counterterrorism unit, special forces and the coast guard to conduct security missions and support U.S. counterterrorism goals and develop the government's capability to secure and control its borders.

The government, which is battling an armed insurgency in the south, is also receiving U.S. funds to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Hartung told IPS the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is also involved in counterterrorism efforts in Yemen, at an unknown budgetary cost.

"It is also possible that a more visible U.S. role in counterterrorism efforts in Yemen could provide a rallying cry for extremists seeking to garner support for terrorist activities originating there," he added.

Hartung said the Obama administration "is essentially initiating a low-level war in Yemen with little or no public discussion about its potential consequences". [Courtesy IPS]

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The revolution rolls on

Kavita Kuruganti

PUNJAB is witnessing a different kind of revival of ‘trinjans’ or forums, where women share their knowledge on farming, spinning, stitching and healing. I thought that a story on Punjabi women would mostly be about girls preoccupied with the glamour world, young women waiting to get married to NRI mundas (men) and older women being silent witnesses to social evils like female foeticide... stereotypes formed despite the best of efforts.

For people like me, who have been working to change the current intensive agriculture models in Punjab to sustainable agriculture, because of the serious environment and health crisis developing in the state thanks to agro-technologies like pesticides, even getting rural women to engage in a dialogue on this with the men has been challenging. They simply say that they have nothing to do with farming and that it is better to speak with the men only.

‘Together, we can’

But this lack of interest in village activities was not always the case. What is not well known is that long before NGOs came up with the concept of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), village women across Punjab used to be part of trinjans — forums where they would share their knowledge on farming, food practices, spinning, stitching and healing with each other. Their families and community would, of course, largely reap the benefits of this exchange.

Did the men ever object to their wives being a part of trinjans, like they do when women want to join SHGs? “Why would they object? We used to have all-night trinjans, too, and the men would not mind,” recalls Harbhajan Kaur, in her late fifties, from Dhaba village in Ferozepur district. Elsewhere, when women express the desire to become part of a local SHG and participate in its meetings, most men initially dissuade them from doing so. Only when they start reaping the benefits of their work — for example, through micro-finance activity — do the men relent and start respecting the “SHG activities”.

Loss of traditional wisdom & wealth

Even though Punjabi women had been way ahead of the SHG movement, these collectives gradually got dissolved due to the onset of the Green Revolution and subtle changes in lifestyle over the years. With the trinjans vanishing so did the use of traditional food and cropping systems. “I don’t recall when the last trinjan I took part in was — we seemed to have slowly stopped holding them without anyone realising why and how. I think it was because we got used to buying everything from outside,” says Sarabjit Kaur (60) of Seerwali village in Muktsar district. Sarabjit is an amazing treasure trove of knowledge of traditional healing practices that women in Punjabi households used to follow. Today, this knowledge has been systematically marginalised along with any status accorded to women possessing such wisdom.

Several things changed, paving the way for trinjans to become history. Some say that the Green Revolution left its impact on these spaces; some believe there were changes in the types of crops grown that affected this practice. For example, a change in the type of cotton grown meant that they could not spin yarn on the charkha any more. Some experts of Punjabi culture feel that the concept of “private spaces” was the end of trinjans — enclosures and the closing of doors on individual houses meant that women no longer walked into each other’s homes with the same degree of comfort as in the past. In addition to trinjans, other women’s activities too vanished. Many do not recall when they stopped saving their own seed; and younger women hardly have any knowledge about traditional food systems/practices.

Glorious comeback

While these collective spaces disappeared and the roles of the women in society diminished some decades ago, the crisis unfolding across Punjab today, connected to agri-technologies, has set the stage for their comeback.

Realising the need for reviving traditional food systems (mainly organic), cropping systems as well as re-tapping into the knowledge base of older women, trinjans are now being re-established in some villages, albeit in a slightly different form with help of groups such as the Kheti Virasat Mission and Pingalwara Charitable Society. Traditional food festivals are being celebrated in villages where the women are keen on recreating new age trinjans, which are like melas, where older women pass on their wisdom and knowledge to the younger ones.

One such state-level trinjan was organised in Amritsar recently. Around 800 women from different parts of Punjab congregated to be part of this day-long trinjan centred on the idea of ‘Back to Nature, Back to the Knowledge of Women’. Even people from the city as well as the nearby villages came to the mela. The event also marked the death anniversary of Baba Bhagat Puran Singh, the founder of the Pingalwara Society for the destitute and marginalised.

Traditional food and healing practices, local seed diversity, the adverse impacts of pesticides and GM (genetically modified) foods, especially on women, were the themes for the mela. Women were also seen enthusiastically spinning yarn on charkhas brought by some participants. Led by Bibi Amarjeet Kaur (40), women of Bhotna village of Barnala district supplied delicious traditional foods, such as mot-bajre di khichdi, jowar di roti, makke di daliyan and bhoot pinne, to the visitors. In fact, many older women exclaimed that they were eating some of the food preparations after nearly 20 years!

Those who participated in this trinjan went back inspired, wanting to do their bit for their environment. Many young women participants promised to revive traditional food systems and also get involved in ecological farming and developing chemical-free kitchen gardens. Some women also came forward and expressed the desire to hold a trinjan in their villages as well. As a result, two village-level trinjan melas were held — one at Jida village on September 23 and the other in Chaina village on September 31 last year. The start has been encouraging. Now it remains to be seen whether this first step would lead to trinjans, once again, becoming forums where Punjabi women will be able to showcase the power of collective work and of sharing knowledge and resources, even as they regain their own status in society.

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Afghanistan: From bad to worse

Sawraj Singh

THE situation in Afghanistan is quickly deteriorating. Thousands of civilians, Afghan troops, and NATO troops have lost their lives. The casualty figure in the year 2009 was the highest since the war started 8 years ago. Now, there are 100,000 NATO troops compared to 16,000 troops when the war started, but many Afghans feel that Afghanistan is more insecure and unstable now.

The Karzai government has lost control over most of Afghanistan and its authority is limited to Kabul only. However, even Kabul is far from secure. Kabul has come under repeated attacks. The population has swelled up to more than three times because of the refugees coming from all over the country. The authorities are unable to provide the most basic necessities. The Karzai government and the war lords who were really ruling the country are probably the most corrupt regime in the world. The 60 billion dollars aid to Afghanistan has been mostly usurped by this click and very little has trickled down to the people.

President Obama has decided to send 30,000 more troops. However, if raising the troops from 16,000 to 100,000 did not help, then how can 30,000 more troops help to control Afghanistan? Many times more troops will be needed to have a realistic chance to control the situation in that country. Even then there is no guarantee that it will do the job.

The situation in Afghanistan is not isolated, but is related to the overall situation in the world. The western crisis is not just an economic crisis, but it is a global crisis which affects all aspects of life.

The west has lost the spirit to fight. The crisis of western capitalism has thoroughly demoralized people in the western countries. Ultimately, it is not the weapons nor the numbers which win the war, but the human factor, that means the spirit to fight, which decides the outcome of the war. This is the main reason that the west has not been able to win any major war after the Second World War.

When we look at Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, and Yemen, then it becomes obvious that the antiWest Islamic fundamentalists are gaining influence. In many Muslim countries, there is a growing trend of antiWest sentiment among the population. In Afghanistan, more and more of the population is getting disillusioned with the west and the pro-western elements in Afghanistan.

I feel that the outcome of the war in Afghanistan is going to be just like Vietnam. The west is not going to win the war. The Russians had warned the Americans not to get involved in Afghanistan. The Americans did not listen to them. The American experience is not only going to be like the Russian experience, but will be much worse because the Russians were only fighting in Afghanistan, whereas America has to fight in many countries. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen; each day the list continues to be longer with no end in sight.

[Sawraj Singh M.D. F.I.C.S. Chairman, Washington State Network for Human Rights]

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