If you have something to say...
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The Blog
The recent decision of the US government to admit the embattled President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to the country for medical treatment presents a classic human rights conundrum.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement last week to transfer power to his vice president. It's unlikely, though, that a piece of paper will bring a peaceful transition to this beleaguered Arabian Peninsula state.
What matters most is early participation in shaping the destiny of the Arabs, so as for the Arabs not to fall into a cycle of organized, creative or random chaos.
It might seem a strange time for all this terrorism talk to resurface. Osama bin Laden is dead, and his cohort in Pakistan is beleaguered. But "terrorism" is a flexible term, and Africa is a big place.
The Arab Spring would not have been possible without Al Jazeera.
It's time for the United States to recognize that the future of the Middle East is not in the hands of aging autocrats like Saleh or even traditional elite oppositionists, but in civil society.
Three issues have plagued the region for decades and threaten to derail progress at every turn. I call them the Mideast's "Stink Bombs" -- hyper-divisive issues that inflame passions and serve a politicized minority only.
I spoke with April Longley Alley, Crisis Group's Senior Arabian Peninsula Analyst, about the latest developments in Yemen and what should happen to ensure that the protest movement yields genuine change.
I spoke with April Longley Alley, Crisis Group Senior Analyst for the Arabian Peninsula, about Yemen's political scene and what comes next for the country, with or without Saleh.
The disappearance of drinking water, corruption, terrifying mosque speeches -- these elements have not yet produced the systems failure everyone knows is coming -- but they have certainly ratcheted up the tension.
Brooks concludes that Huntington's "mistakes illustrate useful truths: that all people share certain aspirations and that history is wide open." I know, just from having lived eighty years, that all people do not share certain aspirations.
Arab youth are demonstrating against their old authoritarian regimes in masses for the first time in recent history. Murmurs abound that Mubarak's regime is in its final throes, and repeatedly cracking down on protest are signs of the beginning of the end.
The true failure thus far has been the inability of the US foreign policy establishment to realize the unsustainable nature of alliances with undemocratic leaders in demographically and ideologically shifting countries.
The U.S. can make a huge difference in Yemen by listening to the will of the people, by abstaining from directly or indirectly supporting this repressive regime and by helping Yemenis bring about true democracy to their country.
Tawakul compares today's movement to Yemen's 1962 revolution which overthrew the monarchy. All of the same conditions hold true: endemic poverty and disease, a lack of education, corruption.
Those in Congress who call for Julian Assange's execution or imprisonment make no attempt to conceal the chaos they are creating.
