On December 4th, 2017, the media reported the killing of the former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and reported that Yemen is on the brink of a new era of political instability.
Comment:
The killing of Ali Abdullah Saleh brings to a total of four tyrants eliminated since the inception of the Arab revolution in 2011. Five despots if one adds Saddam to the equation. Four of the despots were British agents— Saleh, Ben Ali, Saddam and Gaddafi—while Mubarak was the only American agent. The removal of these agents has left behind an unprecedented power vacuum that has embroiled Libya, Iraq, and Yemen in protracted civil wars, destabilized Egypt and rendered Tunisia as tinderbox ready to explode at anytime.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former military officer, assumed the presidency of North Yemen in 1978 after a British coup and when north and south reunited in 1990, was elected as the first president of the new country. He remained an adept political broker for the British – switching sides, forging alliances with erstwhile enemies and dumping allies to prolong British influence in Yemen.
It mattered little to Saleh and his political masters the British how he ran the country, as long as the longevity of British interests were secured. Saleh’s reign was defined by corruption and mismanagement. At the onset of the uprising, Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the world, with widespread unemployment and persistent inflation. Its billions of dollars in oil revenues embezzled or wasted. Forty percent of Yemen’s population lived on less than $2 per day. The UN has gone on record to admit that Saleh had amassed a personal fortune of $60 billion while his people lived in abject poverty and squalor [1].
Saleh loved by the British was despised by the Americans for his duplicity. Gerald M. Feierstein the US ambassador to Yemen from 2010 to 2013, called him “completely untrustworthy” and described him as a “kleptomaniac who stole billions, perhaps tens of billions of dollars, over the years.” However, the Americans also realized Saleh’s uncanny ability to hold things together in Yemen. “The positive is that he did kind of hold the place together,” Mr. Feierstein said, showing “a sort of political mastery that moved Yemen forward in some ways.” Barbara K. Bodine, the American ambassador to Yemen from 1997 to 2001 said, “He kept all the plates in the air…a considerable political achievement.” [2]
Having thrown out Saleh from power in 2012, the Americans tolerated him—despite his pro-British credentials— and his alliance with the Houthis—whom the US heavily influenced through Iran. In many ways, the Saudi alliance and the Yemini actors played out a proxy war at the behest of a power struggle between Britain and America, and Saleh like so many agents before him became another casualty in this power struggle.
Ever since the demise of the Khilafah in 1924, the Muslim lands, especially the Middle East has become an open ground for foreign powers to play with the rulers of the Islamic countries like pawns on a chessboard. This is not the first time that foreign powers have reeked so much havoc in the Islamic lands. During the crusades, there were periods where Muslims openly allied with the crusaders, the Knight Templars, the Byzantine Empire and the Mongols, which inflicted immense damage to the Muslim Ummah. However, the Mamaluks through the strength and unity of the Islamic state overcame the plots of the foreign powers.
How many more agent rulers have to fall before the Muslim Ummah wakes up? Today, the Muslims must re-establish the Khilafah Rashidah (righteous Caliphate), which is the only instrument to protect them from the plots and plans of the foreign powers. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, «إِنَّمَا الْإِمَامُ جُنَّةٌ، يُقَاتَلُ مِنْ وَرَائِهِ، وَيُتَّقَى بِهِ» “The imam is a shield behind whom the people fight and behind whom they are protected.”
Abdul Majeed Bhatti
References:
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31632502
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/obituaries/ali-saleh-dead.html