Analysis: Lessons not learned

WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- As part of its war on terrorism, the United States has started training, among others, units of the Yemeni military in counterinsurgency.

But Yemen is a country far wilder than the old Wild West ever was. Yemen should not even be called a country in the modern sense of the word; it's more an amalgamation of tribes, clans and families, gathered around a grouping of something that vaguely resembles a central government that controls no more than the capital, Sana, and parts of the ancient port of Aden. The rest is up for grabs.

It was in Aden that the attack on the USS Cole took place in October 2000, killing 17 American servicemen and women. The U.S. government believes Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network to be responsible for the attack.

Yemen's central government is unable to guarantee the safety of either its citizens or foreigners who dare travel outside of the two major cities, where each sheik rules over his territory in a manner quite similar to that of the Afghan warlords. Kidnappings in Yemen seems to come naturally.

Bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist mastermind accused by the United States of being responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, is of Yemeni origin, and still commands loyalty and following among some of the tribes in the country.

Every male past puberty in Yemen carries a weapon, and the weapon of choice is the AK-47, which can be bought on the open market for less than $400. As the New York Times' Nicholas D. Kristof recently reported from the country, "It's NRA heaven."

Years ago -- while in Sana to cover the assassination of president Ahmad al Ghashmi, who was killed when an emissary from what was then South Yemen handed him a booby-trapped briefcase -- I learned firsthand the basics of Yemeni politics. In Sana I lunched with Sheik Abdullah Al Ahmar, the charismatic leader of the northern tribes who had come to the big city in order to partake in talks that would lead to replacing the assassinated president.

Al Ahmar summed up Yemen's ways in one simple sentence:

"If we are not happy with the choice of the president, we will retrench in the north, and the government had better keep out."

This was in 1978, and although the two Yemens have since united into a single nation, tribal and family divisions still rule stronger than any government or army. And this has been the way politics have always been conducted in Yemen.

Training the Yemeni army might very well backfire and come back to haunt the United States.

Similar errors were made in Lebanon in 1983, when American Marines and U.S. Army Special Forces were dispatched to train units of the Lebanese Army, then under the presidency of Amin Gemayel. The Americans wrongly believed that the solution to Lebanon, as they now believe with Yemen, lies in a strong national army.

Instead of trying to identify the political causes of Lebanon's unrest, the United States set out to train young men who they should have known would desert the Lebanese army at the first opportunity and join up with militias with whom they had stronger party, religious and family affiliations.

And this is precisely what happened when Gemayel's government collapsed and the Shiite militias -- now U.S.-trained -- emerged to take control of the western sector of Beirut.

And the same can be said today about Yemen, where family and tribal ties run far deeper than they do in Lebanon. The cause of unrest in Yemen, while different from Lebanon's, remains the issue that needs to be addressed. Training the military in order to attain short-term objectives will most likely produce greater problems down the road.

One would hope that history in this case, will not repeat itself.