OTTAWA – Al-Qaida will gain a dangerous foothold in Yemen if the West doesn’t try to help Arab Spring rebels, and Canada is well-positioned to lead the way, says a top opposition leader from the country.
“Al-Qaida does not have roots or a strong base yet – and I stress the term yet – in Yemen,” Mohammed Abu Luhoum, the head of the Middle East country’s newly formed Justice and Building Party, told The Canadian Press Monday.
“If the international community keeps hesitating about taking serious initiatives, serious steps towards getting the power transferred, if you ask me where will al-Qaida be in 2012 or 2013, I will tell you yes they will have a strong base in Yemen.”
Abu Luhoum resigned from Yemen’s ruling party after the March 18 government massacre of protesters.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s authoritarian leader for the last 33 years, has promised to step down early next year as part of a deal brokered by the Gulf Co-operation Council.
But Abu Luhoum said Saleh will likely cling to power unless he’s forced out. And unlike Libya, where a NATO-led aerial bombardment and a naval blockade was needed to unseat Moammar Gadhafi, Abu Luhoum says all that’s needed to help his country are a few strokes of a pen.
He’s calling on the international community to do three things – many of which have already been used against Syria and Libya – but not to help his country’s relatively forgotten Arab Spring uprising.
They are: a freeze of Saleh’s assets and those of his family, impose a travel ban on his family and associates, and ban the import of arms into Yemen.
“I would hope that the Canadians would take this step before everybody else. It doesn’t cost them anything. It has a moral responsibility, a moral duty and it will show that Canadians are in the direction of peace and stability in that area,” he said.
“We will not need any air power and we will not encourage anybody to send any troops to Yemen because we can handle the situation ourselves.”
Abu Luhoum is delivering that message in Ottawa this week as he meets with the Foreign Affairs Department and MPs on Parliament Hill.
Modest estimates say at least 400 civilians have been killed in protests since February.
After a decade of trying to work for change inside his country’s ruling party, Abu Luhoum quit and joined his country’s uprising after government snipers used their rooftop perches to cut down 52 protesters in the capital of Sanaa on March 18.
Abu Luhoum realizes that the West’s ability to intervene is not limitless, but it has a very important reason to take a few modest steps to help Yemen – stamping out the foothold that al-Qaida is working hard to establish in the country.
Yemen is an impoverished nation that has become a battleground in the fight against the terror network. It is nestled on the border of Saudi Arabia, and lies on the sea routes leading to the Suez Canal.
In an unprecedented strike, a U.S. drone killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-Yemeni as he travelled through a stretch of desert in central Yemen last month. Several top associates were killed along with al-Awlaki, who was a top al-Qaida recruiter in the Arabian Peninsula.
Al-Qaida in Yemen has been linked to the failed attempt to blow up a commercial airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas 2009. Printers rigged with explosives that were intercepted by the United States last year were mailed from Yemen.
Abu Luhoum said the regime that replaces Saleh will be a serious, honest partner in the fight al-Qaida and other radical groups.
“The Arab Spring will open new horizons, will open a new way that we can build new relationships,” he said.
The best example of that, he said, is the complete lack of anti-American, anti-Western sentiment that has been expressed in demonstrations from Tunis, to Benghazi, to Cairo, Damascus and Sanna.
“This is a good sign that there is no audience for al-Qaida. This is one of the best ways of fighting al-Qaida, by giving people hope and faith and by showing people that you do really care about their issues and worries.”
Canada stepped up sanctions this week against Iran, and has imposed a series of punitive economic measures on Syria and Libya, prior to Gadhafi’s fall.
Abu Luhoum applauded the Western military intervention in Libya, but said it simply isn’t necessary elsewhere, when there are other ways to help.
“I think the move into Libya was courageous, it was the right move. If they were to delay, Libya would have suffered very severely.”
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