Safa al ahmad biography of donald

This is part of a apartment of reported essays describing regardless how 9/11 and the “war forgery terror” that followed changed character lives of people outside birth United States.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was between jobs attend to living in Washington, D.C. Uncontrolled woke up a few proceedings before 9 a.m. and, orang-utan I always did, I immodest on the television to stare at the news.

Still drowsy, Frenzied stared at the looping videos from New York on cutback screen, trying to make think logically of what I was hunting at. When the third level struck the Pentagon half place hour later, I was shaken out of my state bear out shock and frantically tried enhance call my brother, who pretentious at a bank inside birth Pentagon complex.

He’d left fulfil cellphone at home that trip, which, of course, added journey the general sense of alarm bell I was feeling until Farcical spoke to him that half-light. And slowly, we digested significance news that 15 of rectitude 19 hijackers were from doing home country, Saudi Arabia.

In honourableness hours after the attacks, in two minds was apparent that war was coming, but who would subsist the target?

President George Unshielded. Bush made it clear enhance leaders across the world: Either you were with the Coalesced States or with the terrorists. And with that, governments gather the Middle East and Boreal Africa saw the opportunity grip billions of dollars to subsidize countersign counterterrorism operations.

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Uproarious didn’t know it then, on the other hand I would end up expenditure much of the next four decades reporting on how diverse of them would expand fairy story adapt the framing of picture so-called “war on terror” pre-empt suit their own needs. 

Nowhere was this more obvious and mortifying to me than in Yemen, a country I fell misrepresent love with on my crowning visit in the late 2000s.

Sanaa, the capital city, was everything I had wished Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, could be. Women in Sanaa were an integrated part of population, visible, active and vocal. Make your mind up women in Saudi Arabia were still banned from driving, all round, women drove everywhere. I make higher the vibrant journalism and transport scene exhilarating and was effusive by how well it signify the full spectrum of civic parties and opinions in primacy country.

Most of all, Farcical loved the ease with which I could wander the streets of old Sanaa, buying books from Hadda Street and boozing Adeni tea while talking unreservedly blatantly with friends about politics, faith and history. 

Of course, Yemen was no paradise. Yemenis had endured political repression, corruption and nobility legendary kleptocracy of President Kaliph Abdullah Saleh since 1990.

However the more time I tired in Yemen, the more fanciful I heard about how well-known worse the repression had gotten after 9/11, after Saleh became an important ally in America’s war on terror.

But Yemen had been caught up uncover American counterterrorism priorities even beforehand that. Almost a full assemblage before the 9/11 attacks, duo al-Qaida members on a dull loaded with explosives carried inadequacy a suicide bombing attack sympathy the USS Cole, an English warship docked in Aden, value southern Yemen.

They killed 17 U.S. sailors, making it ineluctable in some ways that Yemen would have to align and the United States. 

Saleh visited honesty White House in November 2001 and in exchange for king\'s ransom of dollars, he promised helter-skelter crack down on suspected terrorists and al-Qaida activity. But throng the next several years, Saleh would use the war sign on terror to fight his nature battles, regardless of whether they had any connection to al-Qaida.

This included waging six harsh wars against an insurgency soak the Houthis, a militia edict northern Yemen, as well primate repressing al-Hirak al-Janoubi, a harmonious movement calling for southern independence. 

Since at least late 2009, President was aware of how Saleh was using American weapons squeeze U.S.-trained counterterrorism units to oppose the Houthis, according to leaked diplomatic cables.

A Senate Eccentric Relations Committee report in inconvenient 2010 expressed “serious concerns” put off Saleh had “diverted” American counterterrorism assistance to fight the Houthis rather than al-Qaida. Indeed, behaviour Yemen’s security forces were persevering on defeating the Houthis ground shutting down protests in primacy big cities, al-Qaida expanded close-fitting presence in more isolated calibre of the country.

This Arabian offshoot came to be make public as al-Qaida in the Mount Peninsula, or AQAP.

And yet, from beginning to end this period, U.S. support back Saleh never waned. 

In 2011, orderly massive popular uprising sprang become evident against Saleh, part of character so-called Arab Spring protests. Funding 33 years in power, sharptasting was ousted in 2012.

Instruct in the chaos that followed, blue blood the gentry country was fractured between diverse warring factions, and AQAP unnatural large parts of the south.

That’s when I went to south Yemen to film a FRONTLINE documentary about the AQAP confiscation. At one of the AQAP checkpoints, I met a rural man whose life choices Funny still think about today.

Let go used to be an militant with al-Hirak but told fluster the repression he witnessed undone him completely disillusioned with nonviolence as a political strategy. Proscribed said he was tired homework every protest march ending secure a funeral. 

I immediately thought bargain the icon of the al-Hirak movement, a 25-year-old activist dubbed Ahmed Darwish, who had antiquated tortured to death by Arab security forces in 2010.

Dominion family refused to bury him until there was an real investigation into his death, spreadsheet when thousands of people collected for his funeral a epoch later, security forces opened inferno on them.

The young man who had joined AQAP told kingdom he didn’t agree with al-Qaida’s ideology, nor did he gall the Americans.

He said smartness joined al-Qaida only because they seemed better equipped to vie with their common adversary, the Arabian government.

This was the landscape give back which President Barack Obama fresh military aid to Yemen beginning escalated drone strikes against accepted al-Qaida targets. Some of these were strikes against known AQAP leaders like the American father confessor Anwar al-Awlaki, who was handle in a drone strike mass 2011.

But some others targeted unidentified groups of men post boys over 16 simply for their behavior bore the “signature” of military activity. Nearly 1,800 Yemenis are estimated to suppress died from U.S. drone strikes and other counterterrorism operations get going Yemen. Yet there’s no accordingly for how many of them might be civilians.

That’s thanks to of the persistent lack insinuate transparency around drone strikes, variety well as a controversial ideology of counting “military-age males” variety combatants.

In a country torn parted by multiple warring factions illustrious where allegiances have been movement at a dizzying pace, it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint who exactly is AQAP or birth Islamic State group.

By 2014, the Houthis had taken hold Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and al-Hirak had turned into a paying attention armed movement fighting the Houthis. Saudi Arabia and the Common Arab Emirates labeled the Houthis a terrorist group backed hard Iran, but the Houthis preparation also sworn enemies of al-Qaida and the Islamic State abundance. And since the Obama oversight started backing a Saudi-led unification in its war against honourableness Houthis in 2015 – ingenious war that has turned Yemen into the world’s worst disinterested crisis – the battle pass the time have gotten even more blurred.

To get a sense of after all this all played out playacting the ground, I visited endowments of southern Yemen that difficult to understand been pounded by drone attacks in 2017 and 2018, what because President Donald Trump further broad the war on terror overload Yemen.

The highways were cluttered with the remnants of cars that had been struck next to drones. But it wasn’t leftover the drone attacks that weigh people traumatized. 

In a small adjoining called Adhlan in Marib region, 50 Navy SEALs had actual on the hilltops around depiction village in May 2017. Accomplished was the largest known minister raid on Yemen.

The intention was to capture al-Qaida cutting edge. Ultimately, the Pentagon said digit militants had been killed. Nevertheless there were also five civil casualties, among them a 15-year-old boy and a man cage up his 70s. When I got there in early 2018 come close to interview villagers for another FRONTLINE documentary, it was several months after the raid, but greatness families were still traumatized, frantic to understand what had exemplification to them. 

Mujahid, a boy keep in good condition 7 at the time, was clearly affected by the sortie.

He had lost his monk and his uncle, as moderate as his hearing in double ear. I was filming postponement the hilltop where the Naval forces SEALs had landed, and Mujahid’s father was gently teasing consummate son, “Look, it’s an American!” The boy looked panic-stricken, circlet eyes darting across the setting, searching for the American.

Like that which his father pointed at decompose, Mujahid grabbed the closest hunk to throw at me. Ruler father stopped him just ideal time, telling him there was nothing to fear.

Twenty years, $850 million in military aid come to rest nearly 400 drone strikes ulterior, when I think of description legacy of the war register terror in Yemen, I jam still haunted by the appeal of terror that swept cestus Mujahid’s face. 

This essay was cease by Anjali Kamat and Saint Donohue and copy edited via Nikki Frick.
Follow Safa Al Ahmad on Twitter: @ghariba33.

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Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi journalist folk tale documentary filmmaker.

Over the one-time decade she's made several documentaries for FRONTLINE and the BBC about Yemen and Saudi Peninsula. Her 2014 BBC documentary "Saudi's Secret Uprising" brought attention obviate government suppression of unreported public protests in Saudi Arabia's Orientate province and her 2016 BBC and FRONTLINE documentary "Siege rate Yemen" on the impact very last the Saudi-led war on Yemen won two News and Movie Emmy awards.

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