Faiz Ahmed's Personal Blog

Faiz Ahmed Oakland University Yemen is a strange place, a mysterious place. A place steeped in tribal culture. Almost every tribe has its own citizen’s militia. Yemen is at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula located south west of the Sultanate of Oman and south of Saudi Arabia. According to the “CIA World Factbook –Yemen”, North Yemen became independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. South Yemen became independent of the British in 1967 and the countries became united in 1990 (CIA World Factbook, pg 2). Since the very infancy of the new government/regime, it has been faced by challenges that have brought the regime close to collapse but it has endured up till now. According to the CIA World Factbook, a “southern secessionist movement was quickly subdued in 1994”(CIA World Factbook, pg 2). Yemen is “mostly desert” with a “narrow coastal plain”. Yemen also has a large mountainous region. “The Legal system is derived from Islamic Law, Turkish Law, English common law and local trib...

By Faiz Ahmed Oakland University Terrorism is the weapon of the weak, and can be either a small irritation or a big threat to the ruling establishment. There is no one particular type of terrorism, and therefore, when dealing with terrorism, the regime will use strategies that are flexible and have the ability to change and adapt. There are a few different strategies to deal with terrorism that Peter Sederberg demarcates in his article, “Conciliation as Counter-Terrorist Strategy”. He states that there are two basic methods of dealing with terrorism, one is the “war model”, and the other is the “rational actor model” (Sederberg 1995, pg 300-301). The “war model” basically means that the terrorists are the enemies that have waged war on the establishment and therefore must be eradicated. The notion of bargaining and talking to terrorists does not enter the picture. The problem with this war model is that if the repression of the terrorist organization becomes so extreme that the ter...

By Faiz Ahmed Oakland University The United States is an empire and has army bases all over the world. They have bases in Japan, Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America etc. The United States is a worldwide military Hegemonic power. But the United States is also a global economic Hegemony. The very basic principle that guides US foreign policy regarding US economic stability is not to let any other power reach the same level as it enjoys. Chalmers Johnson quotes Friedrich List is his book “The Sorrows of Empire”, “It is a very common clever device that when someone has attained a summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means to climb up after him” --- Friedrich List (Johnson 2005, pg262). This is a very true statement. The USA is a world power. It got to this level because of its economic and technological superiority and the ability to produce inexpensive goods before the world wars. While Europe, the then wo...