COMMON SENSE
By: Hassan Al-Haifi
Undoubtedly, the news of the final hurdle of the slow and humiliating fall of Slobodan Melosovitch, is an important milestone in the fight against dictatorships by demagogues and bloodthirsty hate mongers, who rely on their bigotry and chauvinism to rise to power and then put their countries through fruitless adventures and cause hardships for millions. Yes, Slobodan Melosovitch had stained the history of mankind with his ruthless drive to "purify" his nation from those who did not meet his own standards of national affiliation and to rely on mythological grounds for the establishment of a new Greater Serbia, but in the end reduced the country to a fraction of what it was even under Communist rule. There are obviously important lessons that can be learned from this case of political criminology, if that is the name that suits the kind of regime of which the likes of Hitler and Melosovitch might be said to pursue in their quest for satisfying an egotistical mania that surely is out of tune with the progress that man has made in the political and social front, especially in this century.
The first lesson is that in this world of rapid communications and an aggressive international press there can be nothing hidden from the world. The ethnic cleansing campaign of Melosovitch and his cronies in Bosnia, as discreet as the Serbs tried to keep it was widely observed throughout the world and it was just a matter of time before the international community reacted to quickly save the rest of the Bosnian Moslems from the extermination campaign that Melosovitch had unleashed in the gentle hills of Bosnia-Herzogovnia. Although it was not until Melosovitch and his puppets have massacred 200,000 Moslems in Bosnia, that he was finally stopped, the international community should be credited still for acting as it did. Much of the credit of exposing the ugliness of the ambitions of Melosovitch must go to maverick reporting by the likes of Christiane Amanpour of CNN, who literally risked her life on a number of occasions to show the world the kind of madness that was being perpetrated by Melosovitch in the Balkans. Indeed, the ugliness of mass rape and cold blooded murder of innocent civilians, was more than the world could stand. The United States, under the leadership and personal initiative of former President William Clinton, also acted beyond what national self- interest would normally dictate and the humanitarian gesture is to be commended.
But, dictators tend to oblivious to lessons that are learned in the past. So, Melosovitch's thirst for blood prevailed above all sense of logic and rationality. If it could not be done in Bosnia, then let's do it closer to home. The same mentality prevailed in Melosovitch's mind in handling the Kosovo crisis, where he mistakenly thought his legitimate foundations were stronger to prevent international action against him. However, it seems that Melosovitch brought failed to account for the calamity of bringing international action against him right in his own turf. Accordingly, the people of Serbia could see first-hand that what Melosovitch was doing was of no service to them nor did it add anything to their greatness. This time the laser guided bombs and missiles were disrupting a normal and peaceful life for the Serbs, and in the end would do no good for Serbia in the international community. The Serbs were able to realize that as far as they were concerned they could do better without him and soon the people made it clear that Melosovitch just had to go.
Thus, the international community has now taken it upon itself that human rights indeed is an international issue and that it is paramount that no man should be allowed to decide the fate of his fellow human beings at his own whim, even if they are within the borders of the territory that is "sovereign".
Of course, Melosovitch is not the only dictator in the world and he is not the only proponent of "ethnic cleansing" campaigns, or demagogic concepts. Nevertheless, one should expect that the attention of the international community against such outdated nationalist themes needs to be promoted wherever such kind of chauvinism is preached. This area of the world has been witnessing this kind of demagogic "nationalism", in the form of a Zionist machinery that has practiced methodical ethnic cleansing for the past 100 years in the Holy Land and surely is worthy of international attention, to save what is left of the Palestinian people before Ariel Sharon's bloodthirsty trait goes into high gear and insures that the demagogic dream of Eretz Israel is realized before the international community puts and end to this madness that is as foreign to the region as eating pork.
It is also worth noting that there were very good relations between the regime in Tel Aviv and Slobodan Melosovitch and Israel was a "donor" country to the Serbs, even in the times when Serbia was boycotted by the international campaigns, providing technical assistance to the Serb gangs that were unleashing havoc in Bosnia and expertise in the way of conducting hate mongering on a systematic scale.
Surely, this is also a chance for many of the dictators in the region to look back on their records, and to remember that in the end dictatorships neither serve their people nor lead to the dreams of glory they envision for themselves.
They should also realize that their people will be the last to stand by them when these dictators become the targets of an international community that would like to see a world free of the likes of Melosovitch and many of the dictators that are still putting their people through senseless adventures that do neither their people any good nor to the peace and stability, which the world needs in order to overcome the pressing issues of poverty, deprivation and all the maladies that can become the basis of a dangerous time bomb that will threaten all of mankind.

Silver Lining
Mohammed Hatem Al-Qadhi
mhalqadhi@hotmail.com
It is a common belief that respect for time and adherence to punctuality is one of the major ingredients of success and prosperity of the advanced world. It is this ethical norm that has brought about the welfare of these nations. This is because the concept of time is a very important factor that keeps us on the track of success, either at the national or the individual level. Time is precious and valuable and hence people have to utilize every moment effectively and in a proper way. Respect for time and consideration for punctuality means a lot for any nation or individual. It means that people perceive time as a very important element in the realm of productivity and their welfare. In short, it means that these people are productive and active members of the society. Furthermore, it is an indication that every person has something to do with the society and its development. They are all involved in the development process. However, they don't work till they drain off their energy. Rather, they never miss their vacations and use them in a way so that when they are back to their work, they are more energetic and full of life. They give everything its due right and always keep it balanced.
Unfortunately, in Yemen it is only a few who are punctual and who respect time. Just pay a visit to any government office. You will be, of course, appalled. Employees just come to the office and sign at 8: 30 in the morning. Then, they go for breakfast. They come back after some time and keep hanging around in the Ministry offices. Therefore, if one has something to be done, he/she has to go around looking for the person in charge. You might meet him. But he will tell you to come tomorrow or the day after or give any other baseless excuse. This is the case of the ordinary employees. But the high ranking officials might attend office at 10 or even 11 in the morning and stay for some time and then leave. While being in the office, their doors are shut and guards are standing there as statues preventing any one to meet this or that guy.
Well, this is the daily routine one almost finds in all ministries' offices. It is an acute headache, isn't it? Every employee considers himself a sultan in his office since the sense of accountability is entirely absent. It is an irresponsible behavior that makes our work very much bureaucratic.
Another interesting point is this. I have always attended press conferences, workshops, seminars and other kinds of such stuff. I have never found that even a single seminar or meeting has started as scheduled. They might announce, for instance, that the event will start at 10 o'clock. You have to expect that it will start at around 11 o'clock. Sometimes, you might have an appointment with a person he might keep you waiting for a long time, which is actually very worrying. He might not even call and apologize. If you blame him the next time you meet for not keeping his word. He might simply say "SORRY." What a curse!
Besides, even a few foreigners working in Yemen who are supposed to be our role models in this respect seem to have adopted the Yemeni way in not respecting time. In other words, these people have adopted the Yemeni way of not giving much attention to the value of time. This is disturbing too.
More paradoxically, we always seem to be fully preoccupied and busy. We are busy at work, at home and everywhere. The result is that we produce nothing tangible or fruitful. This, of course, doesn't mean that there are no hardworking and punctual people in our society. On the contrary, there are some highly hardworking people who go to the other extreme in their adherence to hard work and time utilization. Sometimes hard work is tiring but it is very interesting and makes one enjoy life. In fact, hard work never hurts.
Finally, I believe our neglect for value of time and punctuality is one of the main reasons for being backward. Time is very important and precious. It is only when we spend the work time at work that a real growth in the society can take place. Do you think so? I do!

DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
By Sharif Akram
Turks and Arabs, once the major and determining players of the History of Islam, shared and enriched their respective cultures with the glorious civilization of each other, and paved the way for the modernization of other civilizations. But where are they standing today?
According to Bernard Lewis, the start of the modern History of Middle East begins at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries when a French expeditionary force commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded and conquered Egypt and stayed there until it was forced to leave by a British force commanded by Nelson. This event heralded two important messages for the Middle East for the coming years: that even a small western force could conquer, occupy and rule one of the heartlands of the Ottoman Empire without serious difficulty and that, not the regional power, but only another western power could get rid of the problem. This showed the way to the end of the Islamic Empires that ruled the Middle East since the Prophet...
So for the following decades, the fate of Middle East in political, economic and cultural fields was shaped by non-Middle Eastern States. After the destruction of the Ottoman Empire neither the Turks nor the Arabs could form another powerful country in the Middle East that could determine its own fate.
Towards the end and after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the West used the Turks and the Arabs against each other, creating a contrived animosity among them. Once the animosity was created, it was exploited by the Western Powers in many ways to achieve their political aims. Turkey trying to be a member of the Western World and under the influence of ideologies of NATO, began to see her fellow and brother Arab countries as inferior and became a victim of Western machination, losing her neutrality in international politics. It even supported France during the Algerian War OF Independence, forgetting her own war of independence for sovereignty, forgetting that she was the first Islamic country to be independent which has been looked at as a role model for the other suppressed nations of the World.
Republican Turkey cannot be alien to its Ottoman Civilization. Actually her past will finally shape Turkeys role for the future. History, whether political, social, economic or cultural is not only a part of past, but it is an identity, it is also means to shape future and provide a background for the identity of the people.
Turkey is a country with a rich and vast Islamic background, which constitutes one of the major components of its cultural identity.
On the other hand, after the First World War a completely new orientation dominated the Arabs who were now divided and came under the control of various colonial states. During this period the Arab elite attempted to find and assert its national identity in regionalism. Colonial regimes sponsored this move and local cadres were created to implement this policy. As Abou al-Haj observes: "In condemning the Ottoman regime and all things Turkish, the scholarship helped this group gloss over its role as part of the Ottoman elite..."
Arab nationalism and concentration, which was an effort to find the roots of national identity in a nation-state. The focus was on the unity of Arab history. None of the Arab historians realized that " the inspiration for the idea of the common identity of the Arab peoples and their common heritage is rooted in the preceding four centuries of Ottoman rule. The Ottoman period is strangely treated as a period of alien domination.
It is general knowledge that the Arab speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire enjoyed a de facto autonomy in their internal administration and that the Arab provinces paid less tax than Anatolian and the Balkan provinces, and that some areas, such as Hejaz, lived for centuries on substinance provided by the Ottoman government.
It is strange that a great amount of research work on the Arab provinces under the Ottoman rule derives its data from Russian, Austrian, German, French and British Archives while a small effort is done to get data from the Turkish Archives.
It is well known now that much of the information about Turks in the Syrian textbooks came directly from the textbooks developed during the French mandate by French commissioners of Education. The Egyptian textbooks are to a great extent the legacy of British colonial administration. Unfortunately, even today many Syrians and Egyptians accept as a factual truth the stereotypes about Turks they inherited from the French and the English and perpetuate them as their own national culture.
An examination of the Egyptian high school text books reveals what the kind of image given to Egyptian youth on the Ottoman Empire and Turkish-Arab relations. One can find that the main source of these books was the history written by European authors. So an European is easily discernible repeated in them. The emphasis is on the populist-nationalist interpretation, with at times a strong denunciation of, and a negative judgement on, the impact of the Ottoman Turkish role. The Ottoman regime is presented a colonial, imperial exploitation of Egypt, and that the Turkish elite ruled the country as a dominant class alienated from the Egyptian people who isolated the country from the West, resulting in its backwardness.
A more careful examination of the history will bring to the fore another role of the Ottoman rule, that is protecting Egypt against the Portuguese menace, upholding the Sunni doctrine, as whole under the Ottoman protection. Egypt, whoever, was able to preserve its religious and cultural identity and was able to be resurrected in the 20th century as an Arab nation-state. Just imagine if there had been no strong Ottoman Empire protecting the world of Islam, the fate than that of the countries of the Middle East would have been no
different of the countries of East Asia (India, Indo-China), Africa and Latin America. They would be just another territory of the Christian colonialist countries.
The split in attitudes to history is not only divided between the Turks and the Arabs, but also among the Arabs themselves. During the uprising of the Wahabis, the expedition of Mohammed Ali against the Wahabis is praised by the majority of the Egyptian scholars and scientists, while a Saudi Scholar, S. Ghannam, sees the same expedition a crusading invasion. 2
To write the history of a given Arab province under the Ottoman rule without consulting Turkish documents and sources is a great mistake. For such writings will concentrate on the Ottoman administration in the absence of the Ottoman viewpoint.
It is evident that the Turks and Arabs must take a close look at the source of their mutual images. One can say fairly safely that the Turkish and Arab elementary schools, and especially textbooks used there, are the key instruments that shape the images of the future generations.
In order to make a constructive approach to the four centuries of common historical existence, we should focus more on economic, social and cultural ties. Instead of repeating superficial generalizations or purposely distorting historical facts and situations for the sake of national fallacies, we should dig into the immense Ottoman archives to establish the realities which made possible this long coexistence and cooperation. One should not forget that the easiest way to run from the responsibilities and duties of history and today's world is to blame the others.
It is absolutely necessary to take a close look at the textbooks used in Turkish and Arab schools and correct the false notions. This can contribute greatly to removing one of the major psychological roadblocks to better Arab-Turkish relations. It will also give a strong impetus to forming a stronger and more dignified existence in the Middle East.

Mohammed Ali Alanisi
Yemen Private Security
Those involved with the security of the private sector should clearly understand that security is not just another job; it is by all means a responsibility .Therefore , professional security staff should carefully
1- define the boundaries of the business which security is being provided for;
2- specify the map of the business operation sites;
3- highlight all the prospective security problems;
4- conduct risk evaluation through a historical study of the security situation related to the type of business (by area and tribal affiliation); and most importantly.
5- keep a list of authorities contacts, in addition to all possible support alternatives.

Defining Security Business Boundaries:
The factors involved in defining the boundaries of a business must include: work force locals- non locals (expatriates); assets and vulnerability to damage, possibility of hi-jacking and abduction.

Map of operation sites:
The operation sites map should include all the locations of the company's fixed assets in addition to wherever the operation vehicles and on-duty-personnel are scheduled to go through at the time of the project.

Prospective Security problems
This factor fluctuates at the level of risk depending on the overall political and economic variations. (These situations must be constantly monitored).

Risk Evaluation
Statistics are available officially or through other existing businesses. The geographical security breakdown divides Yemen into four sections;
-- North and North-Eastern areas (bedouins);
-- Mountainous area (mixture of tribal affiliation);
-- Coastal areas; and
-- Others
One should keep in mind that the tribal factor is as effective as the political factor in evaluating the security situation in a designated area.

Contacts
The Yemeni Government is trying hard to formalize a security system to help the business sector. The Ministry of Interior (MOI) and the Ministry of Defense (MOD) are the main official contacts through their Joint Control Center that is linked directly to the highest official authorities. Moreover, social figures also are effective in some areas (mainly in the tribal section).
Next issue; Forming a security team; Those interested are most welcome to send their comments, views or questions to the e-mail listed above.