Yemen's Multilayered War: Al Qaeda in Arab Peninsula
Publisher
Global Views 360
Publication Date
August 5, 2020
URL
Sailors render honors at the USS Cole Memorial | Source: Flickr
This is the 4th part of a short explainer article series on the current crisis in Yemen. To read the earlier parts of the series click on the following links.
To read the 1st part of the series click on the link.
To read the 2nd part of the series click on the link.
To read the 3rd part of the series click on the link.
The unification of Yemen in 1990 was a direct result of the military defeat of South Yemen at the hand of North Yemen forces. This military defeat and coerced unification implied that Unified Yemen could not achieve real cohesion, preventing the functioning of the nation as a democratic unit.
Meanwhile, newer elements were added to the dangerous mix of sub-nationalism, intra religious division, and tribal loyalty in Yemen. These were the Yemeni veterans of Soviet-Afghan war who fought with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet army backing the Afghan government.
These were hardline Wahabi and Salafi fighters, following an idealogy that mandated a strict interpretation of Islam. The fighters returned to Yemen in the early 1990s, after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The local Yemeni, both the Zaidi Shias or Maliki Sunni have traditionally followed a more liberal version of Islamic and social practices. Unlike the local Sunnis who were living in peaceful coexistence with the Zaidis Shia, these hardliners were antagonistic to the Shias.
Their arrival was followed by a forceful realignment of the local residents’ religious practices, mandating the local population to strict interpretations and social practices. Osama bin Laden, who had family roots in Yemen, was a conveniently placed ideological mentor. This led to a pushback from both the government forces as well as Shia groups, especially the Houthi-led Ansar Allah movement. In time, these former mujahideen, who were battle hardened and well versed in guerilla warfare, allied themselves with Al-Qaeda to start a low level insurgency in Yemen.
The Gulf war and subsequent stationing of American forces in Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries provided another impetus for the growth of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Consequently, they demanded that coalition forces leave Arabian land, failing which would result in more terror attacks.
Al-Qaeda affiliated groups attacked many installations associated with the US-led coalition forces in Yemen and nearby countries. The most successful of those was the famous bombing of USS Colein Aden, in 2000. It was followed by a series of attacks leading up to 9/11.
Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) is also known as the Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen is fighting to set up an emirate amidst the lack of leadership post the Houthi rebellion. It was this outfit that claimed responsibility for the attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in 2015 and is now considered the most dangerous al-Qaeda outfit by the US.
The CNN reported that “AQAP set out its objectives in a May 2010 statement as the "expulsion of Jews and crusaders" from the Arabian Peninsula, the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate, the introduction of Sharia, or Islamic law, and the liberation of Muslim lands.”
The full list of attacks and places captured by terrorist insurgents in chronological order can be accessed here.
One of the outcomes of continual terrorist attacks has been a reduction in Hadi’s popularity. He is also seen as weak for not being able to stop al-Qaeda from terrorising Southern Yemen, as well as for not being able to alleviate them from their feeling of marginalization ever since the unification.
To read the 5th part of the series click on the link.
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Cyberpunk 2077, the most awaited video game was released on consoles and PC on 10th of December, 2020. The game went under 10 years of build-up and had kept gamers waiting for over 8 years. Cyberpunk 2077 is inspired by a cult-favourite tabletop roleplaying game. The video game was designed by well-known Polish studio, CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk was the studio’s first big console game since The Witcher 3: Wild hunt which was an extraordinarily triumphant game that won numerous awards after its launch in 2015.
The popular video game, when released, faced backlash from the gaming community and non-gamers for several reasons. To many observers and gamers, Cyberpunk 2077 even proved to be an absolute failure. Several gamers called out the game developers for the promotion of sexiest ideologies and transphobia. However, the reviews weren’t well received by the fans. Cyberpunk 2077 fans responded with unacceptable abuses, harrasing and hateful messages and even rape and death threats.
Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 released ample previews, trailers, motion pictures and marketing material. Aside from this, the appearence of popular Canadian actor, Keanu Reeves as a character in the game carved the expectations of gamers and promised a sexy and kinky world of futuristic and revolutionary action. CD Projekt Red, one of Europe’s most successful video game company announced Cyberpunk 2077 project in 2012 and released the first trailer in 2013
The game is set in an alternate timeline in the city of California. The streets in the game are owned by tyrannical corporations. Everyone in the game modifies their body with illegal technology. Much of the state in the video game setting is said to be suffering from the impacts of a major nuclear attack which happened years ago. Every player gets to be a cyber-enhanced human who has to fight against physical and psychological threats to their survival. The game character of Keanu Reeves comes in as your sidekick.
In 2018, the developers insisted and had assured the gamers that Cyberpunk 2077 would not include in game purchases. CD Projekt Red did not want to lock any content behind a paywall. The studio was also insistent that the game would come out only when it was completely “ready”. They announced that the release would take place in April 2020 but it was delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other quality problems that the game was facing. When it was finally released in December 2020, gamers expected their experience of the game to be “worth the wait”. However, the video game wasn’t well revived by all. In spite of several months of work that went into making and developing the game, the game was launched with several technical issues. Players on both PC and consoles were having terrible experiences. As a result of multiple glitches and technical problems, the characters’ faces were obscured and the game would reset randomly. Some of the environments or areas of the game map was unappealing. The game even caused consoles to crash repeatedly and sometimes sacrificed players’ progress. One glitch led to characters’ breasts and penises being exposed. The characters’ genitals would poke out of their clothes. CD Projeckt Red offered refunds to players who were disappointed with the product. In fact, they updated a self-review discouraging gamers from playing the game on console until the game was fixed and improved.
Cyberpunk 2077 was roundly criticized by reviewers, game designers, industry insiders and other gamers across the gaming community. The wait and hype for the game had already created a fanbase which turned toxic by harassing reviewers who criticised the game.
There is another reason why the game wasn’t well received. Cyberpunk 2077 transphobia was apparent in the game contradicting the fact that the developers had claimed that the game was ahead of its time. The game has an incredibly detailed character creation menu. The players can control several aspects of their character’s appearance including the shapes and size of the genitals. The game even allows players to decline the option of including genitals to their characters. However, this isn’t the problem and is in fact appreciable. The idea of not determining gender by the character’s genitals in fact made many trans players happy. But this soon turned into disbelief and disappointment. The gamers realised that the game actually assigned the gender to the characters not based on their genitals but rather by the voice. Characters with higher-pitched voices were identified as females and characters with deep-voiced characters were assigned male pronouns. This purports the toxic idea that people’s gender can be determined by certain traits. A non-sexist video game would determine the gender of a player’s character based on an independent choice made by players themselves. This is uninfluenced by other physical traits or qualities.
Several reviewers called out Cyberpunk 2077 for promoting sexist ideologies. Unfortunately, toxic fans harassed the reviewers. “You just KNOW when you're going to get harassed. If the game with all the hype has anything wrong with it, and you're honest about that, or even just want to provide any context outside of ‘it's fun’, you're going to get harassed. It's a given.” These were precisely what Susan Arendt, a podcast host quoted. She even second guessed herself whether sharing her true opinions was worth the hateful, threatening and harassing messages that she received.
Controversial Tweet by Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter Handle
In the early days of arcade, gaming was a family activity. The popular male dominance and stereotype that only boys or men are good at video games were perpetuated in the past three decades. We observe this change due to sexualisation of video games. Today, most video games aren’t family friendly as they include explicit and sexual content. This, in fact, is a marketing tactic used by developers to target the male population. In 2018, a Cyberpunk 2077 fan who was awaiting the game at that point of time tweeted that the user wanted to see more from the “guys” at CDPR. In response to this tweet, CD Projekt Red tweeted, “Did you just assume their gender?!”. On the look of it, the tweet seems innocent but it is a joke at the expense of the trans community. After receiving backlash to the tweet, CDPR took it down and issued an apology staying sorry to “all those offended”. The apology seems like another targeted mockery and CDPR did no right by not taking responsibility for its actions.
Not only is Cyberpunk2077 transphobic and sexist, it is non user friendly as well. The game has several epilepsy triggers without any warnings about it. There are several instances and situations in the game where the effects and the graphics are brighter, louder and flashing. This is a general trigger for seizures. Liana Rupert, a player of Cyberpunk 2077 suffered a major seizure and at several moments felt that she was close to another one. After bringing this to the notice of CD Projekt Red, the company agreed to add trigger warnings wherever necessary.
The gaming industry has definitely taken a few steps forward in terms of inclusivity of all genders but has also taken a few steps backward. While all genders are welcome, they still face harassment and judgement for simply existing in the community and need a lot more improvement.
