The US had already changed my life by giving me generous scholarships. The most recent one transformed me from a young shepherd in Yemen’s mountains into a student at one of the best universities in the world, the American University of Beirut, and into a speaker who has travelled the globe to talk about my country…
But now, as we stood on the edge of Ja’ar hearing the drone buzz overhead, a thought wouldn’t leave my mind: the person remotely piloting this drone may have been my best friend in America.
I couldn’t stop thinking how my mum would regret her words to the preacher, and how she - and our whole village - would become bent on revenge if my best friend pressed the button to incinerate us. That beautiful understanding, that bridge my American friend and I had built, was collapsing as the Predator [Drone] came closer…
As [Al Qaeda] stabs Yemenis in the back, America stabs them in the face. Every time we think of ourselves as the new Tunisia, the US shows that it thinks of us as the new Afghanistan.
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