双语读物：美国的下一场战争（英汉对照）.doc

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Our Next Wars: Yemen and Somalia
美国的下一场战争：也门和索马里

There appear to be some good business opportunities in Yemen, but they may not be what they seem. Yemen is the poorest Arab nation, and one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated annual per capita income of $1,061. It is running out of water, and production from its few oil fields is declining. Apart from that, it produces nothing and is increasingly becoming a center for drug trafficking. It is also corrupt, ranking 164th on Transparency International’s 2009 list, just ahead of Cambodia and the Central African Republic. It is a country that is remarkably devoid of resources or of a developed middle class of consumers, and it is best known for its ongoing multidimensional civil war, pitting the central government against various tribal groups. In spite of all that, there has been a surge in investment in the country by a number of small American companies — all the more remarkable as the U.S. economy itself has been in recession. A similar pattern is observable in Kenya, with an annual income of $912 and ranked just ahead of Yemen at 146th for corruption, and in Ethiopia, with an income of $390 per capita and coming in at 120 for corruption.
也门似乎有很好的商机，但事实可能并非如此。也门是最穷的阿拉伯国家，也是全世界最贫穷的国家之一，估计人均年收徒为1061美元。也门缺水，少有的几座油田的产量正在下滑，此外，它什么也不生产，并且日益成为贩毒中心。也门也很腐败，在2009年的国际透明度排名中列在164位，仅仅好于柬埔寨和中非共和国。该国资源稀缺，也缺少发达的中产阶级消费者，以持续已久的多维内战而闻名于世，各部落集团与中央政府相抗衡。尽管如此，一直有很多小型美国公司在该国投资，在美国经济本身陷入危机的背景下，这种情况尤其引人瞩目。肯尼亚也有类似的模式，人均年收入912美元，腐败排名146位，比也门略高。埃塞俄比亚的人均年收入为390美元，腐败排名为120位。
So what do these countries have in common? They are frontline states in the burgeoning but still secret phase three of the Global War on Terror being planned by the Pentagon and spy agencies with the concurrence of the Barack Obama White House. Those who thought there might be some kind of peace dividend with the Democrats holding the presidency can bid those thoughts goodbye. The administration is clearly thinking beyond Afghanistan (and even Iran), anticipating the next battlefronts in Yemen and Somalia. It is assiduously gathering resources to enter the fray, including setting up business fronts that can be used by covert operatives.
那么，这些国家有什么共通点？他们都是萌芽中的前线国家，仍处在五角大楼、情报机构和白宫的巴拉克·奥巴马共同策划的全球反恐战争第三阶段的秘密时期。这些指望民主党执政能带来和平红利的人们，可以和这些想法说再见了。政府显然是想在阿富汗（甚至伊朗）之外，预谋在也门和索马里建立下一个战场。它正在坚持不懈地收集资源，以便投入战斗，其中包括设立企业，作为秘密特工的阵地。
Why go through the subterfuge? First there is the American side of the story. Given the shrinking public support for Afghanistan, the White House does not want to telegraph that it is planning escalation into yet another war or even two wars, depending on how you count them. And then there are the concerns of the always shaky Yemeni government. Yemen, as part of the Arabian Peninsula regarded as sacred soil to Muslims, is extremely sensitive to the presence of foreign soldiers in uniform, an issue that has been exploited by al-Qaeda and other militant groups in neighboring Saudi Arabia. So the solution is to create an infrastructure of ostensibly private-sector enterprises that can serve as mechanisms for having American special ops soldiers and intelligence officers inside the country to gather information and assist the local government without appearing to do so. For the intelligence officers involved, this is called, not surprisingly, business cover. It is the sort of cover Valerie Plame used against possible nuclear-proliferation targets. Business cover is expensive to set up and maintain and the officers who work under it know that they will not have the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are caught in flagrante, though it is to be assumed that there is an understanding with the local governments that intelligence and other special-status personnel operating as civilians will be protected insofar as possible. What makes it all exceedingly tricky is the fact that the American intelligence agencies normally do not reveal all of their assets to the locals, even in those cases where the government supports the effort. The potential for an embarrassing incident is very high.
为什么要把事情搞得这么诡异？首先是美国方面的考量。鉴于民众为阿富汗战争的支持率正在下降，白宫不希望表现出正计划将战争行为升级，并投入另一场或两场战争（看你怎么计算）。另外，也有对摇摆不定的也门政府的顾虑。也门作为阿拉伯半岛的一部分，被穆斯林视为神圣的土壤，他们对身着军装出入的外国士兵极其敏感，这一点被基地组织和邻国沙特阿拉伯的其他武装组织所利用。因此，解决办法是创建一个表面公开的私营企业，使美国特种部队士兵和情报人员在该国收集资料，并在不为人知的情况下，协助当地政府。对于情报人员来说，这些业务伪装不足为奇。瓦莱丽·普拉姆曾使用类似伪装对抗核扩散目标。业务伪装设施的建立和维护耗资不菲，在其中工作的官员明白， 如果他们在作案现场被捕，将不会享有外交豁免权保护，尽管人们假定当地政府知道，情报和其他地位特殊的人员以平民身份出现时，会尽可能受到保护。令这一切极为棘手的是，尽管在这种情况下，当地人会给予支持，但美国情报机构通常不会向当地政府透露其全部资产。很有可能发生令人尴尬的事件。
In Kenya and Ethiopia, the U.S. is similarly disinclined to have too heavy a footprint, as African Union willingness to persevere in Somalia is decidedly limited and could vanish altogether if it were seen as an American operation. The U.S. military’s African command, or AFRICOM, is actually located in Stuttgart, Germany, but its principal operational component is located at the large French military base Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. The CIA runs its drone operations targeting Somalia and Yemen out of that same location and has been using its assets on the ground in those countries to help direct predator strikes against suspected terrorist targets. CIA and special ops soldiers have been busy placing sensors and electronic surveillance devices throughout the Horn of Africa and in Yemen to permit greatly expanded operations. Both CIA and Army units in Djibouti have recently been beefed up in expectation that fighting will intensify in 2011.
在肯尼亚和埃塞俄比亚，美国同样不愿意留下太多足迹，如果发现美国介入其中，非洲联盟可能会限制在索马里的特派团工作，甚至完全撤出索马里。美军非洲司令部实际上设在德国的斯图加特，但其主要业务组成部分，坐落于吉布提的大型法国军事基地莱蒙尼尔军营。美国中央情报局在同一位置展开对索马里和也门的无人机飞行作业，并使用在这些国家的自有资产，协助指挥猎食者飞机对涉嫌恐怖实施打击。中央情报局和特种部队士兵一直忙于在整个非洲之角和也门放置传感器，以便扩大军事行动。美国中央情报局和在吉布提的陆军部队最近预计，在2011年将增加打击密度。
And what is the nature of the threat justifying major military and intelligence operations in two new countries? Well, according to the State Department’s own recently issued report on global terrorism, the only terrorist incident originating in Yemen that directly threatened U.S. interests was the unsuccessful Nigerian underwear bomber in December, an attack that was carried out in retaliation for a deadly CIA drone strike shortly before. And there have been allegations that U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi might have influenced Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood last November. Apart from that, terrorism in Yemen is internally directed with some spillover against neighbor Saudi Arabia. In Somalia, al-Shabaab, which the State Department describes as “a disparate group of armed militias, many of whom do not adhere to the ideology of the group’s leaders,” is the target of Washington’s ire. Foggy Bottom concedes that the group is linked to al-Qaeda only by “mutually supportive rhetoric.” It has not targeted the United States at all, though some government officials have expressed concerns that Somali-Americans who travel back to their country of birth to join al-Shabaab might return to the U.S. to commit terrorist acts.
是怎样的威胁促使在两个新的国家设立军事和情报活动？根据国务院最近发表的全球恐怖主义报告，唯一发端于也门、直接对美国造成威胁的恐怖主义活动，是去年12月尼日利亚人内衣炸弹未遂事件，是为了报复不久前中央情报局的无人机袭击所造成的人员死亡。据指控，在美国出生的教士安瓦尔·奥拉基可能影响了尼达·马里克·哈桑上校，后者于去年11月在胡德堡军事基地开枪射杀多人。此外，也门境内的恐怖主义直接针对邻国沙特阿拉伯。在索马里，基地青年党是华盛顿发泄愤怒的目标，国务院将其描述为“武装民兵的乌合之众，其中许多人与组织领导人的思想不一致。”雾谷（注：美国国务院的谑称）承认，该组织只与基地组织存在“相互间的言论支持。” 这完全不是针对美国，尽管一些政府官员担心，索马里裔美国人会返回其出生国，加入基地青年党后，可能会回到美国实施恐怖行动。
So we are again talking of secret wars conducted in places where we do not understand the local issues or players very well, all part of a massive overreaction directed against low-level troublemakers who do not actually pose any serious threat against the United States. Where it will all lead is anyone’s guess, but it should be noted that the pattern of new terrorism emerging as the response to misdirected and heavy-handed American intervention has been repeated over and over again during the past ten years.
因此，我们又在谈论一场秘密战争，在它发生的地区，我们并不十分了解当地的问题或责任方，所有大规模过激行动都是针对低级别的麻烦制造者，他们并没有给美国带来真正重大的威胁。这些都是基于一些人的猜测，但是，应该指出的是，正是由于误导和美国的强硬干涉，才导致了新恐怖主义形式的出现，而且，这种情况在过去十年间一次又一次地重演。

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