RADICAL Muslim cleric was born in New Mexico in 1971, educated at Colorado State University in engineering, and radicalised while preaching in US mosques. Two purported 9/11 hijackers attended his compelling sermons in Denver and San Diego, where he completed a Masters in education, but harassment by the FBI prompted him to go to England in 2002. He moved to Yemen in 2004, and continued to attract a following over the Internet. He was arrested in 2006 on kidnapping and terrorism charges and imprisoned but released in December 2007. Nidal Hassan, accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, was in touch with him, and Faisal Shahzad, who was behind last May's Times Square car bomb attempt, cited him as an inspiration. United States President Barack Obama boasted Al-Awlaki was killed on Friday in a drone attack in the northern Yemeni province of Marib, home of Al-Awlaki clan, along with his protégé, 25-year-old American Samir Khan. Al-Awlaki tribal leaders insist the dead body was not Al-Awlaki's and demanded DNA analysis. Assuming that he and Khan indeed died, that the US government deliberately killed two American citizens whose only proven crime was their eloquent Internet appeals to fight the US empire has shocked even mainstream politicians such as Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and gives his "dangerous message a life and power of its own", according to US imam Yasser Qadhi. Claims that he was an Al-Qaeda leader or that he was directly involved in any terrorist action have never been substantiated. His murder was clearly just another feather in Obama's warrior headdress as he launches his re-election campaign. Yemen has been in a state of crisis for decades due to poverty, tribalism and corruption. And that was before the Arab Spring inspired its overwhelmingly young population to demand the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose 33-year rule has shown little concern for the country's future. Tacit support by the US and Saudis for Saleh, since 2001 a key US ally, means Yemen will continue to disintegrate. Virtually unknown in Yemen, Al-Awlaki will merely become another martyr. Others left behind are far more skilled than Al-Awlaki, according to the US Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Centre. The real reason he and Khan were targeted was because they were charismatic communicators to Western dissidents. As the despair of American and European youth, radicalised by the conflicts of the post-2001 period and the endless economic crisis, increases, the likes of Al-Awlaki provide a simple, if deadly, solution to young people with nothing to lose. Just as new recruits to the Taliban spring up daily, even as the US kills these resistance fighters in droves, so the US government will have to kill more and more people in a futile and genocidal campaign in Yemen and who-knows-where next. Its victims will increasingly be Americans, disgusted with their own government and recognising it as the main cause of the world's wars.
