As 2011 ends, its time to take stock. Perhaps more is at stake today than ever before. Our world is changing monumentally. From the Kyoto Accord to the EU split, from the Arab Spring to austerity protests in Europe, the world seems topsy turvy.

Though I do not pay much heed to it, I have to also mention TIME magazine’s declaration today that their Person Of The Year is The Protestor.

I think that this glamorous title needs some perspective. Why is it that this is the year of the protestor. How is it that 2011 came to be that year, and what do we take away from it?

I feel like I may be reverting back to my rhetoric of old when I say that it is clear that our world is coming apart at the seams. We are the cusp, or perhaps we have already jumped of a mountain. Does it not seem that everywhere we look, everywhere we turn, there are people who are expressing their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs? Have we had enough? Have we truly been pushed so far that we leave the comforts of our homes and march down streets in numbers never seen before to declare, Basta! Enough!

From Athens to London, Cairo to Tunis, Aden to Damascus, Ben Ghazi to Tripoli, New York to Moscow - people are rising up. Sure, its not everyone. Sure, its not even even one sixth of the global population, but in doesn’t take much. It didn’t take much. What army can hold back such a show of force? Who can challenge the might of the people?

2011 gave us a clear answer- use that pepper spray, use those bullets (rubber or otherwise), use your tanks, your water pipes, your servicemen or your merceneries - all methods are welcome, because all methods are useless. We are here, we are fighting, in our own ways, on our own terms, and we will bring change.

This is not the year of the protestor. This is the year of the awakening. The system stacked against us is faulty, it is bleeding us dry, it is mincing us raw, and we have been pushed far enough now to push back. I will bring my child to the protest, I will invite my grandmother too.

Viva la revolucion, bitches.

Seven years ago this month, al Qaeda in Yemen was on its last legs, worn down by years of U.S. and Yemeni strikes. The group’s original leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, was dead, the target of a November 2002 strike by an unmanned CIA drone.

His replacement, an amputee named Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, fared little better. One year after the death of his boss, the veteran of the fighting in Bosnia and Chechnya was presiding over an organization in disarray. Like a general without an army, al-Ahdal was out of options. In November 2003, he was tracked down to a safe house on the outskirts of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. A last-minute mediator from the president’s office prevented a shootout in the residential neighborhood, convincing al-Ahdal to surrender. Just like that, the threat had been eliminated. Al Qaeda in Yemen was defeated.

Since then, things have not gone so well. Edmund Hull, the United States’ first post-September 11 ambassador to Yemen, left the country in the summer of 2004. His departure marked a turning point for U.S. priorities in Yemen. No longer was al Qaeda a top concern. Now, it was election reforms and anti-corruption campaigns that took center stage, as part of the Bush administration’s grand scheme to democratize the Middle East. President Ali Abdullah Salih, who had been part of the solution on al Qaeda, was increasingly seen as part of the problem on reform. U.S. funding dwindled to embarrassingly low levels. Absent a terrorist threat, Yemen was no longer important.

Read more at Foreign Policy