The first time Yemen entered my consciousness was when I was little kid in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A young Yemeni man was delivering a refrigerator to our home.

Many Yemenis came to Saudi Arabia to find a better life but most ended up doing menial work and being treated as second-class citizens.

In fact, during the first Gulf War, the Saudis threw all the Yemeni nationals out of the country, even though many of them had been living in Saudi Arabia all their lives.

A policeman stands guard in front of a bus in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, which launched an offensive against al-Qaeda insurgents in three provinces in January 2005. (Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

My mother's clan, the Dawoodi Boras — a Shia sub-sect — were originally from Yemen.

When they were expelled by the Sunnis centuries ago, many of them, including my mother's ancestors, settled in India's Gujarat region.

So from what I have seen — between my mother's family background and growing up in Saudi Arabia, the wealthy and arrogant neighbour just to the north — the people of Yemen have a history of being pushed about.

The new front?

But until Christmas Day, when a 23-year-old Nigerian, who says he was trained by Yemen's al-Qaeda, almost killed 300 people on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, I would warrant that Yemen has barely been given a second thought by most of us.

Then, within a few days, the Middle Eastern nation went from relative obscurity to possibly the new battleground in the so-called war on terror.

Al-Qaeda certainly does exist in Yemen and those who follow it closely say it is growing in strength. So something must be done.

But if Yemen does become the new battleground then I sincerely hope that the Americans will not repeat the same mistakes they made in their previous operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The knee-jerk response of marching out into the hinterlands of a country you know so little about and killing suspicious looking characters will not work.

Waging war on terror has only created more terrorists and more sympathizers for the cause.

More than poverty

Meanwhile, the Yemini foreign minister has come out and declared that the country has the will and ability itself to fight al-Qaeda. So, it is sending thousands of security troops into its provinces to take on the jihadist agenda.

Part of the motivation here clearly is to appease the Americans. Few remember that, in 2002, the CIA carried out a drone strike in Yemen that took out most of the al-Qaeda leadership.

But because you can't win this war with guns and might, Yemen's al-Qaeda almost instantly regrouped and here they are again.

What Afghanistan has taught us is that for every one civilian that dies needlessly because of this war on terror, 10 others will rise to exact revenge.

A Yemeni worker strolls through a market in Sanaa in January 2005. A poor country, Yemenis often do menial labour in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

Some observers are saying that poverty is at the root of the problem in Yemen. Send aid money, reduce poverty and ordinary Yeminis will not join al-Qaeda.

So now the Americans will start sending millions of dollars to the Yemeni president.

But this is the same tactic they took in Pakistan with former President Pervez Musharraf, and it didn't work.

The general is gone, but despite all the American aid and money spent fighting that war, insurgents are still killing thousands in Pakistan.

Jihad elites

Of course, if people have decent living conditions that will reduce the desperation and resentment that can fuel the jihadist movement.

But poverty and aid money alone do not get to the root of the Islamist issue.

The men who run these movements are not poor or ignorant. The leadership of al-Qaeda is built of engineers and men from wealthy families with access to education in some of the best schools in the world.

Osama bin Laden, for example, came from a household with very close ties to the Saudi royal family. His second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri is a medical doctor.

The 19 men who flew four hijacked planes into buildings and a field in the U.S. in 2001 were all educated and reasonably well off. Even our 23-year-old Nigerian was the son of a man who ran a huge bank in Nigeria.

Poverty is not the root cause of this problem and just giving money to the Yemeni president so he can finance a civil war in the northern regions will not solve anything.

Warfare and welfare

Warfare and welfare are not the answers. The only answer in Yemen will be if moderate Yemenis, who are the overwhelming majority in the country, get to take charge of their own affairs.

If Americans want to play a part in creating security in Yemen they must support democracy and democratically elected governments.

If they insist on marching in, then they must learn about the country, its history, its language and its other problems, including its fraught relations with its northern neighbour.

The people of Yemen have many battles to fight already. There is an ongoing civil war in the north and occasional, violent clashes in the south.

There are also water shortages, widespread unemployment and instability in the government.

Yemen most certainly needs international help.

From what I can see, Yemenis don't hate America or the West, but they are suspicious about Washington's motivations and potential encroachment on their territory.

And considering how things have been botched in other "al-Qaeda hot spots," who can blame them?

I've seen Yemenis get bullied in the past. I certainly hope that the Americans will not pick up where the Saudis left off.