Word: peninsulas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...claim of responsibility was a haughty cackle, even if the operation it reveled in had ended in failure. In an Internet post* on Dec. 28, 2009, the group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's alleged attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas had demonstrated the "frailty" of American intelligence, "making all they have spent upon security technologies a waste to them." In an additional shout-out, it praised "the hero mujahid [Major] Nidal Hasan," the accused perpetrator of the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre, as an exemplar of the mission...
Stretched around the southern heel of the Arabian Peninsula and home to 23.8 million people - compared with 28.7 million in geographically much larger Saudi Arabia - Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. It came into being when North and South Yemen merged in 1990. Long a source of jihadis, the region sent hundreds of fighters to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and - to judge by the number of captured, killed and identified insurgents in Iraq - continues to be one of the biggest suppliers of fighters to regional conflicts. It is common knowledge...
...years, al-Qaeda in Yemen began to regroup, spurred by the dramatic 2006 prison break of its leader Naser al-Wahishi and 22 other members. Early this year, Wahishi announced a merger between his organization and al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - a move that caused the U.S. director of national intelligence to note that Yemen was "re-emerging as a jihadist battleground and potential regional base of operations for al-Qaeda." With a base in Yemen, al-Qaeda could launch attacks on the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal as well...
...building religious schools and universities across the capital. Later, as Christianity gained popularity, worshippers held group prayers in public every Christmas. But after the Japanese government took control of Korea in 1910, the new administration began suppressing religious gatherings, and by the 1950s, - after the Korean War left the peninsula split into a communist north and capitalist south, - the northern government began to carry out executions of thousands of Christians for the years to come...
While some western analysts say that al-Qaeda seeks to overthrow Yemen's government, Hassan disagrees, saying that al-Qaeda only seeks to establish a base there - a link between the Horn of Africa and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula - and that so long as Saleh leaves al-Qaeda alone, they'll do the same for him. "The government still sometimes thinks it is too costly for it to fight al-Qaeda. If you ask them to go and fight al-Qaeda, they say 'Why? And what do I get back?'" says Hassan. Fighting al-Qaeda would mean losing...