Word: saif
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...confront the al-Qaeda threat with the gusto that the U.S. has been pushing for, in large part because going after the Islamist group hasn't always been in the government's best interests. "If the government wants to fight [al-Qaeda] seriously, they can do it," says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen's Political Development Forum. But, he adds: "It's a matter of political decision - how much they will win, and how much they will lose." Sana'a has recently focused more of its attention on the rebel separatist movement in the south...
Some point more cynically to a Saudi agenda lurking behind it all. The Saudis, Yemen's largest source of annual aid, were suspiciously quick to join the fight, says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen's Political Development Forum. The Saudis are troubled by Yemen's increasing lawlessness, its porous border, and the ability of local villagers to cross at will. "Now because of this war, they will have a chance to make a fence. And more than that, they will have a chance to clear the area on their side, take all of the villages off and make...
...still at large, believed to be in Pakistan. (Osama has at least nine other sons and six daughters.) Saad had only recently returned to the Afghan-Pakistani border after nearly six years under house arrest in Iran. He was one of several al-Qaeda commanders, including military chief Saif al-Adel, captured by Iranian authorities in the spring and summer of 2003 as they tried to sneak across the border from Afghanistan. (See pictures of Osama bin Laden...
...last time I met Saif Abdallah, in the winter of 2006, he was proud to have helped kill dozens, possibly hundreds of American soldiers. Then 28, he was a geeky electronics engineer who made trigger devices for roadside bombs known as IEDs - the No. 1 cause of U.S. troop casualties. I remember the relish he took in listing his clients, most of them Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups, whom he saw as fellow patriots trying to drive out the American occupier. He had also devised triggers for al-Qaeda. "They pay me," he said then with a shrug. "Anybody who wants...
...Iraq (SOI), one of nearly 100,000 Sunnis recruited by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda. Saif Abdallah (not his real name) is paid about $300 a month, and works with a group of 20 others somewhere north of Baghdad. His job? "Some patrols, some checkpoints," he says with a familiar shrug. "The work is not hard." (See pictures of five years of U.S. troops in Iraq...