Word: sana
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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 in the tearooms of the Yemeni capital of Sana'a and in Western embassies that the government of northern Yemen used jihadis to help defeat the south in the civil war that ended in 1994. But the symbiotic relationship between the government and al-Qaeda shifted after 9/11 and the American invasion of Iraq, when the Yemeni government worried that...
Meanwhile, the Sana'a government is in the middle of another ferocious war, against its Houthi minority, Yemeni followers of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam. That introduces the shadow - both real and imagined - of the primary Shi'a power in the region, Iran, which is happy to take credit even if its actual influence may still be negligible. When Iran is mentioned, however, both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the predominant Sunni power in the region, start quaking. And al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, no friend to any of the parties, is happy to sow destabilization...
Initial reports that the airstrike may have been the work of the CIA seem to have been mistaken: Yemeni authorities say it was their jets that conducted the dawn operation, in the province of Shabwa, 400 miles south of the capital Sana'a. In a statement, the Yemeni embassy in Washington D.C. said the strike targeted a meeting of "scores of Yemeni and foreign Al Qaeda operatives." The meeting had been called to discuss retaliation for government raids in mid-December on al-Qaeda hideouts in Abyan and Sana'a provinces...
...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 and on the recent Houthi uprising in the north than it has on al-Qaeda...
...least 34 people died last week, when Yemeni forces hit suspected al-Qaeda targets in the southern governorate of Abyan and in Ahrab, a district northeast of the Yemeni capital Sana'a. Western and Yemeni media outlets reported that the United States provided Yemen with key intelligence and firepower to carry out the strikes, but to what extent is unclear. Yemeni state media reported that President Obama phoned Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to congratulate him on a job well done, and ABC News said that U.S. cruise missiles had been used. (See pictures of the hidden war in Yemen...