Word: yemen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last week's attacks may mean that change is indeed on the horizon. But if the Yemeni backlash to the attacks are any indication, cruise missiles and firepower may not be the support Yemen needs...
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...
More troubling still is that last week's assault doesn't necessarily indicate a renewed Yemeni commitment to fighting al-Qaeda. Analysts say Yemen has been slow to 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...
...Qaeda threat in Yemen is real, but now after this operation, it will be greater," says Mohammed Quhtan, a member of Yemen's opposition Islamist al-Islah party. "Al-Qaeda will be able to recruit a lot more young people, at least from the tribes that were hit. And it will have reasonable grounds to attract more people from Abyan governorate, and from the Yemeni population in general...
That's a frightening prospect for a country on the brink of collapse. Yemen's economy is in tatters; its population complains of neglect and development woes; and Yemeni children suffer from a 50% malnutrition rate. Observers warn that poverty and unemployment are prime recruitment factors for al-Qaeda, something they say the U.S. government and other foreign powers should have done more to address. "If you're going to carry out [an attack] like this, you have to have done a great deal of field work, where you've sort of undermined al-Qaeda through development...