Word: yemen
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...Washington wants to continue to cooperate with Saleh and is encouraging his government to take the lead in rooting out al-Qaeda. The U.S. boosted counterterrorism funding for Yemen from less than $5 million in 2006 to $67 million in 2009 and has been dispatching CIA and military personnel to train Yemeni forces. U.S. Centcom commander General David Petraeus said on Jan. 1 that military assistance would double in the coming year. But outside observers are skeptical of how much effect more guns and money will have, especially if the largesse is appropriated by a corrupt bureaucracy. In any event...
...authority doesn't extend very far beyond the capital. About two-thirds of the country is in the hands of either separatist groups or local tribes, some of which have a habit of kidnapping foreign tourists to use as bargaining chips with the central government. Economic and developmental issues - Yemen's most volatile regions are among those hardest hit by drought and government neglect - are at the heart of most of those conflicts, especially the war between the government and Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis, that is being waged in the northern province...
...More ominously, Yemen's social and economic problems have created a vacuum for al-Qaeda to fill. Squeezed out of Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda operatives have regrouped in Yemen's lawless mountain regions east of Sana'a and have merged with al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Led by Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi and Saeed Ali Shehri, a Guantánamo detainee who was released in 2007, AQAP may constitute 200 core members supported by thousands of locals. Terrorism experts worry that with a firm footing in Yemen, al-Qaeda...
...When Awful Is Good For foreign aid to have an effect in Yemen, it would have to be tied to some kind of reform process that both addresses Yemen's endemic corruption and devolves some power from Saleh. At the top of the wish list would be a political reconciliation between the central government and the Houthis. Not all is grim. With the right incentives, tribes in al-Qaeda areas could be induced to turn against the extremists, along the lines of the Sunni awakening in Iraq, according to Najeeb Ghallab, a Sana'a University political analyst. "The situation...
...That's why managing expectations down seems a sensible step. Perhaps, if the U.S and its allies play their cards right, with a regional plan to expand economic development in Yemen and coordinate security, the sort of disaster seen in Afghanistan and Somalia can be avoided. "We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends," says Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Yemen's problems are really unsolvable. But you can reduce the impact that they will have, make them less bad and increase the chances...