Word: yemen
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...issue were a number of key mistakes that Obama and Brennan had already identified. Intelligence agencies knew, for instance, about the intent of radicals in Yemen to attack the U.S. They also knew that the suspected bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had traveled to Yemen and that his father had contacted the U.S. embassy in Nigeria with concern that his son had fallen in with radical elements. Making matters worse, no one in the intelligence community tied the two sets of information together, inquired as to whether Abdulmutallab had a U.S. visa or thought...
...Obama's team has decided that the old triggers that were put in place to alert intelligence analysts have not kept up with the evolving threat of al-Qaeda and its sympathizers. "Five years ago, it would have been one thing if a Nigerian went to Yemen," said the senior official involved in the discussions. "It's different now when a Nigerian in the summer of 2009 goes to Yemen, because we know that al-Qaeda is trying to make a play in West Africa, specifically in Nigeria...
Shopkeepers are whispering in the medieval, walled Old City in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, about a war they cannot yet imagine. Workers, students and the old men who sit outside the ancient mosques are wondering what fighting between al-Qaeda and the government would look like. Would it be like the conflict in the north, where extremist insurgents occupy villages with gunfire and government bombs rain down from the sky? Is al-Qaeda an army or just a bunch of ill-equipped gangs? "All citizens are scared," says Jamal al-Najjar, an English-language translator, while waiting...
...government is posturing. A showdown is approaching, and people are nervous. "These extremists, they are bad people," says Ali Mohammad Risk, a medical student, as he strolls along the Saila, a winding brick highway that fills with water when it rains. (See America's military options in Yemen...
...Sana'a, war has always been near. Rarely, however, does it breach the mountains that are topped with military bases and surround the capital. Much of the populace credits Yemen's President of 30 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, with unifying north and south Yemen in 1990 and with holding on to the unification during a civil war four years later. "You should have seen it," Ghalib Onkumah, a teacher, says, shaking his head and making a face. In the dark days before Saleh took over, there were endless tribal and civil wars, he says. Onkumah, like many Yemenis, is confident...