Word: yemen
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Western diplomats in Sana'a, however, suspect that the real culprits behind this year's attacks on foreigners come from the growing band of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Under pressure in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, al-Qaeda is turning the lawless mountain areas of Yemen into a new staging area. U.S. officials and terrorism experts don't think Yemen is close to becoming a failed state like Somalia - just across the Red Sea. But there are warning signs that things could get worse: the Houthi rebellion, secessionists in the south, Somali pirates menacing the coast, an economy that...
Stretched around the Southern heel of the Arabian Peninsula and home to 23.8 million people - compared with 28.7 million in Saudi Arabia - Yemen, which came into being when North and South Yemen merged in 1990, is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. Long a source of jihadis, the region sent hundreds of fighters to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and, to judge by the number of captured, killed or identified insurgents in Iraq, continues to be one of the biggest suppliers of fighters to regional conflicts. It's common knowledge in the tearooms of Sana...
That accommodation has begun to fray as al-Qaeda has stepped up its targeting of foreign interests in Yemen, most notably through a foiled attempt to storm the U.S. embassy in September 2008. Early this year, the head of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Naser al-Wahishi, announced the merger between his organization and al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a move that caused the U.S. director of national intelligence to note that Yemen was "re-emerging as a jihadist battleground and potential regional base of operations for al-Qaeda." With a base...
...worried that Yemen isn't taking the threat seriously enough. In July, General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, visited the country to encourage President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be more aggressive. "The view from Sana'a doesn't match the view from Washington," says Gregory Johnsen, a U.S. expert on Yemen. "The Yemeni government is much more concerned with fighting the Houthis in Saada and with the secessionists in the south. Al-Qaeda ranks a distant third. The government doesn't see it as a Yemeni problem. [It sees it as] a foreign problem...
...doesn't help that several high-level al-Qaeda operatives - including al-Wahishi - have mysteriously escaped from Yemeni prisons in the past, or that former inmates of the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo have resurfaced as active operatives in Yemen. But Johnsen thinks the U.S. is too focused on a military solution. "Obviously you have to eliminate key fighters, but the U.S. has done that before," he says. "Unless you address the underlying issues - especially poverty - you'll just be fighting a different incarnation of al-Qaeda every few years...