Word: yemenis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...post-9/11 cooperation between the U.S. and Yemeni governments met with considerable success - so much so that Yemen later fell off the radar to some extent as the Bush Administration shifted its focus back to battling insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the past two years, al-Qaeda in Yemen began to regroup, spurred by the dramatic 2006 prison break of its leader Naser al-Wahishi and 22 other members. Early this year, Wahishi announced a merger between his organization and al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - a move that caused...
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...
...thrives off the ruins of Yemen's economy, which is in tatters; its population complains of neglect and development woes; and 50% of Yemeni children suffer from malnutrition. Observers warn that poverty and unemployment are prime recruitment factors for al-Qaeda, something they say the U.S. and other foreign powers should have done more to address. Yemen also struggles with a severe water shortage, in large part because of the national addiction to khat, a shrub whose young leaves contain a compound with effects similar to those of amphetamines. The top estimate is that no fewer than...
...always been in the government's best interests. Indeed, some experts say that al-Qaeda seeks not to overthrow the government but only to establish a base in Yemen - a link between the Horn of Africa and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula - and that so long as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh leaves al-Qaeda alone, they'll do the same...
...Yemeni government insists it is doing its utmost in the war against al-Qaeda. "We have been cooperating closely with the U.S., much more than the Pakistanis, for instance, in the fight against al-Qaeda," says a Yemeni official. "The strike last week [that killed top al-Qaeda commanders in Yemen] was a huge blow to them. With one strike, we cut off their head. We are investigating [Abdulmutallab] according to what the FBI told us. If there was a plot from Yemen, it's possible that it happened before last week's strike. Is al-Qaeda using Yemen...