Word: yemenis
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President Barack Obama's announcement on Tuesday that he is suspending repatriation of Yemeni detainees held by the U.S. at Guantánamo Bay solves one political problem but creates another. In the short term, it neutralizes the GOP talking point that Obama was putting the closure of the detention facility ahead of national security by sending Yemenis home. But it presents a longer-term challenge of how to win the battle to close the facility, which has been a key part of the GOP's strategy to undermine Obama from his earliest days in office...
...Even before the Christmas bomb plot grabbed the political spotlight, the Administration was struggling with that dilemma. Senior national-security officials met in mid-December to figure out what to do with the 90-odd Yemeni prisoners who make up the largest contingent of the 200 or so remaining detainees at the offshore facility. A special task force set up a year ago concluded last fall that the U.S. doesn't have sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute any of the Yemenis in either civilian or military courts. Still, the task force concluded, about half of the prisoners are devoted members...
...question facing Obama's top advisers in December was what to do with the 40 to 50 Yemeni detainees who were deemed by the task force to be safe for sending back to Yemen for eventual release under the right circumstances. The officials decided that circumstances militated against sending the men home. "We all took a look at Yemen and said, Man, this stinks," says a senior State Department official. "Normally when you repatriate [detainees] to a government that is competent, they keep an eye on them. In Yemen the government has less capacity...
However, state-run media has taken a back seat to foreign journalists, who have been coming to Yemen since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, is said to have been trained and armed by Yemeni-based AQAP. The threat from AQAP led to the closing of foreign embassies in Sana'a, including the U.S. and British ones. While the embassies have quietly reopened, people are wary that al-Qaeda, in the form of foreigners or locals, may be operating in the capital...
...less than $2 a day. In the center of Sana'a, the Al-Saleh Mosque, a gleaming palace that can hold 40,000 worshippers, outshines every building in the area, perhaps in the country. The mosque cost at least $60 million to build, an unheard-of fortune in Yemeni currency, the rial. In stark contrast to the majesty of the mosque, impoverished Yemenis languish in a dusty beige slum across the street. Yemen's urban poor often live in makeshift homes built with found items like tarp, tires and rocks. There is never running water, and electricity comes from wires...