New AQ locus: Yemen

posted at 12:30 pm on September 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly

Eli Lake continues his excellent reporting at the New York Sun on terrorism today by giving some interesting background on yesterday’s attack on the American embassy in Yemen.  While most analysts believe that al-Qaeda operatives have fled Iraq for Pakistan, Lake reports that a number of them have instead set up camp in Yemen, the “ancestral home” of Osama bin Laden.  Yemen has all but given up the fight against terrorists, and yesterday’s attack comes from that official disinterest — or worse:

Yemen, the site of a car-bomb attack yesterday on the American Embassy, is quietly emerging as a base for Al Qaeda veterans of the Iraq war, who are seeking refuge there and are close to establishing the kind of safe haven the group enjoys on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

American intelligence officials believe that Osama bin Laden’s organization is regrouping in the governorates of Ma’rib, al-Jawf, and Hadhramaut along Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, and that Al Qaeda in Yemen is now being led by a former military aide to Mr. bin Laden, Nasir al-Wahishi.

“The foreign-fighter flow in Iraq has slowed down to a trickle,” a retired four-star general and adviser to Multi-National Force-Iraq, General Jack Keane, told The New York Sun. “They can’t get to their operational cells to be a bomber or a fighter, so some of them are going to other safe havens. A lot of this has to do with where they came from. But two of the places certainly are Pakistan and Yemen.”

That assessment was supported by two American intelligence officials whom the Sun contacted for comment on the bombing of the American Embassy yesterday in Sana’a. The attack killed 16 Yemeni nationals but no Americans, the Associated Press reported, and the attackers included at least one suicide bomber, as well as gunmen wearing Yemeni military uniforms and armed with rocket-propelled grenades. One of the tasks of the FBI, which will investigate the attack, will be to determine whether members of Yemen’s armed forces participated in the attack.

This was the second botched AQ attack on the embassy this year.  The first, in March, also managed to kill no Americans or infidels, but it did kill a Muslim security guard and injure more than a dozen Muslim schoolgirls.  Yesterday’s attack killed 16 people, all Muslims, and counterterrorist officials tell Lake that this will not endear AQ to Yemenis, even those inclined to support jihad.

Yemen has an uninspiring record on fighting terrorism.  Earlier this year, they released a terrorist wanted by the US without informing us, and they have hardly lifted a finger to pursue other suspects.  The implication of the military uniforms is disturbing.  If true, then it’s possible that Yemen’s armed forces have allied with AQ, or at least elements within the military.  Under the real Bush doctrine, that would make Yemen a potential enemy in this war.

Much of the post-Iraq war focus has rightly been on Pakistan and Afghanistan.  We need to pay closer attention to Yemen, especially given its proximity to the failed state in Somalia and the ability to spread its cancer into Africa.

Blowback

You must be logged in to post a comment.