Yemen belatedly grabs world’s attention
by Hoang Nhu Hoa
The failed attempt to destroy a Northwest Airlines passenger jet on Christmas Day has focused the world’s attention on new risks and exposed Yemen as a new source of militant violence fostered and sponsored by al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who allegedly tried to detonate a bomb aboard an aeroplane over Detroit, the US is reported to have told his FBI integrators that he had been radicalised and trained in Yemen during the six months before he began his suicide mission.
Later, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the Yemeni al-Qaeda affiliate, claimed responsibility for the thwarted attack.
Confirmation of the Yemeni connection has since spawned a “new front” in the war against terrorism.
As the Los Angeles Times wrote: “The nation [Yemen], already struggling with civil war, has become a far more inviting haven for al-Qaeda fighters than even Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks.”
Terrorist nursery
But Yemen’s rise to prominence should not have been a surprise.
Al-Qaeda’s first attack against Americans was made in Yemen - the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.
In December 1992, his followers bombed a hotel used by United States military personnel supporting relief flights across the Gulf of Aden to the now dysfunctional Somalia.
An al-Qaeda suicide attack in October 2000 killed 17 American sailors aboard the warship Cole anchored off the country’s capital.
The escape of 23 al-Qaeda suspects, including some supposedly responsible for the bombing of the ship, from a Yemeni jail in February 2006 showed the strength and influence of the jihadists.
Civil war and poverty have plagued Yemen, which sprawls over 527,970sq.km of the Arabian Peninsula, more than one and a half times the of Viet Nam.
Unemployment is estimated at 40 per cent and 45 per cent of people live on less than US$2 a day.
So it’s little wonder that its citizens, who are counted among the most devout of followers of their faith, have supplied such determined foot soldiers for al-Qaeda.
The Yemeni Defence Ministry’s online newspaper September 26 provides the government’s response to the threat.
It quotes an anonymous source as announcing open war against al Qaeda militants “whenever or wherever we find those elements” and warns its citizens against aiding the militants a day before security officials announced that air strikes in northern Yemen had killed six of them.
But while September 26 was calling for Yemenis to co-operate in identifying al-Qaeda supporters and sympathisers, the country’s council of clerics was calling for jihad if foreign troops join the peninsular war.
“If any party insists on aggression, or invades the country, then according to Islam, jihad becomes obligatory,” 150 clerics said in a signed statement that was read at a news conference.
The signatories rejected “any foreign intervention in Yemeni affairs, whether political or military”.
To emphasise that lessons had been learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al Kurbi warned the coalition of the willing on Monday that sending their troops to his country would only fuel terrorism.
“The presence of external troops would actually hamper our efforts to fight al Qaeda,” he said.
“What we need is logistic support, training and the technical capacity to fight al-Qaeda,” the foreign minister told a news conference in Ottawa.
Yemen also needed investment and development aid.
US President Barack Obama said that he had “no intention” of sending troops to Yemen but the US has named AQAP a terrorist group and asked the United Nations to assess the possibility of imposing sanctions against both al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
“These actions prohibit provision of material support and arms to AQAP and also include immigration related restrictions that will help stem the flow of finances to AQAP,” explained US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
The designation – made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after consultation with her senior officials – also gives the Justice Department the tools it needs to prosecute AQAP members.
The Pentagon will reportedly double the worth of the military aid it supplies to Yemen to more than $70 million over the next 18 months and deploy its special forces to train and equip the Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard.
And the European Union, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are likely to pledge even more at the London conference called by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for next Thursday to discuss ways to combat terrorism with a particular focus on Yemen.
Can the US and its allies find a way to stop the looming threat of terrorism in Yemen? Only if they fully understand the challenges involved. — VNS