Instability bred Yemen terror
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SAN'A, Yemen -- Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has rapidly evolved into an expanding and ambitious regional terrorist network thanks in part to a weakened, impoverished and distracted Yemeni government.
While Yemen has chased two homegrown rebellions, over the last year the al-Qaida cell in Yemen has begun sharing resources across borders and has been spurred on to more ambitious attacks by a leadership strengthened by released al-Qaida detainees and returning fighters from Iraq.
The priorities of the Yemeni government have been fighting a war in the north and combating secessionists across the south. In the interim, al-Qaida has flourished in the large, lawless and rugged tribal territories of Yemen, creating training camps, attacking Western targets and receiving increasing popular sympathy, Yemeni and American officials say.
Al-Qaida's growing profile in Yemen became clear after a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was able to overstay his visa in Yemen by several months, connect with al-Qaida militants and leave this country with a bomb sewn into his underwear.
The core of the group is still thought to be small, perhaps no more than 200 people. But it has the important advantage of being part of a larger, regional structure after it merged a year ago with the Saudi branch of al-Qaida to form al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. And it has been able to originate fairly sophisticated operations in Yemen, in Saudi Arabia and now on an airliner headed for Detroit.
Though Yemen played an early role in al-Qaida's history -- it is Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland, and it was the staging ground for the 2000 attack on the American destroyer Cole -- the key chapters in the story of al-Qaida's rise in Yemen have been written recently by leaders who were released from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, escaped from Yemeni prisons or were drawn to shelter in Yemen by common cause and ideology.
First Published January 3, 2010 12:00 am
