By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 21, 2010; A03
Yemen is changing its visa procedures as a result of the Dec. 25 airline bombing attempt in the United States and will require entry permits to be issued at its embassies abroad rather than granting them on arrival in Yemen, Foreign Minister Abubaker al-Qirbi said Wednesday.
His government has also asked all Arabic-language institutes in Yemen to provide information on foreign students, Qirbi said. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with attempting to detonate a bomb aboard the Amsterdam-Detroit flight last month, was a student at such a school in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, before he allegedly joined the al-Qaeda affiliate there last fall.
In a wide-ranging interview at the end of a three-day visit here, Qirbi said that counterterrorism cooperation with the United States had improved under the Obama administration, but that U.S. intelligence was still not sharing enough of the kind of information that could prevent attacks like the Christmas Day attempt, which failed because the bomb malfunctioned.
Although Abdulmutallab's father had told the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son was associating with extremists in Yemen, that information was not transmitted to Yemeni security officials. Qirbi said his government had not yet received any information about up to four dozen Americans that a Senate report Wednesday said had converted to Islam and become radicalized before moving to Yemen.
The State Department's top counterterrorism official, Daniel Benjamin, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the presence of such individuals in Yemen is "obviously a major concern for us," although "we can't stop people from going across the ocean."
Overall, both Qirbi and Benjamin -- who testified with Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs -- put a positive face on U.S.-Yemeni relations, saying that the countries are working closely together to combat al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and that U.S. military and development aid is rapidly increasing. Benjamin said Yemen would receive $63 million in aid this year, with additional military funding anticipated.
All three men, who met several times during Qirbi's visit, spoke of a "holistic" approach that would address the "root causes" of radicalization in Yemen, including poverty and unemployment.
But while Benjamin praised what he said was Yemen's recently arrived-at understanding of the threat posed by the al-Qaeda group, Qirbi said it was the United States that had recently awakened to the danger. "We felt that over the last 20 years, since Yemen started its fight against [al-Qaeda], that nobody paid much attention," he said.
In recent weeks, the United States has launched precision-guided missiles against al-Qaeda targets in Yemen, using Yemeni intelligence, according to U.S. military officials. Both countries have refused to comment publicly on the extent of U.S. intervention, with Yemen acknowledging only the assistance of U.S. "firepower."
Although administration officials have acknowledged a rapid increase in intelligence cooperation and military training in Yemen, they have said they are aware that too big an American footprint would exacerbate already strong resentment of a U.S. presence there.
On other matters, Qirbi said there had been little discussion during his visit of nearly 100 Yemeni detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. An administration review has cleared 45 of them for release, but President Obama suspended their repatriation after the Dec. 25 attack. Qirbi said his government thinks the Obama administration's plans for indefinite detention without trial for some Guantanamo detainees "plays into the hands of al-Qaeda."
Echoing statements by other Yemeni officials, Qirbi said the radical Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi had survived a recent Yemeni airstrike. "He's alive, in one of the remote areas" of the country, Qirbi said. The Obama administration has said that Aulaqi was instrumental in radicalizing Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex.
Qirbi said his government has asked Aulaqi's father, a former president of Sanaa University, to persuade his son to turn himself in to face "legal action" in Yemen.
By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 20, 2010; A01
Experienced fighters returning to Yemen from the Iraq war and radicalized U.S. citizens who have taken up residence in that country have broadened assessments of the threat posed by the al-Qaeda affiliate there, according to administration and congressional officials.
In addition to flooding Yemen with intelligence resources, the United States has stepped up military strikes from the air against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and pressed the Yemeni government, which has offered to negotiate with the group, to toughen its approach.
As Yemen's foreign minister arrived in Washington this week for consultations, the State Department announced Tuesday that it had designated the al-Qaeda branch there, known as AQAP, as a foreign terrorist organization, a move that allows U.S. prosecution of those who are associated with or provide assistance to the group, which was formed only last January. A United Nations sanctions committee also announced Tuesday that it had added AQAP and its senior leaders to a U.N. blacklist that allows assets to be frozen internationally and imposes travel restrictions.
An investigative report scheduled for release Wednesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee cites U.S. concern over as many as three dozen American citizens who converted to Islam in prison and moved to Yemen after their release in the past year. Some of them have "dropped off the radar" of U.S. and Yemeni law enforcement and may be receiving al-Qaeda training there, the report says.
The report cautions that U.S. officials said they had no specific evidence of such training, but a committee staffer said that "everything related to Yemen is now being ratcheted up." As U.S. citizens, these people do not come under the purview of the CIA but are "being watched," the staffer said, by the FBI and State Department security officials attached to the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital.
"U.S. officials said they are on heightened alert because of the potential threat from extremists carrying American passports and the related challenges involved in detecting and stopping homegrown operatives," the report says.
An additional concern, it says, "is a group of nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans who traveled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists, and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country." One U.S. official, it reports, described them as "blond-haired, blue-eyed types" who "fit a profile of Americans whom al-Qaeda has sought to recruit over the past several years."
Intelligence lapses leading to the attempted bombing of a U.S. jetliner on Christmas Day and the growing threat from Yemen will be the subject of a series of congressional hearings over the next several weeks, beginning with testimony Wednesday by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. On Thursday, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has scheduled a closed-door hearing.
Administration and military officials insisted that the intensified focus on Yemen predated the embarrassing failure to prevent the attempted airplane bombing last month. They noted that White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan made two visits there last year and that Yemen was the subject of 15 meetings of the National Security Council "deputies committee" as well as numerous meetings of top national security officers. U.S. military counterterrorism trainers and CIA intelligence collectors on the ground there were increased last year along with the budget for such operations. Twice in December, U.S. precision-guided missiles struck al-Qaeda targets in Yemen; an additional strike took place last week.
The biggest surprise of the Christmas incident, a senior administration official said, was that planning for the attack and training of the alleged bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, took place in Yemen despite the fact that "we had that place sort of blanketed, that we were working it very closely."
"What Mr. Abdulmutallab demonstrates is that we need to heighten our vigilance about those who may have been in Yemen, or that the Yemeni AQAP are working with abroad," including U.S. passport-holders, the official said. This source and military and counterterrorism officials agreed to discuss the still-volatile policy and intelligence situation in Yemen only on the condition of anonymity.
"Individuals who are working this issue need to be in place in Yemen," the official said of the growing U.S. presence there. "We do not have [military] boots on the ground and we have no intention . . . of having boots on the ground. But we want to make sure that we have the expertise and capabilities that can work with the Yemenis to provide them with the wherewithal and the capacity that they need."
The official expressed frustration at a recent offer by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to negotiate with AQAP leaders who agree to lay down their arms. "Al-Qaeda is an organization to be destroyed, not to be negotiated with in any manner," he said. The administration would "continue to press the Yemenis to defeat al-Qaeda, not to talk with them." Officials are "mindful" to avoid inflaming the domestic situation with a heavy U.S. footprint, he said, "but there are certain near-term and immediate imperatives that we need to pursue."
Brennan's conversations with Saleh and other Yemeni officials, he said, have been "pretty intense . . . and rather direct in terms of what we expected the Yemenis to do vis-a-vis al-Qaeda and what we were prepared to do in the event it was not addressed . . . not just collect information about them but take aggressive action to denigrate their capabilities." The December air attacks, in conjunction with Yemeni air, ground and intelligence forces, were seen as proof that the government was starting to get the message.
Saleh's offer to negotiate, U.S. officials said, is based on a failure to understand that AQAP is a different breed than an earlier organization, al-Qaeda in Yemen, that was largely decimated early this decade by coordinated U.S. and Yemeni operations. The new group, whose leadership was formed by terrorists who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006 and Yemenis released from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, under the Bush administration, combines al-Qaeda affiliates in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen and is bolstered by insurgents returning from Iraq with what one counterterrorism official called "battlefield expertise" and tactical knowledge.
"As the Iraq conflict came down, you found that a number of those al-Qaeda types who went to Iraq to fight came back with hardened skills and new techniques," the senior administration official said.
"These individuals who wanted to go and fight are now being plugged into the existing organization in Yemen," said Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University. "For a long time, there was no real organizational infrastructure for them to fit into. Now, there is something."
Ali Abdullah Saleh is not an especially lovable ally. Once known as "Little Saddam"—whom he hero-worshiped back in the day—Saleh is the longest-serving ruler in the Middle East after Libya's Muammar Kaddafi. During interviews, the Yemeni president slouches in his chair like a bored schoolboy, anxiously knocking his knees together as a question is asked. If he thinks he has said something particularly witty, Saleh smirks and flashes a wink at his aides to make sure they have heard it. Otherwise Saleh, a self-styled field marshal, doesn't try very hard to please anyone, even visiting American officials, who control about $70 million in aid for Yemen's military. It's a budget that could soon be at least doubled, and he will continue to do as he pleases, whatever the U.S.'s advice happens to be. Saleh has a standard response when asked about cooperation with Washington. "We're not your employees!" he barks.
Fair enough. No Middle Eastern leader can afford to look like an American stooge, and a little theatrical insolence goes a long way in this part of the world. The last thing the Obama administration wants is another Pakistan or Afghanistan, where local resentment of America's tactics in fighting jihadists has seemed to create more jihadists. Still, Saleh is caught in a harsh spotlight now—one that Barack Obama plans to keep trained on him despite the risk that the Yemeni leader will lose credibility among his own people. U.S. officials have been surprised by what they've discovered about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian student who says he was trained and equipped there. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as this offshoot is called, is linked directly to the "core" group in Pakistan and it is now "one of the most lethal" affiliates, White House counterterrorism coordinator John Brennan said at a news conference. "We know there have been plenty of communications between FATA [the tribal regions in Pakistan] and Yemen," said another senior administration official who was authorized to speak only anonymously.
As a result, the smart-alecky antics of Ali Abdullah Saleh have begun to seriously grate on Washington. Saleh's U.S. critics point out that while his government occasionally cracks down, it has been hopelessly ineffective at keeping Al Qaeda from infiltrating the country—and possibly even Yemen's own security services. And as Yemen's economic situation gets more desperate—thanks in part to the Saleh government's corruption—Al Qaeda's presence in the country is growing. What's worse, some of the men around Saleh occasionally seem to be encouraging the militants: a 2006 prison break that reinvigorated Al Qaeda's local operations was considered to have been an inside job, though no evidence linked it directly to Saleh. Hawks in Congress like Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman breathlessly repeat warnings about Yemen going the way of Iraq and Afghanistan, destined to become "tomorrow's war."
The problem Obama has is that if Saleh is an SOB, he's America's SOB. There just isn't anyone else Washington can rely on in Yemen, which is one reason why in September, Obama sent Saleh a letter pledging full U.S. support. A poor relation of Saudi Arabia that sits at the southern tip of the peninsula, Yemen is, as one British official puts it, "Afghanistan by the Sea." The nation is a topographical mix of desert and savage mountains, with a xenophobic tribal culture. Hopelessly fractious, divided by seven local dialects (Saleh, when he gets excited, will often abandon standard Arabic and lapse into his native Sanani), it is an urgent nation-building problem as much as a terrorist haven, experts say. Saleh is beset by an exploding population, crushing unemployment, an acute water shortage—Yemen's cities have water for only a couple of hours a day—and oil output expected to dry up in less than a decade. And he's running out of money: the president spends most of his dwindling reserves on fighting a grinding civil war in the north and a resurgence of separatist sentiment in the south.
Distracted and deficit-ridden itself, the United States may have neither the patience nor the resources to stop Yemen from sliding into failed statehood. Yet if Saleh fails, there is, one U.S. official says, "a real prospect that Yemen may become a Somalia on the Arabian Peninsula," a no man's land ruled by warlords. So the only policy choice is to give more aid to Saleh and hope that, much like Afghan President Hamid Karzai—who is sometimes dismissed as the "mayor of Kabul"—the Yemeni leader can gradually wrest control of more of his country than the capital city of Sana. Saleh himself compares his constant balancing and maneuvering among tribes and factions to "dancing in a circle of snakes."
Yemen is part of the fluid, ever-shifting "Jihadistan" that keeps opening up new fronts in troubled parts of the world, including neighboring countries like Somalia. As recently as 2006, Al Qaeda was thought to be all but eliminated from Yemen. But in a global game of whack-a-mole, every time U.S. forces crack down in one place, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, jihadists seem to pop up elsewhere. In the case of Yemen, the rebirth of Al Qaeda is also a result of successful operations in neighboring Saudi Arabia.
The terrorist cells these countries harbor are not quite the Al Qaeda of 9/11. While the leaders are sometimes the same, flitting from place to place, Al Qaeda has also mutated into a franchised brand name that is no longer centrally directed. These diffuse cells often use cyberspace to inspire and loosely direct a more individualist, do-it-yourself terrorism.
It was this looser model, apparently, that inspired both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber aboard Northwest Flight 253, and U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, this past fall. While investigations are continuing, it appears that both men had links to Yemen and were in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who foments jihad on the Internet and has long been hiding out in Yemen. Yemeni forces launched a series of raids just before Christmas targeting key Qaeda figures, including Awlaki. But Abdulelah Haider Shaya, a Yemeni journalist who is close to Al Qaeda, told NEWSWEEK that Awlaki survived and called him recently to check in after the attacks. According to Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, both Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Said Ali Al-Shihri, another key Qaeda figure in Yemen, also survived the strikes. In the meantime, the operations have become a rallying point for the regime's enemies, which accused Sana of taking orders from U.S. taskmasters.
Still, there are some signs of hope. In July Saleh met with Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. CentCom chief, in order to more closely coordinate counterterror strategy. Al-Qirbi told NEWSWEEK that the leaders agreed to "enhanced cooperation" at the meeting, including bolstering intelligence sharing and training operations.
Among the new programs, Saleh and Petraeus agreed to allow the use of American aircraft, perhaps drones, as well as "seaborne missiles"—as long as the operations have prior approval from the Yemenis, according to a senior Yemeni official who requested anonymity when speaking about sensitive subjects. U.S. officials say the island of Socotra, 200 miles off the Yemeni coast, will be beefed up from a small airstrip to a full base in order to support the larger aid program as well as battle Somali pirates. Petraeus is also trying to provide the Yemeni forces with basic equipment such as up-armored Humvees and possibly more helicopters.
Any long-term counterterror strategy will require addressing the root causes of the social instability that allows Al Qaeda to thrive. But Petraeus knows that he can go only so far in Yemen. Unlike in Afghanistan, there is no talk of delving into the country's tribal dynamics. Saleh has insisted that any U.S. assistance be confined to training and equipping Yemen's own security forces. Most Yemen experts say the worst possible solution would be to send in U.S. troops—even stealthy Special Ops teams—to do the job for the Yemenis. Seventy percent of Yemen's villages consist of populations of fewer than 500 people, according to Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. American operators would stick out—and guarantee a backlash. "Any outsider who comes in, much less a six-foot-tall American in a ninja suit, is going to show up," says Bodine. And the waves of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have demonstrated how politically explosive an air campaign can become. "If we start allowing what's happening in Pakistan, God knows what will happen," says a senior Yemeni official, who also didn't want to be identified talking about a sensitive topic.
Above all, there is the tricky problem of handling Saleh, who seems to have come around to the view that Al Qaeda threatens his regime. "The good news is he seems for the time being to be on a positive trajectory, having taken action against AQAP several times," says the administration official. "The art in this will be in ensuring he doesn't go back to playing one side off the other." Western officials want Saleh to compromise and end his civil war with a Shiite separatist tribe called the Houthis so he can concentrate on Al Qaeda, but they are leery of suggesting that he might get less help if he doesn't. "One thing we know about Saleh is that any talk of conditionality is just bad news," says the U.S. official. "This is a guy who's going to do what he wants." All Washington can hope is that what Saleh wants is similar to what America wants in Yemen: a few less dangerous snakes to worry about.
Iman university, a Sunni religious school in Yemen, educated US Taliban member John Walker Lindh and gave a teaching post to militant American preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. The school denied rumors that it hosted "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but concern over its militant ties are growing.
Students at the controversial Islamic Iman 'Faith' University prepare for noon prayers in Sanaa, Yemen, on Jan. 12. Officials at the institution deny that the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly planned to blow up a US airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, was ever a student there. Founded and directed by Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani - who is considered a 'global terrorist' by the US, with Al Qaeda affiliations - students and faculty at Imam University say the militant reputation is a myth.
Yemen’s Iman University, a Sunni religious institution that draws students from 40 countries, has come under frequent suspicion from Westerners and some Yemenis as a militant hotbed. American Taliban John Walker Lindh was once a student, and some media reports in the wake of the foiled Christmas Day plane plot said that alleged "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab also attended classes here.
But on the Spartan campus, nestled in a rocky valley on the outskirts of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, officials flatly deny that Mr. Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, ever spent time at their school. Together with students, they defend the controversial Islamic university, saying its radical reputation is not only unwarranted but that they actively seek to blunt radical views.
“We want to study, to help our people and all the world to know what is right and what is wrong, to correct people’s ideas and misperceptions,” says Mohammad al-Nehary, a diminutive graduate student with a stringy black beard.
To change radical views, says Mr. Nehary, who is training to be a religious scholar, the US and Yemen should not “combat Islamic institutions that teach Islam in open places.”
Ismael al-Sohaily, the head of the political science department, agrees.
“If the US exerts pressure on Islamic religious institutions, what would the alternative be?” asks Dr. Sohaily. “You see Iman University is open – the curriculum is open, journalists come, it is regulated by the government. If it were closed, religious people will go to closed places, and who knows what they (will) learn.”
Founder Zindani linked to Al Qaeda
Controversy has stalked Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, who founded the school in 1995 and has a history of inspiring militants. Active in fighting the Soviets alongside Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, he is considered by the US a “terrorist” who was one of Bin Laden’s “spiritual leaders,” and is under United Nations sanction because of Al Qaeda affiliations.
The latest flurry of western interest in Iman University came in the wake of the murder of 12 soldiers at Fort Hood last November by US Army doctor Nidal Malik Hasan, who had carried on an email correspondence with exiled militant preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen born to Yemeni parents. Mr. Awlaki is currently believed to be in hiding in Yemen. On his now defunct blog, he claimed to have been a lecturer in Islam at Iman University.
The red-bearded Sheikh Zindani laughed heartily on Monday when he brushed off the perennial accusations of terrorist involvement.
“I am a general lecturer and a writer of books,” Zindani told journalists. “If someone says they listened to my lectures or read my books, am I to blame if he then, say, divorces his wife, or if he attacks someone? If that’s the case, then all teachers and professors should be accused.”
After years of accusations, Zindani says he is now “ready to hear that if anyone makes any mistake, or there is any attack in London, or anywhere else, he was a student in my university.”
4,000 students – 500 foreigners
Officials say that 4,000 students attend the school, taking classes in everything from the hard sciences to religion. Some 500 of the students are foreigners, and each must get a letter from their embassy before attending, school officials said on Tuesday.
Dr. Sohaily, head of the political science department, says that examples of militant alumni have been overplayed – skewing the university’s reputation.
“Why don’t we talk of the 2,000 graduates who did not commit such acts? Why this one?” asks Sohaily. “The university aims to generate scholars who understand Islam as it is. We believe that [such] a religious scholar ... is best suited to cooperate with other faiths.”
He says two examples are frequently raised. One former student assassinated a top Socialist party leader in 2002, but the killer had left the school seven years earlier because “university teaching could not cope with his radical views,” says Sohaily. The murderer of three American medical workers in 2002 had never been a student, as reported, he said.
Zindani's influence seen in Afghanistan
Still, the example of Sheikh Zindani has inspired militants before. The Monitor came across Yemeni Obaidur Rahman in 2001, held in a Northern Alliance prison in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley. Hobbled by knee-high steel manacles (he was captured in 1996), he said he had been influenced to join the Taliban to fight by Zindani’s preaching.
“[In Yemen,] they said to us, you should go to Afghanistan to learn military arts, then you should go to Chechnya to fight the Russians, and Kashmir to fight the Indians,” said Mr. Rahman, speaking just a month after 9/11. “There are no innocent people in those skyscrapers.”
And according to Defense Department details released in 2006, Guantanamo Bay prisoner No. 115 – Abdul Rahman Mohammed Saleh Naser of Yemen – “decided to go to Afghanistan after hearing and speaking with Sheikh al-Zindani.”
Zindani himself, speaking in Sanaa on Monday, stated that it was “not permissible” in Islam to kill innocents – regardless of religious creed – “in wartime, much less when at peace.”
'Don't judge a civilization by a person'
On Tuesday at his Iman University, just moments before noon prayers, hundreds of students took off their shoes, stepped into a long hall, and sat down on the worn carpet in small groups to recite the Quran. Somalis and other Africans were among them, though several refused to speak.
The scars on the forehead of student Abdul-Karim Morshid wrinkle with determination, as the fifth-year economics student calls for fairer judgment.
“Al Qaeda doesn’t represent Muslims or Islam; they are only one group,” says Mr. Morshid, a Yemeni whose teeth are stained with daily chewing of the mild stimulant leaf called qat.
“Islam is a civilization, and when you want to understand any civilization, don’t judge it by a person, but by its history and institutions,” says Morshid. “If we look at the West through the lens of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, what would we see? But we don’t, because that does not reflect their civilization.”
By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, January 12, 2010; A01
KHARAZ, YEMEN -- Thousands of Somali boys and teenagers fleeing war and chaos at home are sailing to Yemen, where officials who have long welcomed Somali refugees now worry that the new arrivals could become the next generation of al-Qaeda fighters.
As the United States deepens its counterterrorism operations in Yemen, officials are concerned that extremists could find growing Somali refugee camps fertile ground for recruiting. U.S. and Yemeni authorities also fear that Islamist fighters from Somalia could slip into the country among the throngs of refugees, deepening ties between al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and the particularly hard-line militants of Somalia.
Fleeing a failed state for a failing one, the Somali youths arrive daily in this refugee outpost, which is filled with rickety tents and tales of misery, in the vast desert of southern Yemen. They bring stories of brutality and forced conscription by al-Shabab, an Islamist force battling Somalia's U.S.-backed transitional government.
"They ordered us to fight the nonbelievers," said Abdul Khadr Salot, 19, a burly ex-fighter with a thin scar across his cheek who escaped from a militant training camp. "Even if your father tells you to leave the Shabab, you must kill him."
But this longtime haven is becoming increasingly inhospitable since the United States bolstered its operations here, largely in response to the Yemeni al-Qaeda connections of the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to bomb a U.S. airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, and to the links of an extremist Yemeni American cleric to the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex.
Yemen's fragile government fears that Somali fighters from al-Shabab will swell the ranks of Yemen's Islamist militants at a time when links between the Somali group and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are growing, according to Yemeni officials and analysts.
As it quietly wages war against extremists in the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa, the Obama administration could find itself confronting a unified, regional al-Qaeda on two continents. This would further stretch U.S. resources as Washington fights major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could also push Yemen -- beset by mounting internal strife, poor governance, extreme poverty and dwindling resources -- even deeper into a downward spiral.
"Somalia for Yemen is becoming like what Pakistan is for Afghanistan," said Saeed Obaid, a Yemeni terrorism expert who wrote a book on al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate.
Leaders of al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda's central body, said last week that they will send fighters to help al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. That prompted Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi to issue a stern warning through the state-run Saba news agency that Yemen will not allow "any terrorist elements from any country to operate in its territory."
In recent days, Yemeni security forces have staged raids on Somali refugee communities, detaining suspected loyalists of al-Shabab, which means "The Youth." Overnight, an atmosphere of fear has gripped the community, which numbers more than 1 million.
"The climate has changed, and it is heating up," Mohammed Ali, a top leader of the Somali community in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, lamented over a glass of Somali coffee.
An estimated 74,000 African refugees, mostly from Somalia and Ethiopia, arrived in Yemen last year, 50 percent more than in 2008, according to statistics from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR officials say 309 either drowned in capsized boats or were killed by smugglers.
Forced recruitment
In September, a gang of al-Shabab fighters grabbed 14-year-old Saber Ahmed at his father's shop in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
They blindfolded him and took him to a nearby militia base, he said. There, they brought out recruits he knew from his neighborhood, who urged him to join. The peer pressure didn't work. Then, an al-Shabab commander gave him an ultimatum.
"He said, 'We will kill you if you don't join us,' " recalled Ahmed, tall and lanky with a soft voice and chiseled face.
After 20 days of training, he was sent to the front lines. Within hours, he said, a battle erupted; Ahmed was shot in the leg. He managed to crawl to his house. His father took him to a hospital. When Ahmed regained consciousness, his father gave him $100 and ordered him to flee to Yemen.
In the Somali port of Bossaso, he handed the money to a smuggler, who placed him on a crowded boat headed for a treacherous sea. As the boat neared Yemen, it flipped over. Ahmed swam nearly a mile to the shore. He later learned that seven passengers had drowned.
Ahmed's experience is a familiar one, according to Somali community leaders and officials at the UNHCR, which runs the camp here in Kharaz. Parents often say they bring their children to Yemen to prevent them from one day joining al-Shabab. "It's very easy to brainwash youth. They tell them, 'We'll give you money. We'll give you power,' " said Rocco Nuri, a UNHCR official in Aden.
When told that former al-Shabab fighters were in Kharaz, Nuri expressed concern but said it was "impossible to monitor this" in an open camp where residents come and go freely. Nevertheless, he expressed confidence that the camp is not a haven or recruiting hub for Somali militants.
In Yemen, Somalis are worse off than Yemenis. Jobs are scarce. Thousands of Somali youths eke out a living washing cars. They sleep under trees and bathe in public water tanks. Most Somali refugees view Yemen as a transit point to richer nations such as Saudi Arabia. But in recent months, a war between the Yemeni government and Shiite Hawthi rebels in the north has stemmed the migration.
Salafist schools, which teach a puritanical brand of Islam, have attracted several hundred young Somali refugees with offers of free food and lodging, said Somali community leaders. They fear some could join al-Shabab.
"Some boys did return back to Somalia," said Deka Muhamed, a Somali elder in Sanaa. "We've heard they've been killed, but we don't know how or why."
Yemeni officials, meanwhile, worry that al-Qaeda could lure Somali ex-fighters into their ranks with promises of money or aid. But so far, there has been no evidence of this, say Western diplomats and Yemeni officials.
In an audiotape last year, Osama bin Laden exhorted al-Shabab to overthrow the Somali government. Radical Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, whom the United States has linked to the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing and to the gunman charged in the massacre at Fort Hood, has also expressed support for al-Shabab.
Yemeni officials and analysts say there is regular communication between al-Qaeda militants in Yemen and al-Shabab. Last week, Somalia's state minister for defense declared that Yemeni militants had sent al-Shabab two boats filled with arms. They have also traveled to Somalia to fight.
"Some elements went to Somalia. Some were killed there," said Rashad al-Alimi, Yemen's deputy prime minister for security and defense.
Foreign Minister Qirbi, in an interview before the failed Christmas Day attack, urged Western nations to provide greater support for Yemen's coast guard to protect its shores from militants entering or leaving. "We also need better surveillance of refugees in the country," he said.
'All become suspects'
Many Somali refugees refuse to leave their houses at night, fearing they will be picked up in a security sweep. "Nobody carries a Shabab I.D. It's not written on our foreheads," said Ali, the community leader. "We have all become suspects."
Most Somalis, he noted, practice a moderate form of Islam that stresses tolerance.
At the Somali Refugee Council office in Sanaa, more than 20 refugees have reported losing their jobs in the past week, said Mohamed Abdi Gabobe, its chairman. The council, he said, is planning a demonstration to show solidarity with Yemen, in the hopes that this will lessen the pressure on the community.
But many refugees are worried about their futures. They say they have become the latest victims in the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
"When two elephants fight each other, it is always the grass that is destroyed," said Sadat Mohamed Yusuf, a Somali community leader. "We are the grass."
Yemen's capital is home to architectural marvels. But outside, there's rot.Ed Ou / Reportage / Getty
Yemen's President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, faces sectarian threats and criticism from skeptics who think he's soft on al-Qaeda.AFP / Getty
Salesman shoot the breeze in Sana'a. The crop takes up too much precious water.Rachael Strecher / Polaris
Ali Abdullah Saleh has a phrase for it. Ruling Yemen, he says, is like "dancing on the heads of snakes." Saleh, Yemen's President, has had plenty of practice. As an army officer back in 1978, he took power in North Yemen after the assassination of the previous President. (North Yemen had become an independent state after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.) In 1990 he led the North to victory in a war against South Yemen, the territory that was once the British colony of Aden, and has ruled the unified nation ever since. He's done so using the classic techniques of a Middle Eastern strongman — clamping down on the press, concentrating military and economic power in the hands of friends and family and winning elections by suspiciously high margins. Though Saleh's main source of legitimacy is the semblance of unity he has brought to what is one of the world's most fragmented countries, his chief skill has been survival. (See pictures of a jihadist's journey.)
Now Saleh, 67, finds his snake-dancing skills being tested as never before. The suspicion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who allegedly tried to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day, trained for his mission with al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen has renewed attention on the nation as a breeding ground for extremists. Saleh — a professed U.S. Ally — has promised action and indeed has sent hundreds of extra soldiers to the front lines of al-Qaeda-dominated territory east of Sana'a. But U.S. officials view him as a fickle leader facing a difficult array of threats — from a sectarian rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south, to say nothing of dwindling water supplies and oil reserves. In the past, the Yemeni government has been lax about the threat from al-Qaeda, and critics have charged that Saleh has used jihadists against his own adversaries. "The question is, What's his appetite for taking the fight to the bad guys?" says a U.S. official. It's a good question. But with no other options but to work with Saleh, the issue for the U.S. may be how to manage expectations of what is possible in Yemen. And manage them down.
A Troubled History Stretched around the southern heel of the Arabian Peninsula and home to 23.8 million people — compared with 28.7 million in neighboring Saudi Arabia — Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. It has a long history of being both a source of militants and a staging ground for jihadist attacks. In 2000, al-Qaeda fighters rammed an explosives-packed speedboat into the U.S.S. Cole in the port of Aden, killing 17 sailors. Militants have also attacked the U.S. embassy in Sana'a several times.
One indication of Yemen's salience in the fight against terrorism: of the 200 or so detainees still held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, some 90 — more than from any other country — are Yemeni. And one indication of the confidence (or lack of it) that the U.S. has in Saleh's government: last year, officials determined that 40 to 50 of those detainees were safe to send back to Yemen for eventual release, but last month it was decided to keep them at Gitmo. Why? Because, said a State Department official, "We all took a look at Yemen and said, Oh, man, this stinks. Normally, when you repatriate [detainees] to a government that is competent, they keep an eye on them. In Yemen, the government has less capacity [to do so]. We'd be negligent if we were ignoring that." And the Administration hasn't. Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, took direct control of the Yemeni-detainee issue, traveling to Yemen twice last year to push the U.S. counterterrorism agenda.
Government opponents claim that Saleh's use of state resources to bolster his circle of supporters has left the rest of the country to rot. But not all of Yemen's problems are Saleh's doing. The country faces 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 crop accounts for roughly a third of the country's water usage.) Moreover, Yemen's production of oil — which constitutes 90% of its exports — is limited and could end by 2017, according to the World Bank.
Without money, Saleh's ability to play patronage politics and buy off the opposition has faded. Though posters bearing his portrait are plastered across Sana'a, his authority doesn't extend very far beyond the capital. About two-thirds of the country is in the hands of either separatist groups or local tribes, some of which have a habit of kidnapping foreign tourists to use as bargaining chips with the central government. Economic and developmental issues — Yemen's most volatile regions are among those hardest hit by drought and government neglect — are at the heart of most of those conflicts, especially the war between the government and Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis, that is being waged in the northern province of Sa'ada.
More ominously, Yemen's social and economic problems have created a vacuum for al-Qaeda to fill. Squeezed out of Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda operatives have regrouped in Yemen's lawless mountain regions east of Sana'a and have merged with al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Led by Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi and Saeed Ali Shehri, a Guantánamo detainee who was released in 2007, AQAP may constitute 200 core members supported by thousands of locals. Terrorism experts worry that with a firm footing in Yemen, al-Qaeda can coordinate with Red Sea pirates operating from Somalia and eventually reach the Suez Canal — or launch attacks in Saudi Arabia and the other PersianGulf countries. "Anyone who has been to Yemen knows that automatic arms, explosives, even rockets are sold out in the open — on street corners — often by people who make no secret of their Islamist affinities," says a French counterterrorism official. "It's been this enormous crossroads for people traveling from one jihad, like Iraq or Afghanistan, to another one, like Somalia."
The U.S. has few military options against a guerrilla organization that has blended in with the local population and landscape. Air strikes and missile launches from afar run the risk of highlighting America's impotence rather than its might. On Dec. 17 and 24, joint Yemeni-U.S. strikes against purported AQAP training camps took place and killed more than 60 militants, U.S. intelligence officials claimed. It was initially hoped that the attacks had disposed of Wahishi, Shehri and radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the cyber–pen pal of the accused Fort Hood shooter, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, but no evidence has yet demonstrated that to be the case. And more missile strikes could prove politically disastrous in a nation whose citizenry seethes with anti-U.S. sentiment.
Washington wants to continue to cooperate with Saleh and is encouraging his government to take the lead in rooting out al-Qaeda. The U.S. boosted counterterrorism funding for Yemen from less than $5 million in 2006 to $67 million in 2009 and has been dispatching CIA and military personnel to train Yemeni forces. U.S. Centcom commander General David Petraeus said on Jan. 1 that military assistance would double in the coming year. But outside observers are skeptical of how much effect more guns and money will have, especially if the largesse is appropriated by a corrupt bureaucracy. In any event, Saleh's officials have been wary of seeming to do America's bidding. In 2002 the U.S. scored a victory against al-Qaeda in Yemen and promptly spoiled its success. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense at the time, took public credit for a Predator-drone strike that killed a top al-Qaeda figure, exposing Yemeni leaders to domestic criticism for siding with the U.S.
When Awful Is Good For foreign aid to have an effect in Yemen, it would have to be tied to some kind of reform process that both addresses Yemen's endemic corruption and devolves some power from Saleh. At the top of the wish list would be a political reconciliation between the central government and the Houthis. Not all is grim. With the right incentives, tribes in al-Qaeda areas could be induced to turn against the extremists, along the lines of the Sunni awakening in Iraq, according to Najeeb Ghallab, a Sana'a University political analyst. "The situation is moving from bad to worse," he says, "but there's a golden chance to save Yemen if it sparks reform."
Such reform won't happen overnight, however, and possibly not at all while Saleh is President. His son Brigadier Ahmad Ali Abdullah Saleh is widely viewed as being groomed for succession, and his circle of younger, Western-educated officials is sometimes touted by supporters as being more reform-minded than the elder generation. But skeptics think the son may end up being merely a less crafty version of the father. "Ahmad is popular, but without any strategic vision, he will either be weaker than his father or just continue the way his father did things," says Adel Shogaa, a political-science professor at Sana'a University.
That's why managing expectations down seems a sensible step. Perhaps, if the U.S and its allies play their cards right, with a regional plan to expand economic development in Yemen and coordinate security, the sort of disaster seen in Afghanistan and Somalia can be avoided. "We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends," says Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Yemen's problems are really unsolvable. But you can reduce the impact that they will have, make them less bad and increase the chances for it to survive what we know is coming — state failure."
Which amounts to little more than hoping that the collapse of a U.S. ally will have consequences that are merely awful rather than catastrophic.
— With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson / Washington; Bruce Crumley / Paris; Rami Aysha / Beirut; and Abigail Hauslohner / Sana'a
WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration confronts the latest terrorism threat in Yemen, its diplomatic and development efforts are being constrained by a shortage of resources, a lack of in-house expertise and a fraught history with a Yemeni leader deeply ambivalent about American help.
Administration officials said they focused on Yemen as a hothouse for Islamic terrorism from the day President Obama took office. The United States has tripled its foreign assistance to the country from 2008 levels and plans to spend up to $63 million on Yemen this year.
But by all accounts, that is a modest amount for a country that is suddenly a central threat on the foreign policy landscape; it is roughly the same amount the United States sends to Serbia. It illustrates how much the United States is stretched on the foreign policy front, and how hard it is to extend its resources beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Beyond providing military and intelligence help — showcased in recent airstrikes on training sites for Al Qaeda — the administration has yet to develop a coherent plan for dealing with Yemen’s pervasive poverty and corruption, according to former diplomats and outside experts. Those ills, they say, are at the root of Yemen’s lure for terrorists.
“I don’t think we have a strategy for Yemen; I think we have some responses,” said Edmund J. Hull, the American ambassador there from 2001 to 2004. “It’s difficult to do because the problems in Yemen are so huge that you almost get stopped before you start.”
In an overburdened State Department, there are only a handful of Yemen experts, compared with 30 people from nine government agencies who are assigned just to the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke.
“It’s not that Yemen is the most mysterious and unknowable country in the world,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “One needs to ask why more wasn’t done sooner.”
The State Department said it had decided to step up its engagement with Yemen even before the botched Dec. 25 attack on the jetliner. In September, the United States signed an agreement with the Yemeni government for a three-year $120 million “stabilization program,” devised to create jobs and improve health and other public services on an accelerated timetable.
“We wanted to put together a package of quick-impact projects that would give people a sense that their lives are improving,” said Janet A. Sanderson, a deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees Yemen.
After the Navy destroyer Cole was bombed in Yemen in 2000, the United States embarked on a similar effort. In addition to focusing on counterterrorism operations, the State Department helped finance projects like a health clinic on the rugged highway between the capital, Sana, and Marib, a town in a remote region where Qaeda forces are known to cluster.
Improving health care is one way to make Yemenis less receptive to Al Qaeda and other extremists, Mr. Hull said. The United States had previously tended to focus its economic aid on politically influential places like Sana and Aden, the port city where the Cole was attacked. From 2002 to 2004, officials said, Qaeda elements in Yemen were on the defensive.
But Washington’s relations with Yemen soured after several Qaeda suspects escaped from a prison in Sana in 2006. After the release of a high-profile Qaeda operative in 2007, the United States suspended aid that Yemen was supposed to get through the Millennium Challenge program.
“You had this reversal and downward trend in relations,” Mr. Hull said. “Both we and they took our eyes off the ball.”
By 2008, nonmilitary aid to Yemen had dwindled to less than $20 million. Afghanistan is expected to receive $2.7 billion a year in nonmilitary aid, Pakistan $1.5 billion and Iraq $500 million.
The administration doubled Yemen’s economic aid last year, but as Barbara K. Bodine, another former ambassador, pointed out, the amount “works out to $1.60 per Yemeni.”
“That won’t even buy you a cup of coffee in Yemen,” she added, “and they invented coffee.”
Ms. Bodine, who was posted to Yemen at the time of the Cole bombing, said that even with the increased commitment, American aid was still overly skewed toward military support, much of it covert. Over time, she said, that could undermine Yemen’s struggling democracy.
“If they see David Petraeus more than Kathleen Sebelius, then we have a problem,” Ms. Bodine said, referring to the military commander and the secretary of health and human services, respectively.
State Department officials acknowledge that the United States has limited resources for Yemen, though given the intense scrutiny focused on the country, those numbers could rise. But they question whether more aid money would be used effectively, given the pervasive corruption there. As it is, the United States steers most of its dollars through outside organizations like CARE.
Officials also say the United States has to be realistic about what can be done in Yemen, given a long list of problems, including a water shortage, dwindling oil reserves and secessionist movements in the south, a major insurgency in the north and a growing young population with no jobs.
In a speech this week on development strategy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to labeling Yemen a lost cause. “In countries that are incubators of extremism, like Yemen,” she said, “the odds are long. But the cost of doing nothing is potentially far greater.”
The biggest hurdle to aid may be Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. While American officials said he appeared determined to root out Qaeda elements, his resolve has wavered over time, depending on his calculation of whether radical Islamists are a threat or benefit to him. Mr. Saleh is also worried about being too closely identified with the United States.
Saudi Arabia already pours an estimated $1 billion a year into Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Germany have longstanding ties.
“He hasn’t always been eager for American support,” a senior administration official said of Mr. Saleh. “That’s all the more reason to wrap this in broader international support. That makes it easier politically for him.”
By Sudarsan Raghavan washington post foreign service Friday, January 8, 2010; A01
ADEN, YEMEN -- A hatred of the government in southern Yemen is complicating U.S.-backed efforts to stem al-Qaeda's ambitions across the region, according to Western and Yemeni officials, analysts and human rights activists.
The concerns highlight the extent to which the United States, as it deepens its military engagement here, is teaming up with a government facing internal divisions that in some ways are more complex than those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In a speech Thursday, President Obama said the United States has worked closely with its partners, including Yemen, "to inflict major blows" against al-Qaeda. But experts familiar with the group here say it is poised to exploit the country's divide to attract recruits and more sympathy from the south's powerful tribes.
"Al-Qaeda dreams of secession," said Najib Ghallab, a political science professor at Sanaa University. "It wants to turn the south into the perfect breeding ground for global terrorism."
Once two countries, Yemen unified in 1990. But a brief civil war broke out in 1994. From the north, President Ali Abdullah Saleh dispatched thousands of Yemeni mujaheddin who had fought in Afghanistan as well as Salafists, who follow a strict interpretation of Islam, to fight the southerners.
Ever since, tension has gripped this vast region. The government's resources are stretched thin here, as it also grapples with a Shiite rebellion in the north.
Southerners contend that the government has denied them their share of oil revenue, and has dismissed many southerners from military and government jobs. A wave of protests has roiled the south, prompting a government crackdown. Many members of the Southern Movement, a loosely knit coalition, now demand secession.
"We no longer want our rights from the government. We want a separate north and south," said Ahmed Kassim, a secessionist leader who spoke in a hushed tone inside a car on a recent day in this southern port city.
In May, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate alleged to have masterminded the attempted bombing of an American jet on Christmas Day, declared its support for the southerners' demands for a separate state. The group's leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, promised to avenge the "oppression" faced by southerners.
Al-Qaeda's bonds in south
Southern Yemen, nestled at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, edges the strategic Bab el-Mandab strait, one of the world's oil shipping choke points. It is also a gateway to Somalia, where the Islamist militant movement al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaeda, is fighting the U.S.-backed Somali transitional government.
Al-Qaeda militants have thrived in Yemen's southern and southeastern provinces. They are shielded by tribal alliances and codes in religiously conservative communities that do not tolerate outside interference, even from the government. A shared dislike of central authority and U.S. policies in the Middle East has strengthened al-Qaeda's bonds with southern tribesmen.
The resentment persists here in Aden, where al-Qaeda militants bombed the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors.
Inside the dented white car, Kassim sat with another secessionist leader, Nasser Atawil. Now and then, they looked nervously out the window, concerned that Yemeni intelligence agents might overhear their conversation with a journalist.
They complained that the names of streets had been changed to northern ones. They said northerners had taken buildings, farms and land from southerners. Northerners, they contended, gain entry into better universities and had better careers.
Atawil, a retired army general, said his pension was half what his northern counterparts receive.
"What the government is doing will make al-Qaeda stronger here," he said.
In another corner of Aden, the managing editor of Al Ayyam, the largest and most influential daily in the south, said the government has banned his paper for sympathizing with the Southern Movement's cause.
"We are virtually under house arrest," Hani Bashraheel said. On Monday, journalists staged a sit-in to protest the shutdown. But clashes erupted between police and the paper's armed guards; a policeman and a guard were killed. On Wednesday, police arrested Hani and his father, Hisham Bashraheel, the paper's editor.
According to Human Rights Watch, Yemeni forces opened fire on unarmed protesters six times in 2008 and 2009, killing at least 11 and wounding dozens.
On Thursday, a senior Yemeni official denied the government was using excessive force and instead said some secessionists have targeted government forces.
"They claim they are a movement, but they are outlaws," said Rashad al-Alimi, deputy prime minister for security and defense.
Escalating tensions
With the ongoing government repression, concern is growing that violence could increase -- especially as the U.S.-backed war on al-Qaeda unfolds in the south.
Since July, there have been more reports of protesters bringing weapons to rallies, according to Human Rights Watch. In November, al-Qaeda militants killed three senior security officials and four escorts in the southern province of Hadhramaut.
The recent alliance between a powerful tribal leader and former jihadist, Tariq al-Fadhli, and the Southern Movement also has escalated tensions. Fadhli, who is from the south, fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Then Saleh sent him to fight against the former Marxist forces in the south during the civil war.
But in April, Fadhli broke ties with Saleh, injecting new momentum into the Southern Movement. Since then, protests against the government have intensified.
The government has accused Fadhli and the Southern Movement of colluding with al-Qaeda. They have denied this and accuse Saleh of using the specter of al-Qaeda to elicit support from the United States and its Middle East allies.
Still, some rights activists say an alliance is forming between some secessionists, Fadhli and al-Qaeda. Christoph Wilcke, a Human Rights Watch researcher for Yemen, said at least one al-Qaeda leader had joined Fadhli and the Southern Movement. He was killed in a U.S.-backed Yemeni airstrike last month, Wilcke said.
Any melding of the Southern Movement and al-Qaeda is far from established, he said. But that could change if the U.S.-backed war deepens without Washington pressuring Saleh to stop repression in the south. Angry southerners, meanwhile, have accused the government and the United States of killing a few dozen civilians in an airstrike last month. Yemeni officials say they killed militants and their relatives.
"It will change the sympathies if they have a common enemy in the United States," Wilcke said. "Al-Qaeda will become more of an ally. This is exactly what we don't want to get into."
By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, January 6, 2010; A01
SANAA, YEMEN -- When he served in the Afghan mountains as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, Nasser al-Bahri said, he was known as "The Killer." Today, Bahri is a business consultant in Yemen who favors Western-style pinstriped shirts, crisp slacks and black loafers. But his ideas are still radical: Ask him whether jihadists should kill Americans on U.S. soil and he replies without hesitation, "America is a legitimate target."
The arc of Bahri's life helps to explain why Yemen was an attractive place for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who allegedly tried to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, to be indoctrinated into the Islamist world of jihad. Thousands like Bahri, who have returned from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim lands, are disengaged from the fight against the West, yet express sympathy for al-Qaeda's violent core philosophies.
As the United States steps up its engagement here, it faces the delicate task of fighting terrorism without alienating Yemen's highly tribal and religiously conservative society. Like Pakistan and Afghanistan, Yemen has abundant weapons and men experienced in guerrilla warfare who resent U.S. policies and have tribal, social and inspirational ties to al-Qaeda. Many fear that such men could become perfect recruits, especially if anti-American sentiments grow or Yemen plunges deeper into chaos.
"These people are already angry and many are unemployed," said Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a Yemeni political analyst. "The only option they will have if fighting starts is to join al-Qaeda. Where else will they go?"
He added that Yemen is a place where "you cannot prevent contacts between young impressionable men and their jihadist heroes."
Some of al-Qaeda's best-known figures, many with strong connections to bin Laden, live in this Middle Eastern nation led by a weak government and beset by multiple emergencies, from civil war to soaring poverty and dwindling oil reserves.
Abdul Majid al-Zindani, bin Laden's former spiritual adviser, whom the United States has classified as a terrorist, is the most powerful religious figure here today. Senior Yemeni officials both fear him and seek his support. Nasser al-Wuhayshi -- bin Laden's former personal secretary -- is the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which U.S. officials believe trained Abdulmutallab and equipped him with chemical explosives.
U.S. and Yemeni investigators are also looking into a possible relationship between Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Aulaqi, the extremist Yemeni American cleric who U.S. and Yemeni officials allege is one of the emerging spiritual leaders in al-Qaeda.
Aulaqi has also been linked to the man charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., on Nov. 5.
In an interview in a sunny room filled with computers at a business conference where he was working, Bahri, 37, said he has kept a relatively low profile in Yemen since 2002, when he was released from prison.
He said Yemeni authorities held him for nearly two years without charge.
He said he is no longer an al-Qaeda member and has no desire to return to a life of jihad. But he said he still admires bin Laden and his cause.
"He is a man of substance," said Bahri, oval-faced and bald with piercing black eyes. "Whatever mistakes he has made, he has a very pure personality. He's simple, holy and sacred."
'I decided to join'
Bahri, who was interviewed a few days before the failed bombing on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, was born in 1972 in Saudi Arabia to Yemeni parents. He grew up in the kingdom and earned a business degree in college. But like so many young Saudis, Bahri was deeply influenced by Sunni fundamentalist preachers and the Palestinian struggles against Israel.
In 1993, he said, he traveled to Bosnia to join Muslims fighting the Serbs. Bahri was following a well-worn path. Thousands of Yemenis went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. They were welcomed back as heroes. President Ali Abdullah Saleh dispatched many to fight in the south during Yemen's 1994 civil war.
Bahri said he had no desire to return to Saudi Arabia or Yemen. After Bosnia, he traveled on fake passports to Somalia and then Tajikistan, eventually arriving in 1996 in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. There, he heard bin Laden rail against U.S. actions in the Persian Gulf War and preach that Muslims needed to be unified against the West.
"I decided to join," recalled Bahri, who was sent to a training camp in Khost province. A year later, he said, he took an oath of loyalty to bin Laden.
One night, a group of armed defectors from the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group that ruled Afghanistan, entered bin Laden's compound seeking to kill him. Bahri picked up his gun and shielded bin Laden.
"After this, every time Osama bin Laden moved, he would say, 'Abu Jandal should be with us,' " recalled Bahri, using his nom de guerre.
Nine months later, Bahri was shot in his left leg during a battle against Afghan rebels seeking to oust the Taliban. Bin Laden brought him food, changed his bandages and nursed him while he healed.
"He would pour honey into my injury," Bahri recalled.
Failed 'dialogue'
In 2000, Bahri said, he had a falling-out with other al-Qaeda members and decided to visit Yemen with his Yemeni wife. Two months later, al-Qaeda militants bombed the USS Cole in the southern city of Aden, killing 17 American sailors. Bahri said he was not involved in the attack.
But he said he was on a Yemeni security list of al-Qaeda operatives, so he went into hiding. When he tried to flee to Afghanistan, Yemeni intelligence agents captured him at the airport.
Bahri said he was imprisoned without charges. Seven months later, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FBI agents arrived to interrogate him. In testimony before the U.S. Senate in May, former FBI agent Ali Soufan said interrogators obtained from Bahri "a treasure trove of highly significant actionable intelligence," including extensive information on bin Laden's terrorism network, its structure and its leadership. Bahri, he added, also provided "explicit details" of the Sept. 11 plot.
Bahri said that although he fed the FBI lies, he believes his former al-Qaeda comrades view him as a traitor.
After his prison term, including 13 months in solitary confinement, Bahri entered a prison rehabilitation program. Run by a prominent judge, Hamoud al-Hitar, it focused on using theological "arguing" as a tool of reform. It is now widely considered a failure. Bahri, along with two al-Qaeda militants convicted by the United States in the Cole bombings, were released after three sessions of "dialogue" over four months.
"Hitar said he changed our minds," Bahri said. "But he did not."
A latent danger
After Bahri's release, employers were reluctant to hire him. He has had eight jobs in the past six years and earns a meager income. He said he once considered returning to Afghanistan but found it too risky. He was under surveillance by Yemeni intelligence and had to report to its officials every month.
Those who know Bahri say he has given up militancy. Iryani, the political analyst, said Bahri has talked young Yemenis out of going to fight in Iraq.
Iryani said former militants like Bahri need more support from the government. Without it, he said, "if they find the country to be under attack from outside, they will find a legitimate reason to go back to jihad."
Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
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