Get to know Yemen: The new hot front in the war on terror

Will you kill Americans to teach a lesson? Does America care if its soldiers die? When wounded soldiers return from war, they are treated like dogs. America talks about how it loves its soldiers but it cares little more for them than it cares for you. It simply kills them in a slower and more painful way.

Consider these things before giving your life and risking the lives of those around you:

* You are likely working for people influenced or even paid by enemies of Islam
* Your American enemies are people far more like you than many fellow Muslims
* War and terrorism empowers the enemies of Islam and cripples unity and economic development among Islamic nations
* If you believe killing and dying for your religion is your duty, you have little or no real understanding of the teachings of the Prophet.
* Learn the lessons of Vietnam: stop fighting, let Americans go home, then settle your political differences among yourselves. America will not return once they have left.
* Accept the fact that, maybe in 5 years, maybe 20 years, your enemies will be your business associates and possibly your friends. It is begining to happen now but it is hard to see when you are still carrying a gun.
* If you seek justice against tyranny, know you have allies around the world, many in America. We can only define justice when we talk, when we listen. We all know tyranny very well. The boot of tyranny is everywhere.

War has brought a flowering of tyranny that may last a century. Do we kill tyranny with more war?

Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=VT_Authors&author=gordonduff

http://current.com/items/91163912_yemen-water-crisis-builds.htm

And get to know one of the root causes being exploited more and more: water scarcity.

After news of the failed attempt to destroy the Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 emerged, AQAP released a statement saying it had sought to avenge recent raids by Yemeni forces aided by US intelligence , in which dozens of militants are reported to have died.

"We tell the American people that since you support the leaders who kill our women and children... we have come to slaughter you [and] will strike you with no previous [warning], our vengeance is near," the group said.

"We call on all Muslims... to throw out all unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula by killing crusaders who work in embassies or elsewhere... [in] a total war on all crusaders in the Peninsula of Muhammad."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8437724.stm

Prison escape

Meanwhile in Yemen - the ancestral home of Bin Laden - Sunni militants took advantage of the weak central government, whose authority does not extend far outside the capital Sanaa, and established strongholds in its many remote regions.

Although al-Qaeda cells were held responsible for several attacks inside Yemen since the suicide boat attack on the USS Cole near the port of Aden in 2000 that killed 17 US sailors, it was not until the second half of the decade that a fully-functioning affiliated group was formed.

According to the Gregory Johnsen of Princeton University, between 2002 and 2003 the Yemeni government co-operated closely with the US to fight al-Qaeda. By the end of that period - which included one leader being killed in a strike by a US drone aircraft - al-Qaeda appeared to be substantially weakened and so both countries shifted focus.

The policy appeared to have worked until February 2006, Mr Johnsen says, when 23 suspected al-Qaeda members managed to escape from a prison in Sanaa , including Jamal al-Badawi, the alleged ringleader of the USS Cole bombing, and Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former personal assistant to Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

A 33-year-old from the southern governorate of al-Baida, Wuhayshi spent time in religious institutions in Yemen before travelling to Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He fought at the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, before escaping over the border into Iran, where he was eventually arrested. He was extradited to Yemen in 2003.

After escaping from prison, Wuhayshi is said to have then overseen the formation of al-Qaeda in Yemen, which took in both new recruits and experienced Arab fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Protected by tribes who were wary of government interference, the group established bases from which to launch fresh attacks.

The group claimed responsibility for two suicide bomb attacks on Western tourists before being linked to the assault on the US embassy in Sanaa in September 2008 , in which militants detonated bombs and fired rocket-propelled grenades. Ten Yemeni guards and four civilians were killed.

Four months later, Wuhayshi announced in a video the merger of the al-Qaeda offshoots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia to form "al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in the Arabian Peninsula".

Analysts say the move was designed to bring Saudi al-Qaeda members who had fled their country and Yemeni militants together under one umbrella as a first step towards launching attacks throughout the region.

Next to Wuhayshi in the same video sat the new group's deputy leader, Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi national who was released from the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in November 2007.

Another former detainee, Mohammed Atiq al-Harbi, also known as Mohammed al-Awfi, appeared alongside them and was described as a field commander.

The group's first operation outside Yemen was carried out in Saudi Arabia in August 2009 against the kingdom's security chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, though he survived.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8437724.stm

Beheading

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula first came to prominence in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, when it claimed responsibility for simultaneous suicide bombing attacks on three Western housing compounds in Riyadh , which left 29 dead.

Despite a subsequent crackdown on Islamist militants and radicals by the Saudi security forces, the group was able to mount an attack on the Muhayyah residential compound in the capital that November, killing 17 people.

In 2004, it suffered a major blow when its leader, Khaled Ali Hajj - a Yemeni and former bodyguard of Bin Laden - was ambushed and killed by Saudi troops.

However, the group soon recovered under the guidance of a veteran Saudi militant, Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin , and launched a series of spectacular attacks.

On 1 May 2004, militants shot dead five Western workers at a petrochemical complex in the north-western Red Sea city of Yanbu. On 29 May, more than 20 foreign and Saudi nationals were killed in attacks on three sites in the city of al-Khobar, increasing fears of political instability and pushing up global oil prices.

The following month, members of AQAP abducted and beheaded a 49-year old American aerospace worker named Paul Johnson .

The triumph was short-lived, however, as when security forces stormed a hideout in Riyadh looking for Johnson's murderers Muqrin was shot dead.

Although militants killed at least nine people in a raid on the US consulate in Jeddah in December 2004, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula enjoyed notably less success under Muqrin's successor, Salih al-Awfi .

The Saudi security services gradually gained the upper hand, and succeed in preventing any major attacks the following year, when Awfi was himself killed during a police raid in the holy city of Medina.

In spite of the large numbers of Saudis who then travelled to militant training camps and gained experience fighting in places such as Iraq, the group found it increasingly difficult to organise operational cells inside the kingdom. Its last attempt a significant attack was at the Abqaiq oil facility in February 2006 .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8437724.stm