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

As the US pours more troops into the "right war" in Afghanistan, a new front in the war against Al Qaeda seems to be emerging: Yemen. Why? The Underwear Bomber! Yemen is a hot and dusty country down at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Its government likes the US, but not all of its people like the government. Back in September, we posted a story asking if Yemen was the next failed state. It's got an armed insurgency battling the government which claims ties to Al Qaeda and it's got an awful lot of Somali refugees (as reported by Vanguard in "Beach of Death", they swim across the Gulf of Aden - even Yemen is better than Somalia).

But like so many other countries teetering on the brink of some sort of collapse, Yemen has largely slipped beneath the Western radar. That is, until the so-called Underwear Bomber was reported to have received his training and instruction from Al Qaeda in the country. All of a sudden: it's all eyes on Yemen.

Good news is, the US military was already there, quietly conducting a campaign against Islamic militants. On December 24, the day before the attempted Underwear Bombing, the New York Times reported on an airstrike in the country targeting senior Al Qaeda members.

A few days later, the Times followed up with a more in-depth picture of US involvement:

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.

And indeed, yesterday, the AP reported that US-funded Yemeni forces carried out a raid on an Al Qaeda stronghold.

But can Yemen win its war on terror? Again, just in September we were asking whether it would be the next failed state. Yemen may be raiding militant headquarters today, but they've got other problems - like the Houthi clan waging war against the state in the north. Newsweek asks whether Yemen can be a reliable ally.

...Washington is also rightfully wary of its ally in Sana—a caution that seems particularly justified in the wake of this week's in-flight bombing attempt by a Nigerian who had been studying in Yemen. The Yemeni government's relationship with Al Qaeda is a complicated one. The country's ruling clique, led for the past 30 years by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has long been fighting off challenges from Shia tribesmen in the north and rebellious socialists in the south—threats that it sees as more immediate than a small band of Qaeda operatives without a real political agenda. In the past, Saleh has enlisted local Islamists—including, notably, jihadis returning from Afghanistan in the 1980s—to help fight those battles.

Not to mention the leaky security that allowed some of baddest of the Gitmo baddies to escape from prison in Yemen in 2006. Indeed, some of the militants behind the Christmas Day attempt are thought to be Guantanamo alums.

All of this to say: It's time to get to know to know your Yemen. Another American GWOT ally whose trials and tribulations will take the spotlight over the next few months as the US tries for a third time to publicly 'take the fight to the terrorists.'

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