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Strategically located adjacent to both Saudi Arabia and Somalia, Yemen touches on a number of vital U.S. national security interests including access to energy supplies and the ongoing campaign against terrorism. Any single event—or more likely a confluence of worst-case events beyond the ability of the Yemeni government to control—could lead to a further erosion of central government authority in Yemen and destabilization of the region.
Refugee camps in Yemen overwhelmed
Lingering conflict between government forces and al-Houthi rebels in Yemen is straining U.N. efforts to provide relief to the internally displaced community.
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The U.N. refugee agency said at least one of its refugee camps exceeded its capacity as close to 100,000 displaced persons flee the violence.
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The Yemeni government launched a scorched earth campaign in August against the Shiite rebel group. Escalations along the border with Saudi Arabia prompted Riyadh to join the fight against the rebels, while Iran faces accusations of supporting the Shiite insurgency.
International relief groups have raised repeated alarms over the potential humanitarian disaster that members of the displaced community in Yemen face.
SCENARIOS: How might Yemen's toxic mix of conflict develop?
Multiplying security and economic pressures are deepening instability in Yemen, raising fears for a strategically vital neighborhood that includes oil superpower Saudi Arabia and one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
A Muslim Shi'ite revolt, southern secessionism and al Qaeda attacks have combined with water shortages, a humanitarian crisis, worsening poverty and falling oil income to stir powerful currents of turbulence in the poor Arabian country.
Concern has also focused on the proximity of failed Horn of Africa state Somalia, which sits across the Gulf of Aden and hosts a pirate community that preys on international shipping in defiance of an international flotilla that seeks to stop it.
Nearly 20,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year, heading to and from the Suez Canal.
"Yemen faces unprecedented challenges... Any one of these challenges coming to a crisis point could overwhelm the Yemeni government," Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Carnegie Middle East Program, said in a note to journalists this week.
If steps are not taken, "Yemen is at risk of becoming a failed state and a training ground for Islamist extremism."
Following are scenarios on how Yemen's problems may develop:
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Originally posted by jam321
What I find interesting is that the Saudis are actually fighting.
Are they trying to gain experience, US over-committed, or just testing out their investment in new toys?
Originally posted by Rockpuck
Loam, that investment video was just weird .. I'd hope any major corporations did a background check on political stability and not just watch a video of pretty beaches and "culture"
Originally posted by jam321
What I find interesting is that the Saudis are actually fighting.
Are they trying to gain experience, US over-committed, or just testing out their investment in new toys?
By God's grace and support, a fighter plane was shot down yesterday evening (at Isha near Heyuan - Al-Imran). Meanwhile Saudis continued (14) air strikes yesterday (Razkk, Sabba, Mt Mudud, Mt Duknan, Mt Dhahr Al Humar). Intermittant rocket fire attacks contued in the evening, and Yemeni airforce conducted (3) attacks on (Sahar directorate)"
Houthi communique 8 Dec 2009
This is the second Yemeni MIG fighter downed by Houthis, and at least one Yemeni helicopter.
(Report of four months fighting up to end of last week, therefore todays MIG not counted)
Total number of military vehicles captured or destroyed: (230)
Total number of aircraft downed (3) =1 MIG and 2 Sukhoi
Total number of military bases captured: (134)
Detailed spread sheets available here:
h ttp://sadahonline.org/ar/news/1-latest-news/497-2009-12-08-17-08-13.html
General David Petraeus, who now heads the United States Central Command, gave an exclusive interview to Al Arabiya on Sunday where he discussed Washington's support of Yemen and Iraq and Syria's relationship.
The general stated that the U.S. is providing security support to Yemen within the framework of military cooperation provided by Washington to its allies in the region. He emphasized that the U.S. ships found in Yemen waters are not only there for monitoring but for also for hindering the flow of arms to Houthi rebels.
'US fighter jets attack Yemeni fighters'
Yemen's Houthi fighters say the US fighter jets have launched 28 attacks on the northwestern province of Sa'ada.
The US has used modern fighter jets and bombers in its offensive against the Yemen fighters, Houthis said in a statement.
According to the statement, the US fighter jets have launched overnight attacks on the Yemeni fighters, Arabic Almenpar website reported.
More...
US Dispatches Special Forces To Yemen Amid Crisis
US special forces have reportedly been sent to Yemen to train its army, as the Yemeni military backed by its Saudi counterpart battle local Houthi fighters in the coungtry's north.
the commander of U.S. Special Operations during his recent visit to Yemen two months ago, agreed with the Yemeni leaders under pressure to allow three U.S. spy planes to operate in Yemen from U.S. military bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and the implementation of some special operations along the lines of what is happening in Pakistan and Somalia," adding that "These three planes were seen in the governorate of Marib
Fearful that Yemen is in danger of becoming a failed state, America has now sent a small number of special forces teams to improve training of Yemen's army in reaction to the threat.
Report: US helped Yemen's strike against al-Qaida
The U.S. provided firepower and other aid to Yemen in its strike this week against suspected al-Qaida hide-outs and training sites within its borders, the New York Times reported.
President Barack Obama approved the military and intelligence support, which came at the request of the Yemeni government.
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...warships launching cruise missiles...
Despite U.S. Help, Yemen Faces Growing Al-Qaeda Threat
With Yemen apparently on the verge of becoming the world's next failed state and a regional base for al-Qaeda, a series of U.S.-assisted air and ground assaults that shook pockets of Yemen last week might have seemed like a positive development in the troubled country's otherwise downward spiral. But the dramatic action, which appears to have resulted in a number of civilian casualties, may not right the situation at all. "The U.S. has been growing very concerned about al-Qaeda in recent years, but it seems as though the U.S. is coming rather late to the party," says Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen, who contends last week's attacks would ultimately prove counterproductive.
December 24, 2009 7:55 AM
The leader and the second in command of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as well as a radical, Yemeni-American cleric who is said to have inspired the Ft. Hood massacre, are said to have been killed during an airstrike in Yemen today, according to Yemeni officials. The deaths have not been confirmed by the US.
The Yemeni Air Force targeted Nasir al Wuhayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and his deputy Said al Shihri, as they gathered for a high-level meeting of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The terror group's top leaders were thought to have been gathering at the home of Anwar al Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric who provided religious justification for US Army Major Nidal Hasan to carry out a deadly shooting spree against US soldiers in Ft. Hood, Texas.
U.S. quietly takes terror war to Yemen
Covert front against al-Qaida was opened a year ago, military officers say
By ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH
updated 12:38 a.m. ET Dec. 28, 2009
WASHINGTON - In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.
A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent many 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.
As American investigators sought to corroborate the claims of a 23-year-old Nigerian man that Qaeda leaders in Yemen had trained and equipped him to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, the plot casts a spotlight on the Obama administration’s complicated relationship with Yemen.
Refuge for jihadists
The country has long been a refuge for jihadists, in part because Yemen’s government welcomed returning Islamist fighters who had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The Yemen port of Aden was the site of the audacious bombing of the American destroyer Cole in October 2000 by Qaeda militants, which killed 17 sailors.
But Qaeda militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting more frequent attacks on foreign embassies and other targets. The White House is seeking to nurture enduring ties with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and prod him to combat the local Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, even as his impoverished country grapples with seemingly intractable internal turmoil.
With fears also growing of a resurgent Islamist extremism in nearby Somalia and East Africa, administration officials and American lawmakers said Yemen could become Al Qaeda’s next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization’s top leaders operate.
“Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who visited the country in August. “We have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Pivotal point
American and Yemeni officials said that a pivotal point in the relationship was reached in late summer after separate secret visits to Yemen by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American regional commander, and John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser.
President Saleh agreed to expanded overt and covert assistance in response to growing pressure from the United States and Yemen’s neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia, from which many Qaeda operatives had fled to Yemen, as well as a rising threat against the country’s political inner circle, the officials said.
“Yemen’s security problems won’t just stay in Yemen,” said Christopher Boucek, who studies Yemen as an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “They’re regional problems and they affect Western interests.”
Al Qaeda’s profile in Yemen rose sharply a year ago, when a former Guantánamo Bay detainee from Saudi Arabia, Said Ali al-Shihri, fled to Yemen to join Al Qaeda and appeared in a video posted online. Several other former Guantánamo detainees have also joined the group.
Yemen’s remote areas are notoriously lawless, but the country’s chaos has worsened in the past two years, as the government struggles with an armed rebellion in the northwest and a rising secessionist movement in the south. Yemen is running out of oil, and the government’s dwindling finances have affected its ability to strike Al Qaeda.
Ties to plots against U.S.
Meanwhile, there have been increasing Yemeni ties to plots against the United States. A Muslim man charged in the June 1 killing of a soldier at a recruiting center in a mall in Little Rock, Ark., had traveled to Yemen, prompting a review by the F.B.I. of other domestic extremists who had visited the country.
A radical cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, has been linked to numerous terrorism suspects, including Nidal Malik Hasan, the American Army major who faces murder charges in the shooting deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November.
In the latest issue of Sada al-Malahim, the Internet magazine of the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, the group’s leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, praised the use of small bombs — not just big ones — to attack an enemy, in an eerie foreshadowing of Friday’s episode on the plane to Detroit.
Yemen escalated its campaign against Al Qaeda with major airstrikes on Dec. 17 and last Thursday that killed more than 60 militants.
American officials have been coy about the role of the United States in the strikes, saying that they have provided intelligence and “firepower” for the efforts.
Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, said Sunday that Yemeni military cooperation with the United States and Saudi Arabia had increased in recent months as fresh intelligence confirmed Al Qaeda’s greater assertiveness in the country.