AVOID MUSLIM YEMEN
Yemen tribe warns against harming cleric on US wants dead
(AFP) – April 10, 2010
SANAA — A powerful tribe in Yemen threatened violence on Saturday against anyone trying to harm a radical US-born Muslim cleric whom Washington has reportedly placed on its hit list.
The heavily armed Al-Awaliq tribe, active in the Abyan and Shabwa regions that are key Al-Qaeda strongholds in Yemen, warned against any attempt against Anwar al-Awlaqi, a Yemen-based US citizen with suspected Al-Qaeda ties.
In an official statement published after a meeting of tribal leaders, the tribe said it would "not remain with arms crossed if a hair of Anwar al-Awlaqi is touched, or if anyone plots or spies against him."
"Whoever risks denouncing our son (Awlaqi) will be the target of Al-Awaliq weapons," the statement said, and warned "anyone against cooperating with the Americans" in the capture or killing of the cleric.
A US official said on Wednesday that President Barack Obama's administration had authorised the targeted killing of the cleric, even though he is an American citizen.
"The US government would be remiss if it didn't go after terrorist threats like Awlaqi," the counter-terrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
It was not immediately clear if the tribe was actually harbouring Awlaqi in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden where tribal ties and laws largely hold sway.
In 2002, a US missile attack in Yemen killed six suspected Al-Qaeda operatives, including Sunyan al-Harthi whom Washington had linked to an attack two years earlier on American warship the USS Cole in Yemeni waters.
The rare step of targeting Awlaqi was reportedly approved after US intelligence agencies concluded he was now directly involved in plots against the United States, not merely publicly encouraging such attacks.
Awlaqi rose to prominence last year after it emerged he had had prolonged communications with Major Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people.
He is also accused of having had ties to the September 11 hijackers, and to Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight with explosives last December 25.
16 Are Killed in Bombings at Embassy in Yemen
New York Times
Published: September 17, 2008
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Militants disguised as soldiers detonated two car bombs outside the United States Embassy compound in Sana, Yemen, on Wednesday morning, killing 16 people, including 6 of the attackers, Yemeni officials said.
No American officials or embassy employees were killed or wounded, embassy officials said. Six of the dead were Yemeni guards at the compound entrance, and the other four killed were civilians waiting to be allowed in.
It was the deadliest and most ambitious attack in years in Yemen, a poor south Arabian country of 23 million people where militants aligned with Al Qaeda have carried out a number of recent bombings.
The attack began at 9:15 a.m. when gunmen dressed in camouflage uniforms drove up and began firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at a checkpoint outside the heavily fortified United States Embassy compound, said one Yemeni official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.
As the embassy guards began firing back, the suicide bombers drove through the checkpoint and detonated their cars on the concrete barriers nearer to the compound’s front gate, the official said.
Satellite television images showed thick black smoke rising from the blast site as Yemeni security forces and medical teams streamed in and closed off the streets around the sprawling embassy compound, which is in one of the capital’s most secure areas.
The attack was especially shocking to Yemenis because it came during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, when the faithful fast during the day and are meant to abstain from sin.
Just last month, the embassy had reversed an order made in April for all nonessential personnel to leave the country, said Ryan Gliha, an embassy spokesman, speaking by telephone from Sana. The order was rescinded because the security situation appeared to have improved after a series of bombings in the spring, Mr. Gliha said.
Also, Yemeni counterterrorism forces had scored some notable successes in hunting down militants, Mr. Gliha added, including an attack on a Qaeda safe house on Aug. 11 in which five militants were killed.
After the attack on Wednesday, a little-known Yemeni group that calls itself Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. Yemeni officials seemed skeptical, however, saying they suspected Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch, which has become more active over the past year.
After the raid last month, Islamic Jihad released a statement on the Internet promising to carry out attacks in retaliation. The proof, the statement said, using a common Islamist phrase, “will be in what you see and not in what you hear.”
Some American analysts voiced the suspicion on Wednesday that members of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch may have used the name Islamic Jihad to exaggerate the group’s size and influence in the country.
“The group has used various names over time, which leads many to believe it is larger than it actually is,” said an American intelligence official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject. The official estimated that the ranks of Al Qaeda in Yemen, as American intelligence agencies call the group, number in the “low hundreds.” The group is headed by Nasir al-Wahishi.
The official also said that an initial review of security videotapes taken outside the embassy indicated that as many as three of the attackers were wearing suicide vests, another hallmark of Al Qaeda. Two attackers detonated or partially detonated their vests; a third attacker was shot by Yemeni security forces before he could blow himself up.
In Washington, President Bush warned that the United States was “at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives.” Emerging from a meeting with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former commander of American forces in Iraq, he said that one of those objectives was “to try to cause the United States to lose our nerve and to withdraw from regions of the world.”
On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama issued a statement condemning the bombing and calling for increased counterterrorism assistance to the allies of the United States. “We must do more to strengthen the military, police, and intelligence capability in nations like Yemen that are on the front lines in the fight against terrorism,” Mr. Obama said.
Yemen has long been viewed as a haven for jihadists, with its conservative tribal culture and its remote mountains and deserts, where the central government has limited authority. The country became a special concern for the United States in 2000 after Qaeda operatives detonated a suicide bomb alongside the destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, on Yemen’s southern coast, killing 17 American sailors.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Yemen joined in a counterterrorism partnership with the United States, and its elite American-trained forces have had some important successes in fighting jihadists.
But American officials have also voiced frustration with Yemen’s unusual detention policies, under which jihadists convicted on terrorism charges are sometimes granted parole in exchange for assistance in capturing fugitives. Last year, American officials were furious when they learned that Jamal al-Badawi, who is wanted in the United States for his role in the Cole bombing, had been released. He was quickly returned to prison.
Over the past year or so, jihadists claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda appear to have reorganized, releasing more propaganda materials on the Internet and carrying out more attacks. In July 2007, suicide bombers killed seven Spanish tourists in eastern Yemen, and there were two unsuccessful attacks on oil installations.
Earlier this year there were several attacks on foreign embassies and tourists. In March, mortar rounds fired at the American Embassy compound in Sana struck a nearby school for girls instead, killing a security guard, wounding more than a dozen girls and prompting the United States and other countries to send nonessential embassy staff home.
The embassy compound has been the scene of occasional political violence in previous years, including an attack by a gunman in 2006 and a large demonstration against the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, in which three people were fatally shot and dozens were injured.
Yemen is also facing serious security threats on other fronts, including an intermittent rebellion in the north that has left thousands of people dead since it began in 2004 and periodic riots and instability in the south.
Khaled al-Hammadi contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen, and Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.
International Crisis Group
January 8, 2003
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
On 3 November 2002, an unmanned U.S. "Predator" aircraft hovering in the skies of Yemen fired a Hellfire missile at a car carrying a suspected al-Qaeda leader, four Yemenis said to be members of the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, and a Yemeni-American who, according to U.S. authorities, had recruited volunteers to attend al-Qaeda training camps. All six occupants were killed. Almost two months later, three American missionaries were shot and killed in the Yemeni city of Jibla. These incidents, only the latest in a series involving Yemen, reinforced its image as a weak and lawless state with porous borders, a sanctuary for al-Qaeda operatives, a country with tenuous government control over vast parts of its territory and dominated by a culture of kidnappings and endemic violence. The October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the arrest earlier in 2002 of several Yemenis in the United States and Pakistan suspected of membership in the al-Qaeda network, the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibah, a Yemeni citizen accused of being a key plotter of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the U.S., and the attack on the French oil tanker Limburg in October 2002 have all contributed to this perception. Indeed, during the past year, the U.S. has sent special forces to Yemen and neighbouring countries, with the purpose of pursuing presumed members of the al-Qaeda network and associated organisations in Yemen.
The Yemeni reality is, of course, vastly more complex than the headlines it generates and presents a conundrum for international policymakers. Signs of potential instability are offset by significant positive political developments. Yemen has made substantial progress since its unification in 1990 and civil war in 1994. A nascent democracy with the most open political system in the Arabian Peninsula, its government has shown a general commitment to developing the instruments of a modern state and has cooperated with international efforts to uproot the al-Qaeda network.
Concerns that areas of rural Yemen increasingly will become a magnet for members of al-Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan are legitimate but appear exaggerated and, more importantly, can lead to wrong-headed policy conclusions. In contrast to Afghanistan under the Taliban, Yemen's central government has not offered direct support to that international terrorist organisation. Al-Qaeda has used Yemen as a staging and recruitment area on account of the presence of thousands of veterans who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but has not been able to establish large bases. A variety of politically motivated attacks on foreign and Yemeni targets have taken place in recent years but these have been conducted by diverse actors driven by diverse political goals. Detailed, reliable information about such attacks is scarce, and in most cases it is impossible to discern whether they are personally, financially or politically motivated. Organisational and financial relations between al-Qaeda and two home-grown Islamist militant groups, the Islamic Jihad Movement (IJM) and the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, remain murky, although it is known that there have been personal links between Osama bin Laden and members of the IJM in the past.
An exclusive focus on terrorism – and on combating it almost exclusively through military means – would present two sets of risks. First, it could obscure, and therefore leave unaddressed, the domestic roots of the many problems that confront Yemen. Endemic urban and rural violence there reflect a host of interlinked factors. These include widespread poverty, rapid population growth, an uneven distribution of scarce natural and other resources, a heavily armed civilian population that is dispersed throughout remote and often inaccessible regions, a state often unable to extend its authority to rural areas, porous borders and smuggling, weak political institutions, popular disenchantment with the slow pace of democratisation and lingering social, economic and religious cleavages.
The central government has yet to exert full control over tribes in remote areas and faces difficulties in exerting control over religious education in both public and private schools. Parts of the population continue to resist stronger government authority, and many discontented young men and women have been attracted to a variety of home-grown Islamist movements. That Yemen continues to be marred by violent clashes and hostage taking – including by the authorities – is a function of all these complex factors, not one alone.
A second risk, is that the Yemeni government may, like other states, use the cover of anti-terrorism efforts to pursue its own, unrelated political objectives and that it might bend the rule of law in ways that risk generating broader anti-government feeling, thus creating new recruitment opportunities for militant Islamist groups. Branding government disputes with tribes as counter-terrorist operations is one example, as is direct government intervention in tribal disputes motivated by the affiliation of senior officials with one of the conflicting tribes.
The role of the international community and the policy choices it makes are critical. While the government of President Ali Abdallah Salih appears committed to cooperate with U.S. efforts to root out al-Qaeda, it also fears that excessive alignment with Washington, particularly should it attack Iraq, could generate a domestic backlash. Large numbers of Yemenis remain staunchly opposed to any deployment of U.S. forces in their country and an American presence, therefore, needs to be limited, fully coordinated with the Yemeni authorities, and geared toward enabling Yemen to handle security problems arising within its territory. The international community also would be well advised to expand its assistance beyond security in order to help Yemen tackle some of its underlying economic and political problems.
Yemen's relationship with neighbouring Saudi Arabia is equally complex. While a recent agreement resolving longstanding border disputes has the potential to improve relations, Riyadh continues to provide direct subsidies to a number of tribal leaders – making the task of building an effective central government all the more challenging.
Yemen is not a failed or failing state but it is a fragile one. The varied and, at times, contradictory pressures it faces – from the U.S. to take stronger action against suspected al-Qaeda followers; and from the very militant groups the U.S. seeks to root out and that seem to thrive on the expanding U.S. presence in the Middle East – could put it at risk. Add to this the tensions created by a possible war on Iraq and the continued confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians, and the carefully constructed edifice of the Yemeni state – a work still in progress – may yet come apart. The disintegration of the Yemeni state would present its citizens, their region and the international community alike with a set of challenges far graver and more complex than any confronted during the recent past.
Yemen pardons convicted pro-rebel Muslim clerics
Sat 20 May 2006
SANAA, May 20 (Reuters) - Yemeni
President Ali Abdullah Saleh has pardoned a Muslim preacher sentenced to death
and another who was jailed for backing a rebel movement and spying for Iran, a
government official said on Saturday.
Last year, a court ruled that Yehia Hussein al-Daylami, sentenced to death, and
Mohamed Meftah wanted to overthrow the Arab country's government and supported
radical Shi'ite rebels.
Both were being freed under the pardon, the official said. Meftah's original
jail sentence was eight years.
In March, Yemen freed more than 600 supporters of anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric
Hussein al-Houthi in an amnesty that aimed to put an end to two years of
clashes, which have killed several hundred soldiers and rebels.
After Houthi was killed in 2004, the government blamed his father, Sheikh Badr
el-Deen al-Houthi, for a new round of clashes which erupted in 2005. Later, the
elder Houthi agreed to stop fighting.
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, joined the
U.S.-led war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States.
The rebels are not linked to al Qaeda. Sunni Muslims make up a majority of
Yemen's 19 million population, while Shi'ites compose about 15 percent.