al-Qaeda Training Camps in Yemen
Lets review what we know. There’s a link for all of this somewhere on the blog.
2003 al-Qaeda praises Saleh as the only Arab leader not beholden to the West.
2003 Hittar negotiates with al-Qaeda, supposedly the deal falls through.
Hittar “re-educates” 320 al-Qaeda and they are released from jail, many wind up fighting in Iraq.
Eight Cole bombers manage to escape from jail, two wind up as suicide bombers in Iraq.
Cordesman says 17 % of the foreign fighters in Iraq are Yemeni.
Hassani and Dunnigan say theres al-Qaeda in the top leadership of the Yemeni Military.
The military attacks the Shiites.
One official says in a newspaper that the al-Qaeda in the military have established training camps for Baathists.
Osama bin Laden’s driver (released from jail) says theres a deal between al-Qaeda and the Yemeni government not to attack inside Yemen, but outside Yemen is fine.
Now Hassani in this article says: “The suicide bombers in Iraq now and in the past are from groups that came from all over to meet and be trained securely in Yemen. Those groups have been provided with necessary documents to be able to reach Iraq and attack both American forces and people of Iraq.”
Read that again. Training and documents, Yemen a central hub for al-Qaeda. hmmm who else had official documents, oh yes the Cole bombers. So WTF? Seriously WTF. So Syria is letting the jihaddis transit and thats a big deal but our good ally Yemen is training, financing, documenting, protecting, hiding, and equiping terrorists and thats not a big deal. Why is that? So between the 17% that are Yemeni and lets guess 20% trained in Yemen, almost half the foreign fighters killing our troops and the Iraqi people are from Yemen. And Saleh knows and aids, dont buy that weak central government spin. This guy is like Saddam, little goes on he’s not aware of or profiting from.
So now theres several CIA people and reportedly a hundred FBI in Yemen. We have mil-to-mil operations ongoing. Not to mention the embassy. Does the US know that Saleh has a deal to aid al-Qaeda? I know and Im in Jersey. Does the US approve of this deal? I cant believe Bush would negotiate with al-Qaeda even through a third party. But how can we not know and if we know, how can we not oppose? Afraid of losing the base like Uzbeckistan? WTF is going on? Seriously.
Not to mention the chemical weapons. So lets sumarzie, our good ally in the War on Terror, Yemeni President Saleh is using chemical weapons and is a major sponsor of al-Qaeda, in addition to engaging in a wide variety of criminal enterprises including drug smuggling, gun running and counterfeiting, and US Amb Krajeski is talking about the journalists. And then he backtracks.
Update: Oh and lets not forget Chechnya and other arenas of the jihad. This article says 250 Yemenis are fighting in Chechnya and about fifty students from Chechnya are studying in Iman University (Zandani’s) in Sanaa. Also that the number of Arabs in Chechnya is increasing and they are mostly in possession of Yemeni travel documents. Related: 85 killed in Chechen attacks.
BTW the outbound weapons are smuggled by the Yemeni Air Force, in case anyone hasn’t figured that one out.
Its not just me : Furthermore, the President might do well to assure the Americans that all religious institutions “harboring extremism” have been closed and not just the ones that are affiliated with the mainstream Zeidi sect or Shafe’i sect, while some of the more obviously extreme religious institutes manage to continue operating unchallenged.
