Armies of Liberation

I’m dubious and I hope its an inaccurate assessment.

Al Qaeda-trained Americans Washington Times: The FBI is working to track down several hundred American Muslims who traveled to Yemen in recent months and received training there at the hands of the al Qaeda terrorist group, according to U.S. government officials.

Intelligence reports from Yemen indicated that as many as 300 of the U.S. Islamist trainees had been given terrorist training and that many had converted to Islam while in U.S. prisons. It is not known specifically when the American al Qaeda trainees made the journey to Yemen, or — more significantly — how many of them returned to the United States, said officials familiar with U.S. counterterrorism intelligence and operations. (Read on …)

Al-Jazeera aired a TV Program Titled ‘The Right In America Declared War On Islam Inside and Outside America’ which is total garbage.

Hate crimes directed against Muslims remain relatively rare, notwithstanding the notoriety gained by incidents such as recent vandalism at the Madera Islamic Center.

Jews, lesbians, gay men and Caucasians, among others, are all more frequently the target of hate crimes, FBI records show. Reported anti-Muslim crimes have declined over recent years, though they still exceed what occurred prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

“We see hate crimes generally go in spurts, and are often in relation to international or domestic events,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Friday.

In 2008, 105 hate crime incidents against Muslims were reported nationwide. There were 10 times as many incidents that were recorded as anti-Jewish during the same year, the most recent for which figures are available. (Read on …)

The short term packages make much more sense but the strategy overall is flawed because Saleh is the source of nation-wide, legitimate grievances and is a war criminal. The US alliance with Saleh is akin to the alliance with Saddam while he was gassing the Kurds. Furthermore, aspects of the state itself have been co-opted by al Qaeda. Strengthening Saleh strengthens al Qaeda, its that simple.

US officials propose more than billion dollars to support Yemen
Source : Wall Street Journal VIA Nasir al Arrabyee: By ADAM ENTOUS, SIOBHAN GORMAN and JULIAN E. BARNES
WASHINGTON—The U.S. military’s Central Command has proposed pumping as much as $1.2 billion over five years into building up Yemen’s security forces, a major investment in a shaky government, in a sign of Washington’s fears of al Qaeda’s growing foothold on the Arabian Peninsula.

The timing and the final funding amount will depend on how supporters of the effort overcome resistance from some officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, who have doubts about Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the ability of his government, seen by many as corrupt, to effectively use a flood of American-taxpayer money.

The threat to the U.S. from al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has become a priority concern for the Obama administration, fueling a robust internal debate over how to calibrate assistance to address what many officials see as the biggest counterterrorism challenge outside Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Read on …)

I was hoping the Afghan anti-corruption model could be replicated in Yemen, but with the CIA as part of the corruption in Afghanistan, its not very promising. Wasn’t the CIA paying the al-Qaeda supporting mass murderer, Ali Mohsen al Ahmar? I thought the book by Kaplan said as much. But its a few years old, maybe they wised up. Its bad to leak info to the media but its more immediately deadly to leak it to the Yemeni regime.

AP: The Obama administration on Friday accused an analyst who worked at the State Department of leaking top secret information about North Korea to a reporter. Steven Kim, who worked at State as an employee of a contractor, maintains his innocence.

He was named in a federal indictment unsealed Friday and charged with illegally disclosing national defense information, which carries a top penalty of 10 years in prison, and with making false statements to the FBI, which has a maximum five-year sentence. It was the latest move in an aggressive campaign to crack down on leaks, even as the administration has supported proposed legislation that would shield reporters from having to identify their sources.

Recent disclosures to news media have revealed the potential for using CIA drones in the counterterrorist fight against al-Qaida in Yemen, the close relationship of the CIA station chief in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the CIA’s practice of paying some members of the Afghan government for information.

1) What are they afraid of? Losing the case or exposing the Yemeni government officials complicity? Now that would be tacky. Nashiri got weapons permits and travel documents from the Interior Ministry and one report says he hid out in Yemen for months after while the Y govt denied he was there. 2) The old military commissions worked fine, the “reformed” commissions are supposed to be even better somehow. 3) What an insult it is to the US service members and the families of the deceased that politics again is determining US policy toward terrorists.

Boston.com: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing.

The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major Al Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden. (Read on …)

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies strongly condemns the Yemeni army’s shelling in the Lawdar district in the Abyan province, Southern Yemen, which has severely harmed the civilian population located there.

It is with deep concern, that CIHRS observes the nearly week-long shelling campaign, supported by heavy artillery and tanks, which has prompted hundreds of Yemeni families to flee the Lawdar district and take refuge in the mountains as the authorities continue their military siege of the area, sealing off all entrances and exits. According to information received from Yemeni human rights organizations and other sources, at least three civilians have been killed and dozens more injured, among them at least two children, while the artillery fire hit a local market and severely damaged homes, agricultural land, and a nursery.

The assault was launched after several Yemeni troops were killed in an ambush by either al-Qaeda operatives, as the Yemeni authorities claim, or elements involved with the Southern Movement. Exiled Southern Yemeni officials and leaders of the Southern Movement state that the attack was launched in an attempt to turn the international community against the peaceful Southern Movement by associating it with terrorism. It should be noted that the Yemeni regime used Yemeni fighters returning from Afghanistan to quell the rebellion in the South in 1994. Consequently, al-Qaeda began to establish a base in the area, which later became the largest in the Arab world.

The Yemeni authorities have persistently sought to stigmatize the popular protest movement and its leadership in the south as terrorists, in an attempt to justify the use of excessive force and increasing repression against citizens in the Southern provinces.

CIHRS would like to bring attention to the fact that the Southern province of Abyan has been the target of a series of brutal attacks over the last year. One of the bloodiest attacks took place in December 2009 ; when the Yemeni army, with support from the U.S. government, launched two air strikes on alleged al-Qaeda camps. At least 42 civilians were killed in these raids, most of which were women and children.

CIHRS stresses that counterterrorism efforts against al Qaeda should not be used as a pretext for the international community to turn a blind eye to the grave abuses perpetrated by the Yemeni government against individuals suspected of affiliation with al-Qaeda; or against the regime’s political opponents. A noticeably large segment of the citizenry has become the target for various types of collective punishment in light of the militarization of the country and the civil strife being stoked by the regime in the Sa’ada region, North of Yemen, and the South to secure its monopolization of power. In this context, CIHRS would like to bring attention to the fact that it is these very policies that created such fertile ground for al-Qaeda to grow in the Arabian Peninsula.

Additionally, These policies have created an auspicious atmosphere for the recruitment of more terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers, both from inside and outside Yemen.

CIHRS further warns that the unconditional support given to the Yemeni regime by the U.S. administration and some parties in the EU will only exacerbate the dangers of terrorism. Numerous individuals are swayed to terrorism on a daily basis, driven by their growing sense of injustice and injury, which is fed by the daily practices of extrajudicial killings; abductions; forced disappearances; torture; repression of peaceful protests; vicious attempts to silence the press and human rights defenders; the increasing political, economic, and social marginalization of broad swathes of the population; the rampant spread of corruption; in addition to the spread and ascendancy of an extremist religious discourse fostered by the Yemeni regime itself.

Thus, CIHRS believes that averting the threat of terrorism requires concerted efforts by the international community to push Yemen to construct a rule of law; prevent impunity for grave human rights abuses; adopt an enlightened religious discourse; and refuse to sacrifice human rights under the justification of combating terrorism. Yemen’s allies in the fight against terrorism must guarantee that the military, security, and financial aid given to the Yemeni government is not used to perpetrate more war crimes and crimes against humanities or violate the rights of suspected al-Qaeda members or the thousands of Yemenis civilians who are paying a catastrophic price for the policies of the Yemeni regime, which threaten to bring about the wholesale collapse of the central state.

CIHRS

They are all coming back to haunt us, every single one. Nassib was a former intelligence officer, acquitted in the USS Cole bombing. He survived the 2002 air strike on al Harithy, was captured with Dr. Fadl in 2004. Nassib was released in 2006, after the big prison break by 23 al Qaeda operatives.

AFP: The latest deaths add to an earlier toll of 11 soldiers and three civilians killed on Friday. The defence ministry said it had managed to identify one of the slain Al-Qaeda fighters as Adham Shibani, adding that the wounded militants were currently being interrogated.

The security forces were tracking “other terrorists” who took part in Friday’s fighting, the ministry said. The militants who managed to flee were named as Ahmed Mohammed Abdu Daradish, Abdel Rauf Abdullah Mohammed Nassib and Jalal Saleh Mohammed Saidi. (Read on …)

and promises to be good! Of course if he’s going to “serve the country,” he can’t stay in jail. There are/were a lot of this group in Sa’ada. Update: Yemen Times Released from Gitmo to Yemen in Dec. 2006: Esam Hamid Al-Jaefi, Ali Hussain Al-Tais, Mohammed Ahmed Al-Asadi, Tawfiq Al-Murwai and Muhassen Al-Asskari.

Lahj News Net: A security source said an official former detainee at Guantanamo Bay and a member of Al Qaeda (Ali Hussein al Tais) surrendered to security forces and expressed regret and remorse to the period spent in the ranks of al Qaeda and expressed its readiness to cooperate all that would serve the country and maintaining security and stability, and called on other items that were deceived by the organization to follow in the delivery of the same security services and to renounce violence and integration into society and contribute to nation-building process. (Read on …)

The US never brought “incitement to violence” charges against American citizens and jihaddist bloggers Anwar Awlaki, Samir Khan, Jesse Morton, Zach Chessler, and Yousef al Kattab. Meanwhile former federal stooge, racist blogger Hal Turner was convicted–after 14 months and three trials–of incitement to violence for a blog post saying he believed three judges were worthy of execution for a ruling against handguns. Turner was under a gag order while the freds were leaking his file to the Star Ledger. He was denied bail and wound up sharing a cell with an Aryan Nation murder after it was known Turner was a federal rat on the skinheads. Meanwhile Awlaki’s blog was online for years and hosted in the US. While the site may have had some intel value, it was never followed up on. Condolences to the Fort Hood families.

Later the US determined Anwar was operational in AQAP. Awlaki still hasn’t been indicted for incitement to violence, even after numerous persons said they were inspired to violence by Awlaki, including the two latest in Alaska. Awlaki himself claimed the mass murderer Nidal Hassan as his student as well as the would be killer Farouk Abdulmattalab. Anwar also ruled (as if he’s an actual cleric or something) that all Americans should be killed because they pay taxes and have the opportunity to vote. This is one of the issues the ACLU is bringing up- there’s no charges against Awlaki, just a capture or kill order.

Samir Khan ran the Inshallahshahid blog openly calling for jihad against Americans. Sami went to Yemen, apparently not on the no-fly list, and hooked up with AQAP. He is now thought to be the designer of the fanatics’ latest magazine, the English language Inspire. US authorities are just now wondering if Sami is guilty of anything and convened a grand jury to contemplate the question. They are considering if there is enough evidence to support a material support charge and conspiracy to murder, but not apparently incitement to violence. Yousef al Kattab, the Revolution Muslim blog founder, is now in Tetouan, Morocco. Apparently he was also not on no-fly list.

Joey was never charged with incitement to violence, although the RM blog is among the foremost English language proponents of violence under the banner of Islam and he posted specific death threats. Jesse Morton (Younis Abduallah) is another Revolution Muslim flunky, whereabouts unknown, uncharged. Zach Chesser called for the death of the South Park creators and posted their home addresses along with a picture of Theo Van Gogh dead with a knife in his chest. Zachy wasn’t charged with incitement to violence. Zachy became a RM administrator and was only pinched when he tried to go join al Shabab–bringing his infant son as cover. The only one is custody, indicted for material support, Zach flipped in a day and began cooperating with authorities. So the post-racial Obama administration brings a clearly malicious prosecution against a racist blogger but gives a pass to all the jihaddist bloggers. The DOJ, for the first time in a long time, has an overt political agenda in many areas. This is just one instance of selective application of the law. However, others have a more optimistic view.

GPB: One of the jihadi world’s most famous bloggers could be brought up on U.S. terrorism charges soon, NPR has learned. A federal grand jury in Charlotte, N.C., convened to consider evidence against Samir Khan, a 24-year-old North Carolina man who is thought to be the editor of Inspire, a new al-Qaida online magazine….Sources close to the case tell NPR the grand jury convened Tuesday to see if there was evidence enough to charge Khan with terrorism offenses. Among the charges people close to the case said the grand jury is considering: material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy to commit murder overseas. The FBI, for its part, declined to confirm or deny there is an investigation. And the grand jury is unlikely to come out with any decision in the case for weeks. Grand jury deliberations are secret until indictments are announced….Intelligence officials now say they believe Khan’s al-Qaida patron was Anwar al-Awlaki, the same U.S.-born radical cleric linked to the Fort Hood shootings and the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. They say he invited Khan to Yemen and Khan packed his bags and went.

Anthony Shaffer is of course the agent who got totally screwed by DIA after trying to point out that the 9/11 commission skipped any inquiry into Able Danger’s (ignored) warnings two weeks prior to the USS Cole bombing in Aden. Although the Yemen hub was under close scrutiny prior to (and after) the attack, no warnings were generated from that intelligence either.

ABC: Anthony Shaffer is a CIA trained intelligence officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve with more than 25 years experience in the intelligence community. He doesn’t have any sympathy for Anwar al Awlaki’s activities or his alleged terrorist connections, but he does think the US cleric is due what he calls “due process”.

“I think the best answer is to capture him and bring him back and have him stand trial,” he says. And he’s made another intriguing point. He believes Anwar Al Awlaki wants to be martyred. “He would become the Elvis of Al Qaeda if we kill him and so I think there’s a great downside to that,” he said. The lawyers who are now acting for Anwar al Awlaki’s father don’t know how far their legal case will get. But it’s certainly going to create a very awkward situation for the Obama administration.

Update: And another at Foreign Policy from May but the following is a current analysis from Professor Sheila Carapico at the Yemen Times:

Americans got a crash course on Yemen for Christmas.

That’s because we’ve wanted to know more about the little-known, dirt-poor country in southwestern Arabia where the “underwear bomber” who tried to blow up a plane—bound for Detroit from Nigeria on Christmas Day—says he was trained. President Barack Obama says, correctly, that “large chunks” of Yemen “are not fully under government control.” So it seems to make sense to strengthen the Yemeni government, to get at “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” as the local gang of Islamist extremists is known.

The State Department has duly doubled aid to Yemen, pledging $63 million in 2010, $12.5 million of which will buy military equipment. And there will be more from the Pentagon: Yemen received $67 million for its armed forces from the Defense Department in 2009, an amount set to increase this year.

But what kind of government rules Yemen, and how is it using these boatloads of Pentagon boodle?

Its elected parliament makes Yemen a democracy in name only. Its president, Ali Abdallah Salih, has held office longer than any other Arab ruler except Libya’s strongman, Muammar Qaddafi, and is grooming his son to take over.

Salih’s regime has battled rebels in the far north since 2004, and today it also faces a very disaffected population throughout the south. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a tertiary concern at best. In fact, Salih has a history of strategically enlisting radical jihadis to keep his political opponents in check. (Read on …)

Press Conference: State.gov,

Our coordinator of the office of counterterrorism here at the Department of State, Ambassador Dan Benjamin…Let me turn to Yemen. We recognize that al-Qaida has taken advantage of insecurity in various regions of Yemen that have been worsened by internal conflicts. We also know that Yemen is grappling with serious poverty and is the poorest country in the Arab world. The lack of resources inhibits good governance, the delivery of services and the effectiveness of the security provision that is needed to deal with terrorism. So to have any chance of success, U.S. counterterrorism policy has to be conceived in strategic and not merely tactical terms. That’s why the Administration has adopted a two-pronged strategy for Yemen: helping the government confront the immediate security concern of al-Qaida and mitigating the serious political, economic, and governance issues that the country faces over the long term.

US State Department Report on Terrorism 2009:

(11) The attempted December 25 bombing provided a further reminder that un- or under-governed spaces can serve as an incubator for extremism and underscored that we cannot expect al-Qa‘ida affiliates to be focused solely on the near enemy – the governments in their own countries and regions – or American facilities in their immediate surroundings.

(115) After the failed December 25 attempt on NWA Flight #253, in which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had trained in Yemen with al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), attempted to detonate explosives over the continental United States, the international community intensified its focus on Yemen‘s security situation, which continued to deteriorate in 2009. The Yemeni government‘s response to the terrorist threat improved dramatically in December, exemplified by the heightened pace of counterterrorism operations. Still, the government‘s focus on other internal security challenges, including the ―Sixth War‖ of the Houthi rebellion in the northern Sa‘ada governorate, which began in August and had not ceased by year‘s end, often diverted it from broader counterterrorism activities. (Read on …)

CNN:
Washington (CNN) — Federal authorities Wednesday granted two civil liberties groups a license they need in challenging the government’s authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens designated as terrorists. (Read on …)

The news was not well received in Yemen. SABA

US raises annual aid up to $300 million to Yemen

SANA’A, Aug. 02 (Saba) – The US Administration stated on Monday its decision to raise the annual aid for the democratic and economic development in Yemen to $300 million. (Read on …)

Yahya al-Houthi, an MP and brother of Abdel-Malik, sent a letter to the Yemeni parliament about the Senate’s finding the US military aid may have been mis-used (diverted) to Saleh’s efforts against the Houthis. Its extremely difficult to believe that the transfer of mil aid comes as a shock to anyone in DC. The Sa’ada region has been cut off from journalists since 2004, and the civilian casualty toll is anyone’s guess, but the Yemeni regime’s tactics are clearly in violation of international law and include sustained blockade and indiscriminate bombing. While Saleh is using US military support against the Houthis, he is also using al-Qaeda operatives as mercenaries and has been doing so since 2005-ie, the US is equipping an (al-Qaeda supported) jihad against Shia civilians. The Yemeni state itself calls it a jihad and has produced fatwas claiming “Houthi blood is free.” This is not news, but an ongoing pathetic failure of integrity and foresight.

We continue to expose our deep concern of the military and financial help of Western and especially the assistance the United States, European Union, as well as Arab aid provided to the system of Yemen in response to Western demands to provide such assistance to the regime in Yemen, and we reiterated our concern that such assistance will increase the tension conditions in our country and increase the unjust compulsion, the arrogance and injustice, emphasizing that he would use the aid in the suppression of the people and strengthen the dictatorship and the rule of domestic and install the corruption, rather than commitment to a democratic political and institutional governance, and it will expand the popular discontent against the corrupt system more, thereby expanding the cycle of violence and prolonging it.

We are today before the important recognition of the Chambers of the U.S. published a lot of media sources, reporting on the health of our apprehension of that aid has recognized that the system used actually against Houthis, rather than hunt for alleged terrorists, and people saw that it did not distinguish between one was people of all age groups and orientations of the target of bombs and missiles and one incident of camp the normal people too-distant future where the regime killed this aid, scores of children and women and the elderly, as well as it beat for the accommodation of prisoners from the Yemeni military in Sa’ada, where he spent more than 100 prisoners, as well as hit the markets and the displacement camps and cities inhabited by the civilian population. (Read on …)

Really.

MSNBC: Two civil rights groups today sued the US government, seeking the legal authority to challenge the Obama administration’s targeting of a radical cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki — who may now be America’s most wanted terrorist.

The government says al-Awlaki has become one of the dominant recruiters of Americans for violent attacks on the homeland. He’s said to have communicated with Major Nidal Hasan before last year’s shootings at Ft. Hood and with Faisal Shahzad, who planted a car bomb in Times Square earlier this year. In addition, the FBI says he played a key role in the Christmas Day airline bomb plot. Intelligence sources say he has been the target of several unmanned drone attacks.

Now, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights say they’ve been asked by al-Awlaki’s father to challenge the government’s targeting of al-Awlaki, who is a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico. The groups say the government has improperly “asserted authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield without charge, trial, or judicial process of any kind.” (Read on …)

Oh yes, that’s what Yemenis need is another foreigner inciting bloodshed. The lunatic Egyptian wants Yemeni clerics to declare jihad on the US. Certainly strengthens Saleh’s position with the US though, how handy.

Reuters: Zawahri, in his second message this month released on Islamist websites, also ridiculed Yemeni clerics, who he said promised jihad, or holy war, against the United States if it interfered in Yemen, but who he said ignored signs that the government was cooperating with U.S. forces.

Noting that Amnesty International had called on Washington to explain its role in Yemen, Zawahri asked: “Is Amnesty International more concerned about defending the Yemeni people than they (the clerics) are?”

Amnesty International released a report in June suggesting that the United States may be playing a role in Yemen after releasing photographs that showed remnants of alleged U.S. missiles and cluster bombs used in an attack in south Yemen.

“What more are they waiting for to call for jihad? … are they waiting for the U.S. soldiers to appear on the streets of Sanaa in their tanks?”

Mr. President Barack Hussein Obama:

We the people of Aden in the south are suffering humiliation and oppression, murder and torture by the regime of the State of North Yemen, Sanaa

We also know we have an independent state and we have entered into unsuccessful unity with North Yemen, Sanaa, a country with a tribal, military and Baathist structure, that is usually backward for us and takes us back a century.

Today, the Arab people in Aden struggle to disengage from the North Yemen, Sanaa, and his re-Arab and to re-establish a southern capital of Aden, known as a free state on their national soil, known to the May 21, 1990

We want your support and your support and you with the free world in order to restore our nation and peaceful coexistence among the nations of the earth

Thanks
يافعي حضرمي متواجد حالياً with my regards
journalist from south yemen

alkhader alhasani
sana a 25/7/2010

A letter to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from southern Yemenis in the US:

The South Yemen community in U.S.A sincere regards, and thank you for your efforts for the past years and your positive interaction, whether by descending on the ground in the south and especially the governorate Aden, and some nearby provinces, Your meeting with some of the families of the martyrs and prisoners, or through your reports on the bitter reality and the serious daily violations of human rights in under the occupation of Yemen, and heinous practices against the people of South Arabia are engaged in struggle for independence.

We appreciate these efforts and urge you to exert more pressure on the occupying government in Sana’a to stop all methods of repression, torture and killing, siege and arrests, and pursuits, committed against peacefully protesters and activists, and move quickly to rescue the Political prisoners of Sana’a regime, and the rest of the detainees from daily torture of those who are still in detention including minors.

First the Political Security prison in Sana’a

Ahmed Alkuwma – correspondent

Maged Althammah – Age 14 years (Read on …)

In a cringe-inducing remark, Mr. Gerald M. Feierstein, Ambassador-Designate to the Republic of Yemen, said to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 19, 2010: “Yemen faces many challenges and threats, the chief of which is terrorism, a global threat that requires a global response.” No. The main threat to Yemen is President Saleh. Could the US State Department possibly believe that Yemen’s main threat is terrorism or are they deliberately spinning a load of hogwash? There’s two US advisers that have a clear view, the rest have been in love with Saleh for a long time.

Well they are trapped in the Embassy and only talk to pro-regime Yemenis: Sen. Lugar expressed his concern over the U.S. embassy team’ being unable to travel outside of Sana’a to monitor key projects on the ground. I guess Obama like Bush prefers a dream world to reality, especially when the reality is the US is allied with an al-Qaeda supporting mass-murderer.

This is a little more realistic Jerry: Regarding how U.S. can measure the effectiveness of U.S. financial aid, Feierstein explained that “We are less confident that we can assure the Congress in particular that this money is being well-spent,” Feierstein concluded.

Losers!!!

NYDNA slick new Al Qaeda magazine written in English to lure U.S. jihadists may be the work of a former New Yorker with an eye for graphics – and a lust for American blood. Intelligence officials see chilling similarities between a militant blog Samir Khan produced and the Internet-based magazine Inspire. Khan landed on intelligence radar in 2007, when he was 21, after posting an Osama Bin Laden screed to the blog he maintained from his parents’ basement.

The blog boasted crisp graphics, an easy familiarity with American culture and attitudes, and a pipeline to hard-core rhetoric. Fast forward to last month, when Al Qaeda put out Inspire, with the message that U.S. military action in the Arab world must be avenged. The packaging spooked experts with its potential for recruiting Western youth. It also seemed familiar to those who track militants, like the Jawa Report blog…

Khan has been in Yemen since October – and the mag was posted by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen branch with ties to American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki uses English to get his message out in the West.

(Read on …)

They plead guilty to lying about a hit list. Below is the State Department’s notice about Awlaki addition to the UN’s 1267 terrorism sanctions list. The list is meaningless in Yemen; Sheik Zindani is on it and his assets were not seized and in fact he traveled with President Saleh to Saudi Arabia a few years ago. Update: Zach Chesser, arrested after admitting to trying to join al Shabab, is another Awlaki drone.

NWCN: ANCHORAGE, Alaska – An Alaska couple accused in a domestic terrorism plot is expected to plead guilty Wednesday to federal charges of lying about creating a hit list of possible targets. (Read on …)

Two entirely unrelated stories, 1) US freezes Anwar Awlaki’s assets and criminalizes providing material support to him; 2) After February truce agreement and May’s amnesty announcement, there’s still over 400 rebels in jail and dozens of southerners. In theory, Saleh agreed to release them but we’ve heard it dozens of times before. He uses the prisoners as a bargaining chip against the opposition and the general public.

Gulf Times: Yemen’s government has agreed to free more than 400 people, mostly northern rebels, as the Arab state tries to launch a dialogue with opposition groups, an opposition leader said yesterday.

An opposition coalition and the ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) party signed an agreement yesterday to set up a joint body for a national dialogue, state media reported.

The government is trying to halt conflict in the northern province of Saada with Shia rebels as well as with secessionists in the south.

“As demanded by the opposition in order to sign the agreement, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has issued a directive to free 27 from the southern movement and 400 with links to the fighting in Saada,” the opposition figure, who declined to be named, told Reuters. (Read on …)

The new Al Qaeda mag in English had pages of corrupted code but the second release includes an article by Anwar Awlaki calls for death for a cartoonist in Seattle. But since we all pay taxes and vote, everybody in the US is a “combatant” according to Awlaki and deserving of death, so it doesnt matter either way what anybody says or does,

Google News “The proper solution to this growing campaign of defamation” of the prophet is “the execution of those involved,” reads the article in web magazine “Inspire,” in a text provided by the US monitoring service SITE on Sunday. (Read on …)

The US is deeply troubled now? What a load of hooey. There was five months straight of carpet bombing of civilians and there was nada, nothing, zip from the US except a blatant disregard for civilian slaughter- in the north and the south. The US is troubled by the violence now only because the resumption of war will mean that Saleh will remain distracted from a dedicated counter-terror posture against al-Qa’ida. However, thats the point. The regime is structurally reliant on corruption, repression and detante with al-Qaeda. This is pathetic.

Peoples Daily: The United States is “deeply troubled” by violence in the northern Yemen and calls for a comprehensive dialogue between all opposition parties and the government, said the White House on Thursday.

“We are deeply troubled by reports of fresh outbreaks of fighting in Sa’ada, and urge full compliance with the ceasefire agreement announced in February, and an end to the violence,” said a White House statement, referring to recent violent conflicts in the northern Yemeni province of Sa’ada.

“The United States calls for a comprehensive and inclusive national dialogue between all opposition groups and the ruling party. Such a dialogue needs to be undertaken in good faith and with haste by all parties to address legitimate grievances and increase stability in Yemen,” said the statement. (Read on …)

Really getting desperate, aren’t they? I guess the Saudi women didn’t come flocking to Yemen after al-Qa’ida’s last appeal to them for suicide bombers. Short of funds they are as well. Interesting how AQIY can distribute the CDs in such a systematic manner without drawing the attention of the state-funded Imams and security. Oh yes, it was actually the state funded Imams who first warned against US intervention in Yemen, threatening jihad in a statement. Yeah that was it. The AQIY zealots are hoping that US backing of the widely reviled dictator and his messy messy methods of counter-insurgency will create a backlash in their favor, not an improbable outcome even without the CDs, but there are a lot of other options for those with anti-government inclinations. Anti-US sentiments grew geometrically after the slaughter in Abyan (cluster bombs??!!) and the US’s extremely poor follow-up. (Nary a word. Even after the Yemeni government apologized, the US kept congratulating.) Inciting against US intervention incidentally and conveniently dovetails with Saleh’s position. This Abdulelah mentioned works for (gets a paycheck from) the state news agency SABA and is the brother-in-law of Abdulmajid al-Zindani, a long time Saleh loyalist. Abdulelah is the one who manages to interview all the top al-Qa’ida (including his bestest friend Anwar Awlaki, Nassir al Wahishi and Fahd “but I thought he was reformed” al-Quso) without a problem as we noted first in January 2009. We’ll file this about the CDs under the heading “flaky stuff”.

Yemen Post An unidentified group has distributed a CD at a number of mosques in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a that some people said contained interviews with Al-Qaeda leaders and videos about U.S. raids on terrorist targets in the country, independent sources said on Thursday.

Uthman Al-Ghamidi, Fahd Al-Qusa, Abu Musab Muhammad Saleh Umair and Saeed Al-Shari, all of the most wanted terrorist suspects by Yemeni and Saudi authorities, appeared in the CD speaking about U.S. crimes and calling for reviving Jihad, holy war.

They talked about terror raids that took place in late last year and early this year in Abyan, Shabwa and Sana’a with a focus on the raid in Almajalah district, Abyan, in which many were killed including civilians. Murdered terrorist Abu Umair was seen discussing Jihad with young Jihadists.

Abdul Elah Shaea, a local expert in terrorism issues, also appeared speaking about Al-Qaeda in Yemen including remarks he previously gave to Aljazeera Satellite Channel.

The CD was intended to incite the people against the U.S. intervention as concerns, mainly by the west, continued to grow about Al-Qaeda presence in the country and to praise the role of Al-Qaeda and its acts.

It also contained photos of some Arab leaders described as agents for the west including Egypt’s Mubarak and President Saleh.

CNN Yemen has detained a dozen Americans among a larger group of foreign students reportedly being held for security reasons, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

Citing “privacy issues,” P.J. Crowley would not provide details about the detentions nor would he confirm other media reports that the students may have had connections with the terror group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

“We have great cooperation with the government of Yemen,” Crowley said when pressed on the issue. “Together, we are doing our best to help Yemen, you know, reduce the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. That’s a threat to Yemen. It’s a threat to the United States.”

Earlier media reports indicated the arrests of as many as 50 students suspected of having connections with the Yemeni-based terror organization were made last week. CNN has been unable to confirm those reports.

There’s 30 or 50 foreigners in detention on suspicion of terror activities.

www.hoodonline.org

An imprisoned Australian women was able to visit with her children for the first time since her arrest, and security officials indicate that she is about to be deported to her home country, HOOD’s lawyer said yesterday.

“There is a promise from security bodies that Mrs. Giddins is about to be deported to her home with her children. The children remain under house arrest with Rafa Hussein, a Bengali citizen, who was earlier arrested on suspicion of terrorism, said Abdul Rahman Barman, a HOOD representing Ms. Giddins. .

Shylon Giddins, an Australian citizen, was arrested on May 15, 2010. She came to Yemen to live in Islamic country and works as an English teacher. (Read on …)

WSJ: Federal authorities arrested and filed terror-related charges against an American man who they say received advice from radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and attempted to provide money and materials to an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

Barry Walter Bujol, 29 years old, was arrested Sunday in a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting after he used fake documents supplied by an undercover informant to board a ship in Houston he thought was bound for the Middle East, the Justice Department said Thursday…. (Read on …)

The defendants, identified as Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park, were arrested at JFK International Airport. They conspired within the US to commit murder outside the US, which is illegal, unlike in Yemen where it is encouraged. They were arrested boarding a plane to Egypt, with the ultimate destination Somalia where they were looking to hook-up with al Shabab. Yemen reiterated today that if captured, Awlaki will not be extradited but instead tried in Yemeni courts for his offenses within Yemen.

PDF

“8. On December 20, 2009, in New Jersey, the DEFENDANTS listened to a recording of Anwar al Awlaki promoting violent jihad and martyrdom”.

“22. On May 25, 2010 in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, ALMONTE played for ALESSA a video-recorded interview of Awlaki, during which Awlaki justified the killing of civilians in the course of waging violent jihad.”

The implication being that al Qaeda used US drones to kill their enemy al Shabwani. Naba News has it. It was first posted to a political forum, and the members objected to a terrorist in their midst. So it could be propaganda, if not by al Qaeda then by someone trying to discredit the intelligence and discourage people from talking about where the al Qaeda are.

Quite a fascinating interview at Naba News with the American Ludmila Yamalova after she was freed from her kidnappers in Yemen.

1. Your feeling as a woman when tribesmen kidnapped you, did you think that they may kill you or being raped?

a. Answer. Yes, after the first half-hour of denial that this nightmare was happening and the intense conviction that it was going to end …the fear of physical violence kicked in. I started remembering previous hostage situations, which had ended tragically. Images of rape and killing kept crossed my mind for the next fifteen or so minutes… These fears were further perpetuated because for the first hour or so, we had no idea what was going on and what the agenda was. There was a lot of screaming, yelling, talking on multiple mobile phones, anger, angst and, what seemed like, confusion. It was difficult to tell how I fit into the whole picture and what their motives were against me, individually, and us, as a couple.

2. How did they treat you during the period of hostage? (Read on …)

Several other foreigners were arrested in Yemen including Americans, Brits, French, Asians and Africans, at the behest of foreign intelligence agencies. Yemeni security said the group was linked to the Nigerian’s airliner terror plot and Anwar Awlaki who repeatedly announces how proud he is to have been Abdulmattalab’s “teacher.”

An Australian woman, Shyloh Giddins, was arrested in Yemen May 15. Her two children are under house arrest alone, with a neighbor tending to them twice a day. Giddens was associated with some Bengali citizens who were later deported from Yemen. ”

Yemen holds Americans, others in al-Qaida probe
By AHMED AL-HAJ (AP)

SAN’A, Yemen — Yemeni authorities have detained several foreigners, including Americans, Britons and an Australian woman, in connection with an investigation into al-Qaida’s increased activity in the country, security officials said Wednesday.

The arrests were made after foreign intelligence agencies provided lists of names of people they wanted detained or put under surveillance, the two security officials said. (Read on …)

More on the Australian woman, her friends, the two kids under house arrest and the context of the arrests

Tens of detainees in Yemeni prisons, under the name of counterterrorism

By: Nisreen Shadad, edited by Jane Novak

The Yemeni authority detained tens of people in the beginning of this year, under the name of counterterrorism. Rafah Hussein and her brother Sadman, Bengali citizens, were arrested on February 14, 2010. Rafah was released after hours of interrogation. Her brother and three other Bengalis imprisoned in February, 2010 are in custody of the Political Security. The four are being held incommunicado and have joined the ranks of Yemen’s “disappeared.”

Rafah found no one to stay with except a friend of hers named “Umm Omar.” Shylon Giddins, an Australian citizen, was arrested as well on May 15, 2010. (Read on …)

The woman is being held without charges on suspicion of ties to an “Islamist group.” Her children aged 5 and 7 are under house arrest, under the supervision of police officers, and a 17 year old Bangladeshi girl is with them in the house. A neighbor is allowed in twice a day to tend to them. HOOD’s letter to the Australian Foreign Affairs Office follows.

TVNZ: An Australian woman who converted to Islam and moved to Yemen in 2006 has been detained in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on suspicion of links to unnamed radical Islamist groups, her lawyer said today. (Read on …)

Sure took them long enough

SANAA, May 6 (Reuters) – Yemeni authorities have begun questioning a U.S. citizen suspected of being an al Qaeda militant who is accused of killing a guard as he tried to escape a hospital, a state-run website said on Thursday.

Sharif Mobley, arrested in March along with 10 al Qaeda suspects, was handed over to a court in the capital Sanaa. He also faces charges of wounding another guard as he tried to shoot his way out of the hospital where he was being treated, the Yemeni Defence Ministry website said. (Read on …)

Update: The WSJ clarifies:

U.S. officials said that Mr. Shahzad didn’t appear to have communicated with Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical U.S.-born cleric who exchanged dozens of emails with suspected Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan in the run-up to the November assault that left 13 soldiers dead.

But the officials said Mr. Shahzad told his interrogators that he read Mr. Awlaki’s English-language writings calling for holy war against Western targets and was moved to action, at least in part, by the cleric’s exhortations.

(Read on …)

Suckers. The US State Dept AGAIN congratulates Yemen on air strikes that killed civilians not terrorists. Its not even in dispute that 43 civilians were killed in Abyan. The US needs to come up with a more nuanced phrase because the current one appears very callous. Also Mueller was in Yemen praising the regime’s counter-terror efforts according to government press releases. Other reports indicate that he discussed the Gitmo detainees, which is out of their scope, and/or extraditing Jaber Elbanah and Anwar Awlaki, both US citizens. I guess they gave up on al Quso and al Badawi. And of course the normal regime line will be that its against the constitution, but Yemen signed an extradition treaty with Spain and extradited Nankli, who was in jail forever, a few years ago. Granted Nankli was Spanish-Syrian but when does Saleh follow the constitution anyway?

Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula had already shown itself to be a formidable threat to Yemen’s internal security, with attacks on the Yemeni security forces, as well as a threat to Saudi Arabia, with an August 2009 attempted assassination against the head of counterterrorism in Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed bin Nayif. The administration recognized the threat in Yemen as from day one, and has been focused on Yemen since then.

The U.S. strategy in Yemen recognizes that Yemen has not always had the political will or focused attention to address its problems. We are encouraged that President Saleh and his government have shown more resolve than ever before to confront AQAP and to engage with the international community on domestic non-security issues. The United States commends Yemen on its December counterterrorism operations and we are committed to continuing support for security initiatives and economic-development initiatives.

I certainly hope so. Their magazine is so lame anyway. All the other internet is censored, why not al Qaeda? Updates below.

Newsweek: Brooklyn ‘Computer Wiz’ Accused of Conspiring With Al Qaeda Affiliate in Yemen, Mark Hosenball

A New York-born man described by a law-enforcement official as a computer expert is at the center of the latest investigation into Americans who have tried and, in some but not all cases, succeeded in hooking up with Al Qaeda elements based overseas. Wesam el-Hanafi, a 34-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., native, is one of two men indicted by Federal authorities in Manhattan on Friday on charges of conspiring to provide material support, including computer expertise, to Al Qaeda—more specifically to Yemen-based elements of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a spinoff of the now Pakistan-based terror network founded by Osama bin Laden. (Read on …)

The material support was computer systems modernization and technical advice. The indictment is here. The time frame is November 2007 through March 2010. Hasanoff received $50K in Nov. 2007. Hanafy traveled to Yemen in Feb of 2008. In March 2008 through May 2008, Hanafy ran a software program that enabled secure internet communication with al Qaeda.

CBS Two United States citizens residing in Brooklyn, N.Y., have been charged with trying to aid Al Qaeda terrorists. According to the indictment obtained by CBS News, the men, Wesam El-Hanafi, 33, and Sabirhan Hasanoff, 34, are charged with one count of “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.”

The charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Also according to the indictment, “the defendants would and did agree to provide al Qaeda with, among other things, computer advice and assistance, services, and currency, knowing that al Qaeda had engaged and was engaging in terrorist activity[.]”
(Read on …)

Good Luck!

State.gov: Mr. Feierstein, a specialist in Near East and South Asian Affairs, entered the Foreign Service in June 1975 and has served overseas in seven postings: Islamabad (1976-78), Tunis (1983-85), Riyadh (1985-87), Peshawar (1989-92), Muscat (1995-98), Jerusalem (1998-2001), and Beirut (2003-04).

In Washington, he has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary, Directorate of Programs in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, desk officer for Nepal, Pakistan, and Egypt; Deputy Director in the Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs, as Director of the Office of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh affairs, and as Director of the Office of Regional Affairs in the Near East Bureau. Mr. Feierstein holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Point Park College and an M.A. in International Relations from Duquesne University.

What a pathetic bunch of losers if there ever was one…

ABC: New videos produced by al Qaeda in Yemen show the accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and others in his training class firing weapons at a desert camp whose targets included the Jewish star, the British Union Jack and the letters “UN.” (Read on …)

Anwar Awlaki’s brother Omar verbally attacked and threatened a Salafi researcher on al Qaeda as he was leaving a mosque in Sana’a yesterday. Saeed Obaid Jamahi said in an interview with al Tagheer (The Change), an independent news site, that Omar Awlaki confronted him and threatened to kill him in front of dozens of worshipers. Jamahi told al Tagheer the attack surprised him because he sympathizes with Awlaki’s cause and believes Awlaki should not be hunted or killed without clear evidence of wrong doing. Jamahi urged the Ministry of the Interior and Attorney General to do their duty and take the threats seriously.

Update from a witness: Saeed Ubeid was interviewed at his home by a western TV channel which was conducting a series of interviews for a program on Anwar al Awlaqi. As Anwar’s home was in the same neighborhood, the channel called Nassir al Alwalqi (Anwar’s father and a leading member of the ruling party) for an interview for the same program. But he instead refused to do, and asked the channel to stop “campaigning against his son” and insulted the channel aggressively. Afterward, Mr. Ubeid left his home for prayer in the neighborhood mosque, where he met with Anwar’s brother who insulted him, tried to physically attack him and threatened him with death. Update 2: Gulf News

A former f-16 pilot is going to engage US and military officials and defense contractors on behalf of Yemen, hire a public relations firm, make introductions, get financing, etc etc… But does Yemen need to buy more weapons? I hope he understands who he is dealing with; who would want to be the rep for a mass murderer?

The Hill: A former U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot is in talks with the government of Yemen to become its lobbyist in an effort to boost the country’s defense forces. (Read on …)

I thought I had posted this already, but I can’t find it. Its not only the PSO that is infested with jihaddis but also the military, security and National Security which is headed by President Saleh’s office manager since 1988, Ali al Ansi.

CIA and Yemen playing a doubles game
If Yemen seems like a terrorist playground today, the answer might be that its top intelligence service is run by jihadis.

According to a report in the reliable Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, “who has traveled twice to Yemen in the last six months, has been told by his advisers that Yemen’s Political Security Organization has been infiltrated at the highest levels by jihadists active in the country.”

A Brennan spokesman declined to comment on the report, which most likely originated in the region. But it came as no surprise to a top former CIA counterterrorism official, who said with a chuckle: “that report is stating the obvious.” (Read on …)

Anwar as the number one terrorist threatening the US and the driver behind AQIY’s apparent shift to targeting the US homeland, questionable. Related: Awlaki issues audio calling for attacks on US.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has authorized operations to capture or kill a U.S.-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen, who is described by a key lawmaker as Americas’s top terrorist threat, officials said on Tuesday. (Read on …)

A good pdf round-up from ICT’s Internet Monitoring Group notes the recent issue of Sada al Malehem contains an article by Qasim Al-Rimi, “who was declared killed in the attacks by the Yemen Army, has published an article in the twelfth issue of the organization’s magazine,“Sada Al-Malahim”, where he threatens to attack the US, as it attacked the homes of the Yemeni people.34 It should be noted, that previous threats made by AQAP, were directed in a more general manner against US targets abroad and this could be the first direct publicly made threat against the US mainland.”

Also al Libbi authorizes the jihaddis to murder Yemeni soldiers but urges them to remain focused on bringing the battle to US soil. (Read on …)

- Urges American Muslims to commit jihad against the US
- Says the US is withholding the Nidal Hassan emails because the US is trying to convince the American public that it was an individual act
- US officials confirm Mobley left to US to seek out Awlaki and found him

London, England (CNN) — American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is calling for jihad against America, claiming “America is evil” in a new audio message obtained exclusively by CNN.

“With the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim,” he says in the recording that runs more than 12 minutes.

Al-Awlaki is believed to be hiding out in hills of southern Yemen with the protection of his very powerful family tribe.

CNN could not authenticate the recording as being by al-Awlaki, but sources have told CNN that they believe the voice on the recording is him and that the recording is genuine. (Read on …)

We’re all overdue for a feel-good story from Yemen and this might do it:

Flatbush retailer sees customers having fun, winning; buys himself a $3,000,000 Money winner
Yemen-born Abdo Ashariki has owned the Cortelyou Deli & Grocery on Cortelyou Rd. in Brooklyn for three years. The father of 10 children who range in age from 4 to 39 said he liked to watch his customers scratch and win prizes on the New York Lottery tickets he sold to them. “But why,” he asked, “should they have all the fun?” That’s why Ashariki said he usually bought one or two tickets for himself each day, a habit that paid off handsomely on February 20, 2010 when Ashariki purchased a $10 Money ticket that turned out to be a $3,000,000 winner. (Read on …)

The US State Department report on Human Rights Practices in Yemen 2009 is accurate and thorough. I thought they might dumb it down a bit considering the increased level of US support, but they didn’t. Click here for the report.

Other reports have Mobley as a low level, if that, terrorist wanna-be who never actually hooked up with AQAP. This is an interesting angle though considering the Nasir al Wahishi, Emir of AQAP, spoke about a nuclear attack on the US in a January 2009 interview. Update: AOL News: He also said Mobley studied at Dar al-Hadith Dammaj institute in Saada, a well-known Salafist school in Yemen’s northern province, which was decried as a “known terrorist training center” during tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees. Reports say that between 3,000 and 5,000 foreign students live and study there,” said Abdul-Salam al-Korary, a local journalist who has covered Yemen for several decades. “It is a very radical school.”

AJC: From 2002 to 2008, Mobley worked for several contractors at three nuclear power plants in New Jersey, PSEG Nuclear spokesman Joe Delmar said. Mobley carried supplies and did maintenance work at the plants on Artificial Island in Lower Alloways Creek, and worked at other plants in the region as well.

He satisfied federal background checks as recently as 2008, Delmar said, adding that the plant is cooperating with authorities. Mobley moved to Yemen about two years ago, supposedly to learn Arabic and study Islam, a former neighbor said.

It just never ends. A nice boy from New Jersey is an Qaeda suspect in custody in Yemen who was a) planning an attack b) wounded somehow and hospitalized last week and c) tried to bust out of the hospital Sunday in Yemen and killed a guard. His friends are shocked. I’m shocked too, I thought the shooter was supposed to be a German citizen of Somali origin. Fox also reports he is a a dual citizen, Yemeni-American.

NBC: Federal sources have confirmed that a man from Buena is in custody in the Middle East, and they say he’s believed to be an Al-Qaeda militant who’s accused of going on a deadly rampage.

“We don’t know nothing, we’re trying to hear something,” said Charles Mobley. Those were the only words he would share on camera about his son, 26 year-old Sharif Mobley. Federal sources have confirmed the 2002 Buena Regional High School graduate is currently in custody in the Middle East, suspected of being an Al-Qaeda militant. (Read on …)

Of 250,000 Sa’ada War refugees only 30,000 are in the UN camps. Its too early to send them home, many have no homes to return to as cold weather and malnutrition threatens children. UN appeal is still unfunded, may cut programs for want of $16 million. A good report on
US funding notes that it overwhelmingly targets security not the population:

Congress has enacted roughly $218 million in US assistance for FY2010, of which $170 million or 78 percent has been in the security domain [Train and Equip (Section 1206), Foreign Military Financing (FMF), International Military Education and Training (IMET), Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining and Related Programs (NADR), and International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE)]. This dwarfs the development and diplomatic sums provided to Yemen and transparently communicates the American investment in President Saleh.

An Islah MP gave an interview to al Sahwa following the delay in the parliamentary session meant to discuss the airstrike in Abyan that killed dozens of civilians. Abdul Karim Shiban said that the “al Qaeda” killed in the strike were released from a PSO prison two years earlier. Since then, they moved back and forth from Shabwa to Abyan openly and freely. It was known by the security forces who would have been able to capture them easily. In fact, the men used to chew khat with security officials and received an allowance from the state.

al Sahwa Those targeted in the strike were closely linked to power (Read on …)

Yay, its not just me anymore. Now that the WaPo has another excellent article on the infiltration of al Qaeda to the Yemeni security and intelligence forces, I’m feeling a tad less lonely. Of course, some um, passport offices, financial exchange offices and other sensitive positions are currently held by “recently reformed” convicted al Qaeda operatives, not to mention the older bin Laden loyalists serving as governors and ambassadors, rewarded after the 1994 civil war. Jihaddis in ties, as I say.

The full WaPo is below. There is one section of the Washington Post article seems to be getting a lot of play in Yemen so, just to be nice, I am posting the original entry from History Commons: first theres’s 1990- 1998, Zawaheri frequently visits Yemen (Hello?) then as follows (PSO shelters Zawaheri) Spring-Summer 1998: Yemeni Officials Help Al-Qaeda with Knowledgeable Defector

Ahmed Nasrallah, a veteran al-Qaeda operative who has been in Yemen for several years, decides to defect and turn himself in to the Yemeni government. He discloses the location of al-Qaeda strongholds in Yemen and even gives away the location of al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a southern Yemeni town. He describes al-Qaeda’s weaponry, security, and violent plans for the future. He offers to spy on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or on a militant Yemeni group led by Zein al-Abidine Almihdhar, a relative of hijacker Khalid Almihdhar. (In 1999 Zein will be caught and executed in Yemen for kidnappings and killings.) However, two officials in the Political Security Organization (Yemen’s equivalent of the FBI) have radical militant ties and hand over Nasrallah to al-Qaeda operatives. These operatives plan to kill him for betraying their group, but he escapes to Egypt before they can do so. The Egyptian government then interrogates him for more than a year. However, it is not known what he told them before 9/11, or what they might have passed to the US. One of the two Yemeni officers helping al-Qaeda on this matter, Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman al-Hilah, will be recorded by Italian intelligence in 2000 apparently mentioning the upcoming 9/11 attacks (see August 12, 2000). [Wall Street Journal, 12/20/2002]

Somewhere down the History Commons page is likely 1999: Yemen releases Khalid bin Attash after deal with bin Laden, but that’s also in the 9/11 Commission Report. Attash of course went on to have an instrumental role in the bombing of the USS Cole. Yemen as a stagnant political system has many, most of the same players playing now as in the 1980’s and ’90’s. For example, Ali Al Ansi, head of the National Security, has been Saleh’s office manager since 1982. Al Qamish also has been around forever. So the argument that these close ties to bin Laden were a decade ago doesn’t reassure me much. The article I wrote early in Feb. 2009 referencing a deal between Zawaheri and Saleh was based on current reporting but fits quite nicely into the overall pattern. The second terror attack on the South Korean’s in March 2009 wasn’t a result of a small leak, one subverted guy passing information, which is why even the Parliament started complaining openly. OK here’s the excellent WaPo:

Yemen security agency prone to inside threats, officials say
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Foreign Service

SANA’A, YEMEN — As deputy director of Yemen’s feared internal security agency a few years ago, Mohammed al-Surmi was in charge of monitoring al-Qaeda extremists. But he also allegedly lived a double life, feeding the terrorist network information to uncover informants within its ranks.

Surmi was removed from his job, but still wields influence: He is now deputy mayor of the capital, Sana’a, where some residents call him “His Excellency.” (Read on …)

One of the funnier or perhaps pathetic things about Freidman’s article was his praise of the vibrant Yemen Observer newsroom, when it is the primary English language propaganda machine of the Yemeni government. One of the most despicable was his omission of any mention of the kidnapping and torture of editor Mohammed al Maqaleh and the fact that the Bahsraheels and hundreds of others are likely undergoing the same depraved treatment. Considering Freidman who didn’t meet with, perhaps he’s just an ignoramus. But the information is easily available on open source including the fact that Yemeni civil society is regularly cloned, bribed, threatened and assaulted, somewhat tempering their message and work product. Maybe Freidman thinks he can accomplish more by self-censoring and sucking up to the Yemeni government, but its been unsucessfully tried before by some rather impressive people. The US alliance with Saleh is akin to the US alliance with Saddam while he was gassing the Kurds.

Letters to the International Herald Tribune
Yemen’s Human Rights Record

Thomas Friedman rightly praises the emergence of strong civil society organizations in Yemen, (“Postcard from Yemen,” Views, Feb. 8), but he ignores the repression they suffer under the Saleh administration.

If Muhammad al-Maqalih, the online editor of an opposition publication, had tried last autumn to send a postcard, for example, it would have been postmarked from an unknown prison. Government agents, not Al Qaeda, snatched him on Sept. 17, 2009, after he accused Yemen’s military of war crimes against Houthi rebels. After denying to Human Rights Watch in December that it held him, the government is now prosecuting al-Maqalih before the state security court.

The Yemeni government has brazenly “disappeared” and unfairly prosecuted critical journalists and academics and quashed civil society efforts to promote the rule of law.

The United States praises Yemen for its counter-terrorism efforts, but glosses over its human rights abuses, which generate local support for Al Qaeda.

Christoph Wilcke, Munich

Senior Middle East researcher, Human Rights Watch

Update: OK Friedman gets one right when he notes the Yemeni public schools including grammar schools are biased toward the Wahabbi philosophy. As I noted in 2005, in the diverse religious environment of Yemen, the state’s support of Salafism in schools creates friction and is one of the main reasons the Houthi rebels have always demanded the right to run their own schools.

Not something you see everyday, southern Yemeni oppositionist Tarik al Fadhli raises the US flag (with anthem) over his compound in Abyan:

As I mentioned in my article, US flags are popping up at southern demonstrations “like a distress signal for rescue from tyranny.”

PETN is so last year… This is all coming from the governor of Abyan, al Maseri. A Pakistani expert came to Yemen last year to train them on smaller, undetectable explosives and he died at some point in a work accident. Another Pakistani gave training on poisen gases. Four months ago they got aid with the help of non-Yemenis in the organization. Al Maseri says the security forces found a similiar substance to that used to attack Prince Naif.

Saudi Gazette Pakistani built bomb to kill Prince, says Yemeni official
By Abdullah Al-Oraifij
ABYAN, Yemen – Dramatic new claims have been made that a Pakistani explosives expert was responsible for manufacturing the bomb that was used by a suicide bomber in a failed attempt to assassinate Prince Muhammad Bin Naif Bin Abdul Aziz, Assistant Interior Minister for Security Affairs at his palace in Jeddah last August.
Talking to Okaz, Ahmad Al-Maseeri, Governor of Abyan in Yemen, said that the man who made the explosive capsule, used by Abdullah Hasan Al-Asiri in his attempt to kill the Prince, was a Pakistani. (Read on …)

There’s a new ops center and intermediaries to funnel and pass US intel to the Yemenis. Good luck with that, all their sources are going to start having car accidents. Yemeni-American Anwar Awlaki is on a pre-approved hit list. Other reports say theres about 200 Special Ops in Yemen and plans for more but no troops.

WaPo: The operations, approved by President Obama and begun six weeks ago, involve several dozen troops from the U.S. military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. The American advisers do not take part in raids in Yemen, but help plan missions, develop tactics and provide weapons and munitions. Highly sensitive intelligence is being shared with the Yemeni forces, including electronic and video surveillance, as well as three-dimensional terrain maps and detailed analysis of the al-Qaeda network. (Read on …)

Yemen
How worried are you that it could become the next Afghanistan in terms of providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda to launch global attacks.

A number of us have been focused on Yemen for well over two years.
From the time when we were examining how foreign fighters were being trained and then how foreign fighter facilitators were operating who enabled foreign fighters to come into Iraq through Syria and many different roads lead to what was then termed al-Qaeda in Yemen and this past year was franchised by the al-Qaeda senior leadership as al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsular. (Read on …)

Reuters: Following is the final statement from the talks, as released by the British foreign ministry.

Yemen, its friends and partners have today met in London to discuss the many urgent problems which the people of Yemen face.

The meeting reiterated support for a unified Yemen, respect for its sovereignty and independence, and commitment to non-interference in Yemen’s internal affairs. It was clear that economic and social reform by the government of Yemen was key to long term stability and prosperity. It was agreed that a comprehensive approach was needed, with strong support from the international community. (Read on …)

Slideshow, click here.

I’ve been shocked by the US willingness to work with such a lying, stealing, cheating, two-timing, double dealing crook like Saleh, after he already screwed the US during the USS Cole investigation. And then it hit me. Old habits die hard.

At the link is a video from BBC of Dr. al Qirby proclaiming Yemen will accept any and all conditions on donor aid.

The Yemeni Foreign minister, Dr Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, denies that Yemen has been failing to tackle al-Qaeda but he says the international community needs to provide more aid to the country to help them defeat terrorism.

Yemen is asking for aid to also reduce poverty in a country that is one of the poorest in the Middle East.

Denying the money would disappear into corrupt hands, he said the government will accept conditions on how and where the aid is spent.

A good overview of the complexities in a write up at Chatham House.

Jeffrey D. Feltman
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs
Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Washington, DC

January 20, 2010

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Lugar, and Distinguished Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this Committee today to discuss this important subject.

The unsuccessful attack on a U.S.-bound aircraft on December 25, 2009 serves as a further reminder of the threats that can emerge when ungoverned and poorly governed places around the world are exploited by terrorists. The United States and the international community have been engaged in supporting good governance, sustainable development, and improved security in Yemen for years. Recognizing the growing threat emanating from Yemen, the United States has been significantly ramping up levels of both security and development assistance since FY 2008. In addition, this administration has developed a new, more holistic Yemen policy that not only seeks to address security and counter terrorism concerns, but also the profound political, economic, and social challenges that help Al-Qaeda and related affiliates to operate and flourish. (Read on …)

The full report from the Senate Foreign Relations committee is here, pdf. From the Gulf Times: Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed al-Sabah noted “members of Al Qaeda (in Yemen) already hail from 36 nationalities.” And Fox News reports there are 55,000 Americans in Yemen. The following news story from ABC:

As many as three dozen criminals who converted to Islam in American prisons have moved to Yemen where they could pose a “significant threat” to attack the U.S., according to a report on al Qaeda from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be released Wednesday. (Read on …)

People providing arms, money or material support to AQAP are guilty of supporting a terror group under US law. That’s a broad category of persons that includes some members of the PSO. The US is asking for the UN’s 1267 committee to include AQAP. IN 2004, the UN gave Yemen a list of 400 AQ and Talaban associated personal and business bank accounts in Yemen, Yemen froze one account and never circulated the list the next years. Update: AQAP, Whahishi and al Reimi added to 1267 list.

Press Release: The Secretary of State has designated al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (INA). The Secretary also designated AQAP and its two top leaders Nasir al-Wahishi and Said al-Shihri under E.O. 13224. Secretary Clinton took these actions in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury. These actions prohibit provision of material support and arms to AQAP and also include immigration related restrictions that will help stem the flow of finances to AQAP and give the Department of Justice the tools it needs to prosecute AQAP members. (Read on …)

In an interview al Shabab spokesman Ali Rage said the Somali terror group intended to provide manpower to Yemen’s al Qaeda group, and that Yemen’s al Qaeda had provided generous support to al Shabab in the past.

Closer coordination between Somalia’s al Shabab and Yemen’s AQAP heightens risk of a coordinated attack on the NATO anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden. Currently AQAP is asking for any information on the US vessels in the Gulf including the names and home states of individual American sailors, blueprints, suppliers and operating procedures.

In a missive released yesterday, AQAP said, “Today, the duty of our Muslim nation is to declare Jihad against the infidels and their apostate cooperatives; not only on land but on sea and in the air too. The Crusader warships are present in the Gulf of Aden, in the Arabian Sea and in the Red Sea, and the American surveillance jets occupy the sphere over the Arabian Peninsula..” This echoes an earlier statement from AQ Central calling for naval jihad.

Droves of Yemeni jihaddists and Somalis in Yemen traveled to Somalia when the TFG was battling the ICU. Afterward, the US noted an exodus to back to Yemen. The intersection of piracy, arms smuggling, human smuggling and terrorists has been noted by the UN.

Update: Reuters: AQAP military commander Qasim al-Raymi has fought in Somalia and has written on the need to back Somalia’s revolt… Some others in that founding group had also fought in Somalia. Security experts say Yemenis make up a sizeable part of a foreign contingent that fights with al Shabaab’s Somali rank and file and supplies bomb-making and communications expertise. By one estimate there are about 500 or more foreigners in Shabaab’s ranks, which experts say may number 5,000 or more.

(Read on …)

There we go. I think I wrote something very similar in 2005 after my head stopped exploding, but its good to see it in the New York Times. (See my Feb. 2006 article, Al Qaeda Escape in Yemen, Facts, Theories and Rumors for a comprehensive round-up of the situation then that brought us here now.)

Ali Mohsen, bin Laden recruiter, using Afgan Arabs in the Sa’ada War, and possibly training al Iman students at his military camp next door. The US funnels money pretty directly to Ali Mohsen, according to Robert Kaplan in Imperial Grunts. The US is funding a jihaddi that targets Zaidi civilians with indiscriminate bombing and deliberate starvation? The Houthis have always claimed the Sa’ada war was intent on the irradication of Zaidism itself. The strategic location of Sa’ada for al Qaeda can’t be underestimated.

NY Times: Mr. Mohsen, a general who is currently prosecuting the war against a Houthi rebellion in the north, also recruited thousands of Yemenis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. His brigades returned victorious, and Mr. Saleh has used them since to help defeat the south in the 1994 civil war and against the Houthis. Some fighters, of course, have migrated to Al Qaeda, and there are imams here more radical than Mr. Zindani.

When north and south Yemen were united in 1990, Sheik Zindani accepted Mr. Saleh’s rule and was granted this huge area of government land on the western edge of Sana for the university — adjoining a large military base, which is Mr. Mohsen’s headquarters. There are rumors that students sometimes get military training there, which Mr. Abu Ras also denies.

Ali Mohsen’s extremist office manager in Sa’ada indoctrinates the military in Friday sermons and they hand out religious tracts to soldiers that say Houthi blood is free. This is the guy who was instigating against foreign medical workers prior to the kidnapping of the Germans.

frick NY Times: WASHINGTON — Worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday, President Obama met on Dec. 22 with top officials of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security, who ticked off a list of possible plots against the United States and how their agencies were working to disrupt them. (Read on …)

That’s some good targeting right there, if it turns out to be true. Two cars, no civilians, direct hit. Ammar Al Waeli? Fascinating. Update: They are “almost certain” al Reimi was killed. Also: Mr. Ayman was an Egyptian jihadist who had arranged many suicide bombings in Afghanistan, the official said. He had moved in and out of Yemen recently, and has been on Yemen’s most-wanted list for years… Another man targeted in the raid was known to have escaped, the official said: Ammar al-Waeli, an important arms dealer for Al Qaeda.

Update 2: Almotamar.net The ministry said the killed terrorists are Qassim al-Raimy, Ammar Abadah al-Waili, Saleh al-Tais, Ayedh Jaber al-Shabwani and Ibrahim Mohammed Saleh al-Banaa.
(Read on …)

Yemeni President Saleh is quite adroit at playing the terror card. Today he warns the US that he will declare jihad if the US attempts any military action against al Qaeda in Yemen, in a statement from Yemen’s Council of Clerics. Its Saleh talking. There’s no way they would issue that without Presidental approval.

The message is simple: Just. Give. Me. The. Money.

Saleh has various mouthpieces: the government media, officials, GONGOs (governmental non-govermental organizations) some “experts” and Sheik Abdulmagid al Zindani (oh! scary!), who is classified by the UN’s 1267 committee as a terrorist financier. Al Zindani endorsed President Saleh’s 2006 “re-election” bid, and Saleh made his first speech of the electoral season from al Zindani’s al Iman University. The Minister of Endowments is Judge Hamoud al Hittar, who ran the now defunct dialog program that released hundreds of al Qaeda. (He never dialoged with the Houthi rebels though.)

Al Hittar is often an intermediary between the regime and al Qaeda. For example in 2003 al Qaeda offered Yemen a truce, and al Hittar was in charge of negotiations. At the time he said some demands were non-starters, meaning perhaps others were workable. That marked the beginning of what al Qaeda calls the (quite productive) “quietness period” from 2003-2006 when the group provided logistical support and thousands of jihaddists to various hotspots around the world, especially Iraq.

To follow is the clerics’ statement. Also below the fold is Foreign Minister al Qirby’s nearly identical statement that US counter-terror aid must be unconditional. The upcoming London Conference on Yemen should not attempt to deal with internal affairs like civil rights, political reforms, press freedom, corruption or economic transparency, he said, repeatedly.

Update: Alert Net: Yemen, facing a daunting array of security and economic problems, needs about $2 billion a year in aid to stay afloat and double that to turn its economy around, Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi said on Thursday…”I am not an economist, but I think one is talking about probably $4 billion a year,” Qirbi told Reuters when asked how much aid was required to rescue an economy struggling with a sharply rising population and falling oil revenues. (Read on …)

WASHINGTON: Twenty other young Muslim radicals have been trained to blow up planes by al-Qaida in Yemen, a young Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a US airliner has told FBI.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, has told FBI that close to 20 other young Muslim men were being prepared in Yemen to use the same technique to blow up airliners, CBS said in an exclusive investigative report.

US surprised by AQAP’s links to Pakistan? Say it aint so…

Newsweek: U.S. officials have been surprised by what they’ve discovered about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian student who says he was trained and equipped there. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as this offshoot is called, is linked directly to the “core” group in Pakistan and it is now “one of the most lethal” affiliates, White House counterterrorism coordinator John Brennan said at a news conference.

Times Online:

Yemeni security sources believe that of the 15-20 Britons recently recruited by Al-Qaeda, most have undergone training in camps in Rafad, a mountainous region in the southeast. It lies in the province where Abdulmutallab is thought to have met Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who is viewed as a big influence in luring foreign recruits to Al-Qaeda.

One institution popular with British Muslims is Dar alHadith in Dammaj, northern Yemen. US defence officials have described the institute as a “known terrorist training centre”. This has always been denied by the institute.

Students can access weapons there, and teachings have traditionally been anti-western. Students are told that democracy is an enemy of Islam and locals are reported to refer to America as “the great Satan”.

Abu Muaz, head of the Salafi Youth Movement in the UK, said about 50 Britons had gone to study at Dar al-Hadith. “Most want to learn about Islam, but there are some jihadi supporters who decide to take up arms,” he said.

Its not a surprise the six detainees transferred from Gitmo to Yemen were released within a week of their return to Yemen, and its no surprise that the Saleh government in Yemen lied to the US with a promise of indefinite detention. What’s shocking is that anyone on the US side actually believed them to start with. (Read on …)

Al Shabab’s announcement yesterday that it is coming to the defense of its Yemeni counterparts overshadows the fact that the intial airstrikes in Yemen on al Qaeda did very little actual damage to the organization. All the targeted leaders survived. The sucess of the strikes were repeatedly over-stated by the Saleh regime in its typical pattern of blatant propaganda for the western audience. Yemen’s subsequent “storming” and “hunting” operations are more of the same. The AFP article notes the Yemeni government claims that 60 Islamist militants were killed. Its not true. Its not even close to being true.

AFP however does note the widely overlooked November arrest and later release of an individual at a Mogadishu airport with chemicals and a syringe.

Jihaddists have been going back and forth between Yemen and Somalia for some time. When the TFG was battling the Islamic Courts Union, there was a marked increase in terrorist traffic from Yemen to Somalia. Subsequently, the US noted somewhat of an exodus of Islamist fighters from Somalia to Yemen. Substantial amounts of weapons move from Yemen to Somalia, as the UN’s monitoring committee found, and is perhaps the most destabilizing factor in Somalia’s continuing chaos. Tens of thousands of Somali refugees cross the Bab al Mendab annually into Yemen. Somali pirates obtain logistical and intelligence support from sources in Yemen.

The overlapping infrastructure of refugee smugglers, arms smuggling and piracy was also noted by the UN, and of course, overlaps with al Qaeda’s footprint as well. To the extent that Somali terror recruits are joining Yemeni terrorists, its the Americans among them who pose an enhanced risk to the US homeland. The Yemeni jidaddist fanatics have historical relationships with Al Qaeda Central, which remains intent on a catastrophic attack on the United States. AFP article below the fold.

Do we really have to do this over and over and over again? It has been going on since 2000 and President Saleh has never been sincere, he just comes up with better BS. To go forward on the premise that Saleh achieved any level of rehabilitation after a good talking to is ludicrous.

The US believes Saleh rehabilitated in July when presented with evidence the Al Qaeda fanatics were planning assassinations against top officials. Al Alimi, perhaps? Its a huge mistake to trust Saleh on any level at any time. It is a threat to US security to under-estimate the level of enmeshment between the Yemeni state and al Qaeda, from al Qaeda local to al Qaeda central, from mid level security officials up to the President of Yemen.

Washington (CNN) — “Solid intelligence” from U.S. and Yemen services finally persuaded Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh last summer to accept increased help in fighting al Qaeda in his country, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

After years of pressure from the United States to crack down on al Qaeda in Yemen, Saleh was persuaded to accept help after he was presented with intelligence that al Qaeda “was targeting inner-circle Yemeni leaders,” and that there was a growing number of terrorist training camps in Yemen, the official said… (Read on …)

Anwar’s been a busy bee, issuing fatwas, negotiating tribal alliances, and meeting with would be suicide bombers. In his recent public statements and interviews, Awlaki justified attacks on US military personnel as legitimate jihad. Apparently he also promoted attacks on civilians as acceptable (if not required) by Islamic law. LAT:

Under questioning by the FBI, Abdulmutallab has said that he met with Awlaki and senior Al Qaeda members during an extended trip to Yemen this year, and that the cleric was involved in some elements of planning or preparing the attack and in providing religious justification for it, officials said. (Read on …)

President Saleh is an extremely irrational player, and has never learned from his mistakes. Maybe thirty years in power makes you go nuts. Look at Khadaffi… Saleh makes the same plays over and over, with the same results. In addition, the fractured nature of the regime means the government is often at odds with itself. Its important to keep in mind the Yemeni government tactics in dealing with internal civil unrest. In the south, as HRW recently found, the Yemeni government is shooting peaceful protesters in the head and engaging in mass arrests, and has been for well over a year. Dozens have been killed. In the north, the Yemeni military is bombing civilian areas on a regular basis and blocking the delivery of international aid, creating a humanitarian crisis in Sa’ada, long called “Yemen’s Darfur.” Do we want to equpt this slaughter? Any arms or equipment to Saleh will go straight to Sa’ada or Aden, with some show raids on al Qaeda, big announcements and underlings rounded up as the main facilitators and figure heads escape unmolested as they have done for years.

WSJ: But Mr. Saleh is struggling with two rebellious provinces, dwindling financial resources and a significant weakening of his once-strong influence over Islamists in his country. His courting has been a source of debate within the administration: Some officials are concerned he is more interested in seeking American aid to crush local insurgencies than target Islamist militants.

“President Saleh is not a consistent and rational player,” said another senior military official. “That’s the other major worry we have there: What will he do for himself versus what he’s doing against al Qaeda.”

Yemen’s government on Tuesday reiterated its desire for more foreign military aid, with foreign minister Abu Bakr al Qirbi telling the British Broadcasting Corp. that Yemen’s battle is being undermined by a lack of financial and military support.

The Obama administration has praised Mr. Saleh’s government in recent weeks for intensifying its campaign against al Qaeda, which includes two major offenses against suspected terrorist camps earlier this month.

Mr. Saleh, 63 years old, reiterated his support in combating terror in a telephone call to President Barack Obama two weeks ago, according to the state-run Yemeni press agency. But the U.S. has been frustrated by his unwillingness to open a serious dialogue with the Houthi rebels in the north, a move officials believe would allow Mr. Saleh to focus his attention on al Qaeda.

According to the former military official, Mr. Saleh has asked for weapons that he could use against indigenous rebels, including hundreds of tanks and Humvees. Sana’a has claimed the Houthi forces are receiving arms and funding from Shiite Iran. The Obama administration says it has found no such evidence.

An excellent editorial from The Daily Star:

The strife and warfare that has shaken Yemen in the last few months raises disturbing parallels with another Arab country, one that has experienced years of misery and woe. There might not be an exact fit between the regimes of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the regime of the late Saddam Hussein, but the broad outlines are there, and don’t bode well.

Like Saddam Hussein, Ali Abdullah Saleh is an autocrat with a fair amount of blood on his hands, perched atop a decades-old security-oriented regime.

This regime does some things well, such as managing a personality cult, but it’s much less proficient at other tasks, such as running the country’s tribal and regional politics and generating stability.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt have stood with Saleh and the US is now getting heavily involved, providing the regime with missiles, sending unmanned drones to bomb areas affected by the Houthi rebellion, and dispatching covert military teams to join Yemen’s Army in pursuing threats to stability, under the rubric of the “war on terror” policy.

And like Saddam, Saleh deals with a large part of his country as if it’s the enemy. Iraq’s Kurds suffered atrocities in the weapons during the Saddam era, while the southerners of Yemen have also been treated horribly by the Saleh regime, and we’ve heard calls for secession from the central government in both countries.
(Read on …)

The Yemeni government knows EXACTLY where they are.

Washington (CNN) — U.S. officials are privately acknowledging they have provided secret intelligence on several al Qaeda targets to Yemen’s government, but they won’t say if U.S. fighter jets or armed drones are involved.
(Read on …)

I’ve always been concerned about that, “naval jihad” against the assorted western navies on anti-piracy ops in the Bab al Mendab. To the extent that Somali and Yemeni al Qaeda are in contact, and the pirates are already paying for intel on where the ships are, the sea is a potential theater of operations as it was in both the USS Cole and Limburg attacks. There was a statement from al Qaeda Central calling for naval jihad in Spring 2008, I think it was. To follow, the latest ramblings from the Yemeni fanatics in response to the first air strike, here at NEFA:

“And lastly, we call upon the proud tribes of Yemen—people of support and victory—and the people of the Arabian Peninsula, to face the crusader campaign and their cooperatives on the peninsula of Muhammad, prayer and peace upon him, and that’s through attacking their military bases, intelligence embassies, and their fleets that exist on the water and land of the Arabian Peninsula; until we stop the continuous massacres on the Muslim countries.”

Reports are that 350 al Qaeda are in an inaccessible area of Shabwa, Yemen.

A reliable source, al Tagheer: According to the sources, Aulaqi returned to the area and began practicing refusal to live a normal life with his family which is still up to this moment with him and then started preaching to people in the mosque every Friday and began to recognize a group of young people and meet them.

Also in the area, convicted USS Cole bomber Fahd al Quso. That’s really the news here. The guy already blew up a warship, what’s his follow up going to be? This is the last man standing from the 2000 Malaysia meeting where both the USS Cole bombing and 9/11 were planned. Al Quso is on bin Laden’s short list of trusted lieutenants. Al Quso was convicted and sentenced to ten years in jail, escaped, returned and then was granted an early release in 2007 by our ally, the war criminal President Ali Abduallah Saleh. Al Quso was listed as one of the FBI’s most wanted last month.

Just out of pure curiousity, where’s al Badawi and Elbaneh these days? And when oh when will the MSM realize the Yemeni dictatorship is not a reliable source. Its a lying al-Qaeda infiltrated, mafia government that spins the western media time after time with out and out BS.

al Tagheer:

Mohammad Amir change – special – forbid evangelized: denied private sources for “change” is Mohammed Amir Ahmed Saleh, who recently appeared on Al Jazeera Festival in South Yemen as one of the public elements of the al-Qaeda cadres and handled news of his death in a raid yesterday (Thursday) it belonged to al-Qaeda, noting that, only, one of the Wajahat region that has appeared. (Read on …)

Nigerian student studying in the UK flying from the Netherlands to Detroit tries to detonate explosive device he says he obtained from Yemen. BBC:

A Nigerian reported to have links to al-Qaeda is being questioned after an attempted act of terrorism on a plane arriving in the US, officials say.

They say the 23-year-old man was trying to ignite an explosive device as the jet approached Detroit from Amsterdam. (Read on …)

Update: According to Yemenat, the Supreme Security Committee said one air strike today was on al Quso’s farm. Al Quso is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. Is that new? They were both indicted after the 2003 escape, but I thought only al Badawi made it to the most wanted list. Wow, yes it is new, last month (??!!) according to the interview.

In addition to the interview published today with Anwar Awlaki, Fahd al Quso gave an interview a few days ago that was published today at al Jazeera. ( This is the interview link here.) He said (roughly translated) the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which interrogated him after the attack on the 2000 al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, believed there is a link between the attack and important Yemeni official figures including Brigadier General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, half-brother of the President, the Yemeni Islamic Reform Party’s leader, Sheikh Abdul Majid Al Zindani, and the son of the president, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh. According to his knowledge, he says they were not…

Al Quso said he was released by judicial decision in 2007, and that Washington objected to his release from prison. Al Quso also said U.S. investigators interrogated him directly after his arrest in Yemen. They told him that foreknowledge of the bombing of the Cole means “to participate and punishable by death,” pointing out that Yemen’s judiciary sentenced on such participation.

أجرى الحوار: عبد الإله حيدر شائع Interview conducted by: Abdul Elah Haidar,

كيف تلقيت نبأ إدراجك ضمن قائمة المطلوبين العالمية التي أصدرها مكتب التحقيقات الفدرالي (إف بي آي) منتصف الشهر الماضي؟ How I learned enrollment on the wanted list issued by the World Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mid-last month?

تفاجأت لأن القضية انتهت قانونيا باعتقالي ومحاكمتي، وقضيت محكوميتي في السجن وفق المدة القانونية وخرجت بقرار قضائي في العام 2007. Surprised because the case ended legally arrested me, try me, and I spent Movernmiti in prison, according to the legal limit and went out by a judicial decision in 2007. (Read on …)

In a new piece at al Jazeera (Arabic), Yemeni expert on Islamic groups Abdul Elah Shayer interviews Anwar Awlaki, Yemeni-American al Qaeda propagandist.

In the interview Awlaki says Nidal Hassan inquired by email specifically about the Islamic legitimacy of killing US soldiers. Awlaki also seems to be trying to distance himself from a charge of material support. Excerpts from the Aljazeera.net interview with Awlaqi below the fold. (Read on …)

Arab Monitor:

Yemen’s government farer away than ever from restoring political stability

Sanaa, 22 December – Saudi Arabian Deputy Defence Minister Khaled bin Sultan admitted that his country’s military intervention in neighbouring Yemen has so far resulted in 73 soldiers killed and 470 wounded, while 26 are missing. According to him, 12 of the missing are believed to have been killed, while the fate of the remaining 14 is still unclear. Following these announcements, the Deputy Defence Minister said his country’s armed forces are mulling an attack on the border village of al-Jabiriya, where the al-Houthi movement is still present. (Read on …)

Oh my! Someone noticed that the Yemeni government is deliberately starving tens of thousands of people in the war zone in Sa’ada:

Guardian: There is no question that civilians are increasingly victimised in conflicts and further cut off from lifesaving assistance, often deliberately,” said Christophe Fournier, the MSF international council president. “In places like Sri Lanka and Yemen, where armed conflicts raged in 2009, aid groups were either blocked from accessing those in need or forced out because they too came under fire. This unacceptable dynamic is becoming the norm.”

The press release::
Five prior unsettled wars in Yemen’s northern Saada Governorate led to a sixth in 2009, the most intense so far. The Yemeni army ratcheted up its offensive against a rebel group drawn from the dominant community in the region, and the humanitarian fallout was unprecedented. Civilians and non-military targets such as hospitals were heavily affected by fighting. Hundreds of thousands were displaced and humanitarian assistance came to a virtual halt. A malnutrition emergency was discovered among children uprooted from their homes. For the first time, a foreign neighbour, Saudi Arabia, was drawn into the conflict, further complicating the plight of civilians. (Read on …)

DOJ: Six Yemeni detainees, Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami and Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf, were transferred to the Government of Yemen.

Solid analysis from Ali Saif Hassan of the YPDF at Time:

“If the government wants to fight [al-Qaeda] seriously, they can do it,” says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen’s Political Development Forum. But, he adds: “It’s a matter of political decision — how much they will win, and how much they will lose.” Sana’a has recently focused more of its attention on the rebel separatist movement in the south and on the recent Houthi uprising in the north than it has on al-Qaeda.

While some western analysts say that al-Qaeda seeks to overthrow Yemen’s government, Hassan disagrees, saying that al-Qaeda only seeks to establish a base there — a link between the Horn of Africa and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula — and that so long as Saleh leaves al-Qaeda alone, they’ll do the same for him. “The government still sometimes thinks it is too costly for it to fight al-Qaeda. If you ask them to go and fight al-Qaeda, they say ‘Why? And what do I get back?’” says Hassan. Fighting al-Qaeda would mean losing key fundamentalist support in the country, support that is already falling away. What would compel Saleh to turn it around? “It is business,” says Hassan. “If the government gets more support from the Americans, they will change.” The Obama administration has requested $65 million to help Yemen battle its resurgent terrorist threat.

SABA WASHINGTON, Dec.20 (Saba) – The U.S. authorities has sent six Yemeni detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay to Yemen.
(Read on …)

When a counter-terror air strike kills more civilians than an average suicide bombing, can it be called a success? Discounting the dead kids for just a minute and using even the coldest pragmatic standards, the US air strikes in Yemen did much more harm than good to the US on multiple levels and will negatively impact security for a decade. Despite the broad pro-democracy sentiment in Yemen, and increasingly vocal popular frustration with Yemen’s brutal and incompetent dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the only allies the US has in Yemen now are the genocidal Saleh and his corrupt cronies. (Read on …)

Sahwa Net – Main Yemeni opposition parties, the Joint Meeting Parties, in Abyan governorate has denounced assaults launched by Yemeni forces on alleged al-Qaeda sites on Thursday in Abyan, describing the strikes as a “brutal massacre”. (Read on …)

Five unidentified foreign “al Qaeda” killed in the preemptive airstrikes were buried already. I guess we’ll just have to take Saleh’s word on the fact that they were indeed terrorists. Did they take DNA? The official story now is these persons provided logistical support to al Qaeda. Shared the cloth houses I guess. And thats bad if its true, dont get me wrong, but it begs the question of why the US air raid and not just go arrest them? Because al Reimi was supposed to be in Arhab? Too bad, yet entirely predictable, that al Reimi slipped away at the last moment. (Read on …)

Al Qaeda in Yemen has a recruiting tool for a decade now, locally and internationally.

Gulf News: The leader of Al Qaida in Abyan, Mohammad Saleh Al Kazimi, was confirmed to be among those killed. The second man in Al Qaida in Yemen, Qasim Al Raimi, reportedly survived the attack. Ten of the Al Qaida members killed in Thursday’s attacks were not Yemenis, according to the report. Between 24-34 Al Qaida members were reportedly killed in the attack, but independent sources and eyewitnesses say that nearly 50 were killed and 60 injured including women and children.

So 25 innocent people were killed and 60 wounded preventing a possible terror attack in Yemen. What is the calculus? The value of 25 unidentified dead possible al Qaeda outweighs the loss the 14 dead dirt poor Bedouin kids? That seems a bit racist. Would the equation be acceptable if they were European kids? What is the ratio of the death value of Yemeni kids to foreign tourists? The celebratory call that followed the air strikes was premature.

WaPo: The United States provided intelligence and other assistance to Yemeni forces in attacks Thursday against suspected al-Qaeda targets, according to officials from both countries…U.S. officials refused to comment Friday on a report by ABC News that U.S. air-launched cruise missiles had been used in two of the attacks. The network said that the launches had been approved by the White House and that President Obama had called President Ali Abdullah Saleh to congratulate him on Yemen’s efforts against al-Qaeda.

Maybe its hard to get good intell from under the bus…

NYTimes: U.S. Aids Yemeni Raids on Al Qaeda, Officials Say

WASHINGTON — The United States provided firepower, intelligence and other support to the government of Yemen as it carried out raids this week to strike at suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda within its borders, according to officials familiar with the operations. The officials said that the American support was approved by President Obama and came at the request of the Yemeni government.

The American contributions were intended to help Yemen to prevent Al Qaeda from mounting attacks against American and other foreign targets inside its borders. Officials declined to say whether those targets were embassies, businesses, schools or other sites. (Read on …)

The choice for the US was a) bring Saleh to the ICC on “crimes against humanity” charges or b) join the air war that already constitutes substantial war crimes. Hmmm…

And in order to select option B, you have to believe that President Ali Abdullah Saleh has one sincere bone in his body despite the magnitude of his lies.

I’m surprised Secretary of State Clinton didn’t smell a rat. She was through this before when Yemen obstructed US investigations after the USS Cole bombing. The State Dept. earlier this year advanced the idea of a major crimes tribunal in Afghanistan. It would have been better suited in Yemen. Now Clinton and Obama are tied to Saleh, against the Yemeni people who are rightfully very cranky after all these decades of incompetent dictatorship. 1431 is going to be rough.

What a disaster!!! What a stupid and reckless move in such a volatile place. Did they rely on Yemeni intel sources? Could they be that stupid? Well you got duped President Obama, 14 kids are dead and Qasim al Reimi “escaped,” which in itself was entirely predictable. Saleh is brilliant tactician. He is wedded to the US now, despite the fact that he is a war criminal. (Read on …)

After all this time and all the lies and all the elaborate hoaxes on the al Qaeda issue, who in the world takes Ali Abdullah Saleh at his word? Who, really?

The tens of millions offered by the Millennium Challenge Account didn’t spur any real reform, and apparently the winning smile just doesn’t cut it in Yemen either.

There’s been enough civilian slaughter in Sa’ada under the guise of counter-insurgency to warrent a war crimes tribunal. And there’s been enough in the South. A bogus counter-terror operation (or a sincere one, but we’ll never see that) doesn’t legitimize US support of a mass murderer.

SANAA (Reuters) – Yemen’s opposition accused the government on Friday of killing dozens of civilians, including whole families, in raids a day earlier which the authorities said had killed about 30 al Qaeda militants. (Read on …)

The wholesale slaughter of Yemenis by their government is well documented. Tactics include bombing, shooting in the head, and intentional starvation. The recent HRW report on the deliberate killing of protesters in Southern Yemen is augmented by their earlier reports on the withholding of aid to Sa’ada civilians, indesriminate bombing and mass arbitrary arrests. Yemeni prisons are filled with innocent people. The US can really no longer say that “Sa’ada is a mystery” or the situation in the south is confusing. Apparently the Obama adminstration is willing to trade off 22 million people for an occasional al Qaeda raid here and there. More frustrating is that Yemen’s counter-terror efforts, when they infrequently occur, are more smoke and mirrors. The bombed children and starving families and activists in jail have been sacrificed for nothing.

Saleh gets telephone call from U.S. President Barack Obama
Thursday, 17-December-2009
Almotamar.net, Saba – President Ali Abdullah Saleh received on Thursday a telephone call from U.S. President Barrack Obama. (Read on …)

Yes, the PSO and other Yemeni security agencies are seriously compromised by al Qaeda infiltration. The Saudi intell in Sana’a are working with Prince Ahmed Saleh, who heads the Special Forces and Republican Guard. So far, in the Sa’ada War, Saudi Arabia is helping President Saleh with money, media propaganda, intell on the ground, tanks and other weaponry, fatwas, a naval blockade, arrests and deportations and air support including bombing villages. Meanwhile Saleh, with all due bluster and pomp, hotly rejects external interference or mediation. The article mentions Qamish, head of the PSO, who had the pissing match with al Qaeda cell leader Hamza al Qaiti after a trio of mortar attacks early in 2008. Al Qaiti blamed al Qamish for a double cross (or faulty equpment) when the mortars missed. Al Qaiti was killed shortly thereafter and before the September 2008 attack on the US embassy.

UPI Dec. 15 — Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service has established a station in Yemen’s capital ostensibly to help coordinate a joint campaign against northern Shiite rebels along the kingdom’s border.

But its main task is understood to be hunting down the Yemen-based operatives of a resurgent al-Qaida that threatens the Saudi monarchy, and eliminating them with extreme prejudice…The Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, the kingdom’s principal intelligence agency, set up its Sanaa operation in June following talks between King Abdallah and Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 40 years. (Read on …)

The last time the Houthi rebels made allegations of direct US bombing was in 2005. The current charges of US bombing are the first in this outbreak of the war and came immediately after General Patraeus said in an interview, “”We offer variety of security assistances to Yemenis as we do almost with many countries in the region, in addition to training and education programs we provide to the Yemeni military.” But thats the normal policy for years already. The US also announced the US special forces were training Yemen’s military. Maybe the rebels thought that was a new policy but its not. In November, six Yemeni military officials trained with the Marines in NC. And whenever the bombs get bigger or more precise in Sa’ada, rumors fly of US involvement. (Read on …)