Wuhayshi has declared that jihad is a duty that God has made incumbent, reasoning that Johnson says “leaves no room for negotiation. … Under his leadership, al-Qaeda in Yemen has become more strident, better organized and more ambitious than it has ever been in years.”

This generation of younger veterans is infinitely more dangerous than its predecessors. One of its first operations was an act of vengeance that delivered a bloody message to the Sana’a regime. On March 29 of last year, they assassinated Ali Mahmud Qasaylah, the intelligence chief in Marib province east of Sana’a, an Islamist stronghold.

Upping the tempo. Qasaylah headed security operations against al-Qaeda, and he was supposedly killed to avenge the assassination of the organization’s first leader in Yemen, Abu Ali al-Harithi. In November 2002, al-Harithi was killed with five other jihadis in an attack on his car in the Marib desert, by a missile-armed Predator drone controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Over the last year, Yemeni author-ities claim to have foiled several plots against Americans in Sana’a, while the tempo of actual attacks has accelerated alarmingly. For example:
• July 2, 2007: Eight Spanish tourists and two Yemeni drivers were killed in a suicide car bombing of their convoy in Marib governate, near a temple dating back to the time of the Queen of Sheba.
• Jan. 18, 2008: Two Belgian tourists and two Yemeni guides were shot dead in eastern Yemen.
• March 18: The heavily guarded American Embassy in downtown Sana’a, a frequent jihadi target since 1988, was mortared, killing a police officer. One round hit a nearby girls’ school in the Sawan district, wounding eight pupils.
• March 27: An oil pipeline operated by the French oil company Total was bombed in Hadramaut. Two days later, an oilfield run by a Chinese company was attacked there. These followed two foiled suicide attacks on major oil and gas installations in September 2006. The new al-Qaeda has clearly made Yemen’s energy industry, which produces three-quarters of the national budget, a priority.
• April 6: Jihadis rocketed a Sana’a compound housing American oil workers. The following day, the State Department ordered all non-essential staff and their families to leave Yemen.
• April 16: Three Yemeni soldiers were killed in a bombing at a Marib checkpoint near where the Spanish tourists were slaughtered.

Yemenis have been a key component of al-Qaeda since it was founded in 1998, and bin Laden considers Yemen an important base. Michael Scheuer, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency unit charged with tracking bin Laden before resigning in 2004, notes that the al-Qaeda leader and his strategists have “always valued what they refer to as ‘the strategic depth’ that Yemen affords.”
Scheuer says Yemen provides al-Qaeda with “a pivotal, central base that links its theaters of operation in Afghan-istan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, East Africa and the Far East. It also provides a base for training Yemeni [and other] fighters … and refit of fighters from multiple Islam-ist groups after their tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.”

   Email This Post      Print This Post       Previous | Next