Taking on Al Qaeda, with help and a nudge from abroad.


By ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON - In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according to a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels. As American investigators sought to corroborate the claims of a 23-year-old Nigerian man that Qaeda leaders in Yemen had trained and equipped him to blow up a Detroitbound Northwest Airlines jet on December 25, the plot casts a spotlight on the Obama administration’s complicated relationship with Yemen.

The country has long been a refuge for jihadists, in part because Yemen’s government welcomed returning Islamist fighters who had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The Yemen port of Aden was the site of the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in 2000 by Qaeda militants, which killed 17 sailors.

But Qaeda militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting attacks more frequently on foreign embassies and other targets. The White House is seeking to nurture enduring ties with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and prod him to combat the local Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, even as his impoverished country grapples with seemingly intractable internal turmoil.

With fears also growing of a resurgent Islamist extremism in nearby Somalia and East Africa, administration officials and American lawmakers said Yemen could become Al Qaeda’s next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization’s top leaders operate.

“Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who visited the country in August. “We have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

President Saleh agreed to expanded overt and covert assistance in response to growing pressure from the United States and Yemen’s neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia, from which many Qaeda operatives had fled to Yemen, as well as a rising threat against the country’s political inner circle, the officials said.

Yemen’s remote areas are notoriously lawless, but the country’s chaos has worsened in the past two years, as the government struggles with an armed rebellion in the northwest and a rising secessionist movement in the south. Yemen is running out of oil, and the government’s dwindling finances have affected its ability to strike at Al Qaeda.

Yemen escalated its campaign against Al Qaeda with airstrikes on December 17 and December 24 that killed more than 60 militants. American officials said the United States had provided intelligence and “firepower” for the attacks. Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, said Yemeni military cooperation with the United States and Saudi Arabia had increased in recent months as fresh intelligence confirmed Al Qaeda’s greater assertiveness in the country.

Other countries in the region also have increased their financial assistance to help Yemen, said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in particular provided aid, he said, because “they feel that sooner or later they will become targets too.”


Yemen, with foreign help, is stepping up its fight against Al Qaeda.
Yemenis protested a government raid on militants. / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES