Testing a Dangerous Yemen
COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG
By Jonathan Winer
It is no accident that Al Qaeda has found a home in Yemen to prepare for terrorist attacks directed at other countries, including the attempted airplane suicide bombing of last week. Al Qaeda's power there has visibly increased over the past two years, with Al Qaeda in Yemen conducting multiple attacks within the country.
As with Pakistan and Afghanistan, the central government of Yemen has never been in control of tribal areas. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, a small corrupt group around long-time President Abdullah Ali Saleh controls most of the country's wealth, dominated by oil. Like Saudi Arabia, with whom it shares a largely open border (despite efforts by the Saudis to build a security barrier, since halted), Yemen hosts radical Wahabi clerics who promote jihad to would-be holy warriors.
Yemen's attractiveness for terrorists has been further increased by local factors such as the Houthi-Shi'ia rebellion in Yemen's northern Sa'ada province, secessionist war in the south, the estimated six to nine million small arms distributed among its 23 million population, and a national tradition of generating resources through kidnappings-for-ransom. Government institutions and private sector entities operate in an environment with little accountability, enabling illicit financial transactions to move unencumbered within an economy laced with illicit activity. Yemen's government agencies are poorly administered and subject to minimal oversight, and enforcement of regulations on such issues as money laundering and terrorist finance (only recently criminalized) is lax. Afghan Arabs returning to Yemen have penetrated political, security, tribal and religious institutions, and constitute important elements of Al Qaeda in Yemen, which generates funds that move freely through Yemen's cash economy, formal banking system, and alternative remittance houses.
Over the past decade, Yemen's government has balanced actions against terrorists with efforts to work out forms of cohabitation. On the one hand, it has participated with the U.S. and other countries in military training and shared intelligence, especially in the months immediately after 9/11, and prior to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. It worked with the U.S. on the targeting and killing by drone of Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a Yemeni suspected of helping organize the USS Cole attack. More recently, Yemen carried out a raid in August 2008 on an al-Qaida Yemen cell, killing the cell leader. On the other hand, it has provided safe havens to known terrorists through such mechanisms as a surrender program that provides lenient punishment to those who agree to surrender themselves and to cease blowing things up. Yemen refuses to extradite Yemenis to the U.S., regardless of what they have done.
The results have been deficient, especially over the past few years, with Yemen emerging as a stronghold for terrorists training for what Al Qaeda's leaders have termed a "wave of action" against Western targets. Last year's State Department Country Report on Yemenese terrorist activity, including that directed against the U.S., is chilling.
Short-term, President Saleh will need to take visible action to crack down on the places, people, and institutions which are supporting terrorism and which to date have felt safe in Yemen. Here, it would help if the US and UK were not the only countries demanding action. Independent action by the Saudis on the ground in border areas (and perhaps across them, as the Saudis appear to have done repeatedly against the Yemeni Shi'ia), as well as Saudi diplomacy, might help.
Longer term, Yemen faces such problems as massive illiteracy (50% or more, 75% among the country's women), a population on track to double from 23 million to 46 million over the next 20 years, a formal unemployment rate that is already at 35%, water shortages, and oil reserves that are projected to run out within a half generation. Average life expectancy is already short -- just 49 years. Health care is poor, and 40% of the population is undernourished.
And then there is the corruption. Most state contracts are controlled by a small number of people from the northern tribes control in a system of grand corruption that leaves state institutions dominated by patronage networks. These in turn ensure impunity for the the powerful and injustice for the majority, whose basic needs are not met. The result is that most Yemenis do not have a stake in perpetuating the existing system, making instability essentially inevitable.
President Saleh's strategy for the future of his country is to secure power for his son, who recently turned up as the receipient of corrupt funds from a telecommunications company in a U.S. criminal bribery case. The question for the U.S. and other governments is whether it is smart to invest in Yemen's security forces through training and assistance aimed at countering terrorism at the very time that Yemen has been brought to a critical phase of instability under President Saleh's governance.
The UK has already answered this question in the affirmative. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that he is convening a January 28 donor conference in London to coordinate efforts to encourage donations to help build Yemeni government capacity and to counter radicalization. According to 10 Downing Street, the UK will identify counterterrorism needs faced by the Yemeni government and seek commitments to train Yemeni forces and help coordinate counterterrorism in the region, supplementing existing UK support to Yemen "to tackle the underlying causes of the terrorist threat through intelligence support, training of counterterror units, capacity building and development programs."
Before getting further into support of President Saleh's regime, concrete tests may be in order. Presumably, the U.S, UK and other nations will work with Yemen to identify the locations in Yemen of Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi and former Guantanamo detainee Saeed Ali Shehri, two leaders of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, as well as Anwar al-Awlaki, whose calls to action helped to inspire the Fort Hood terrorist murders, and who was nearly killed by a US drone December 24. We should expect successful raids (by drone or in person) that punish, incapacitate, arrest, and deter, repeated as needed in the weeks to come. Such successful operations will surely result in continued international assistance to Yemen, ultimately providing help to those who deserve something better than a failed state.
If instead, critical counter-terrorist operations with Yemen experience leaks and failures, with al-Awlaki and his cohorts surviving raids to continue their threats to public safety, other strategies may be needed, including ones that are not predicated on members of the Saleh family being in charge of the country forever. |
