The Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ordered 3,000 new troops, including members of U.S.-trained counterterrorism units, to support offensives against the Al Qaeda affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), suspected in last week’s foiled package-bomb plot, according to a Yemeni security official.

The Yemeni military campaign, nearly a year old, has garnered few victories against AQAP. Tribal animosities inflamed by the U.S. backed counterterrorism campaign have pulled much-needed local tribal allies away from the government. This blurring of allegiances is also undermining the already weak hold Mr. Saleh has over his country.

The Wall Street Journal reported on 2 November: “We always told the Americans that it’s hard to gauge loyalty among the tribes,” said an adviser to Mr. Saleh. “In Yemen, the tribe comes first, and once tribal blood starts to spill, the bloodshed is hard to stop.”

This has been the same in Iraq and Afghanistan but was slow, if yet, to be learned by U.S. military and political leaders.

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President Ali Abdullah Salih’s Yemen government forces have moved against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQIAP) strong hold in Hawta in the northern Shabwa Province and near Saudi Arabia.

Yemen’s president is caught in a dilemma. He needs money, but must fight the jihadist to get it. He needs peace and posterity, but must accommodate southern secessionists, northern rebels, and the Islamist AQIAP to secure it. The U.S. knows that his regime is corrupt and unpredictable, but the alternatives look even worse, with a possible civil war and famine.

The Global War on Terrorism is bringing more U.S. attention to Yemen. AQIAP claimed responsibility for the attempted December bomber plot on a Detroit bound airline.

A large number of AQIAP extremist are known to have set up operations in Hawta. Unfortunately, the Yemen government forces have set up a siege and have not fully assaulted the AQIAP positions.

Without a resolution of the problems in the country, Yemen’s descent into chaos could make Somalia look like a parade.

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The Washington Post reported on Tue, 24 Aug: “CIA analysts consider al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based offshoot — rather than the core group now based in Pakistan — as cause for an escalation of U.S. operations in the Arabian Peninsula.”

The CIA sees Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate as a seriousa threat to U.S.

Recognizing the CIA control on intelligence and activities that area may give the CIA a far larger role in what has until now been mainly a secret U.S. military campaign against militant targets in Yemen and across the Horn of Africa. It would likely follow the CIA’s covert drone campaign in Pakistan.

The U.S. military’s SOF and the CIA have been working surveillance equipment, drones and personnel in Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia to step up targeting of Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, and Somalia’s Al Shabaab.

Both Yemen and Somalia have become a recruiting and training ground for terrorist. Additionally, both countries have dispatched terrorist to the U.S.

Best defense is a good offense.

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The Washington Post, 30 Dec, 2009, “Former Guantanamo Detainees Fuel Growing Al-Qaeda Cell,“ by Sudarsan Raghavan, said: “Former detainees of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have led and fueled the growing assertiveness of the al-Qaeda branch that claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner, potentially complicating the Obama administration’s efforts to shut down the facility.

They include two Saudi nationals: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s deputy leader, Said al-Shihri, and the group’s chief theological advisor, Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish. Months after their release to Saudi Arabia, both crossed the kingdom’s porous border into Yemen and rejoined the terrorist network.”

The terrorist group led by former Guantanamo (Gitmo to all who served there) detainees equipped and trained the Nigerian bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutalla has to raise questions on plans to close Gitmo and return those prisoners to their home countries. Another six Yemenis were released last week, and there are now 80 Yemenis left at Guantanamo.

Reports on the number of “Enemy Combatants” at Gitmo are reported to be over 200 and many are heavily radicalized by their capture, imprisonment, and association with hard core extremists. Since 2002, more than 550 “Enemy combatants” captured in Afghanistan and sent to Gitmo have been released.

Well now, before I could get this into Poliquicks.com, New York Daily News reports on 31 Dec 2009, that the 91 Yemeni “Enemy Combatants” at Gitmo scheduled to be released are being looked at by the Obama administration as to whether that’s a good idea or not.

It’s not a good idea.

We’ll see.

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Much of American news media has been focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with little attention to Yemen until the Northwest Flight 253 bombing attempt identified parts of Yemen as the suspected bomber’s Al Qaeda training camp.

It is now verifiable that Al Qaeda has an affiliate in parts of Yemen and has become a new haven for Islamic extremist to flee Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

Recently Shiia-Huthi rebels made a huge mistake when they attacked across the Saudi border and killed and injured Saudi Border Guards. Saudi Arabia responded with air strikes on rebel positions along the Yemen-Saudi border and unconfirmed reports have said that Saudi tanks and regular infantry are now in position to be involved in the fight.

The civil war between the Iranian backed Huthi rebels in the north and the Saudi Arabian back Yemen central government has been going on since 2004.

The Saudi Arabian navy has been patrolling the Yemen coastal waters and recently seized a cargo ship carrying Iranian arms for the rebels. Additionally, it has been reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are training the rebels.

The Administration has admitted that the U.S. has entered the war in Yemen with Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on reported Al Qaeda base camps.

It would appear that we now have U.S. forces engaged in three wars – Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.

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A few months ago it was reported that Al-Qaeda, under attack in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had largely been degraded. After the attempted bombing of a Northwest 253 flight bound for Detroit, the same sources in the US and UK intelligence agencies ­ say not only that Al-Qaeda is still a dangerous threat, but that it may have managed to reconstitute new bases of its operations in Somalia and Yemen.

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