Yemen

Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki described both the Fort Hood Shooter and the Christmas Day bomber as his “students” in a tape released this weekend, according to press reports. This is not surprising – the evidence tying Awlaki to both terrorists has continued to mount. But Awlaki’s comments highlight, once again, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s many failures in investigating the al Qaeda cleric.

More often than not, Guantanamo detainees’ claims are repeated verbatim, and uncritically, by the press. This is true both here in the U.S. and abroad. And it leads to some curious stories.

Nearly 50 years ago, Yemen fought a civil war pitting the Egyptian-backed government in Sana against insurgents supported by Saudi Arabia and its cadre of European mercenaries. The six-year war was bloody: At one low point in the campaign, Cairo resorted to mustard gas and nerve agents in an effort to stem the rebel tide. In the end, the government prevailed, but not before Egypt lost 26,000 troops.

As Stephen F. Hayes has thoroughly documented, there is much U.S. officials should be asking Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab about. Abdulmutallab was mirandized shortly after his arrest, however, and decided to stop talking. He has provided, at most, limited cooperation since then, prompting administration officials to claim that the FBI got everything that was needed in just 50 minutes. That is implausible for a variety of reasons. But here is one more topic for the interrogation that should have been: What does Abdulmutallab know about the Americans (including ex-convicts) al Qaeda has recruited?

Reuters reports:

Yemen will begin building an $11 million rehabilitation centre for returning Guantanamo detainees in three months when it expects to receive funding from the United States, a government official said on Wednesday.

There are 91 Yemeni detainees left in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Washington suspended transfers to Yemen this month because of a deteriorating security situation in the country, in the throes of a crackdown on a resurgent al Qaeda.

Anybody curious about how and why Yemen became a place where al Qaeda and other jihadist groups operate with apparent impunity--while its government claims to be a reliable ally of the United States--should simply look at a map of the Middle East. Throughout its history Yemen has been different from the rest of its neighbors. It is, in truth, a local pivot--but a permanently wobbling one. It now faces an existential threat, as radicals from within in its borders and around its neighborhood threaten to destroy it, with the apparent complicity of--or at least, a dangerous passivity on the part of--its rulers. In this it resembles that other strategic hub and Islamist target, Pakistan.

What the Obama administration is saying now:

“We never had a plan to transfer Yemenis back to their country if the Yemeni government was not capable of handling that transfer.”
January 6, 2010 -- Robert Gibbs, White House briefing

With respect to closing the Guantanamo detention facility, President Obama said the following on Tuesday:

"Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

The president did not say which statement, in particular, he had in mind. But the “explicit rationale” he references must come from al Qaeda’s own propaganda.

Bloomberg reports:

THIS WEEK, after pulling off one of the most remarkable interdictions in naval history and succeeding for the first time in making nonproliferation something more than a feel-good slogan, the Bush administration concluded that it had made a mistake. Announcing December 10 that the Spanish Navy with U.S. assistance had intercepted an unflagged North Korean ship carrying 15 hidden SCUD missiles, the White House decided the following day to release the shipment to its intended recipient, the government of Yemen.