Yemen’s War on Terror

Abstract

Yemen has emerged of late as one of the more fertile locations for Al Qaeda activity. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate, the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan (IAA), has executed a number of spectacular attacks against Western interests in recent years. It was responsible for the 1998 kidnapping of sixteen Western tourists in the southern province of Abyan, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, and an assault on the French tanker the Limburg in 2002, among other attacks. Despite these international strikes, the IAA is the classic Al Qaeda affiliate: a local phenomenon that assists the larger jihadi network in its war against the West. Historically, Yemen has often been the site of proxy battles among foreign powers, from Pan-Arabists to communists. Not surprisingly, Al Qaeda has also used Yemen as a staging ground. The network has been active in Yemen since its inception: Al Qaeda’s first-ever attack took place in Aden in 1992. What started as a loose network of Yemeni Afghans—soldiers who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then brought radical Islam back to Yemen when they returned home in the early 1990s—slowly became a node in the Al Qaeda system. More than fourteen years after the end of the Soviet withdrawal in 2003, government officials in Yemen confirmed that several senior Al Qaeda operatives were still at large in Yemen, with dozens of lesser militants roaming the countryside. 1 While Yemen has cooperated with the United States on counterterrorism issues, making significant arrests and thwarting several plots, Al Qaeda is nonetheless likely to maintain deep roots there for years to come.