Riyadh | May 23

Reuters - Saudi Arabia, concerned that chaos in Yemen is creating an al Qaeda base on its doorstep, pledged $3.25 billion in aid to its neighbour at a donor group meeting two days after more than 90 Yemeni soldiers were killed in a suicide attack.

Riyadh, which already provides oil and military aid to its impoverished neighbour, convened Western and Arab Gulf nations to see how they can help Yemen push ahead with reforms and tackle its poverty and lawlessness.

Go read David Axe on how Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti joined the dots to throw some new light on America's shadow wars along Africa's Indian Ocean coastline. F-15s based in Djibouti carrying out airstrikes in Yemen, spyplanes at the same airbase, Reaper drones with bases in the Seychelles Yemen and Ethiopia. Axe himself adds the possibility of a floating headquarters for special forces ops sitting somewhere of the coast.

America is waging more wars, with a bigger involvement, than it wants to admit.

Former Director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center Robert Grenier makes the case against a stepped-up drone campaign in Yemen over at Al Jazeera:

I do not claim deep knowledge of developments in Shabwa Privince, but when I hear significant numbers of tribal militants being referred to as al-Qaeda operatives, and AQAP, a small organisation dominated by non-Yemenis, being alleged to have political control of significant parts of Yemen, I react with some scepticism, and some suspicion.

One wonders how many Yemenis may be moved in future to violent extremism in reaction to carelessly targeted missile strikes, and how many Yemeni militants with strictly local agendas will become dedicated enemies of the West in response to US military actions against them. AQAP and those whom it trains and motivates to strike against civilian targets must continue to be resisted by the joint efforts of the civilised world. But the US would be wise to calibrate its actions in Yemen in such a way as to avoid making that obscure and relatively limited and containable threat into the Arabian equivalent of Waziristan.

the militarization of US counter-terrorism policy over the past decade has meant that turning a local problem group into one fixated on the "far enemy" of America, whether it be by occupation or drone strikes, is a regular occurence.

Greg Miller & Karen DeYoung | May 10

WaPo - The United States launched airstrikes in Yemen on Thursday that killed as many as seven militants, the second American missile attack in the country since the CIA and other spy agencies disrupted an al-Qaeda airline bomb plot, U.S. officials said.

The strike came as new details surfaced about the foiling of the plot, including the disclosure that the operative who posed as a willing suicide bomber and later turned the device over to authorities was a British citizen, according to Western officials.

Washington | May 7

AFP - The United States has foiled a plot by Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen to blow up an airliner and recovered an explosive device, officials said Monday, stressing the public was never in danger.

"The device was for use by a suicide bomber on an airliner," a US counterterrorism official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The plot hatched by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was uncovered at an early stage and represented a "success story" for US authorities working closely with allies, he added.

"At no point were any airlines at risk," the official said, as news of the plot was revealed just days after the first anniversary of the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden by US commandos at his Pakistan hideout.

The bomb had "notable differences" from the explosive employed in a failed attempt also linked to the Al-Qaeda affiliate to blow up a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 using plastic explosives hidden in a Nigerian man's underwear, the official said.

According to the FBI, the improvised explosive device was seized abroad and was currently in its possession. Agents were "conducting technical and forensics analysis on it."

"Initial exploitation indicates that the device is very similar to IEDs that have been used previously by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in attempted terrorist attacks, including against aircraft and for targeted assassinations," the FBI statement added.

The bomb was "a non-metallic device," the counterterrorism official said, presumably to avoid detection by airport security. "This suggests AQAP is adapting its methodology, its tactics et cetera."

Jim Lobe | Washington | April 26

IPS - Even as President Barack Obama touts his progress in extracting the U.S. from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his administration appears to be deepening its covert and military involvement in strife-torn Yemen.

Washington is worried about recent advances by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), particularly in the southern part of the country.

Since the failed "Christmas Day" bombing by an AQAP-trained Nigerian national of a U.S. airliner over Detroit in December 2009, the group has been regarded here as a greater threat to the U.S. homeland than its Pakistan-based parent.

Sana'a | March 11

Dallas Morning News - Yemeni military officials said Sunday that U.S. aircraft carried out four airstrikes in a southern province where al-Qaida-linked militants control several key towns.

Two military officials said the airstrikes targeted Khanfar Mountain near the town of Jaar in Abyan province, where al-Qaida is in control.

There was no comment from U.S. officials.

Jeremy Scahill's latest, an account of his recent time in Yemen, is a must-read. "Washington's War in Yemen Backfires."

The United States “should have never made counterterrorism a source of profit for the regime, because that increased terrorism,” asserts Iryani. “Their agenda was to keep terrorism alive, because it was their cash cow.” The US bombings, he said, were “a bad mistake. Military action often backfires by killing civilians, by the violation of sovereignty. That offends a lot of Yemenis.” For the United States, the most serious question that lingers over Yemen after Ali Abdullah Saleh is: Did US counterterrorism policy strengthen the very threat it sought to eliminate? “It was a major fiasco,” Iryani says of the past decade of US counterterrorism policy in Yemen. “I think if we had been left alone, we would have less terrorists in Yemen than we do now.”

It seems as if everywhere the U.S. goes it is only concerned with short-term band-aids and only reaps longer-term negative blowback.

Kareem Fahim & Laura Kasinof | Sana'a | November 23

NYT - After months of street protests calling for his resignation, President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement Wednesday that Yemeni officials said immediately transferred power to his vice president.

If the agreement holds up, it would end Mr. Saleh’s 33 years of authoritarian rule and make him the fourth leader forced from power in the uprisings that have shaken the Middle East and North Africa. But the deal is unlikely to restore calm anytime soon to a country that has become increasingly important to the United States as Islamist militants have gained a stronger hold.

Oct 8

BBC - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said that he will step down from power within the "coming days".

Mr Saleh has appeared to be ready to resign several times, but pulled out of deals to stand down at the last moment.

He returned to Yemen unexpectedly last month from Saudi Arabia where he had been receiving treatment after his office was shelled in June.

He is faced with protests and an insurrection by renegade army units.

He has also repeatedly refused to sign a transition deal brokered by Gulf states, and first presented in March, whereby he would hand over power to his vice-president in return for immunity from prosecution.

But Yemen's deputy information minister told the BBC that Mr Saleh was no longer clinging to power.

"I reject power and I will continue to reject it, and I will be leaving power in the coming days," he said.

"It's not because I crave power, I reject power and I will leave it in the coming days and leave it behind," Mr Saleh said.

"There are sincere men, whether they be military or civilian," who are capable of governing Yemen, he added.

But the speech appears not to have referred to the Gulf-mediated transition deal.

yada yada yada

Sept 30

BBC - US-born radical Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a key al-Qaeda leader, has been killed in Yemen, the country's defence ministry said.

US President Barack Obama said his death was a major blow to al-Qaeda.

Awlaki, of Yemeni descent, has been on the run in Yemen since December 2007.

The US named him a "global terrorist" and said he had played a "significant role" in plots to blow up US airliners and use poison to kill US citizens.

Mr Obama is said to have personally ordered his killing last year.

Yemen's defence ministry statement said only that Awlaki had died in Khashef in Jawf province, about 140km (87 miles) east of the capital, Sanaa, "along with some of his companions".

US and Yemeni officials later named one of those as Samir Khan, also a US citizen but of Pakistani origin, who produced an online magazine promoting al-Qaeda's ideology.

Amazing how many major blows occur...

** Lots of Senior Officials Spilling State Secrets Today
** Ron Paul condemns killing of U.S.-born al-Qaida cleric
** Same US military unit that got Osama bin laden killed Anwar al-Awlaki
** Anwar al-Awlaki and America's fear of the enemy within

Sept 24

BBC - At least 17 people have been killed in a government assault on protesters in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, reports say.

Witnesses say the demonstrators came under fire in Change Square, the focus of months of protests.

Fighting is continuing to rage, as troops target protesters and dissident soldiers.

The violence comes a day after the return of President Ali Abdullah Saleh from three months' treatment in Saudi Arabia following an assassination bid.

Correspondents say his arrival back in Yemen raises the risk of all-out civil war.

The upsurge in violence happened at the end of a week of fighting in which scores of people are reported to have died.

Unconfirmed reports say Saturday's toll from the fighting in Sanaa may be much higher than 17.

"More bodies and injured are pouring into the hospital," Mohammed al-Qabati, a medic at the field hospital in the square, told AP news agency.

Sana'a | Sept 16

Gulf news - Officials in Saudi Arabia and Yemen say that President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not return to Sana'a and will, instead, remain in Riyadh, where he has been since June recuperating from serious wounds after an attack on his compound in June.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because they were not authorised to release the information.

On Thursday, the US State Department said in a statement that it believes Saleh could sign a Gulf-sponsored proposal to transfer power to his vice president within a week.

Saleh has drawn back several times from signing the power transfer accord proposed by Yemen's powerful neighbors.

Adam Baron | Sana'a | August 7

McClatchy - The Yemeni capital remained tense Sunday as a second day of clashes between government forces and armed supporters of powerful tribal leader Sheikh Sadiq al Ahmar threatened to reignite large scale fighting in the city.

A tenuous calm has held since the days of fierce fighting between government troops and dissident tribesmen brought Sanaa to the brink of war in late May. These renewed clashes come amid reports that embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been the target of nearly six months of anti-government protests, is preparing to transfer from the Saudi hospital for further recuperation in Saudi government housing in Riyadh.

Zinjibar, Yemen | July 30

RFI - At least 42 people have died in violence near Yemen's southern city of Zinjibar, most of which is reportedly now controlled by armed groups which the government accuses of being members of Al-Qaeda.

Eleven people including top officers were killed in fierce clashes in Dofas, a village 15 kilometres south of the Abyan provincial capital, the military said Saturday.

"Al-Qaeda elements stationed in Dofas attacked army units there using machine-guns on Friday, killing two officers and four soldiers, and wounding nine others," a military official in the village told the AFP news agency.

We've now spent one trillion dollars on the war on terror. What have we gotten in return?

...I would think Anthony Weiner's "mistake" wasn't.

While the nation has been focused on one dick, a bunch of other dicks in the White House have been fighting a shadow war in Yemen:

A major American newspaper is reporting that the U.S. government has intensified its covert war in Yemen in recent weeks, deploying armed drones and fighter jets to attack militant suspects seeking to undermine the shaky Sana'a government.

Citing U.S. officials, The New York Times said that after nearly a year-long pause in American airstrikes, the U.S. has accelerated its campaign in an attempt to keep militants linked to al-Qaida from consolidating power. The attacks are being led by the U.S. Defense Department's Joint Special Operations Command in close coordination with the CIA.

Mark Mazzetti | Washington | June 8

NYT - The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.

Washington | May 25

AP - The State Department on Wednesday ordered nonessential U.S. diplomats to depart Yemen and urged all Americans there to leave as security conditions deteriorated with the country’s embattled leader refusing to step down.

The decision to tell most nonessential personnel and the families of all American staff at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa to leave was a sign of Washington’s increasing concern about the situation in Yemen, where street battles between supporters and opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh raged for a third day. The clashes have left at least 41 dead and dozens badly injured.

“The security threat level in Yemen is extremely high due to terrorist activities and civil unrest,” the State Department said in its advisory. “There is ongoing civil unrest throughout the country and large-scale protests in major cities.”

AQAP will do everything it can in the short term to take advantage of the security vacuum caused by the current turmoil in Yemen

Michael W. S. Ryan | May 20

Jamestown Foundation - Information seized by American forces in Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad has sparked questions about Bin Laden’s involvement in the planning and current strategy behind al-Qaeda operations in places like Yemen. We have known for some time that Bin Laden has had a strategic relationship with Yemen, but we did not know to what extent his personal involvement continued in recent years (see Terrorism Focus, February 2, 2008). Some have speculated that Bin Laden’s death should not only demoralize al-Qaeda but should also remove a major source of authoritative planning and decision- making. The obvious immediate task for American authorities is to glean whatever information may help deter or disrupt planned terrorist operations. A longer-term goal must be to understand the extent to which al-Qaeda affiliates continue to follow a common strategy and doctrine even in the absence of the iconic Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda’s media output continues to be a good indicator of at least the intentions of the affiliates.

In the case of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), we previously have had strong evidence that the local affiliate has been following al-Qaeda’s global plan to exhaust American patience, resources, and political will to maintain a strong military posture in the Middle East in general and the Arabian Peninsula in particular. ...

Photo: Yemen soldiers, by Franco Pecchio

Uri Friedman | May 18

The Atlantic Wire - We're told this morning that Yemen's president and official opposition bloc, hemmed in by Western pressure, have agreed to sign a Gulf-brokered deal today in which Ali Abdullah Saleh would step down within a month and usher in new elections in exchange for immunity from prosecution, potentially putting an end to three tumultuous months of bloody protests against Saleh's three-decade rule. Reuters has confirmation from an opposition official, Al Arabiya from a Saleh adviser. Big news, right?

Here's the problem: We've seen this before. In the face of popular protests calling for his immediate resignation, Saleh has gradually moved up his departure date from 2013 to 2011 in what we called his "shrinking self-imposed deadline to step down" back in March. In April we reported--in a post eerily similar to today's--that Saleh had agreed to a Gulf-mediated deal to relinquish power within 30 days, only to see the agreement unravel at the last minute.

Photo: Iranian leader, former President Seyed Mohammad Khātamī, meeting Yemen President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, in 2003 to re-affirm Iran-Yemen ties, by michaeldebeul

Saleh's strategy of escalating violence suggests that he is desperate.

J. Dana Stuster | May 18

The Atlantic - The town of al 'Urr lies in the heart of Yafai, a tribal and geographic delineation. Yafai as a region used to be part of the Democratic Republic of Yemen, the socialist country that merged with the Republic of Yemen in 1990 to form Yemen as it exists today. Many of the Yafai, as a people, are loyalists to the southern cause in the 1994 civil war that, in their view, has not ended.

Tensions between the Yafai and Republican Guard forces, stationed at a nearby base, erupted into gunfire in late April, and skirmishes continued until May 1. On May 2, the Republican Guard forces withdrew from al 'Urr. Video posted to YouTube shows tanks rolling out of the area under white flags made of undershirts, as villagers chant "leave" and "the people want the fall of the regime." Yafai tribesmen plundered the empty base for munitions left behind. Pictures show piles of spent bullet casings and Yafai tribesmen climbing over an abandoned tank while one man holds a homemade Democratic Republic of Yemen flag. On the morning of May 3, the Yemeni Air Force bombed the base. PressTV reported three dead, while the Yemen Rights Monitor blog counted eight injured. ...

Photo: SANAA, YEMEN | FEB 17 by Sallam

Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been referred to as an Al Qaeda leader, strategist, or ideologue – and now, as a successor to Osama bin Laden.

Erik Stier | May 10 | Sanaa, Yemen

The Christian Science Monitor - Following the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, some Western analysts see Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen as next in line to lead Al Qaeda because of the preacher's inspirational role in past attacks on America from a nation considered increasingly important for the global terrorism brand.

The US-born cleric has been a high priority since President Obama made him the first American approved for targeted killing in April 2010. Last week, the US confirmed that drone strikes in Shabwa province were aimed at the Yemeni-American who is said to have inspired the Fort Hood shooter, the 2009 Christmas Day underwear bomber, and last year's parcel bomb plot targeting America.

But while Mr. Awlaki may be garnering attention in the West, there is little evidence to indicate that he wields significant influence within Yemen’s Al Qaeda offshoot – Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) – much less its central command in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ...

Photo by by Sallam

The raid and subsequent killing of Osama bin Laden will echo for years, if not decades, to come:

Since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, al Qaeda has spawned affiliated groups in the Middle East and North Africa and inspired attacks by so-called home-grown militants in Europe and the United States.

But White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said bin Laden's death was the latest in a series of U.S. operations that have delivered "severe body blows" to al Qaeda's central network in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past year.

Amed Al-Haj | Sana'a | April 28

AP - Yemeni security forces opened fire on a massive antigovernment demonstration in the capital Sana yesterday, killing nine protesters and wounding some 100, a doctor at the scene said.

The violence broke out as about 100,000 government opponents filled a landmark square at the epicenter of the uprising, spilling into the streets around the state television building. Witnesses said security forces, including members of the elite Republican Guard, fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowd to break it up. Snipers were seen on nearby rooftops aiming at the crowd.

“Many of the dead and wounded were shot in the head and torso,’’ said Dr. Mohammed al-Ibahi.