Counterterror efforts in Yemen expected to be difficult

Counterterror efforts in Yemen expected to be difficult
By Josh Meyer, Chicago Tribune
Stars and Stripes online edition, Sunday, January 3, 2010

WASHINGTON — As the war on terrorism turns toward the al-Qaida threat from Yemen, U.S. intelligence officials say that the country's strategic location, lawlessness and instability may make it an even more problematic battleground than Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The impoverished nation, already struggling with civil war, has become a far more inviting haven for al-Qaida fighters than even Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials say.

The severity of the threat — and the United States' deepening involvement — were underscored by President Barack Obama on Saturday as he declared a new counterterrorism partnership with Yemen that will include more intelligence sharing, training and possibly joint attacks against the rising al-Qaida affiliate in the region, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Obama's top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, arrived in Yemen on Saturday to meet with President Ali Abdallah Saleh and announce that the U.S. will sharply increase its counterterrorism aid in the coming year. The Yemeni government also deployed hundreds of troops into the mountainous Marib province and other al-Qaida strongholds as a show of its commitment.

Obama, offering new details on the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner, said that the Yemen branch of al-Qaida trained, equipped and dispatched the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up the Northwest Airlines plane.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66998