U.S. to Join Talks on Helping Yemen

A month after the failed airplane bomb plot that put this country’s problem with Al Qaeda in the international spotlight, the United States and 20 other countries are gathering for a conference on Wednesday in London to discuss ways to address Yemen’s growing instability. But in their efforts to move beyond a narrowly military approach to fighting Al Qaeda here, the conference participants are likely to run up against a morass of social, political and logistical obstacles that have frustrated similar efforts in the past. And some diplomats and analysts say they fear that the sudden rush of aid and attention, if it is not handled properly, could reinforce patterns of patronage that have contributed indirectly to Yemen’s culture of extremism. Western donors have already begun increasing their aid commitments, and the London conference — though not aimed at securing more money — is focused on the need to address the many crises that help breed radicalism in Yemen.

The facts are appalling: half the population is living on less than $2 a day; the official rate of illiteracy is 45 percent; fewer than half of Yemenis from ages 15 to 24 are employed. Outside the major cities, access to public water supplies, electricity and health services is vanishingly rare. Those desperately poor hinterlands have become a haven for Qaeda militants, who have regrouped here in the past two years and claimed credit for training Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian militant accused of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound jet on Dec. 25.

Addressing Yemen’s needs, though, is no simple matter. As in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, security concerns have put some of this country’s poorest and most dangerous areas beyond the reach of development assistance. An intermittent war rages in the country’s remote north, and a secessionist movement has grown worse in the south. A vast, corrupt and spectacularly inefficient government bureaucracy has been a stubborn obstacle to aid as well. For those reasons, only a tiny fraction of the $4.7 billion pledged to Yemen during a London donor conference in 2006 has been spent. More money, in other words, is not necessarily the answer. Yemen’s main development agency, the Social Fund for Development, has $12 million in unspent aid money for the Jawf Province, a huge, impoverished area where Qaeda militants have found refuge, said the agency’s director, Abdulkarim Ismail al-Arhabi. The province is too dangerous, and there are no effective intermediaries who could help spend it, Mr. Arhabi said. Western donors say they understand the challenges and are calling for political and economic reform to pave the way for more effective aid. Fixing Yemen’s system of diesel fuel subsidies — which consume almost a third of the budget and are widely said to be an avenue for smuggling and kickbacks — is an important priority, diplomats say.

The conference will also seek a more unified international approach to Yemen, including support from its immediate neighbors. Pressing Persian Gulf countries to open their labor markets to Yemenis could provide tremendous relief for the ailing economy, Western and Yemeni officials say. Another focus will be Saudi Arabia, which gives far more to Yemen than any other country, though mostly through unofficial channels. Western diplomats say they hope to persuade Saudi Arabia to start making its support conditional on political and economic reforms in Yemen. But previous reform efforts have repeatedly stalled. And diplomats say that the publicity created by the Dec. 25 bombing attempt could generate more foreign military and development aid, which in turn could — without the necessary reforms — strengthen the patronage networks that have helped weaken Yemen’s state institutions in the past.

Part of the problem, critics say, is that Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has concentrated too much power in his own hands, skillfully balancing the country’s various political and tribal groups over his 32 years in office, but failing to build a modern state. “At the heart of the economic problem is corruption, and at the heart of the corruption problem is unchecked presidential power,” said Abdel Ghani al-Iryani, a political consultant. Government officials counter that patronage is part of the price of stability in a country that is fragmented along lines of sect, tribe, region and social class. They say that corruption, though widespread, has been exaggerated, and that reforms are under way. Last year Mr. Saleh endorsed a 10-point plan that would bring new blood to the civil service and cut back on the government’s use of diesel fuel. “The corruption is a symptom of the lack of money, the lack of capacity for monitoring this kind of thing,” said Jalal Yacoub, a deputy finance minister and one of the authors of the plan.

The Yemeni state’s administrative weakness, Mr. Yacoub added, derives in part from two major crises of recent years. North Yemen and South Yemen united in 1990, and the north had to absorb hundreds of thousands of public employees from the formerly socialist south. A year later, Saudi Arabia expelled a million Yemeni laborers, following Mr. Saleh’s decision to side with Saddam Hussein in the first Persian Gulf war. Afterward, the Yemeni civil service became a social safety net, as Yemen struggled to find jobs for the returning workers. Mr. Yacoub and other Yemeni officials say they put their hopes in well-financed pilot projects that can quickly improve people’s lives, especially in remote areas where distrust of the government is high. That is also the goal of the United States Agency for International Development, which channels its aid mostly through Yemeni nongovernmental groups. The agency signed a $121 million three-year development assistance program in September, a major increase. But that effort will be hampered by Washington’s inability to send Americans to Yemen’s most dangerous areas, which are also some of its poorest. And they are not the first efforts of their kind. Starting in 2003, a former United States envoy, Edmund J. Hull, traveled to Marib, Jawf, Shabwa and Abyan Provinces to foster aid projects, including the building of new hospitals. “The formula was ‘no security without development, no development without security,’ ” Mr. Hull recalled. “I proposed a virtuous circle to replace the vicious circle.”

Today, the provinces Mr. Hull focused on constitute the main havens of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Source: New York Times

Bin Laden warns US of more attacks

Osama bin Laden has warned Barack Obama, the US president, that there will be further attacks on the United States unless he takes steps to resolve the Palestinian situation.



In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera on Sunday, the al-Qaeda chief, praised the Nigerian accused of a failed attempt to blow up an airliner heading for Detroit on Christmas Day. "The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you," Bin Laden said. "America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly. "Therefore, with God's will, our attacks on you will continue as long as you continue to support Israel," bin Laden said. "If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes."

The Obama administration said intelligence analysts had not confirmed that the al-Qaeda leader's voice was on the tape. But it quickly dismissed its significance. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, told CNN's State of the Union programme that "assuming that it is him, his message contains the same hollow justifications for the mass slaughters of innocents that we've heard before". "And the irony is that he's killed more Muslims than people from any other religion - he's a murderer," Axelrod added.

Phil Rees, the author of Dining with Terrorists, told Al Jazeera: "Bin Laden has a great sense of timing; it's a complete poke in the eye to President Obama at a time when Obama is domestically suffering. "The reference to Palestine is possibly the most interesting part of this because he almost now becomes the al-Qaeda leader that speaks about Palestine."What you've now got in Gaza is bin Laden looking at the situation where there's a peace process which is going nowhere, and in an ironic way, Hamas is at the frontline of the battle with al-Qaeda there."

Azzam Tamimi, a political analyst and the author of Hamas the Unwritten Chapters, said that bin Laden was simply using the Palestinian issue in an attempt to mobilise Muslims against the US. "I would say that al-Qaeda has not been able to set foot in many places in the Muslim world despite its rhetoric," he told Al Jazeera. "In Palestine they failed miserably and that is why I understand this message as a return to the older strategy of waging war against America and the world order in the skies. "It is very difficult to compete with an organisation like Hamas in Palestine."

Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for the Hamas movement, told Al Jazeera that the Palestinians were focused on ending the Israeli occupation. "All Arabs and Muslims support our cause. [But] the Palestinian position is clear, the resistance is against the occupation, the Israeli army who is occupying and killing our people," he said. "Everyone knows that the policies of the US have created huge problems in the region. At this moment, we know who our enemy is - the Israeli occupation."Imtiaz Gul, the chairman of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, questioned whether the tape was genuine."I think the validity of this tape should be subjected to scrutiny because we haven't heard from Mr Bin Laden for quite some time."

In the attempted attack on Christmas Day, Abdulmutallab, who is now in US police custody, allegedly tried to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 made its final descent to Detroit. He had boarded the flight in Amsterdam, but purchased his tickets in Ghana on December 16. Passengers on the flight were able to overpower the would-be bomber as he attempted to ignite the explosive's fuse. After being taken into custody, Abdulmutallab told police he had been directed by al-Qaeda and had obtained his explosive device in Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the organisation's affiliate in Yemen, has said it armed Abdulmutallab, describing the attempted attack as revenge for the US role in a Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda. Obama has criticised his own intelligence agencies for failing to piece together information about the suspect which should have stopped him boarding the flight.

Source: Al Jazeera

Al-Awlaki's father says son is 'not Osama bin Laden'

His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al-Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen. "I am now afraid of what they will do with my son, he's not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. As recently as Sunday, Yemeni officials including provincial governor Al Hasan al-Ahmadi claimed that al-Awlaki was hiding out in the southern mountains of Yemen with al Qaeda. "He's dead wrong. What do you expect my son to do? There are missiles raining down on the village. He has to hide. But he is not hiding with al Qaeda; our tribe is protecting him right now," insisted al-Awlaki's father in an exclusive interview with CNN. "My son is (a) wanted man, he's cornered, that's the problem I am facing," al-Awlaki said.

The al-Awlaki family comes from the large and powerful Awalek tribe of southern Yemen. It has many connections to the government of Yemen, including the country's prime minister, who is a relative of the al-Awlaki family. Recently, Yemeni officials have also claimed that Anwar al-Awlaki had contact with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab during his stay in Yemen in late 2009. When asked if his son met with the man charged with trying to blow up a U.S.-bound plane on Christmas day, al-Awlaki's father said it's not likely. "I have no idea but I don't believe it," he said. But the United States has independent intelligence verifying that AbdulMutallab met with al-Awlaki somewhere in southern Yemen before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, according to a U.S. security official with knowledge of the intelligence.

Even if al-Awlaki is hiding out with his tribe in the mountains of southern Yemen, the official added, authorities have no doubt that he is a member of al Qaeda and is now one of the top five or six operatives in Yemen for the terrorist organization. The official said al-Awlaki's transformation from inspirational leader to operational recruiter for al Qaeda was first picked up in the early part of 2009. This official also noted that the United States believes he is still involved in trying to recruit more bombers to launch attacks.

His father, the elder al-Awlaki, is an accomplished academic and had held several positions within the Yemeni government, including minister of agriculture. He first went to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in the late '60s, and his son Anwar was born there in 1971. Al-Awlaki says he is doing what he can to coax his son out of hiding, but does not want to jeopardize his son's life. "I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said. "If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.

Al-Awlaki acknowledged his son has espoused some controversial views but all of them, he said, would be protected by freedom of speech provisions in the American Constitution. He denied his son has done anything to encourage terrorists to commit violent acts. "He is a preacher, you cannot tie Anwar to acts of terrorism," said al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki's name surfaced in November when U.S. officials revealed he and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 -- had exchanged e-mails. The intercepted e-mails between the two, officials said, had not not set off alarm bells. The cleric recently told Al Jazeera's Arabic-language Web site that he met Hasan nine years ago while serving as an imam at a mosque in the Washington, D.C., area. He said he lauded the Fort Hood attack because it was aimed at troops, whom he accused of fighting an unjust war against Islam. "It is a military target inside America and there is no dispute over that," Anwar al-Awlaki said. "Also, these military personnel are not ordinary; they were trained and ready to fight and kill oppressed Muslims, and commit crimes in Afghanistan." When asked why his son would praise Hasan, Nasser al-Awlaki said he did not agree with his son's views. "I don't think that's right what he said about Major Hasan's actions, but my son has been very upset by the violence against Muslims," said al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki does concede his son's views did seem more radical after he spent time in a Yemeni prison from 2006 to 2007 for suspected ties to terrorism. He was released for lack of evidence. "They put him in jail for 18 months and I detected a change after he got out of prison, he began to get away from the mainstream," al-Awlaki said. The father also warned that the aggressive hunt for his son and al Qaeda operatives in Yemen using missile strikes will only serve to recruit more members to the organization. "I don't want those American cowboys to destroy Yemen," said al-Awlaki before conceding that the hunt for al Qaeda in Yemen is now a global concern. He has been wrongly accused, it's unbelievable. He lived his life in America, he's an all-American boy. My son would love to go back to America, he used to have a good life in America. Now he's hiding in the mountains, he doesn't even have safe water to drink," al-Awlaki said.

Source: CNN

U.S. Says Plane Passenger Tried to Detonate Device

A Nigerian man with possible terrorist ties sneaked an explosive onto a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight on Friday and tried to ignite it as the plane prepared to land in Detroit, federal officials said. The device, described by officials as a mixture of powder and liquid, failed to fully detonate. Passengers on the plane described a series of pops that sounded like firecrackers.

Federal officials said the man wanted to bring the plane down. ''We believe it was an attempted act of terrorism,'' said a White House official who declined to be identified discussing the investigation of the incident, which is likely to lead to heightened security during the busy holiday season. ''This was the real deal,'' said Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident and said something had gone wrong with the explosive device, which he described as somewhat sophisticated. ''This could have been devastating,'' Mr. King said.

It was unclear how the man, identified by federal officials as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, managed to get the explosive on the plane, an Airbus A330 wide-body jet carrying 278 passengers that departed from Amsterdam with passengers who had originated in Nigeria. A senior administration official said that the government did not yet know whether the man had had the capacity to take down the plane. A senior Department of Homeland Security official said that the materials Mr. Abdulmutallab had on him were ''more incendiary than explosive,'' and that he had tried to ignite them to cause a fire as the airliner was approaching Detroit.

Mr. Abdulmutallab told law enforcement authorities, the official said, that he had had explosive powder taped to his leg and that he had mixed it with chemicals held in a syringe. A federal counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified said Mr. Abdulmutallab was apparently in a government law enforcement-intelligence database, but it is not clear what extremist group or individuals he might be linked to. ''It's too early to say what his association is,'' the counterterrorism official said. ''At this point, it seems like he was acting alone, but we don't know for sure.'' Although Mr. Abdulmutallab is said to have told officials that he was directed by Al Qaeda, the counterterrorism official expressed caution about that claim, saying ''it may have been aspirational.''

The incident unfolded just before noon. ''There was a pop that sounded like a firecracker,'' said Syed Jafry, a passenger who said he had been sitting three rows ahead of the suspect. A few seconds later, he said, there was smoke and ''some glow'' from the suspect's seat and on the left side of the plane. ''There was a panic,'' said Mr. Jafry, 57, of Holland, Ohio. ''Next thing you know everybody was on him.'' He said the passengers and the crew subdued the man. The suspect was brought by the crew to the front of the plane -- Northwest Airlines Flight 253, bearing Delta's name -- and the plane made its descent into Detroit Metropolitan Airport, landing at 11:53 a.m. (The two airlines merged last year.) Once on the ground, it was immediately guided to the end of a runway, where it was surrounded by police cars and emergency vehicles and searched by a bomb-disabling robot.

Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Detroit office, said F.B.I. agents were at the scene Friday night and were investigating the matter. One federal official who requested anonymity said Mr. Abdulmutallab had suffered severe burns but was expected to survive. A Michigan state official confirmed that he was being treated at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor.

Friday's incident brought to mind Richard C. Reid, the so-called ''shoe bomber,'' who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight between Paris and Miami in December 2001 by igniting his explosives-laden shoes. Since then, airline passengers have had to remove their shoes before passing through security checkpoints in American airports.

Source: New York Times

More information and images of the explosive device can be found here.