As if there were not enough reasons to be worried about what is going on inside Yemen, the Yemeni government has decided to release more than 170 al Qaeda suspects. Reportedly, 95 of them have been released already. This news comes at an inauspicious time. As Steve Hayes and I discussed in a recent piece in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, the Obama administration is considering sending dozens of Yemenis currently detained at Guantanamo back to their homeland. There are a number of obvious problems with this plan. President Saleh’s regime cooperates with al Qaeda and related jihadist groups against their common enemies, including Shiite tribes. Al Qaeda terrorists, including some of the USS Cole plotters, have a habit of “escaping” from prison. Yemen is home to a substantial recruiting network, comprised of veteran jihadists and radical clerics who indoctrinate impressionable minds and send them off for jihad. Their recruits have fought around the world, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq and elsewhere. And Osama bin Laden has decades-old familial and tribal roots in Yemen that he and al Qaeda rely on. In recent months, al Qaeda in Yemen has become increasingly stronger, to the point that the Saudi regime has openly complained about it. The Yemeni branch of al Qaeda has merged with its sister branch inside Saudi Arabia to form one cohesive network. Two former Guantanamo detainees recently appeared in an al Qaeda propaganda video and one of them is now the deputy leader of the group. Early last week, the Saudis released a list of the Kingdom’s 85 most-wanted terrorists. Eleven of those terrorists, including the two that appeared in al Qaeda’s video, were once detainees at Guantanamo and the Saudis fear that all of them may work with their brethren inside Yemen to commit attacks. This latest move by the Yemeni government only compounds these existing problems. What is particularly strange is that the President Saleh did not hide the fact that his regime was letting so many al Qaeda suspects go free. One would expect Yemen to maintain some amount of discretion because Saleh has commented publicly about his desire to see the Yemenis at Guantanamo returned to their home nation. This move can only make it more difficult for the Obama administration to send the Yemenis home. Yemen has signaled once again that it is anything but a trustworthy ally in fighting al Qaeda. Hopefully the Obama administration got the message.
