Anybody curious about how and why Yemen became a place where al Qaeda and other jihadist groups operate with apparent impunity–while its government claims to be a reliable ally of the United States–should simply look at a map of the Middle East. Throughout its history Yemen has been different from the rest of its neighbors. It is, in truth, a local pivot–but a permanently wobbling one. It now faces an existential threat, as radicals from within in its borders and around its neighborhood threaten to destroy it, with the apparent complicity of–or at least, a dangerous passivity on the part of–its rulers. In this it resembles that other strategic hub and Islamist target, Pakistan.
Thomas Joscelyn has emphasized the high number of Yemeni captives at Guantánamo and the absurdity of their proposed repatriation–now suspended by President Obama. Yemen’s government claims to support the U.S. against radical Islam, but has a demonstrated record, under long-ruling president Ali Abdullah Saleh, of compromise with the extremist enemy. Yemen probably first came to the attention of most Americans when the USS Cole was attacked in the harbor at Aden, the traditional local port, in 2000. The Cole was engaged, lest we forget, in a routine refueling call to a “friendly” state. A paramount example of the apathy of Saleh’s government toward its, and our, radical enemies came with the 2006 prison break in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, when 23 al Qaeda captives, including 13 convicted for involvement in the Cole bombing, escaped detention.
