A year before the Middle East uprisings that have shaken regimes across the region, a top al Qaeda operative from Libya was predicting that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq would destabilize governments in the Muslim world and he outlined ways in which al Qaeda could capitalize on the chaos. Sheikh Abu-Yahya al-Libi, who is considered by experts the third-ranking operative in al Qaeda, focused much of his writing on the tiny country of Yemen, where the American-backed government of Ali Abdullah Saleh is struggling against violent protests. In a February 2010 report called “Yemeni Government to America: I Sacrifice Myself for Your Sake,” he described with eerie accuracy the coming revolt.
Al-Libi wrote that the United States, already spread thin by two wars, would use proxy fighters and weapons in the region. “In effect, U.S. involvement would aid in destabilizing the Yemeni government on al Qaeda’s behalf,” said Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst and expert on al Qaeda who has analyzed the report.
“[Yemen] has found agents and collaborators who have said we will sacrifice ourselves for your [United States] sake,” said al-Libi. “The United States thought that the battle ended when the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was overthrown. It did not know that this was only the beginning.”
The al Qaeda chief wrote in the paper that the terrorist group failed to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet bound from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. That compelled American officials to decide to spend more money backing the corrupt Yemeni government in an effort to root out al Qaeda there, experts said.
But some experts say those efforts have backfired — something al-Libi predicted.
White House and U.S. intelligence officials are now grappling with the possibility that the anti-government revolutions sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa may be strengthening al Qaeda.
Some analysts believe that al Qaeda’s wing in Yemen, which formed in 2009 from the merger of cells in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, may be gaining strength from the uprisings and may now represent the greatest threat to the U.S. of any terrorist cell in the region.
On Sunday, members of the group were suspected of being behind an attack on a military checkpoint in the Yemeni city of Marib. The attack killed seven soldiers, and the attackers escaped with a cache of weapons.
A U.S. official told The Examiner that Yemen was at risk of becoming “a literal bastion of lawlessness” where al Qaeda fighters could establish bases like those destroyed in Afghanistan early in the war.
Christopher Boucek, a Yemen specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the U.S. needs to make it clear to the Yemeni people that it does not support a government they view as corrupt.
“Al Qaeda thrives on politically weak states,” he said. “Everybody in Yemen knows that we supported the [Saleh] regime at the expense of the Yemeni people — that is a message we have to change. We have to let the Yemeni people know we support them, regardless of the regime.”
Brachman, who left the CIA and now works for security consulting firm Cronus Global, said al-Libi has closely watched the situation in Yemen and “is one of the most astute observers of international politics in al Qaeda and he has combined that with his observations over the past decade.”
He said al-Libi’s February 2010 paper outlines “a very logical conclusion that the U.S. is hamstrung” by ongoing events in the region, economic uncertainty and war fatigue.
While he lauds al-Libi’s logic, he notes that the paper concludes “with the faulty assumption of al Qaeda winning.”
Brachman and others say the key to keep that from happening is to eliminate al-Libi as swiftly as possible. “When [al-Libi] is taken out, it will be a cataclysmic event to al Qaeda,” Brachman said. “They just can’t replace him. There is no one in the organization who can fill his shoes. So from an intellectual perspective al Qaeda will be crippled.”
Boucek said the U.S. can’t afford for chaos to continue in Yemen for very much longer. The Obama administration and its European and Arab allies need to take a direct role in brokering negotiations between Saleh and his opponents, and help establish a path to a new government.
“The Yemen government security forces are using the weapons we’ve supplied them on their own people,” he said. “We need to say now that we’re on the side of the Yemeni people. This is not pro-regime or anti-regime. We need to do everything we can to bring these two sides together — everything to keep [al Qaeda] from gaining ground.”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
