The Bankruptcy of Yemen, Hotbed of International Terrorism

After Afghanistan and Pakistan, is Yemen in the process of becoming the new front in the struggle against terrorism and Al-Qaeda? The failed bombing attempt on Dec. 25 against a United States airplane on its approach to Detroit could have simply remained a frightening news item followed by a police investigation. However, despite the failure of the instigator — a young Nigerian having an angelic face and being a member of a good family — in his attempt, this will soon instigate important international consequences.

The first, of course, is that this demonstrates that fundamentalist terrorism, even when weakened, is still a threat. He was a kamikaze-in-training, acting perhaps of his own initiative and not under the direct command of Osama Bin Laden, like the 19 hijackers and their murderous attempts of Sept. 11, 2001. Without a grand scheme, he was still able to send a shock wave sufficient to make one question the flaws of Western intelligence and airport police surveillance systems. Additionally, regarding the father of the sorcerer’s apprentice, Umar Farouk Abdulmattulab — did he not alert the authorities himself of the fundamentalist turn taken by his son, apparently without result? The fear of new assassination attempts, notably on civil aircraft, has already led to a reinforcement of security measures, as seen in the experiments of widespread body scanner installation at airports.

The second consequence is undoubtedly geo-strategic. It has abruptly changed the agenda of President Barack Obama, who had, in 2009, decided to send military reinforcements to Afghanistan, making them, once again, the strong point in the struggle against terrorism.

Yemen was again put in the spotlight at the start of the year, even if Washington did not consider sending massive troops and even if the path taken by the terrorist-in-training is still full of shadows. For the Yemeni government, it is in Yemen that the young Nigerian came together with the nebula associated with Osama Bin Laden. He even trained and procured the explosives there.

Furthermore, this is not a first. Yemen has been the theatre of a number of attacks like this one. A year before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there was an offensive against the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden, and another in its territorial waters against the French oil tanker Limburg. At Guantanamo — the prison opened by President Bush with Cuba’s concession for imprisoning “enemy combatants” after Sept. 11 — the contingent of Yemeni prisoners has always figured among the highest, most notably on the side of the Saudis. In addition, Yemen is a country becoming more and more fragile and offers every possibility of becoming a sanctuary for the terrorist network, Al-Qaeda. Over the course of the last few weeks, militants from that circle of influence coming from neighboring Saudi Arabia and Egypt may have become refugees there, according to the Yemenite authorities as cited by the British Press.

However, we must avoid confusion. President Ali Abdallah Saleh, 20 years after having come to power during the reunion of the two Yemens — the Arab Republic of Yemen (North) and the Democratic and Popular Republic of Yemen (South) — could have indeed been tempted to join the War on Terror in order to suppress his opposition. For the regime, the promise of a doubling of American aid, from $70 to $140 million a year, to further the struggle against terrorism is, in this respect, welcome. In the north, Sana’a has been confronted with a rebellion of Zaidist Shiite militants. This revolt, which was sparked in 2004, in reaction to the death of one of its directors, Hussein al-Houthis, continues to grow. In the south, President Saleh faces secessionist pressures. This past weekend, incidents have taken place simultaneously, as a general strike called by autonomist movements.

Yemen, a demographically blooming country (46 percent of the population is less than 15 years old), is an economically weakened state. It remains largely dependent on petroleum income, but its reserves in hydrocarbons, as well as those in water, are being exhausted and the rate of unemployment is extremely high. The strategy adopted by Saleh, which, in the eyes of a number of analysts, essentially aims to keep him in power, presents risks for the West. There is a risk of pushing the rebellion of the North towards supporters like Iran, as think tank International Crisis Group recently emphasized, and shoving autonomist temptations into the background.

At the end of January, an international conference on Yemen, separate from the one on Afghanistan, must, in principle, meet in London. Certainly, the struggle against terrorism must be an important point, but not the only one. Yemen is especially in need of economic aid in order to avoid an outburst that would drive the country to the level of its states — in bankruptcy — those states being the hotbeds for warriors against the West.