The Problem with Yemen
Well, now that the underwear bomber has been tied to Islamic terrorists in Yemen, all eyes in the West seem to be once again paying attention to the situation in Yemen. This hasn’t really happened since since the Cole bombing in 2000 in the port city of Aden or in 2002 when the first known offensive Predator interdiction took place. But there’s a problem here that I’m afraid many are missing.
Yemen in many ways is like Afghanistan or nearby Somalia, with a very weak central government and a handful of powerful insurgent groups to challenge it. Not all of these groups are religious extremists- many are just tribal groups vying for power in a fractured country. Regardless, they all threaten a monetarily poor and politically weak government that doesn’t have a whole lot of friends around the world. The government’s inability to control the outlying countryside has even led to Saudi forces launching air strikes inside of Yemen against cross border insurgent groups.
So I suspect the Yemeni government is seeing the latest attention pointed their way as a chance to bring in some much needed funding as well as allies. All they really have to do is convince Western powers that these groups that threaten them are all linked to al-Qaeda, are a threat to the West and can be neutralized with large sums of money, equipment and training. So if you can’t see where I’m going with this, the danger is that we end up getting suckered into a situation where someone is playing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Granted, I don’t think we have much of a choice seeing how threats like al-Qaeda will always seek safe haven in lawless areas, but we would be wise not to get sucked into a situation that could backfire on us.