Arabian Peninsula

As the United States finally begins to wind down its military presence in Afghanistan, is the Obama administration poised to replicate that intervention in Yemen? The administration insists it has no such plans, but it has been evident for months that it regards the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as the most dangerous incubator of terrorist plots directed at America. And it is acting on that conviction. This week The Times reported that U.S. special operations troops, which were withdrawn from Yemen last year amid political turmoil in that country, have returned and are providing technical assistance to Yemeni forces.

SANA, Yemen - A suicide bomber targeted soldiers rehearsing Monday for a military parade here, killing as many as 112 people and signaling that Islamic extremists may be shifting their focus to Yemen's capital after weeks of intense battles in outlying provinces with U.S.-backed government forces. Al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al Sharia claimed responsibility for the bombing in retaliation for American-assisted government offensives against its strongholds in southern Yemen. Unnerved by increasedU.S.

The Al Qaeda wing in Yemen that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight has as many as 2,000 militants and sympathizers exploiting the country's economic and political chaos to create a base for jihad at the edge of the Persian Gulf, according to a Yemeni terrorism expert. The group, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is the latest reincarnation of Islamist militant cells that have been active in Yemen for years. The country has supplied extremists to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to terrorist networks stretching from North Africa to Europe.

As the United States finally begins to wind down its military presence in Afghanistan, is the Obama administration poised to replicate that intervention in Yemen? The administration insists it has no such plans, but it has been evident for months that it regards the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as the most dangerous incubator of terrorist plots directed at America. And it is acting on that conviction. This week The Times reported that U.S. special operations troops, which were withdrawn from Yemen last year amid political turmoil in that country, have returned and are providing technical assistance to Yemeni forces.

Habib Bourguiba wore the smiling face of a kindly dictator. The aging revolutionary hero had presided over Tunisia's breakaway from France and, in a country populated with Berber mountain men and Muslim peasants, nurtured a nation that remained among the most Westernized in the Middle East, an Arab haven of gourmet seafood restaurants and liberal divorce laws, a Paris thrust oddly into the middle of North Africa.

U.S. military aircraft launched strikes that killed at least five suspected militants in southern Yemen in one of the deadliest attacks since the Pentagon and CIA stepped up counter-terrorist operations in the impoverished Middle Eastern nation last year, U.S. officials said. The attacks Tuesday in Yemen's Abyan province targeted a meeting of members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a militant group whose leadership has been badly degraded in a series of U.S. air attacks, the officials said.

SANA, Yemen - A suicide bomber targeted soldiers rehearsing Monday for a military parade here, killing as many as 112 people and signaling that Islamic extremists may be shifting their focus to Yemen's capital after weeks of intense battles in outlying provinces with U.S.-backed government forces. Al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al Sharia claimed responsibility for the bombing in retaliation for American-assisted government offensives against its strongholds in southern Yemen. Unnerved by increasedU.S.

A U.S. military drone strike killed a top Al Qaeda operative in Yemen and the son of Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric killed in a similar strike two weeks ago, Yemeni security officials said. As political unrest continues to roil Yemen, the U.S. has escalated its attacks against Al Qaeda's affiliate in the country. Yemeni officials told reporters that nine members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed in the strike near the town of Azzan in southeastern Yemen, including Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman Awlaki, and Egyptian-born Ibrahim Banna, whom officials described as the media chief of the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

The Nigerian Islamist who allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has brought Yemen once again into the spotlight as a breeding ground for terrorists. Abdulmutallab is thought to have trained with Yemen's Al Qaeda affiliate, and the group has claimed credit for the failed attack. Yemen has long been a place of concern. Last month, before the attempted airliner bombing, the United States facilitated a missile attack against two suspected Al Qaeda strongholds in Yemen.

Officials raised the death toll from a grenade attack in northeastern Somalia to 21 and said 100 were wounded. The grenade blew up Tuesday in a crowded neighborhood in Bossaso, a port town in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, officials said. Most of the victims were believed to be Ethiopians on their way to find work in the Arabian Peninsula, which lies across the Gulf of Aden, officials said. No one has claimed responsibility, but the attack was believed to have been related to animosity between citizens of Ethiopia and Somalia.

U.S. military aircraft launched strikes that killed at least five suspected militants in southern Yemen in one of the deadliest attacks since the Pentagon and CIA stepped up counter-terrorist operations in the impoverished Middle Eastern nation last year, U.S. officials said. The attacks Tuesday in Yemen's Abyan province targeted a meeting of members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a militant group whose leadership has been badly degraded in a series of U.S. air attacks, the officials said.

A request by President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen to come to the U.S. for medical treatment puts the United States in a delicate position, and the White House has not yet made a formal decision about how to respond. Granting Saleh a visa would remove a symbol of repression from the country located along the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and perhaps smooth the transition to new leadership, a senior administration official said Tuesday. It would be helpful to Yemen because it would "get him out of the region," the official said.

A U.S. military drone strike killed a top Al Qaeda operative in Yemen and the son of Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric killed in a similar strike two weeks ago, Yemeni security officials said. As political unrest continues to roil Yemen, the U.S. has escalated its attacks against Al Qaeda's affiliate in the country. Yemeni officials told reporters that nine members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed in the strike near the town of Azzan in southeastern Yemen, including Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman Awlaki, and Egyptian-born Ibrahim Banna, whom officials described as the media chief of the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

Osama bin Laden's death was cheered, I suspect, by 99.99% of Americans. But there was that 0.01% — and a slightly higher number abroad — who doubted the legality of simply pumping two bullets into the Al Qaeda leader rather than trying to arrest and Mirandize him. Likewise, amid the general rejoicing over the death of Anwar Awlaki, one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a few civil libertarians are raising questions about whether...

Yemen's beleaguered government claimed Sunday that the capital of Abyan province in the south had been overrun by the country's Al Qaeda affiliate, while the political opposition and dissident generals blamed the president for losing control of the city. The allegations about Zinjibar, Abyan's capital, raised fears that the radical group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was taking advantage of the last four months of popular protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh to gain ground.

The U.S. drone aircraft attack that killed two midlevel al Qaeda militants in Yemen on Thursday was targeting the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a U.S.-born radical known for encouraging attacks on the United States, U.S. media reported. CBS News and The Wall Street Journal, citing Yemeni and U.S. officials, said on Friday that Anwar al-Awlaki was not hit when a missile was fired at a car in southern Yemen on Thursday, killing two brothers believed to be al Qaeda militants.

An international team of archeologists attempting to retrace a Bronze Age trade route by sailing from Oman to India in a reed boat had to be rescued this week by the Omani navy. The 40-foot craft was made of reeds, date palm fibers and tar. It had a wool sail and two teak oars. The team made it seven miles from the port of Sur in Oman before the boat sank.

Said Shihri, who was captured in Pakistan in late 2001 and became one of the first suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, was released six years later after he convinced U.S. officials that he would go home to Saudi Arabia to work in his family's furniture store. He emerged instead as the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based group that U.S. intelligence considers the world's most dangerous terrorist organization. Review panels at Guantanamo Bay also released at least six other detainees who later joined the militant group that has turned Yemen into a key battleground for Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, which security officials believe was responsible for last week's attempt to down American-bound aircraft, has managed to avoid the mistakes of its Iraqi counterparts, making it perhaps more resilient than the militant group's other franchises, according to an assessment by an analyst. Much like the U.S. military, which has had to adapt to fighting in the Muslim world, Al Qaeda has been doing its homework and changing its ways, according to a recent paper by Ryan Evans in the Sentinel, the monthly journal of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.