Is Yemen becoming a breeding ground for terrorists? The question has been posed with much urgency by media commentators after the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab claimed that al-Qaida operatives based in Yemen trained, armed and tasked him with blowing up a US flight.
Yet articulating the question in this form is hardly novel. The western intelligence community has already established that Yemen is indeed a breeding ground for terrorists, more precisely since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The weakness of the Yemeni central government, its inability to penetrate the tribal areas, the mountainous Yemeni topography, in addition to the Yemeni leadership's ambiguous position towards its local jihadists, all contribute to the country's attractiveness to al-Qaida operatives. No wonder that the US Congress has designated Yemen a "front state" in the war on terror.
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