Excerpt: The United States may be on the verge of involvement in yet another counterinsurgency war which, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, may make a bad situation even worse. The attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight by a Nigerian apparently planned in Yemen, the alleged ties between the perpetrator of the Ft. Hood massacre to a radical Yemeni cleric, and an ongoing U.S.-backed Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda have all focused U.S. attention on that country.
Expert: Most of the focus of the United States war on al-Qaida since 9/11 has been on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq; relatively little attention has been given to the two states on either side of the Gulf of Aden - Yemen and Somalia. Any surplus resources away from the middle east and southwest Asia have tended to be devoted to Algeria and Mali as potential sites for al-Qaida activity.
Yet, Paul Rogers points out that with Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab's attempt on 25 December 2009 to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit and his connections with Yemen, al-Qaida may simultaneously be in decline in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but growing in the Gulf of Aden.
Expert: Most of the focus of the United States war on al-Qaida since 9/11 has been on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq; relatively little attention has been given to the two states on either side of the Gulf of Aden - Yemen and Somalia. Any surplus resources away from the middle east and southwest Asia have tended to be devoted to Algeria and Mali as potential sites for al-Qaida activity.