*** Idiots ruining it for all those who actually want to study the language. MS ***
FROM: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6531XM20100604
(Reuters) - When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab enrolled in an Arabic course in Yemen last year, few who met him could have guessed what this withdrawn young man was really up to, nor the devastating impact he would leave behind.
World
Staff at the now-deserted language center where he studied are still reeling from the actions of the Nigerian, suspected of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound plane in December, just weeks after leaving the Arabian peninsula country.
Adil Badi, a teacher at the Sanaa Institute for the Arabic Language, said radical Muslims such as Abdulmutallab, a student from a wealthy family who had no criminal record, had used the Arabic courses on offer in Yemen as a pretext for entering the country to meet fellow militants there.
"They had something else to do in Yemen but their excuse was to study Arabic," Badi said.
Prized for the purity of its dialect and cheap living costs, Yemen was long a popular destination for students of Arabic. But over the years, a number of foreign militants have arrived in Yemen in the guise of Arabic students, only to join al Qaeda training camps.
Sherif Mobley, a U.S. citizen currently being held in Yemen on suspicion of belonging to al Qaeda, also first came to the country as a student of Arabic at a language institute, before attending a university run by prominent hardline Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, officials say.
Abdulmutallab was on his second visit to Yemen when he enrolled at the center in August 2009. When his visa expired in September, he disappeared for around two months, during which officials believe he moved to al Qaeda's main hideout there.
Four months after the attempted bombing, an al Qaeda video showed Abdulmutallab attending a militant training camp in the desert and also showed footage of him in an apparent martyr's farewell.
During this time, the former engineering student also met Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical U.S.-born preacher who is wanted dead or alive by Washington.
"His goals and objectives came prior to Yemen," said Sabri Saleem, president of the Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies, one of Sanaa's oldest Arabic language schools. "He just came to implement."
VISA BAN
Yemen has a long history with al Qaeda, whose resurgent regional wing has its base in the impoverished country and continues to attract Islamist militants from abroad.
Saleem's institute keeps close tabs on its students, screening academic records, keeping track of their movements while they are in the country, and making them sign a declaration that they would adhere to the centre's rules.
Of the 9,000 students who have passed through his school over the past two decades, Saleem said only one of them was radical, and that was John Walker Lindh.
Dubbed the "American Taliban," Lindh was captured in 2001 during the Afghanistan war and jailed under a U.S. plea deal for 20 years for fighting alongside the Taliban.
The Yemeni government has made it clear that it does not believe Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Yemen, but that this happened in London, where he was a student.
But in the immediate aftermath of the attempted bombing, it banned visas issued at arrival in the airport.
Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told Reuters that Yemen had also begun to screen individuals applying for tourist visas from its embassies abroad.
That U.S. and many European citizens could previously obtain visas at the airport had turned out to be a major security problem for the government, he said.
"That's how some of these extremist groups managed to get into the country," the minister said.
BAD FOR BUSINESS
While security concerns have kept potential students away for several years now, language schools say that enrolments have fallen sharply in the months since the failed plane attack, particularly as the government tightens visa restrictions.
Pictures displayed in the reception of the Sanaa Institute for the Arabic Language tell of better times. One shows a class listening attentively to the teacher, while in another a group of students poses in the now-empty garden outside.
"We are on the verge of bankruptcy," said Badi, adding that he had only two students left, one from South Korea and the other from the United States.
Belman Sihombing, a chef from Indonesia who came to study Arabic with his wife and daughter, said his family only managed to obtain their visas with help from the school's director.
"The visa was a problem from my embassy in my country. They wouldn't give it to us because of the Nigerian trying to bomb the United States, so all embassies don't give visas," he said.
Saleem said recent events had hit his institution badly too.
This summer, Saleem's center, which is accredited with over 100 universities across the world, will host 32 students, compared to 85 last year and 230 students in 2008, he said.
Concern over security in Yemen, which is also facing rising violence between government forces and separatists in the south and has just ended a bloody round of fighting with northern rebels, has long been an issue for his business.
"It was really building up, but the Nigerian was the worst case," he said. "If I didn't own the building we are in, then we would have closed by now."
(Editing by Lin Noueihed)
Showing posts with label yemen and somalia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yemen and somalia. Show all posts
Friday, June 4, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
SOMALI REFUGEES TO YEMEN & TERRORISM
*** When people are made to feel they are not welcome in society, they become marginalized and are easy pickings for those who peddle in anger, desperation and rage. We are dismantling human society through our negligence. MS ***
FROM: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/Al-Qaeda-reaps-recruits-from-Somali-refugees-in-Yemen-94782249.html
Al Qaeda reaps recruits from Somali refugees in Yemen
By: Sara A. Carter
National Security Correspondent
May 25, 2010
Al Qaeda's robust terror organization in Yemen is recruiting from a pool of hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees who have fled war in their homeland, according to U.S. and Yemeni intelligence officials.
Approximately 700,000 Somali refugees have made Yemen their home, and that population is expected to continue to grow in the face of the collapse of the East African nation, Yemeni and intelligence officials told The Washington Examiner. A significant number of those Somali refugees are believed to be members of Al-Shabaab Mujahideen, an Islamist insurgency group with strong ties to al Qaeda.
Two American tourists were kidnapped by gunmen in Yemen Monday, and local officials said it was likely the group holding them had ties to al Qaeda. The abduction highlighted the growing danger of Islamic extremists in Yemen, experts said.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who was an adviser to President Obama on Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, said the Somali refugee crisis poses significant national security concerns for the United States, and a golden opportunity for al Qaeda.
Riedel, who visited the Gulf of Aden last winter, said that although Somali refugees hope that Yemen will be their first stop to a wealthier country, "most never get beyond Yemen. Among them are dozens of young extremists who become recruits for [al Qaeda Arabian Penninsula]."
Al Qaeda in Yemen and Saudi Arabia merged into a single organization in early 2009, intelligence officials said. It calls itself al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and is based in Yemen. A number of Somali militants enter Yemen "to train with AQAP," a U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed.
American born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has emerged as a key player in al Qaeda's efforts to raise important new infrastructures in countries like Yemen which are outside the reach of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and where lawlessness and poverty prevail.
Al-Awalki, an American of Yemeni decent, is believed to be hiding in Yemen. U.S. intelligence officials say he is the new face of al Qaeda and recruits from the large number of Somali refugees entering that nation.
Al-Awlaki is the only American on the CIA's list of important targets to apprehend or kill. On Monday, in a video released by al Qaeda, al-Awalki, dressed in Yemeni traditional tribal clothing, called on believers to kill American soldiers and civilians.
Christopher Boucek, a Yemen specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a recently published report, "There are increasing indications that al Qaeda is regrouping in Yemen and preparing to strike at Western and other targets."
A retired senior military official with direct knowledge of al Qaeda in Yemen said that as al Qaeda's recruiting pool grows, Western targets will become more vulnerable.
He said Somali refugees are just one group of potential recruits.
"With the Somali crisis in Yemen growing we have to be mindful of how these various groups, like Somalia's Al-Shabaab, are connecting, recruiting and developing ties to one another," the official said.
Another military official warned that the global links between the groups in Yemen pose a "significant danger to our own national security because the next attack in the U.S. may not come from someone we suspect but from a recruit born right here or someone else, like a Somali refugee," he said.
In April, The Examiner reported that 23 Somalis who entered Mexico illegally earlier in the year were believed headed for the U.S. after being released by Mexican authorities. Of the 23 Somalis, several were directly connected to Al-Shabaab, according to the law enforcement documents.
Intelligence suggested some were attempting to cross the southern border into the U.S. Intelligence officials say they have not been located.
Al Qaeda's ties with Somali refugees also have implications for the oil-rich Middle East.
Riedel warned that as al Qaeda solidifies its safe havens in Yemen and Somalia, it will become a growing danger to the shipping lanes in the world's most important waterways.
"Al Qaeda's leadership in Yemen has very ambitious plans to develop cooperation [with] the Shabab in Somalia so that al Qaeda can influence the control of the shipping lanes in the Bab al Mandab strait that separates Asia from Africa and which is the world's energy choke point," he said.
FROM: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/Al-Qaeda-reaps-recruits-from-Somali-refugees-in-Yemen-94782249.html
Al Qaeda reaps recruits from Somali refugees in Yemen
By: Sara A. Carter
National Security Correspondent
May 25, 2010
Al Qaeda's robust terror organization in Yemen is recruiting from a pool of hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees who have fled war in their homeland, according to U.S. and Yemeni intelligence officials.
Approximately 700,000 Somali refugees have made Yemen their home, and that population is expected to continue to grow in the face of the collapse of the East African nation, Yemeni and intelligence officials told The Washington Examiner. A significant number of those Somali refugees are believed to be members of Al-Shabaab Mujahideen, an Islamist insurgency group with strong ties to al Qaeda.
Two American tourists were kidnapped by gunmen in Yemen Monday, and local officials said it was likely the group holding them had ties to al Qaeda. The abduction highlighted the growing danger of Islamic extremists in Yemen, experts said.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who was an adviser to President Obama on Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, said the Somali refugee crisis poses significant national security concerns for the United States, and a golden opportunity for al Qaeda.
Riedel, who visited the Gulf of Aden last winter, said that although Somali refugees hope that Yemen will be their first stop to a wealthier country, "most never get beyond Yemen. Among them are dozens of young extremists who become recruits for [al Qaeda Arabian Penninsula]."
Al Qaeda in Yemen and Saudi Arabia merged into a single organization in early 2009, intelligence officials said. It calls itself al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and is based in Yemen. A number of Somali militants enter Yemen "to train with AQAP," a U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed.
American born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has emerged as a key player in al Qaeda's efforts to raise important new infrastructures in countries like Yemen which are outside the reach of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and where lawlessness and poverty prevail.
Al-Awalki, an American of Yemeni decent, is believed to be hiding in Yemen. U.S. intelligence officials say he is the new face of al Qaeda and recruits from the large number of Somali refugees entering that nation.
Al-Awlaki is the only American on the CIA's list of important targets to apprehend or kill. On Monday, in a video released by al Qaeda, al-Awalki, dressed in Yemeni traditional tribal clothing, called on believers to kill American soldiers and civilians.
Christopher Boucek, a Yemen specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a recently published report, "There are increasing indications that al Qaeda is regrouping in Yemen and preparing to strike at Western and other targets."
A retired senior military official with direct knowledge of al Qaeda in Yemen said that as al Qaeda's recruiting pool grows, Western targets will become more vulnerable.
He said Somali refugees are just one group of potential recruits.
"With the Somali crisis in Yemen growing we have to be mindful of how these various groups, like Somalia's Al-Shabaab, are connecting, recruiting and developing ties to one another," the official said.
Another military official warned that the global links between the groups in Yemen pose a "significant danger to our own national security because the next attack in the U.S. may not come from someone we suspect but from a recruit born right here or someone else, like a Somali refugee," he said.
In April, The Examiner reported that 23 Somalis who entered Mexico illegally earlier in the year were believed headed for the U.S. after being released by Mexican authorities. Of the 23 Somalis, several were directly connected to Al-Shabaab, according to the law enforcement documents.
Intelligence suggested some were attempting to cross the southern border into the U.S. Intelligence officials say they have not been located.
Al Qaeda's ties with Somali refugees also have implications for the oil-rich Middle East.
Riedel warned that as al Qaeda solidifies its safe havens in Yemen and Somalia, it will become a growing danger to the shipping lanes in the world's most important waterways.
"Al Qaeda's leadership in Yemen has very ambitious plans to develop cooperation [with] the Shabab in Somalia so that al Qaeda can influence the control of the shipping lanes in the Bab al Mandab strait that separates Asia from Africa and which is the world's energy choke point," he said.
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