*** This is precisely why you should not rely so heavily on technology to do this kind of job. As we have seen many, many times - these strikes cause more long-term harm than good. Beef up the HUMINT sections people! MS ***
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100525/n_top_news/cnews_us_yemen
SANAA (Reuters) - An airstrike in Yemen targeting al Qaeda missed its mark on Tuesday and killed a mediator by mistake, prompting members of his tribe to blow up a crude oil pipeline in clashes that followed, a provincial official said.
A Yemeni news website seen as aligned with the opposition said the strike was carried out by a drone, a weapon that the Yemen military is not believed to have. U.S. forces helping Yemen fight al Qaeda have used drones in the past, but a U.S. diplomat declined to say if the United States was involved.
The strike could heighten anti-U.S. sentiment and broaden al Qaeda's appeal among some influential Yemeni tribes, threatening efforts to stabilize a country neighboring oil power Saudi Arabia and busy international shipping lanes, analysts said.
The botched bombing of a U.S. airliner on December 25, claimed by al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, spurred Washington to step up security help to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government, which faces multiple grave challenges apart from militancy.
The Yemeni mediator, who had been trying to persuade members of the global militant group to surrender, was killed instantly in a pre-dawn strike on his car in Yemen's mountainous Maarib province that also killed three other people.
"Jaber al-Shabwani, the deputy governor of Maarib, was killed with a number of his relatives and travel companions in an airstrike targeting the Wadi Obeida area, where al Qaeda elements are present," the provincial official said.
"The deputy governor was on a mediation mission to persuade al Qaeda elements to hand themselves over to the authorities, but it seems that the airstrike missed its target and struck his car, killing him instantly in addition to three companions," he added, declining to be named. Two others were wounded.
The strike provoked clashes between the army and members of Shabwani's tribe, and the tribesmen attacked the pipeline that ferries crude oil from Maarib, east of the capital Sanaa, to the Red Sea coast, the official said.
Yemen, which borders the world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, moved to the forefront of Western security concerns after al Qaeda's Yemen-based regional arm claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound plane in December.
The United States and Saudi Arabia want Yemen, which is trying to end a conflict with Shi'ite rebels in the north while separatist sentiment bubbles over in the south, to focus its efforts on fighting al Qaeda, seen as a greater global threat.
NO EXPORT DISRUPTION
A statement from a Yemeni High Security Council source expressed sorrow for the death of Shabwani and called him a martyr, but did not specify who carried out the strike or what type of aircraft was used.
A U.S. diplomat would not discuss the attack. Washington backed Sanaa's fight against al Qaeda by training Yemeni forces, sharing information and providing equipment, and recognized al Qaeda in Yemen was a threat to both countries, he said.
"So we are working together. The Yemeni forces always take the lead in operations carried out in Yemen using some of that support that we have provided for them through training and information sharing..." the diplomat said.
Asked directly if the U.S. was involved in the strike, he said: "If you want operation-specific details you need to contact the Yemeni government."
Yemen and U.S. military targeted al Qaeda figures in Yemen, the ancestral home of the network's leader Osama bin Laden, after the September 11, 2001, attacks. A CIA drone fired a missile that killed al Qaeda's leader in Yemen in 2002.
Yemen's foreign minister said earlier this year that Yemen needed logistical support to help fight al Qaeda but would not allow foreign covert operations against the group on its soil.
In Maarib province where Tuesday's airstrike took place, clashes with the mediator's tribe spread from the countryside to Maarib town, where dozens of tribal gunmen opened fire on government buildings. The army was returning fire. At least seven people were injured, a local official said.
Security officials said angry tribes blocked the main road between Sanaa and Maarib, preventing trucks carrying cooking gas and petrol from reaching the capital.
Tuesday's strike had likely intended to hit Ayed al-Shabwani, an al Qaeda leader whose farm in Maarib province was the target of a strike in January, the provincial official said. Shabwani is a relative of the mediator who was killed.
Shipping companies said there was no impact on exports from the attack on the pipeline, which ferries crude to the Ras Isa offshore export terminal. Authorities could not immediately reach the affected area.
Showing posts with label yemen clerics jihad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yemen clerics jihad. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
AT YEMEN'S AL EMAN UNIVERSITY
SANA, Yemen — The mosque at Al Eman University is larger than a football field, an immense warehouse with breeze-block walls, a tin roof and industrial lighting. On Fridays, more than 4,000 men come to pray, lining up along the marks on the figured green carpet, giving each enough room to prostrate himself toward Mecca.
The devotions of such a crowd are a powerful message of faith and solidarity. Most are dressed in national costume, white robes and embroidered shawls for Yemenis and Arabs, tribal robes for some Africans, crocheted prayer caps for the Asians.
This university, the size of a village, was founded in 1993 by Sheik Abdul Majid al-Zindani, a revered spiritual leader, theological adviser to Osama bin Laden and co-founder of the main Yemeni opposition party, Islah. In 2004, the United States Treasury put Mr. Zindani on a list of “specially designated global terrorists” for suspected fund-raising for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The university itself is a good symbol of the complications of Yemen, its need to strike a balance between conservative Islam and an increased American involvement.
The radical American-born Internet preacher Anwar al-Awlaki took classes and gave lectures here in 2004 and 2005, when a young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — who later tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Dec. 25 — was in Sana studying Arabic. There is no firm evidence that they met then, or even last summer, when Mr. Abdulmutallab returned before heading off to Qaeda training camps, where he probably did meet Mr. Awlaki; the school denies that they ever met here.
John Walker Lindh, the American who was captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, studied here before fighting the Americans, and in general the university is seen as a center for jihadist ideas. While the school says lectures are only for students, the mosque is open to all Muslims.
The university has more than 4,000 students and teaches courses in Islam and Western disciplines, sometimes trying to meld the two. Sheik Zindani, thought to be 59 and favoring a long dyed beard, is well known for his effort to prove that the Koran predicts Western scientific discoveries, and he has claimed to have cured AIDS. One of his books, translated shakily into English, with charts about the ruminant stomach of the cow, photosynthesis and other scientific discoveries, is called “Signs & Mericals [sic] of Prophet Messenger, Peace be Upon Him.”
Hood Abu Ras, who runs Sheik Zindani’s university office, denies that Mr. Abdulmutallab was ever here, or that anything happens at Al Eman except scholarship. “Has the U.S. ever produced any evidence of Sheik Zindani’s involvement in terror?” Mr. Abu Ras asked. As for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an alliance of Saudi and Yemeni Qaeda operatives, he said, “It gets more propaganda than it deserves.” The sheik himself, at a recent news conference, said he opposed foreign forces in Yemen. “We accept any cooperation in the framework of respect and joint interests, and we reject military occupation of our country,” he said, adding: “Yemen’s rulers and people must be careful before a guardianship is imposed on them” by foreigners.
He was blunter in Friday Prayer at another mosque, when he warned of an American plot to occupy Yemen, based on a London conference scheduled for Jan. 28 whose stated subject is Afghanistan.
“The U.K. request for an international conference on Yemen is meant to pave the way for a U.N. Security Council resolution to approve an occupation of Yemen and to put it under a U.N. mandate,” Mr. Zindani said, as the worshipers shouted, “No to occupation!” He said that Washington’s “so-called war on terror is in fact a war against Islam,” according to Al Jazeera.
After his sermon, he told a reporter for Al Jazeera: “Obama’s advisers recommended that if Yemen becomes a failed state, they have to occupy the oil resources and Yemen’s seacoast. What is this military buildup on our coasts for? Is it really justified by piracy? No one really believes that.”
Sheik Zindani is no fan of American involvement in the Muslim world and has defended jihad — beginning with the thousands of Muslims, many of them from Yemen, who heeded the call, as he did, to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Their alliance with the Taliban then was considered a fine thing, and Mr. bin Laden himself fought the Soviets.
But the reaction to Afghanistan, including the creation of Al Qaeda, has hit Yemen, too. Sheik Zindani, who has considerable political and moral weight, has come out against terrorism, if not jihad, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has failed to get Washington to remove the sheik from the terrorist list. Even a senior Western diplomat said that the sheik “has kept his head down for the last few years,” since he took legal action against Yemeni newspapers and journalists in 2006 for reprinting even censored parts of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad.
Mr. Saleh, who has run Yemen for 31 years, told The New York Times in June 2008 that ruling here is like “dancing with snakes.” Sheik Zindani and his conservative brand of Islam — Yemeni Salafism — has strong support from Saudi Arabia and one of Mr. Saleh’s oldest allies, Ali Mohsen. They are all pillars of the current government, even if Mr. Mohsen opposes the dynastic succession of Mr. Saleh’s son, Ahmed, to the presidency.
While Yemeni Salafism is not as militant as the Saudi variety — Wahhabism — Sheik Zindani studied in Saudi Arabia, and the mental landscape of the Salafis and Al Qaeda is very similar — conservative, anti-Western, devoted to purifying Islam and returning to the practices they believe existed at the time of Prophet Muhammad.
Mr. Mohsen, a general who is currently prosecuting the war against a Houthi rebellion in the north, also recruited thousands of Yemenis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. His brigades returned victorious, and Mr. Saleh has used them since to help defeat the south in the 1994 civil war and against the Houthis. Some fighters, of course, have migrated to Al Qaeda, and there are imams here more radical than Mr. Zindani.
When north and south Yemen were united in 1990, Sheik Zindani accepted Mr. Saleh’s rule and was granted this huge area of government land on the western edge of Sana for the university — adjoining a large military base, which is Mr. Mohsen’s headquarters. There are rumors that students sometimes get military training there, which Mr. Abu Ras also denies.
Tuition, housing and food are free for students, and there is a primary school for their children. But with the Treasury Department crackdown on financing suspected terrorist groups, Yemeni analysts say that the school now has less money, that the number of students is down at least 2,000 and that there is less food in the cafeteria.
Ismail al-Suhailyi, who has taught political science here for 13 years, said that the West must concentrate on economic development, not just security assistance. “Otherwise, the people will see their government working only for the interests of the Americans,” he said.
“Al Qaeda is part of Yemen, but they are just a few hundred people,” Mr. Suhailyi said, advocating further dialogue with Al Qaeda. “I hope the American government will work to solve the problems here, and not become part of the problem.”
The devotions of such a crowd are a powerful message of faith and solidarity. Most are dressed in national costume, white robes and embroidered shawls for Yemenis and Arabs, tribal robes for some Africans, crocheted prayer caps for the Asians.
This university, the size of a village, was founded in 1993 by Sheik Abdul Majid al-Zindani, a revered spiritual leader, theological adviser to Osama bin Laden and co-founder of the main Yemeni opposition party, Islah. In 2004, the United States Treasury put Mr. Zindani on a list of “specially designated global terrorists” for suspected fund-raising for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The university itself is a good symbol of the complications of Yemen, its need to strike a balance between conservative Islam and an increased American involvement.
The radical American-born Internet preacher Anwar al-Awlaki took classes and gave lectures here in 2004 and 2005, when a young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — who later tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Dec. 25 — was in Sana studying Arabic. There is no firm evidence that they met then, or even last summer, when Mr. Abdulmutallab returned before heading off to Qaeda training camps, where he probably did meet Mr. Awlaki; the school denies that they ever met here.
John Walker Lindh, the American who was captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, studied here before fighting the Americans, and in general the university is seen as a center for jihadist ideas. While the school says lectures are only for students, the mosque is open to all Muslims.
The university has more than 4,000 students and teaches courses in Islam and Western disciplines, sometimes trying to meld the two. Sheik Zindani, thought to be 59 and favoring a long dyed beard, is well known for his effort to prove that the Koran predicts Western scientific discoveries, and he has claimed to have cured AIDS. One of his books, translated shakily into English, with charts about the ruminant stomach of the cow, photosynthesis and other scientific discoveries, is called “Signs & Mericals [sic] of Prophet Messenger, Peace be Upon Him.”
Hood Abu Ras, who runs Sheik Zindani’s university office, denies that Mr. Abdulmutallab was ever here, or that anything happens at Al Eman except scholarship. “Has the U.S. ever produced any evidence of Sheik Zindani’s involvement in terror?” Mr. Abu Ras asked. As for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an alliance of Saudi and Yemeni Qaeda operatives, he said, “It gets more propaganda than it deserves.” The sheik himself, at a recent news conference, said he opposed foreign forces in Yemen. “We accept any cooperation in the framework of respect and joint interests, and we reject military occupation of our country,” he said, adding: “Yemen’s rulers and people must be careful before a guardianship is imposed on them” by foreigners.
He was blunter in Friday Prayer at another mosque, when he warned of an American plot to occupy Yemen, based on a London conference scheduled for Jan. 28 whose stated subject is Afghanistan.
“The U.K. request for an international conference on Yemen is meant to pave the way for a U.N. Security Council resolution to approve an occupation of Yemen and to put it under a U.N. mandate,” Mr. Zindani said, as the worshipers shouted, “No to occupation!” He said that Washington’s “so-called war on terror is in fact a war against Islam,” according to Al Jazeera.
After his sermon, he told a reporter for Al Jazeera: “Obama’s advisers recommended that if Yemen becomes a failed state, they have to occupy the oil resources and Yemen’s seacoast. What is this military buildup on our coasts for? Is it really justified by piracy? No one really believes that.”
Sheik Zindani is no fan of American involvement in the Muslim world and has defended jihad — beginning with the thousands of Muslims, many of them from Yemen, who heeded the call, as he did, to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Their alliance with the Taliban then was considered a fine thing, and Mr. bin Laden himself fought the Soviets.
But the reaction to Afghanistan, including the creation of Al Qaeda, has hit Yemen, too. Sheik Zindani, who has considerable political and moral weight, has come out against terrorism, if not jihad, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has failed to get Washington to remove the sheik from the terrorist list. Even a senior Western diplomat said that the sheik “has kept his head down for the last few years,” since he took legal action against Yemeni newspapers and journalists in 2006 for reprinting even censored parts of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad.
Mr. Saleh, who has run Yemen for 31 years, told The New York Times in June 2008 that ruling here is like “dancing with snakes.” Sheik Zindani and his conservative brand of Islam — Yemeni Salafism — has strong support from Saudi Arabia and one of Mr. Saleh’s oldest allies, Ali Mohsen. They are all pillars of the current government, even if Mr. Mohsen opposes the dynastic succession of Mr. Saleh’s son, Ahmed, to the presidency.
While Yemeni Salafism is not as militant as the Saudi variety — Wahhabism — Sheik Zindani studied in Saudi Arabia, and the mental landscape of the Salafis and Al Qaeda is very similar — conservative, anti-Western, devoted to purifying Islam and returning to the practices they believe existed at the time of Prophet Muhammad.
Mr. Mohsen, a general who is currently prosecuting the war against a Houthi rebellion in the north, also recruited thousands of Yemenis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. His brigades returned victorious, and Mr. Saleh has used them since to help defeat the south in the 1994 civil war and against the Houthis. Some fighters, of course, have migrated to Al Qaeda, and there are imams here more radical than Mr. Zindani.
When north and south Yemen were united in 1990, Sheik Zindani accepted Mr. Saleh’s rule and was granted this huge area of government land on the western edge of Sana for the university — adjoining a large military base, which is Mr. Mohsen’s headquarters. There are rumors that students sometimes get military training there, which Mr. Abu Ras also denies.
Tuition, housing and food are free for students, and there is a primary school for their children. But with the Treasury Department crackdown on financing suspected terrorist groups, Yemeni analysts say that the school now has less money, that the number of students is down at least 2,000 and that there is less food in the cafeteria.
Ismail al-Suhailyi, who has taught political science here for 13 years, said that the West must concentrate on economic development, not just security assistance. “Otherwise, the people will see their government working only for the interests of the Americans,” he said.
“Al Qaeda is part of Yemen, but they are just a few hundred people,” Mr. Suhailyi said, advocating further dialogue with Al Qaeda. “I hope the American government will work to solve the problems here, and not become part of the problem.”
Thursday, January 14, 2010
YEMEN CLERICS THREATEN JIHAD FATWA
*** One of those things we certainly do NOT need in that place. MS ***
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100114/world/world_yemen_clerics_jihad
WINNIPEG (CBC) - A group of clerics in Yemen signed a statement Thursday warning that they would call for a jihad, or holy war, if any foreign military intervenes in the conflict-ridden country.
The warning did not name the United States specifically but appeared to be directed at America's potential for involvement in a fight between the Yemeni government and al-Qaeda in the Arabian country.
"If any foreign country insists on aggression and the invasion of the country or interference, in a military or security way, Muslim sons are duty bound to carry out jihad and fight the aggressors," the clerics said in a statement.
The group of 15 clergymen includes Sheik Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, whom the U.S. says has been a spiritual mentor to Osama bin-Laden, but who remains influential in Yemen and is being courted by the Yemeni government for his backing.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said he does not plan to send America troops to Yemen, but Washington sent nearly $70 million in military aid and training to Yemeni forces last year aid in their fight to root out al-Qaeda, which has made substantial gains in the country in recent years.
The conflict between the Yemeni government and al-Qaeda gained international attention after news that an al-Qaeda-related group in Yemen was reportedly behind a failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb a U.S. passenger jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Since then, Yemen has stepped up missile strikes and assaults on known al-Qaeda strongholds.
Yemeni political analyst Nasser Arrabyee said the government wasn't always a willing participant in the fight against al-Qaeda, but said recent missile strikes and assaults on known al-Qaeda strongholds demonstrate its renewed commitment.
"I think in the past the Yemeni government was somewhat lenient, but [now] it is completely different. It has declared open war" on al-Qaeda, he said.
Yemeni authorities on Thursday said they have increased security in areas around the capital of San'a in an effort to find al-Qaeda suspects who escaped a raid earlier this week in the southern province of Shabwa.
Yemen's government has little control over large areas of the mountainous country, allowing well-armed tribes to exert control over regions with little interference from the capital.
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100114/world/world_yemen_clerics_jihad
WINNIPEG (CBC) - A group of clerics in Yemen signed a statement Thursday warning that they would call for a jihad, or holy war, if any foreign military intervenes in the conflict-ridden country.
The warning did not name the United States specifically but appeared to be directed at America's potential for involvement in a fight between the Yemeni government and al-Qaeda in the Arabian country.
"If any foreign country insists on aggression and the invasion of the country or interference, in a military or security way, Muslim sons are duty bound to carry out jihad and fight the aggressors," the clerics said in a statement.
The group of 15 clergymen includes Sheik Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, whom the U.S. says has been a spiritual mentor to Osama bin-Laden, but who remains influential in Yemen and is being courted by the Yemeni government for his backing.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said he does not plan to send America troops to Yemen, but Washington sent nearly $70 million in military aid and training to Yemeni forces last year aid in their fight to root out al-Qaeda, which has made substantial gains in the country in recent years.
The conflict between the Yemeni government and al-Qaeda gained international attention after news that an al-Qaeda-related group in Yemen was reportedly behind a failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb a U.S. passenger jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Since then, Yemen has stepped up missile strikes and assaults on known al-Qaeda strongholds.
Yemeni political analyst Nasser Arrabyee said the government wasn't always a willing participant in the fight against al-Qaeda, but said recent missile strikes and assaults on known al-Qaeda strongholds demonstrate its renewed commitment.
"I think in the past the Yemeni government was somewhat lenient, but [now] it is completely different. It has declared open war" on al-Qaeda, he said.
Yemeni authorities on Thursday said they have increased security in areas around the capital of San'a in an effort to find al-Qaeda suspects who escaped a raid earlier this week in the southern province of Shabwa.
Yemen's government has little control over large areas of the mountainous country, allowing well-armed tribes to exert control over regions with little interference from the capital.
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