Al-Qaeda: Between Afghanistan and Yemen.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, some of the leaders of the Al-Qaeda organization came out with theories which stated that attracting the United States Army to "friendly soil" had been an "intentional and planned decision" aimed at defeating it, as the Soviet army had been defeated before it.

And although such a claim was aimed at providing cover for the crime of the attacks themselves and for the mistake the organization committed by deploying its bases in known locations in Afghanistan - as well as hiding the differences in stances among its leaders, especially between Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri, on the group's priorities in terms of goals - it was adopted by some middle-ranking leaders in the organization, some of whom have today moved to Yemen, where the same experience is nearly being repeated.

Targeting the United States, as is known, was the result of the failure of the current led by Zawahiri to achieve "victory" over the "apostates", by which is meant Arab countries, and the dominance of Bin Laden's current, which called for striking against "the head of the snake", i.e. the US, first.

And just like in Afghanistan, there are two currents within Yemen's Al-Qaeda as well. One focuses on the domestic situation in Yemen, benefiting from local support, and seeks to move the country from a "land of Jihad" to "friendly soil". It thus attacks Yemeni army locations in various regions in order to impose its control over them and establish "emirates" and "governorates" where it would apply its own Sharia law. Among its leaders are Saudis such as Said Al-Shihri and Ibrahim Al-Asiri. The other current, once led by Yemeni Anwar Al-Awlaki and Pakistani Samir Khan, focuses on targeting the Americans and thus sends hidden explosive devices planted in human bodies and in printers to threaten civilian American planes.

After Awlaki and Khan were killed in US attacks, the two currents have come together and agreed on the principle of "dual targeting", i.e. of striking at whatever targets become available, be they near or far.

Meanwhile, the Americans have also changed their strategy. Thus, after they had focused their intelligence activity and their attacks on leaders and members of the Al-Qaeda current that threatened them, leaving the issue of dealing with the other current to Yemeni authorities, they have recently decided to stop distinguishing between the two and to target any leaders in the organization, regardless of the current they belong to.

The decision by Yemen's new President, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi, for the central government to regain control and expel Al-Qaeda and its supporters from the areas they have occupied, has come in clear compliance with Washington's desire to exhaust the organization and keep it busy, after it had grown more dangerous and its attempts to strike at American targets had multiplied. Yet the task of the Yemeni army seems extremely difficult, due to overlapping religious, tribal and political factors that prevent Yemeni consensus to back such a task from being reached, especially on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was late to condemn the painful suicide bombing that took place in Sanaa last week, and that Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for. In fact, it tried to clear the group of responsibility by placing the incident within the framework of "family terrorism", in reference to the relatives of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The task is even more difficult because of the vast areas in which the Yemeni army will have to keep its troops deployed, as liberating the Southern regions means that fixed and mobile army locations will be a constant target for the group's fighters, as long as the government fails to convince the tribes and the Islamists to stop providing them with cover, something it is unlikely to achieve in the near future.

A few days ago, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who had previously been the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which ran the operations carried out in Yemen, said in a statement that there was no necessity so far for direct military intervention in that country, and that the airstrikes carried out by unmanned drones were fulfilling their function of targeting Al-Qaeda leaders who posed a threat to the security of the United States.

But what will Washington's position be if Al-Qaeda were to succeed in one of its terrorist attacks against American targets? If the group is repeating the same mistakes that were made in Afghanistan and seeks to "attract" the Americans, will the latter repeat the mistake of invading as well? And how true are the reports circulating in Yemen of the US military increasingly gathering troops at sea while waiting for the countdown to end?

2012 Media Communications Group

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