Don’t Panic September 25 2002
Why have we been hearing so much about Yemen over the past couple of weeks?
Although Yemen has been key in the War On Terror since 9-11, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, when a Shoney’s customer in South Georgia overheard Yemen talking suspiciously, that we as a nation started paying attention. No, wait. I’m mixing up my current events. Let’s start again.
Yemen is all over the news recently for several reasons. First, there were some recent high-profile arrests of Yemenis and Americans of Yemeni descent. Near Buffalo, N.Y., in Lackawanna (apparently Iroquois slang meaning “I don’t want nuthin”), five Americans of Yemeni descent were arrested recently and charged with providing material support to terrorists. A sixth Lackawanna Yemeni (say that several times fast) was arrested in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, where he had flown to complete his arranged marriage. Apparently, the six were graduates of an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Authorities made the arrests after a customer at an Afghanistan Shoney’s confirmed their identities to the FBI. A seventh man, thought to be the Lackawanna head kahuna, is supposedly in Yemen.
In Pakistan, eight of the 10 al-Qaedudes arrested in a recent raid were Yemeni, including Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, whom the U.S. accuses of being a participant in the planning of 9-11. Authorities also believe that al-Shibh’s brother was a key player in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Under the USA Patriot Act passed last year, being the brother of an accused terrorist is alone punishable by 15 years in prison.
Meanwhile, in the tiny East African nation of Djibouti, which is just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, the U.S. has stationed 800 troops and an amphibious assault ship, ready to mount anti-terrorist raids in Yemen on short notice. The U.S. believes many top al-Qaeda officials are hiding in Yemen. Dubbed Operation Djibouti-licious (by me anyway), the forces include what the USA Today has called (I’m not making this up) a Delta Force “Snatch Team.” When asked about forces in Djibouti (pronounced ji-booty), a Pentagon spokesperson pointed tauntingly pointed toward Yemen and sang, “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. Operation Djibouti-licious’ on the way.” OK, I did make that last bit up.
So what is it about Yemen that makes it so damn terrorist friendly? The government of Yemen has in fact been quite cooperative with U.S. anti-terrorist efforts. In fact, it brought in U.S. troops this year to help train its forces in counterterrorism. But Yemen is a large country (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation helpfully describes it as three-fourths the size of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan), dirt-poor (or more precisely, sand-poor), not governed very effectively, and rife with Islamic fundamentalists. It is thought to be a collecting point for Saudi radicals who want to overthrow the U.S.-supported Saudi royal family and rid neighboring Saudi Arabia of American troops. Because the country lacks a Shoney’s restaurant, terrorist activities in Yemen are very hard for authorities to track.
Completely irrelevant, except to readers who want to use this column to impress some hot employee at Starbucks, is the fact that Yemen is the first place coffee was cultivated. There’s actually a city in Yemen called Mocha. Yemen also is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, whose father, Mohammed bin Laden, moved to Saudi Arabia from Yemen in 1931 to pursue his dream of being the rich father of the world’s most famous terrorist.