Terror Watch: Yemen's Revolving Door | Newsweek Voices - Terror Watch

Yemen’s Revolving Door

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What's particularly galling to the Bush administration is that Wahishi is reported to be one of 23 Al Qaeda prisoners who, in February 2006, escaped from what was supposedly one of the most secure security facilities in Yemen. U.S. officials widely suspected it was an inside job. According to NEWSWEEK's account, the suspects were being held in a basement compound beneath the headquarters of the Political Security Office, Yemen's main intelligence service. Over a two-month period, using improvised tools, they managed to dig a tunnel to a nearby mosque and, eventually, make their escape via the womens' bathroom.

Among those who escaped was Jamal al-Badawi, another veteran Al Qaeda operative who has been indicted in the United States for his involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, an attack in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 U.S. sailors. The Saleh government later announced that Badawi turned himself in, but Bush administration officials are livid that he has not been handed over to the United States to face trial and believe he is really being kept under "house arrest"—detained under less-than-onerous conditions.

While Badawi's precise status remains unclear, U.S. officials believe other escaped prisoners, including Wahishi, have since returned to terrorist activities and have been involved in current plotting or recent attacks in Yemen, which have been occurring at a regular, though sometimes little-noticed, pace for the last couple of years.

What makes the recent events in Yemen all the more unsettling is that this was once considered a bright spot in the U.S.'s Global War on Terror. Following the Cole attack, the United States leaned heavily on Yemen's government to crack down on Al Qaeda and other homegrown Islamic militants, and the Yemeni government pledged greater cooperation. But Al Qaeda spokesmen in Yemen began publicly reiterating threats of terrorism after the Great Escape in 2006, and militants subsequently launched a series of regular, if often low-level, attacks. Since then, the Yemeni government's counterterrorist efforts have begun to resemble a revolving door; suspects are captured or turn themselves in, then escape or are released and are implicated in subsequent attacks.

With Katie Paul

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all i want to say is that no americans officials or staff died. this doesn't dilute the tragedy of those lives lost. it does however call for a more balanced therefore less reactionary view of the attack. america is, i would warrant,more concerned about our citizens than the hapless victims of their host country. they are likely to be considered collateral damage. if armed soley with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, as has been
reported, the attack was under-funded and amateurish. more zeal than adequate funding seems to negate
the "well-organized" aspect of it. the real success can be measured only in the fact that so few continue to prove that are the david to our goliath. our strength is might . their strength is willpower. the real issue at stake here is our vulnerablity to it.
moniker attached to it. "trying to breach the heavilyl fortified walls" is just that, the operative word being "try."