Airliner plot raises fears about al-Qaida in Yemen

WASHINGTON — As U.S. investigators sought to corroborate the claims of a 23-year-old Nigerian man that al-Qaida leaders in Yemen had trained and equipped him to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, the plot casts a spotlight on the Obama administration's complicated relationship with Yemen.

The botched attack on the U.S. plane came a day after Yemeni forces, with the help of U.S. intelligence, launched the second of two big air and ground assaults on major al-Qaida hide-outs in Yemen. At least 64 rebels were killed in the two operations in Shabwa and Abyan.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement, dated from last week and posted online Sunday, that the first airstrike was conducted by U.S. jets. The group urged followers to attack U.S. military bases, embassies and naval forces in the region.

If the link to Friday's attack is confirmed, it would be the second known case recently by the relatively new group, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, of exporting terrorism out of Yemen — a country with a weak central government, many lawless areas and plenty of weapons.

In August, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, in a suicide bombing that bore similarities to the airliner plot. The explosive device used Friday was attached to the suspect's body, just below his torso. The explosive material apparently used in Friday's attack is believed to have been used in the August assassination plot in Saudi Arabia by Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri.

A video posted online four days before the Detroit bombing attempt featured an al-Qaida operative in Yemen threatening the United States and saying "we are carrying a bomb."

Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, has long been an al-Qaida stomping ground.

A year ago, the CIA sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according to a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secret Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

Some analysts say increased activity by al-Qaida in Yemen suggests the group has strengthened and taken root in a country whose proximity to the world's top oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and vital maritime routes makes it strategically more important than Afghanistan.

"Al-Qaida started in Yemen and the Arabian peninsula, but it was raised and nurtured in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other places. Now it is clear that it is coming back to its roots and growing in Yemen," said Saeed Obaid, a Yemeni terrorism expert. "Yemen has become the place to best understand al-Qaida and its ambitions today."

Yemen's government is struggling with a civil war in the north, a secessionist movement in the south and a crumbling economy.

U.S. officials are concerned that Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, could become as volatile as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Yemen is running out of oil, and the government's dwindling finances have affected its ability to strike al-Qaida.

Last week's airstrike targeted a meeting of suspected al-Qaida leaders, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi in Shabwa, a southern province.

U.S. and Yemeni officials say both al-Wuhayshi and his deputy, Said al-Shihri, a Saudi national and former detainee at the U.S facility at Guantánamo Bay, were at the meeting, along with Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Yemeni American cleric linked to the gunman charged with killing 13 people at the Fort Hood military base Nov. 5.

The fates of the three men are still unknown. Eyewitnesses and tribal leaders in the area expressed doubts that the men had died or were even at the meeting.

Thousands of Yemenis have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq; many returned to Yemen. In 2000, al-Qaida extremists rammed the USS Cole with an explosives-packed speedboat off the southern city of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

The leadership of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has its roots in a February 2006 jailbreak of 23 prisoners from a maximum-security prison in the capital, San'a. U.S. and Yemeni officials said the prisoners were aided by Yemeni intelligence officials sympathetic to al-Qaida.

The escapees included al-Wuhayshi and several high-profile operatives behind the Cole bombings.

Hailing from a wealthy family, al-Wuhayshi, who is believed to be in his early 30s and to have fought alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan, soon began to rebuild the branch.

Until a year ago, the branch mostly targeted tourists, missionaries, oil installations and other soft targets in Yemen. In November 2008, heavily armed al-Qaida gunmen attacked the U.S. Embassy, detonating a car bomb that left 16 dead, including six of the assailants. The embassy attack, analysts and officials said, was believed to be a direct order from bin Laden.

Two months later, the Yemeni and Saudi Arabian branches of al-Qaida merged.

Today, the branch has about 100 core operatives, most in their 20s and 30s. But it has countless sympathizers and immense tribal support in southern and eastern provinces, said Abdulelah Hider Shaea, a Yemeni journalist with close ties to al-Qaida. Shaea, who interviewed al-Wuhayshi in an al-Qaida hideout earlier this year, said he saw several Muslims with Australian, German and French citizenships.

In a report to parliament last week, Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Security Rashad al-Alimi said rebels killed in a Dec. 17 airstrike included Yemenis, Saudis, Pakistanis and Egyptians. U.S. officials have said that some insurgents are leaving Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight in Yemen.

The group has an online magazine, Sada al-Malahim, or "the echo of epic battles," and regularly beams videos and communiqués to Web sites and jihadist forums.

In a recent posting, al-Wuhayshi praised the use of small bombs — not just big ones — to attack an enemy, in an eerie foreshadowing of Friday's drama in Detroit.

With fears also growing of a resurgent Islamist extremism in nearby Somalia and East Africa, administration officials and U.S. lawmakers said Yemen could become al-Qaida's next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization's top leaders operate.

Anwar Eshki, the head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies based in Jiddah, said al-Qaida in Yemen "is stronger than it was a year ago and is turning Yemen into its base for operations against the West." Eshki's center follows al-Qaida in Yemen.

"Yemen is al-Qaida's last resort," Eshki said. "There's no doubt that al-Qaida's presence in Yemen is more dangerous than its presence in Afghanistan."

The White House is seeking to nurture enduring ties with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and U.S. and Yemeni officials said a pivotal point in the relationship was reached in late summer after separate secret visits to Yemen by Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. regional commander, and John Brennan, President Obama's counterterrorism adviser.

Saleh agreed to expanded overt and covert assistance in response to growing pressure from the United States and Yemen's neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia, from which many al-Qaida operatives had fled to Yemen, as well as a rising threat against the country's political inner circle, the officials said.

Compiled from Washington Post, New York Times and Associated Press reports