Gulf | Yemen
Al Qaida elements taking root in Yemen
The cave tucked in the remote Saudi mountains near the Yemeni border was clearly a way station for Islamist militants, Saudi police say, pointing to the stock of guns and ammunition, nooks for holding hostages and cameras for filming them.
- Agencies
- Published: 22:51 May 7, 2009
Sana'a: The cave tucked in the remote Saudi mountains near the Yemeni border was clearly a way station for Islamist militants, Saudi police say, pointing to the stock of guns and ammunition, nooks for holding hostages and cameras for filming them.
It even had buckets of sugar, rice and flour, as well as boxes of charcoal, candles, pasta and beans - supplies for a long stay by Al Qaida fighters moving across the border to prepare attacks in the kingdom.
The discovery in early April reinforced a growing fear in Saudi Arabia: that Yemen could become another Afghanistan right on its doorstep, an out-of-control state where Al Qaida runs free and exports violence into its neighbour's territory.
The United States shares the Saudis' fear. General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, told Congress in April that the weakness of Yemen's government provides Al Qaida a safe haven and that terror groups could "threaten Yemen's neighbours, especially Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states."
Yemen is the Arab world's poorest nation - and one of its most unstable - making it fertile territory for Al Qaida to set up camp.
The country is also in a strategic location, next door to some of the world's most important oil producing nations. It also lies just across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, an even more tumultuous nation where the US has said militants from the terror network have been increasing their activity.
Al Qaida militants, including fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, have established sanctuaries among a number of Yemeni tribes, particularly ones in three provinces bordering Saudi Arabia known as the "triangle of evil" because of the heavy militant presence, Yemeni authorities say.
In January, militants announced the creation of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a merger between the terror network's Yemeni and Saudi branches, led by Naser Abdul Karim Al Wahishi, a Yemeni who was once a close aide to Osama bin Laden.
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