A breeding ground for extremism

Sana'a:  When he served in the Afghan mountains as Osama Bin Laden's personal bodyguard, Nasser Al Bahri said, he was known as "The Killer".

Today, Al Bahri is a business consultant in Yemen who favours Western-style pin-striped shirts, crisp slacks and black loafers. But his ideas are still radical: Ask him whether jihadists should kill Americans on US soil and he replies without hesitation, "America is a legitimate target".

The arc of Al Bahri's life helps to explain why Yemen was an attractive place for Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who allegedly tried to bomb an airliner on Christmas, to be indoctrinated into the Islamist world of jihad.

Thousands like Al Bahri, who have returned from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim lands, are disengaged from the fight against the West, yet express sympathy for Al Qaida's violent core philosophies.

As the US steps up its engagement here, it faces the delicate task of fighting terrorism without alienating Yemen's highly tribal and religiously conservative society. Like Pakistan and Afghanistan, Yemen has abundant weapons and men experienced in guerrilla warfare who resent US policies and have tribal, social and inspirational ties to Al Qaida.

Many fear that such men could become perfect recruits, especially if anti-American sentiments grow or Yemen plunges deeper into chaos.

Joining up

"These people are already angry and many are unemployed," said Abdul Gani Al Iryani, a Yemeni political analyst. "The only option they will have if fighting starts is to join Al Qaida. Where else will they go?"

He added that Yemen is a place where "you cannot prevent contacts between young impressionable men and their jihadist heroes".

Some of Al Qaida's best-known figures, many with strong ties to Bin Laden, live in this Middle Eastern nation led by a weak government and beset by multiple emergencies, from civil war to soaring poverty and dwindling oil reserves.

Abdul Majid Al Zindani, Bin Laden's former spiritual adviser, whom the US has classified as a terrorist, is the most powerful religious figure here today. Senior Yemeni officials both fear him and seek his support. Nasser Al Wuhayshi — Bin Laden's former personal secretary — is the leader of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which US officials believe trained Abdul Mutallab and equipped him with chemical explosives sewn into his underwear.

US and Yemeni investigators are also probing a possible relationship between Abdul Mutallab and Anwar Al Aulaqi, the extremist Yemeni American preacher who US and Yemeni officials allege is one of the emerging spiritual leaders in Al Qaida. Al Aulaqi has also been linked to the man charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5.

In an interview in a sunny room filled with computers at a business conference where he was working, Al Bahri, 37, said he has kept a relatively low profile in Yemen since 2002, when he was released from prison. He said Yemeni authorities held him in prison for nearly two years without charge.

Revered

He said he is no longer an Al Qaida member and has no desire to return to a life of jihad. But he said he still admires Bin Laden and his cause.

"He is a man of substance," said Al Bahri, oval-faced and bald with piercing black eyes. "Whatever mistakes he has made, he has a very pure personality. He's simple, holy and sacred."

Al Bahri was born in 1972 in Saudi Arabia to Yemeni parents. He grew up in the kingdom and earned a business degree in college. But like so many young Saudis, Al Bahri was deeply influenced by Sunni fundamentalist preachers and the Palestinian struggles against Israel. In 1993, he said, he travelled to Bosnia to join Muslims fighting the Serbs. Thousands of Yemenis went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. They were welcomed back as heroes.

Al Bahri said he had no desire to return either to Saudi Arabia or Yemen. After Bosnia, he travelled on fake passports to Somalia and then Tajikistan, eventually arriving in 1996 in Afghanistan. There, he heard Bin Laden rail against US actions in the Gulf War and preach that Muslims needed to be unified against the West.

"I decided to join," recalled Al Bahri, who was sent to a training camp in Khost province. A year later, he said, he took an oath of loyalty to Bin Laden.

In 2000, Al Bahri said, he had a falling-out with other Al Qaida members. Two months later, Al Qaida militants bombed the USS Cole in the southern city of Aden. Al Bahri said he was not involved in the attack, but he was on a Yemeni security list of Al Qaida operatives, so he went into hiding. When he tried to flee, Yemeni intelligence agents captured him at the airport.

Al Bahri said he was thrown in prison without charges. Seven months later, after the September 11 attacks, FBI agents arrived to interrogate him. Al Bahri said that although he fed the FBI lies, he believes his former Al Qaida comrades view him a traitor.