Following Path of Least Resistance, Terrorists Turn Yemen Into Poor Man's Afghanistan

With a stepped up presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, intelligence and security officials are now looking at other would-be hosts to Al Qaeda and its offshoot terrorist elements. Near the top of that list is Yemen. If terrorism follows the path of least resistance, then Yemen may be the poor man's Afghanistan. With a stepped up presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, intelligence and security officials are now looking at other would-be hosts to Al Qaeda and its offshoot terrorist elements. Near the top of that list is Yemen. "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war. That's the danger we face," said independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, head of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. "Yemen is a hot spot. We need to do everything we can to work with that government," added Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, who appeared with Lieberman on "Fox News Sunday." The arrest of a Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a transatlantic flight to the United States on Christmas Day has now led back to Yemen.  Sources told Fox News on Sunday that suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the son of a wealthy retired Nigerian banker and government minister, had spent time in Yemen in the past year. A government report sent to law enforcement agencies on Sunday also referred to Abdul Mutallab's "extremist ties and possible involvement with Yemen-based extremists." However, federal officials have not determined that Mutallab obtained any explosives in Yemen. Yemen has been a trouble spot for a long time. In 2000, the USS Cole was attacked in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed. All the defendants connected to the Cole bombing were released by Yemeni authorities or broke out of Yemeni jails by May 2008.  While Yemen's President Ali Abdallah Saleh has been increasing counter-terrorism cooperation, tribes in rural areas have given refuge to Islamic extremists. More than 90,000 Somali refugees also are located in Yemen, which sits across from the Horn of Africa. Nearly half of Yemen's population is under age 15, and fewer than half the people are literate. Yemen was reunified in 1990 after being divided in two since the end of World War II. The southern portion was overrun by Marxists after the British abandoned its protectorate in 1967. The north was run by an Islamic theocracy until 1962. Now, political parties are divided into Islamic reformist groups, socialists and a Ba'athist Party similar to Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, among others. The Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab, Sunni group that wants to spread Islamic law to secular governments, is an influential pressure group.  "The Yemeni government now is facing three confrontations -- one with the south, one with Al Qaeda and one in the north" that is supported by the Iranians as part of its proxy war with the West and U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, said terrorism expert Walid Phares.