Faced with a resurgent Al-Qaeda in Yemen the Obama administration seems to have learned nothing, writes Graham Usher in New York On Thursday -- on the sidelines of the London International Conference on Afghanistan -- another, smaller meeting took place. Its focus was Yemen, a country that in recent months has loomed almost as large as Afghanistan on the fluid frontline of America's wars against Al-Qaeda or those Al-Qaeda inspires or enfranchises. Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) has been a "serious problem" for America throughout 2009, conceded President Barack Obama earlier this month. But it morphed into a national security danger after the discovery that Umar Farouk Abdel-Muttaleb -- the Nigerian who tried to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day -- had been trained and dispatched by AQAP in Yemen. The failed attack was "revenge" for recent raids by Yemeni armed forces aided by the United States, said an AQAP statement on 28 December. And it was endorsed by Osama bin Laden in an audiotape aired by Al-Jazeera Arabic on 24 January. Entitled "From Osama to Obama", the Al-Qaeda leader said the Christmas Day attack "by the hero Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdel-Muttaleb" was "a confirmation of our previous message conveyed by the heroes of 11 September". One year after the CIA pronounced Al-Qaeda's "near strategic defeat" on the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and allied groups seem resurgent, not only on the borderlands, but in North Africa, Somalia and Yemen. The aim of the London meeting is to prevent Yemen from becoming "an incubator and safe haven for terrorists", said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In particular -- say diplomats -- foreign ministers from a dozen or so countries will try to agree a more coherent international response to the factors driving radicalism in Yemen. Regional analysts know what those factors are: an "incomplete and collapsing central state", poverty, joblessness, illiteracy, chronic depletion of oil and water resources, corruption, poor governance and civil and separatist wars in the north and south of the country. AQAP has thrived amid all these ruins. But it didn't create them. And its eradication won't mend them. That would require political reform and reconciliation at the national level and aid and support at the regional level, say analysts. Neither seems large on the London agenda. It will not be a pledging conference, say sources, despite appeals from the Yemeni government for big amounts of cash. So far the only up-front financial commitment has been a promise from the US to double military aid from $70 million to $150 million. (Non-military US aid in Yemen in 2009 was $40 million, or $1.60 per Yemeni). Instead the Western powers will likely parade the same holy trinity tried, tested and failed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan: development, state (or more precisely government) building and "counterterrorism". In practice this means the downgrading of development in favour of a government-building project mortgaged to a "counterterrorism" strategy designed by the Americans. It hasn't worked in Afghanistan. There is no reason to think it will fare better in Yemen. But it's being applied. Following the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi wings of Al-Qaeda in January 2009, US and British agents have been tutoring Yemen's National Security Agency (NSA) to counter the influence of its domestic Political Security Organisation: seen by the US and UK as penetrated by and complicit with AQAP. In a cruel irony the NSA is staffed among others by ex-Baathist Iraqi officers, given sanctuary by the Yemeni government after fleeing the 2003 US occupation. The NSA is said to have supplied intelligence for a slew of air-strikes on alleged AQAP bases in southern Yemen in December and January. It's not clear whether these strikes were launched from CIA pilotless drones or by Yemeni fighter jets guided by US technology. It is clear they mark a significant escalation of American military power in Yemen. There are also American reports of US Special Forces engaged in covert operations against AQAP in Yemen and/or against AQAP-aligned tribes. For now these forces will not be joined by ground forces, says Obama. Rather the strategy for Yemen seems to be a lethal mix of US counterinsurgency tactics drawn from the Palestinian occupied territories and Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands: schooling an anti-Islamist security force like the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and conducting covert operations and drone attacks against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as in the border areas. In Gaza this helped ferment a civil war that resulted in a Hamas takeover. In the Afghan- Pakistan borderlands it helped mould the Pakistan Taliban into a major military force while dispersing Al-Qaeda from havens there to havens abroad, including Yemen. Both outcomes could be repeated in Yemen. It could also win recruits for Al-Qaeda, says Abul- Elah Hidar Shaea, a Yemeni with close ties to AQAP. "The US wants to fight Al-Qaeda here. It won't work. They'll make this the new Waziristan, exporting fighters all over the world," he told the BBC on 5 January.
