Mean while, in Yemen...
Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 6:23 am
Al Qaeda is controlling entire towns and cities with ambitions of creating its own state.
Troubling to say the least.
Troubling to say the least.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/insi ... 25868.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;In dangerous areas of southern Yemen where few journalists have traveled, Ghaith found members of al Qaeda, describing themselves as the group Ansar al-Sharia, in control of cities and towns and winning both support and recruits among some in the local population by administering scarce resources.
In the above video, Ghaith visits Jaar, which al Qaeda captured a year ago without resistance from the Yemeni Army—which receives arms, training and intelligence from the United States. An al Qaeda spokesman, Fouad, took Ghaith on a tour of the large town and explained the way they are implementing Sharia, Islamic law. On the desolate streets, Ghaith encountered fighters he believed to be from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
"We are at war with America and its allies," Fouad told Ghaith. And Ansar al-Sharia has grand ambitions: the creation of its own state.
"For the first time in my experience, we see al Qaeda actually trying to hold territory, and this is a departure from anything that we had seen before," U.S. ambassador Gerald M. Feierstein told FRONTLINE. "The fact of the matter is that they continue to try to find ways to attack not only here in Yemen, but in the United States, in the neighborhood against Saudi Arabia, against Western Europe and the U.K. So they have global aspirations, and we consider that they still present a very significant challenge."