The government of Yemen is engaged in three counter-insurgency campaigns. Southern secessionists, northern rebels, and al-Qa’ida are each challenging the state. The calls for independence, revolt, or jihad arose as the state came to exist as the equivalent of a privatized mafia, but only al-Qa’ida in Yemen (AQIY) presents a transnational threat. The lethal jihadi attack on Fort Hood in November 2009 and the December 2009 attempted bombing of an airliner over Detroit were linked to … [Read more...]
Varieties of Islamism in Yemen: The Logic of Integration Under Pressure
By March 3, 2009
In the spring of 2005 in a remote corner of former South Yemen, the driver of an old Toyota Land Cruiser displayed two seemingly opposite pictures on his windshield. The first showed Ali Abdallah Salih, the president of Yemen since July 1978 and a new ally of the United States in the “War on Terror,” while the second depicted Usama bin Ladin, the world-famous embodiment of transnational terrorism. This reveals much about Yemeni society and its political system; nevertheless it can be … [Read more...]
The Sickle and the Minaret: Communist Successor Parties in Yemen and Afghanistan After the Cold war
By March 2, 2005
By John Ishiyama This paper examines the evolution of the only two former ruling Marxist-Leninist parties in the Islamic world--the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan/Watan Party (PDPA) in Afghanistan and the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP)--following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It considers these parties' historic development and how they adjusted to the changed circumstances of the post-Cold War world. The YSP has fared much better than its Afghan … [Read more...]
