| This will turn out well ... |
SANAA -- Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh said he is open to dialogue with Al-Qaeda militants, as a top official warned that dozens of foreign jihadists are grouping in a remote part of the impoverished country.
"If Al-Qaeda (militants) lay down their arms, renounce violence and terrorism and return to wisdom, we are prepared to deal with them," Saleh told Abu Dhabi TV in an interview carried by Yemen's Saba news agency on Sunday. "We are prepared to deal with anyone who renounces violence and terrorism," he said.
| If they did all that you wouldn't need to deal with them. They'd be auto mechanics or IT support guys or farmers or teachers. |
| All the farmers are growing khat, and the teachers mostly can barely read and write, as I recall, and are paid accordingly. The only thing those mooks are qualified to do is to fire guns wildly at nothing in particular until the villagers give up because they feel a headache coming on. |
Saleh, whose country is also facing a Shiite rebellion in the north and a movement for autonomy in the south, stressed the government will crack down heavily on those who resort to violence.
"They are a threat not only to Yemen but also to international peace and security, particularly Al-Qaeda. They are ignorants, drug dealers and illiterate. They have no relation with Islam," he said.
The governor of southern Shabwa province, Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi, was quoted as saying on Sunday that dozens of Al-Qaeda fighters have streamed in from Afghanistan to join local members of the jihadist network in lairs carved out in the province's rugged Kour mountain.
| The Romans handled that lair thingy when they reduced Masada. Granted, it took a trained and disciplined army and more than twenty minutes of wild shooting at nothing in particular, but even so. |
"There are dozens of Saudi and Egyptian Al-Qaeda militants who came to the province," Ahmadi told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily. "This is in addition to Yemenis who came from Marib and Abyan (provinces) and a number of militants from Shabwa province itself," he added.
| Got thumped in Iraq, Afghanistan is too far away, and Somalia is too turbulent. Yemen is the new stronghold for al-Q. |
Among them, he added, are the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Nasser al-Wahishi, his number two, Saeed Ali al-Shehri, a Saudi, and radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.
Saudi analyst Anwar Eshki said Al-Qaeda militants have been fleeing to Yemen after they came under tremendous pressure in Afghanistan and Pakistan in addition to a crackdown in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
"The (Al-Qaeda) network is trying to establish itself in Yemen," Eshki, head of the Jeddah-based Middle East Strategic Studies Centre, told AFP.
Eshki believes Al-Qaeda in Yemen "will be far more dangerous than in Afghanistan because of its proximity to Gulf oil resources and transportation lines."
| And besides, Yemen is the heart of Arabia, whereas Afghanistan is... not Arab. |
President Saleh, meanwhile, said security forces and air force have achieved "impressive victories" against Al-Qaeda in the provinces of Abyan, Shabwa and the capital Sanaa.
| For a given definition of impressive, they have indeed. |
Yemeni security forces insist they are winning the war against the jihadists, pointing to two separate air raids in December that killed more than 60 suspected Al-Qaeda members. On Wednesday, Yemeni officials announced the capture of key Qaeda leader Mohammed al-Hanq and two other militants believed behind threats against Western interests in Sanaa that caused embassies to close for several days.
Yemen insists it can win the war against the militants without US military intervention, but analysts fear bin Laden's ancestral homeland cannot tackle the jihadists on its own.
| On the other hand, who is going to notice a couple of Special Forces teams wandering up and down that rugged mountain at night? |
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