Yesterday, U.S. national security officials announced that the CIA and other U.S. agencies, working with foreign intelligence services, had uncovered and disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to bomb civilian aircraft. The terrorist operation, hatched by the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has launched several high-profile attacks in the …
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled Yemen since 1978, stepped down from power on Monday under strong domestic and international pressure. He became the fourth Arab leader ousted since the dawn of the so-called Arab Spring last year. Saleh was succeeded by his longtime crony Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi, …
Libya and Yemen until recently were led by the longest-ruling dictators in the Arab world. Muammar Qadhafi’s death marks the official end of his 42-year rule in Libya. While the overthrow of his regime enables Libya to embark on the challenging path to democratic governance, Yemen’s president, President Ali Abdullah …
According to media reports, Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American Islamist radical who played an increasingly influential role in the al-Qaeda network, was killed in a CIA drone strike earlier today in Yemen. Awlaki was reported to have been killed at least twice before, and one of his brothers reportedly already has …
President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s return to Yemen on Friday after four months in Saudi Arabia has sparked renewed violence after protestors launched demonstrations against the government that were violently repressed. Since the beginning of the uprising last January, Yemen—an already volatile and poor country—has plunged deeper into chaos, dividing the …
In January, Heritage Senior Research Fellow Jim Phillips predicted that Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution would spark uprisings throughout the Arab world. Four months later, North Africa and the Middle East are experiencing substantial governmental transformations, and there is no end in sight. Tunisia As the first leadership casualty of the “Arab …
On August 5, more than a dozen Somali-Americans, variously located across several states, were arrested on charges related to providing material support to the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. The arrests of these individuals represents the latest in a string of incidents in which U.S. citizens, or foreign nationals living within the …
On Monday evening, Dutch authorities detained Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi (of Detroit) and Hezem al Murisi when their United Airlines flight from Chicago landed in Amsterdam. It’s always a big mistake to jump to “instant analysis” based on preliminary press reports. But it shouldn’t come as much of a …
Following weeks of strong bipartisan criticism of their handling of terror trials and detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder released a letter yesterday defending the Obama administration’s criminal justice system approach to prosecuting the war against al-Qaeda. Defending his administration’s handling of the Flight 253 terrorist, Holder wrote: “I made the decision to …
