This week's attack on the US embassy in Yemen shows Al-Qaeda's ability to regroup in a strategically important country and further underscores a shift in the group's focus from Iraq, analysts said. It is a reminder that the United States will have to keep fighting Al-Qaeda on multiple fronts even if Iraq – cast by the Bush administration as the central front in its war on terrorism – calms down. “Al-Qaeda's most senior leaders have called for attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the region, and extremist groups in Yemen have made it known in words and terrible misdeeds that they are willing to murder innocent civilians,” a US counterterrorism official said. “The attacks in Yemen are an example of their ability to strike anywhere on the battlefield at any time,” said John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. Al-Qaeda has for years targeted US interests in and near the Arabian peninsula, the US official said. But the embassy attack, which the United States says bears “all the hallmarks” of Al-Qaeda, was the biggest against a US government target in Yemen since the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole, which killed 17 sailors at the port of Aden. The embassy strike in Sana'a killed 17 people, including an American woman and six attackers. The attackers used two suicide car bombs that triggered a series of blasts outside the embassy – signs, analysts said, of a sophisticated attack. Al-Qaeda in Yemen was weakened after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, as President Ali Abdallah Saleh stepped up counterterrorism cooperation with the United States. Attacks focused mainly on foreign tourists and private companies, said Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama Bin Laden tracking unit. “Al-Qaeda's had a rough fall in Yemen, but they're an improving organization. American embassies are a pretty tough nut to crack, but they did a pretty good job yesterday,” Scheuer said. “This is a hard target. To me it would say that they have more confidence and that they've rebuilt to the extent that they can do something like this.” The US counterterrorism official said: “Al-Qaeda in Iraq is certainly struggling badly, so it's entirely likely that Al-Qaeda's senior leaders are looking to mount operations in other places.” Al-Qaeda has deep roots in Yemen. It is the ancestral home of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and was a key source of fighters for the anti-Soviet brigades in Afghanistan in the 1980s that spawned Al-Qaeda. About one third of the roughly 250 detainees at the US Guantanamo Bay prison for foreign terrorism suspects are from Yemen. Yemen has arrested 30 Al-Qaeda suspects since the embassy attack, a security source in Sanaa said. A US Predator missile strike in 2002 killed six Al-Qaeda operatives including a Cole bombing suspect, but it has not been repeated. Defeating Al-Qaeda in Yemen and elsewhere will require nimble networks of local allies and focused US military and intelligence assistance, said Arquilla, who advocates a “global countertenor network.” “You build the networks and you take the offensive,” he said. – Reuters __
