As the government today claims it prevented a terrorist attack, the AP reports that the al Qaeda affiliated Islamist group in the South is gaining strength. Joshua Goldstein takes a step back from the "Yemen mess":
Yesterday hundreds of thousands of Yemenis turned out to demonstrate peacefully for a transitional council to take over from President Saleh. With the president still in a hospital in Saudi Arabia — where Western diplomats say his progress will take months — bargaining on his exit from power seems truly stalled. The president’s supporters say he will make a speech to the nation shortly and return to the country soon. The vice president, the military led by the president’s son, and the opposition armed tribes all are circling without much direction. The son is even talking peace recently, though it’s hard to know if there’s anything behind that. The bright side is that a cease-fire between the government military and the armed tribesmen has pretty much held up over the last couple of weeks.
No such good news in the south of the country, however. …
The militants might actually capture the main city in the south, Aden. Tens of thousands of refugees have fled the fighting. And the country’s economy — already the poorest in the Arab world — has declined by half amidst all these problems.
Why does it matter for Americans? Ten years after ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan so that al Qaeda did not have a safe territorial base from which to attack America, the militants in Yemen are poised to potentially give al Qaeda a safe territorial base to attack America.
Amel Ahmed keeps tabs on the current state of the opposition. Previous Dish coverage here.
The Dish 