Only days after the parliamentary elections in Yemen on April 27, the US agency for international aid (USAID) announced the return of its mission to the country after seven years, saying that its activities would be restricted to the areas of public health, primary education and the provision of security, and the sources of income and food in certain rural areas.
A series of explosions at locations in government buildings and buildings adjacent to the US embassy in Sana, the capital of Yemen, and noisy demonstrations against the regime have shown how angry the Yemeni people are becoming at president Ali Saleh’s undiminished cooperation with the American ‘war against terrorism’.
The increasing activity of US military and intelligence officers in Somalia — and the need in general to justify the extension of the “war on terror” — led Washington to announce on March 18 that it had found incontrovertible evidence linking al-Qaeda to Islamic activists in Somalia.
Five British Muslims went on trial in Aden, Yemen, on January 26, accused of planning to bomb the city’s main hotel, the British consulate and a church.
Yemen, in a move reflecting its new close diplomatic and military ties with the US, is offering to mediate between Eritrea and Ethiopia in their territorial dispute, which is threatening to unravel the US’s carefully constructed anti-Sudan alliance in the Horn of Africa
