DUBAI: Mounting Western pressure on Yemen to intensify its campaign against Al-Qaeda could backfire in a country already weakened by internal conflicts and poverty and with a suspicious populace, analysts say.
The ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden and headquarters of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is battling secessionist elements in the south, a rebellion in the north and increasing economic difficulties.
With two US-bound parcel bombs having been traced to suspected jihadists in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh is hearing ever-louder Western demands to curb a rapidly growing Al-Qaeda threat emerging from his country’s soil.
"The problem with the international vision is that it excessively focuses on the terrorist threat, which itself is only a symptom of other problems," said Laurent Bonnefoy, a political scientist who has worked in Yemen for years.
There were no Al-Qaeda attacks in Yemen between 2002 and 2007, mostly due to a tacit collusion between the authorities and armed militants to avoid direct confrontation, Bonnefoy notes.
"The regime is under Western pressure, but unfortunately its efforts aren’t very effective," he said, expressing a view held by others that Saleh simply does not have the resources to do the job.
Amr Hamzawy, a research director at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, doubts the capability of Saleh’s regime to fight Al-Qaeda.
"Does Saleh have the tools to fight Al-Qaeda," asks Hamzawy. "I doubt it very much. But he has no other option."
"The state is weak and becoming weaker; Yemen is degenerating," he said.
Long-term stability can only be achieved by resolving social and economic problems, Hamzawy says, in what is the poorest country in the Arab world.
He believes that, for now, Yemen has no choice but to confront Al-Qaeda using Western "military and intelligence information" combined with "technical and security support."
The US military currently oversees a 155-million-dollar (111 million euro) program to bolster the counterterrorism campaign. It provides helicopters, equipment and training by US Special Forces, and has also been widely reported as carrying out missile strikes against militants.
Fares Al-Saqqaf, president of the Centre for Future Studies in Sanaa, agrees that despite showing a will to do so, Saleh cannot fight the jihadists alone.
"The regime is in an awkward position. (Saleh) says he could fight Al-Qaeda on his own but has proved that he cannot do it."
Western countries want "more concessions," including direct US involvement in operations against Al-Qaeda, Saqqaf said.
Following the failed parcels bomb plot, which experts say showed high sophistication, US officials are weighing expanding operations in Yemen to hunt down Al-Qaeda extremists.
"The intelligence community has been increasing its focus on Yemen and, for obvious reasons, this will continue to be the case," a US official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Wall Street Journal reported that President Barack Obama’s administration was considering placing under CIA authority elite "hunter-killer" special operations teams that would operate secretly in the country to track and kill Al-Qaeda leaders.
Shifting to a more covert strategy would allow Washington to move faster against suspected targets and enable Sanaa to deny knowledge of the strikes, but the approach, denied by the Pentagon, risks triggering a popular back lash in Yemen.
Discreet US interventions have so far only turned the population against the central government.
A US cruise missile fired against Al-Qaeda in the south last December killed 55 people, Amnesty International said. Yemeni authorities claimed to have conducted the raid.
A similar operation in May, according to a New York Times report, resulted in the death of a deputy provincial capital governor as he tried to negotiate the surrender of suspected militants in the network, provoking the wrath of his tribe.
Saleh "finds himself caught in a kind of trap. How credible can a president who accepts American bombings on Yemeni soil be in the eyes of his people," asks Bonnefoy.
"I think this repression is counter-productive and can only increase Al-Qaeda’s popularity and ultimately legitimize their position."
