The new decade has started like the previous one, with Al-Qaeda organization spreading terror around the world by transforming airplanes which were created to facilitate people's movement from one place to another into bombs ready to kill the biggest possible number of passengers. The new decade also started with a new name to be added to the list of Muhammad Atta and his companions who headed the first group which spread the fear from flying. They were young men from stable and successful family backgrounds and were never known for their religious fanaticism or political uptightness, until they became tools in the hands of a terrorist ideology which exploited them to serve its interests because they were the least suspected of following such an ideology. And just like the father of Muhammad Atta and the family of Ziad al-Jarrah among other families of the “heroes” of September 11 were shocked by the actions of their sons, so were the professors of the young Nigerian national Omar Abdul Mottaleb, the “hero” of the planned explosion over the Detroit Airport which could have claimed the lives of over 300 people on December 25, who were also shocked by the behavior of this young man who had been an excellent student in one of the best colleges in London, before he went to Yemen to receive Arabic courses in an institute in Sana'a and underwent a complete transformation. It was this visit that made President Barack Obama add Yemen to the list of the states considered to be a source of threat for global security by the United States, after he said that the list included Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia, and threatened to pursue all those planning to undermine the security of the US and the world from the latter territories. For its part, the American Congress considered that Yemen had currently become on the front line of the war on terrorism, and that seeing how Al-Qaeda organization used the emergence of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the failure of this country to protect itself and impose its sovereignty on the ground, exploited the collapse of Somalia as a country that did not enjoy the basic requirements for the building of a state and saw the facilitation of its activities and those of the other extremist organizations through the infiltration of the Pakistani security institutions, the Western security and intelligence apparatuses were currently keeping an eye on Yemen as a center used by Al-Qaeda organization in the Arab Peninsula to export sabotage activities to its neighbors and to the world. This is why comparisons were seen between the method used by Omar Abdul Mottaleb in his attempt to detonate the Northwest Airlines plane over Detroit and the method used by terrorist Abdullah Asiri in his attempted assassination of Assistant Saudi Interior Minister for Security Affairs Prince Muhammad Bin Nayef. And just like Afghanistan became a headline for the war on terrorism during the two terms of George Bush and was passed on to Barack Obama as such, all signs indicate that Yemen could become a similar headline for the war on terrorism during the term of the current administration, since the security rhetoric used by the American president in his response to the attempt to detonate the American plane, was the same one we heard from his predecessor following the September 11 events. Indeed, both featured talk about non-leniency with the terrorists, the necessity to pursue them wherever they were, the necessity to uphold American security and to proceed with the open war on Al-Qaeda organization until its total elimination. For his part, Omar Abdul Mottaleb confessed during the interrogation that there were many men like him training in Yemen to attempt what he has failed to accomplish. In this context, what is increasing Obama's concerns is the fact that the Guantanamo dossier whose closure raised criticisms in the ranks of the leaders of the Republican Party, is a Yemeni dossier par excellence, since half of those who are still detained in it are Yemenis and since there are still questions revolving around their possible return to Yemen after a number of those who were released resumed their terrorist activities. Yemen is definitely not another Afghanistan or another Somalia. Not yet anyway. There are open fronts in it, whether in Saada or in the South, and there are calls to increase Western support to the Yemeni forces to help them in their war against the terrorist organizations as it was demanded by Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qorbi as soon as he heard about the Nigerian young man's “graduation” from Sana'a. However, Yemen is still a state enjoying the elements of stability, but there is an urgent need to help it overcome its domestic problems especially since its collapse will entail extremely dangerous repercussions in the region due to its geographic location and the sectarian character of the ongoing conflicts on its soil.
