Bin Laden’s Bridge over Troubled Waters
Why is Osama's brother pushing a bizarre construction project in one of the world's most dangerous areas?
Last month, General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, told Congress that Yemen could easily become another Afghanistan. Petraeus’ info came on the heels of similar information conveyed to Congress a month earlier by Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence. In Blair’s U.S. national security threat assessment, prepared annually for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Blair fingered both Yemen and Somalia as two of the world’s worst security threats.
Yemen, Blair said, was “reemerging as a jihadist battleground and potential regional base of operations for al-Qaeda to plan internal and external attacks, train terrorists, and facilitate the movement of operatives.” Supporting that theory was the fact that when Interpol recently released an orange alert for 85 most wanted terror suspects, the majority of the men (most of whom are Saudis) were listed as believed to be in Yemen. And then just last month, Saudi police discovered a terrorist cave compound in the mountains that run along the Saudi-Yemen border, complete with weapon stockpiles, hostage-holding cells, and camera equipment, ready to film … something.
Across the sea from Yemen, in Somalia, Blair said, “the influence of the Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shabaab” had grow exponentially with the help of “al-Qaeda operatives in the Horn.” Earlier this week, CNN ran a headline story, complete with video footage, featuring an American man called Abu Mansoor al-Amriki — whom al-Qaeda calls “the American” for short — urging his “Muslim brothers in Mujahid Somalia” to join al-Qaeda. The al-Shabaab terrorist organization, thriving alongside the pirates whose headquarters is also there, is now using hip-hop to promote jihad. This begs the question: who needs Koranic verse when you can scribe lyrics like:
Away from your family, away from our friends, away from ice, candy bars, all those things is because we’re waiting to meet the enemy.
Or:
Mortar by mortar, shell by shell, only going to stop when I send them to hell.
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Annie Jacobsen writes about aviation and intelligence. She blogs at TheAviationNation.com and is working on a new book for Little Brown and Company.
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7 Comments
1. BPT (Australia):In a just world, Yemen would be treated like a joke by Comedy Central. There is so much material here.
May 8, 2009 - 5:28 am 2. kazooskibum:One thing about bridges. They’re easy to blow up.
May 8, 2009 - 7:09 am 3. seven:If they have 35% unempluyment, why don’t the take it on with ultra cheap labor. We could give them shovels and wheelbarrows. Most folks do not know the only remaining sector on this planet with slavery is a set of Muslim nations. all other cultures hve left slavery. Of course if slavery is productive, why don’t they apply their prosperity to their infrastructure?
May 8, 2009 - 7:51 am 4. Don:You don’t understand. Building a bridge to nowhere is one of those popular liberal foreign infrastructure projects, paid for by the American tax payer, to jump start sustainable growth in the “third world.” It’ll erase poverty by putting all those would be religious warriors to work, building bridges of cross cultural understanding and empathy. As we’ll know, poverty produces to hate. Why would any self respecting rich Saudi prince spend their own money on regional economic development when the the Americans can so easily be extorted? Give me your money or I’ll blow up your church!
May 8, 2009 - 8:05 am 5. Paul:Am I the only one who noticed that the bridge isn’t going to Somalia? It’s going to Djibouti, which has a very different relationship with the US. Djibouti is home to Camp Lemonier the only permanent US military base on the continent. It’s still a stupid idea but it’s not a bridge connecting two terrorist havens.
May 8, 2009 - 9:10 am 6. Frank:Talk about a bridge to nowhere
May 9, 2009 - 10:25 am 7. Jeff Guthery:I’d rather see the Saudis spend $70 billion on an idiotic bridge than use it to continue to fund Wahabbi mosques across the U.S. and Europe, spreading their filthy, slimy, 6th century bedouin dogma.
May 9, 2009 - 4:51 pm