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Yemen, the Middle East, and the World Beyond
Editor's Note: I recently read and subsequently tweeted about Submergence, the new novel by J.M. Ledgard. Then I asked one of the smartest people I know - Brian O'Neill - if he would review the book for Waq al-waq. His review is below and it is my hope that he'll continue to review books for us ...
This week The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda and the Battle for Arabia was released in the UK. For those wanting to get a sense of the book, I urge you to watch this short (1:41) book trailer, which you can view here. And for those in the US and Australia who haven't yet had a chance to ...
On Thursday, John Brennan, President Obama's nominee to be the new director of the CIA, went before the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer questions. I watched all three and-a-half hours of the discussion and despite a few moments of genuinely challenging questions I was largely ...
On Christmas Eve, Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post wrote a detailed article about a September air strike in which the US attempted to kill 'Abd al-Rauf al-Dhahab, whom it believes to be a regional al-Qaeda commander. That strike missed al-Dhahab and killed several innocent people and has ...
On December 23 - the same day the US carried out an apparent drone strike in the al-Baydha governorate of Yemen, apparently targeting 'Abd al-Rauf al-Dhahab - AQAP released a 43 minute video. The video, which is one of the more polished videos I've seen AQAP release, is basically a catalog of ...
Three years ago, on December 17, 2009, the Obama administration launched its first strike on what it believed to be an AQAP training camp in southern Yemen. Unfortunately, what the Obama administration believed to be a terrorist training camp turned out to be a bedouin encampment, and the ...
US officials continue to maintain as they have publicly for some time that in Yemen the US is only targeting the top 10-15 leaders of AQAP, whom it believes are actively plotting against the US and US interests in Yemen. However, in order to kill these 10-15 individuals the US has carried - by ...
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about security in Sanaa and my own sense of unease during my last trip to Yemen. That piece drew several comments both here on the blog and in person, where a number of people who know Yemen well pushed back against my sense of safety. It even came up during my ...
Editor's Note: Today I'm thrilled to have a guest post by Adam Baron, an excellent journalist, who is working and writing from Yemen. Today, he wrote a must-read story on his trip to see the aftermath of the November 7 drone strike that killed 'Adnan al-Qadhi. You can and should read that story ...
Today I published an op-ed in the NY Times, arguing that the "Yemen model" approach to counterterrorism is deeply flawed. I also suggest a way forward for the Obama administration in selecting a new CIA director. You can read the whole piece here. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case ...
In the latest issue of New York Review of Books, Robert Worth reviews The Last Refuge along with Edmund Hull's book, High Value Target. Worth opens like this: Yemen is an ancient country on the southern heel of the Arabian peninsula, the crucible of many of the peoples and customs we now ...
I encourage Waq al-waq's readers to tune in to Rock Center with Brian Williams this evening at 10 pm EST for a segment on Ibrahim Asiri - who I wrote about here - and AQAP, in which I'll be talking about the organization with NBC chief foreign correspondent and, as I found out, fluent Arabic ...
This weekend the Toronto Star published an excerpt from The Last Refuge entitled: "The Bomber and His Brother," which looks at Ibrahim and Abdullah Asiri. The piece opens: A decade ago, in the months after Sept. 11, the boy who would become one of Al Qaeda’s most famous suicide bombers ...
This is the type of post I'm not a big fan of writing, and you probably aren't a big fan of reading. But, I'm told I'm supposed to do things like this, so, here it goes .... I appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition on Sunday talking to Rachel Martin about The Last Refuge, Yemen, and US policy. You ...
Editor's note: The below is a guest post by Waq al-waq co-founder Brian O'Neill. (I want to thank Greg for inviting me to post, and urge any of you who haven’t to buy- don’t rent, you freeloaders!- his book. It is truly excellent, and a must read. There isn’t an analyst who I trust more, or ...