Too Much

There is a tendency when talking about al-Qaeda to over-exaggerate the threat and hastily abandon nuance in an attempt to make headlines, I’m sure I am as guilty of this as the next person. (Well maybe not, but at least the appearance of humility counts for something, yes?)

Yemen has largely been ignored in recent years, but that is now changing, and as it does more and more people are commenting on Yemen who understand the local version of al-Qaeda less as a product of Yemen and to some extent Saudi Arabia and more as a different version of the beast they study elsewhere.

This can lead to some interesting and at times ill-informed comments. I would put the following comment in this category: “Yemen is becoming an epicenter of global terrorism.”

The comment is by Rohan Gunaratna and appears in this piece by Henry Meyer, which is, well, interesting.