Gregory Johnsen
Near East Studies Scholar, Princeton University
Gregory Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Johnsen has written for a variety of publications on Yemen including, among others, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, The Independent, The Boston Globe, and The National. He is the co-founder of Waq al-Waq: Islam and Insurgency in Yemen Blog. In 2009, he was a member of the USAID's conflict assessment team for Yemen.
One really never knows what one will find cruising around the jihadi forums. The other day I came across a pretty interesting thread asking who was the true Amir al-Mu’minin. […]
Well Thanksgiving didn’t last long. The video of a Yemeni security official, Bassam Sulayman Tarbush, that I mentioned yesterday has now – as a few commentators have pointed out – […]
As Ibn Silliqi noted in the comments this morning another video has been released from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This one is entitled, “The Descendants of Muhammad ibn Maslamah.” […]
From time to time I hear rumors, most of them I ignore but every so often – apparently – I blog about them. One thing that I’ve been hearing lately […]
I finally carved out some time today to read over the transcript of Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahman Sulayman al-Rashad’s recent audio tape. This is the second anti-Shi’a screed from AQAP in […]
Brian and I are both in the process of posting skeleton bios and e-mail addresses to our profiles. Over the coming days – hopefully not weeks – we will also […]
The forums are still silent as to an AQAP statement (or any other one for that matter) on the kidnappings and executions. However, judging from the 1,069 people (at last […]
Yesterday the NEFA announced that it had “obtained” an AQAP statement – I’m not sure obtained is the right word here, as they didn’t find it in some Yemeni safehouse […]
I have been promising for a while to post about Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battles), but it turns out I’m actually over-worked and under-paid – on a related note […]
A YSP leader and his son were killed in Amran. The details are a little sketchy but it seems as though the two came under gunfire and were killed. Husayn […]
Now that it is confirmed that al-‘Awfi is back in Saudi Arabia’s custody, everyone has a chance to speculate on exactly how he came in from the cold and what […]
Both members of the Waq al-waq team were in Washington today for different events, both of which came off well or so I have been told. But somehow we managed […]
For those of us who have been watching al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and its predecessor groups al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Qaeda in the South of the Arabian Peninsula (note […]
After a long day of reading about the Yemeni civil war – the one in 1994 not in 1962 – I treated myself to a quick scan of the pan-Arab […]
In our unceasing quest to bring you everything that the contributors to Waq al-waq write and say in print (it really is a tireless task) we bring you this post. […]
Faysal Mukrim of al-Hayat has a decent overview of a number of recent events in Yemen. He mentions the transfer of al-‘Awfi, al-Wahayshi’s recent audio tape and he says that […]
Al-Hayat is reporting that two al-Qaeda members have been killed in Sa’dah. This is a new and confusing twist to an ongoing story. Both men are Saudis and on the […]
Two new You Tube videos supposedly show the Saudi Air Force carrying out bombing runs. Part one is here and part two is here. For me the big question is […]
In Waq al-waq’s continued attempt to bring you a better, sleeker blog I have added a new section entitled aptly: “Sites of Interest.” The first entry is the website of […]
One of the things I regret here at Waq al-waq is how little time we spend writing about anything besides what is going wrong in Yemen – really what I’m […]
Here is the link to my appearance this morning on the Takeaway, featuring what I can only imagine was brilliant 6:30 am analysis. One note: I told the producers that […]
Ginny Hill has written a couple of articles over the past few days on Yemen and Guantanamo and al-Qaeda and failed states. The first is at Open Democracy and provides […]
I saw a similar story earlier today on al-Tagheer, which I now can’t find thanks to more warnings about Sa’dah, but I can link to this story from Mareb Press. […]
I often feel that before even sitting down to write about Yemen one has to spend significant chunks of time separating fact from fiction in the swirl of rumors and […]
Timeline of recent events in YemenDec. 17:Three raids. One on what is being described as an al-Qaeda training camp in Abyan. The second on al-Qaeda safehouse in Arhab and the […]
Al-Sahwa has a piece from al-Mukalla, which starts off a bit too poetically for me, but nonetheless illustrates what the city is like as it prepare for protests. The description […]
For all our Danish speakers out there, and seeing as how I come from good (or at least hearty, as family legend says we were chased out of Denmark a […]
The news today from al-Jawf that five al-Huthi commanders were killed in an ambush by what some are charging as a militia linked to the government is yet another in […]
… is this brief from News Yemen that makes the claim that people in Shabwa are asking members of al-Qaeda to teach in their schools after the government has been […]
It is nice to know that someone is still reading Waq al-waq after the extended lay-off, and while I would like to re-start Waq al-waq in full fashion at some […]