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 can sometimes get the impression – not from reading this blog, of course – that all Islamists are violent, even if they aren’t all al-Qaeda. For those, I would […]
Thanks to the good people at the Carnegie Endowment, Tuesday’s event is now on-line for any and all who weren’t able to make it but still might have an interest. […]
I have had some more conversations today about the truce that al-Ghad reported, and at least some government sources are pouring cold water on the report. This is the first […]
Yemen, or at least the newspapers in Yemen, are fairly quiet this morning.Trey pointed out that the Ministry of the Interior has put together a list of terrorist that combines […]
Here at Waq al-waq we like to pride ourselves on our gravitas and serious attention to detail and historical fact – except of course when we are talking about swords […]
For the past few years one of the more intriguing questions about Yemen has been: what is Muhammad bin Nayyif (Saudi Arabia’s deputy Minister of the Interior) thinking about his […]
My technical incompetence has forced me to re-post the announcement on the Losing Bet. For those in Washington and interested you can watch a trailer here. (Click on the announcement […]
Last year on the eve of September 11 the al-Ikhlas forum was taken off-line. I have yet to see a good explanation for its absence although I have heard plenty […]
Yemen has upped the reward and expanded the search to two other governorates, but there is still no word on the remaining six hostages. This absence of information is leading […]
Al-Sharq al-Awsat leads the way with an article about AQAP’s statement. One thing that few people seem to be picking up on is the difference in names between AQAP’s statement […]
Thomas over at Jihadica has a lot more on the term ruwaybidha, including one of the traditions from which some version of the term stems,also politely correcting my original transliteration. […]
For those interested in a bit more background on AQAP and the recent raids I have done a couple of radio interviews that may be illuminating.The first was with Glenn […]
Waq al-waq does not usually break protocol and comment on issues outside of Yemen, but this is an exception. On Friday my younger brother was awarded the Navy and Marine […]
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Simon Henderson has this piece on the Huthi conflict.He suggests that the reason for the renewed conflict in August was that fighters of […]
I heard some very interesting and very big news from the Sa’dah front last night, which I’m waiting to see reported in the local press to confirm what I heard […]
We still don’t know a lot about the two package bombs from Yemen that were discovered the other day. Although I’m pretty certain that the next time I go to […]
In what is almost surely a sign of things to come, at least in my opinion, there is a thread up on one of the jihadi forums that discusses a […]
Faysal Mukrim of al-Hayat has an article covering the opening of the trial of the 16 al-Qaeda suspects. The article is fairly good, and it gives the names of all […]
Today’s papers are full of fears of what tomorrow’s anniversary (Brian lives in an alternate universe one day ahead of the rest of us – like some little-remembered sitcom I […]
The following comes from Greg Miller’s article in the Washington Post on the second issue of Inspire:“The publication notes with evident pride that AQAP, as the group is known, has […]
Studying and thinking about groups like al-Qaeda can be an intellectually dangerous undertaking. Like most areas of study, the information one is dealing with is often heavily biased. Additionally, there […]
Every so often – say once or twice every few months – it really does seem, at least from the outside, as if Yemen is falling apart, and, gasp, could […]
Given some of the comments that have shown up on the blog over the past few days, Waq al-waq has decided to disallow anonymous comments. While we encourage different views […]
Yemen’s Ministry of the Interior has put out yet another wanted list. This time of 150 leaders of the so-called “Southern Movement.” Headlining the list as this Mareb Press brief […]
Despite the headline of this piece from Reuters, Gilles de Kerchove actually makes some very sober points:“I was in Yemen a month ago. It’s a state that really needs to […]
I respect Abdul Hameed Bakier’s take on Islamists and al-Qaeda, and I’ve always gotten along well with him, but for me this article is lacking his usual nuance, which often […]
I’m heading off for a few days of what I like to think is a much-deserved vacation later today, which means that postings will likely be sporadic over the next […]
In today’s Guantanamo files it appears that not only is al-Shihri still suspected of being involved in the September 2008 attack on the US Embassy (hopefully, returning readers know how […]
Today we would have seen parliamentary elections, but they were postponed, so instead, like everyone else, I’m waiting to see the results (if any) of today’s goings on in Abyan.