Ties between the United States and Yemen are being strained by a growing disagreement over how to combat the Yemen-based terrorist group that US officials have called the most potent al-Qaeda franchise.
Even as both sides claim credit for the death of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a US drone strike, they are sparring over divergent priorities.
Senior Yemeni officials accuse the United States of not helping government forces fight opponents, many of whom they say are al-Qaeda-linked insurgents intent on attacking the West, inside Yemen.
US officials, in turn, express little interest in the insurgency in Yemen and say their counterterrorism efforts are limited to what they describe as a minority within al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate that is focused on US attacks.
The dispute underscores a fundamental dilemma facing the Obama administration. Although it depends on counterterrorism cooperation from the Saleh government to target leaders of the Yemen-based group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, it is seeking Saleh’s resignation as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring.
Already Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has come out publicly denouncing Saleh‘s tactics of targeting protestors with lethal force. This means that the administration must play an even harder balancing act as summer draws to close. Some analysts question whether anything can really be done, and that the best solution maybe a hands free approach at this juncture.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
Even as both sides claim credit for the death of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a US drone strike, they are sparring over divergent priorities.
Senior Yemeni officials accuse the United States of not helping government forces fight opponents, many of whom they say are al-Qaeda-linked insurgents intent on attacking the West, inside Yemen.
US officials, in turn, express little interest in the insurgency in Yemen and say their counterterrorism efforts are limited to what they describe as a minority within al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate that is focused on US attacks.
The dispute underscores a fundamental dilemma facing the Obama administration. Although it depends on counterterrorism cooperation from the Saleh government to target leaders of the Yemen-based group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, it is seeking Saleh’s resignation as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring.
Already Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has come out publicly denouncing Saleh‘s tactics of targeting protestors with lethal force. This means that the administration must play an even harder balancing act as summer draws to close. Some analysts question whether anything can really be done, and that the best solution maybe a hands free approach at this juncture.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
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