Militants create haven in southern Yemen

By Sudarsan Raghavan,
WashPost
Saturday, December 31, 7:12 PM

ZINJIBAR, Yemen — — In this remote, sun-blasted corner of southern Yemen, there’s a battle raging that is as important to the United States as it is to this nation’s beleaguered government.

Each day, American-backed Yemeni forces engage in a grueling struggle to retake territory from militant Islamists — a conventional army pitted against a guerrilla militia with grand ambitions to stage an attack on U.S. soil. Each day, the soldiers feel increasingly besieged.

“We are like an island in a sea of al-Qaeda,” said Lt. Abdul Mohamed Saleh, standing at a checkpoint on a desolate highway that connects Zinjibar with the port city of Aden. “We are surrounded from every direction.”

The battle is but one in a broader struggle that has upended Yemen over the past year and left the country badly fragmented. With pro-democracy demonstrators now in the 11th month of a populist uprising that has forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to agree to step down, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and its sympathizers have taken full advantage of the turbulence.

(More here.)