Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Yemen’s mounting security and economic issues require an international approach. Ultimately, aid to Yemen must address the long term stability issues the country is facing, not just American or regional security concerns.
Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation program for former detainees at Guantanamo Bay includes religious dialogue and relies heavily on families of the former detainees. To date, the program has had a success rate of about 80 percent.
The Saudi Arabian program to rehabilitate former Guantanamo Bay detainees and al-Qaeda militants has seen high success rates, but it has also allowed a considerable number to slip through the cracks and return to militancy.
As the security situation in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan has improved, al-Qaeda has been forced to seek out new safe havens in places like the ungoverned parts of the Yemeni countryside.
Protests in Iran over the past few days have shown the breadth, determination, and sustainability of the opposition movement, with demonstrations not only in Tehran but throughout the country.
The Saudi and Yemeni affiliates of al-Qaeda have merged into a single regional group and undertaken a series of attacks on U.S. interests from Yemen, taking advantage of the increasing instability of the Yemeni government and making the situation in Yemen a much higher priority for U.S. policy makers than it was a few months ago.
Airstrikes launched against al-Qaeda militants in Yemen were an attempt by an increasingly weak Yemeni government to fight the growing population of violent extremists using the Yemeni countryside as a staging ground for terrorism.
Cyberspace is at the heart of the fight against terrorism, as terrorists increasingly use the Internet to keep in touch with other cells and spread propaganda, and governments use it to convince potential terrorist recruits to leave before committing violence against civilians.
It remains to be seen how the Obama administration’s efforts at engagement with Iran will affect the domestic situation, as tensions grow between the opposition leadership’s calls for reform and the movement’s younger members, who are looking for a more fundamental change.
Saudi Arabia’s biggest internal challenge continues to be reconciling its conservative, religious identity with the politics of the modern world; while it grapples with fundamental political questions regarding religion and state, it must also deal with regional challenges that threaten its security.