American officials say they are seeing the first evidence that dozens of fighters with Al Qaeda, and a small handful of the terrorist group’s leaders, are moving to Somalia and Yemen from their principal haven in Pakistan's tribal areas. In communications that are being watched carefully at the Pentagon, the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency, the terrorist groups in all three locations are now communicating more frequently, and apparently trying to coordinate their actions, the officials said.
Pochi giorni fa, Ali H. Soufan - agente speciale dell'Fbi responsabile dell'indagine sull'attentato alla Cole nel 2000 - ricordava:
Yemen has been a front in that war [against the terrorism] since at least Oct. 12, 2000, when Al Qaeda blew up the Navy destroyer Cole, killing 17 American sailors, in the port of Aden. The explosives for the bombing were bought in Yemen. And the attackers and their accomplices were predominantly Yemenis. Indeed, after the attack, terrorists in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan would march and chant, “We, the Yemenis, destroyed the Cole.” [...] Even before the Cole attack, Yemen was linked to terrorist acts. Most of the people who executed the 1998 East African embassy bombings either traveled through Yemen or used fraudulent Yemeni passports. Almost two years after the Cole, Qaeda terrorists based in Yemen struck the Limburg, a French oil tanker, off the coast of Yemen. Qaeda terrorists in Yemen also helped facilitate the attacks of 9/11. Fahd al-Quso, a Yemeni Qaeda member who confessed to me his role in the U.S.S. Cole bombing, also admitted to ferrying money to a Qaeda operative known as Khallad who was part of an important 9/11 planning meeting in Malaysia.
Che poi lo Yemen non sia un "nuovo fronte" nella guerra ad Al Qaeda lo spiega meglio di tutti Lawrence Wright, autore del saggio-capolavoro Le altissime torri (pubblicato in Italia da Adelphi): quella terra è da sempre una fissazione di Osama Bin Laden, il quale - già in tempi non sospetti - la indicò come possibile rifugio dell'organizzazione terroristica nel caso in cui Al Qaeda fosse stata cacciata dall'Afghanistan.
