Although the international oil and gas industry has become the target of the terrorist al-Qaeda organization in Yemen, officials there insist the country is safe for investment.
"We realize that in the mind of every one of you there's a blurred image concerning the confrontation with al-Qaeda, but we assure you, [Yemen]…is capable of [overcoming their] terrorist activities and eradicating them," said Yemen's Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Mujawar.
The prime minister made his remarks at a 2-day oil and gas conference in the Yemeni capital during which the country offered 75 international firms 21 projects, 10 of them in the oil and gas sector.
The prime minister's remarks followed the tenth anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden harbor. But to his shame, the Yemeni prime minister did not mention the attack, which was carried out by the al-Qaeda organization in his country.
Enter the FBI
However, an emphatic reminder of the attack on the USS Cole was recently provided by Ali H. Soufan, an FBI special agent from 1997 to 2005, who formed part of the US team sent to Yemen to investigate the bombing.
"As soon as the FBI received news of the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing, I flew to Yemen with a team to investigate," Soufan wrote in the New York Times. "The bodies of sailors draped in flags on a blood-stained deck, guarded by teary-eyed survivors, formed a heartbreaking image that motivated us during the following months."
Yet, as Soufan notes, the investigation faced difficulties from the beginning. Why?
"Yemen's weak central government's on-again, off-again relationship with extremists meant that al-Qaeda had influential sympathizers in positions of authority, as well as among powerful tribes in the country's vast desert," Soufan says.
Blurred image
Doesn't that sound like the Yemeni prime minister's notion of a "blurred image" concerning his country's confrontation with al-Qaeda? While the prime minister is ready to wave away that image, the former FBI agent is not. Indeed, he ties Yemen's vacillation over the al-Qaeda organization to the terrorists' subsequent Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the US.
"We long ago realized that if the American government had not let the Cole attack go unanswered, and if our investigation had not been so constrained, we could have undermined al-Qaeda and perhaps even averted the 9/11 attack," Soufan said.
Meanwhile, if you can believe it, Soufan noted: "The security situation in Yemen has deteriorated. Freed operatives and the availability of safe havens arguably make Yemen an even better base for al-Qaeda than Afghanistan or Pakistan."
Invest in Yemen? There's really only a single responsible piece of advice in that regard: Caveat emptor.
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