Amid Yemen chaos, U.S. spies a resurgent al-Qaeda affiliate
(The Christian Science Monitor) Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen have wasted little time in exploiting the country’s recent collapse into chaos, from storming a remote border post to breaking into a prison to free a senior leader.
The rapid resurgence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemeni branch is called, has put national security officials in the United States on high alert, given the group's determination to launch attacks on the West. At the same time, the U.S. must navigate the complicated web of regional Shi'ite-Sunni rivalries that has turned Yemen into a proxy battlefield.
U.S. defense secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday said AQAP is making “great gains” amid the turmoil. He warned that the collapse of Yemen’s central government at the hands of Houthi rebels makes it harder to conduct counterterrorism operations against it, reports The Associated Press.
