The"new" terrorist hot spot". Yes...: Any explosive wrapped fahrouki who is anybody can be seen tripping the light fantastic in Yemens nightspots... Funny how they pop up where ever there's valuable resources to be found. Yemen has quite abit of oil and gas activity. http://www.gulfoilandgas.com/WEBPRO1/Main/NewsCTRY.asp?nid=YE perhaps minuteman knows how to interpret some of these numbers.
This AM on MTP was the first reference I've heard to Somalia as a potential threat site. Yemen has it's resources, but Somalia has the anonymity of space and lack of government that will allow for lots of training. Both are needing a lot more predator cruising if it isn't already being done. I'd stake a small amount on having US boots on the ground in Somalia before Yemen (or Iran.) Why do I think I'm prescient? Dunno, I see the same news as everyone else. The silence is deafening.
There are very few countries in the world that have no oil and or gas reserves at all. Especially in that part of the world. Yemen is next to last on the list of Middle Eastern nations for proven reserves. Next only to Syria. Their fields are in serious decline and are expected to be completely depleted in the very near future. They have just recently opened a LNG terminal and are selling natural gas to Asian countries. The ability to transport LNG around the globe is a recent developement that is proving to be an economic lifeline to the many countries around the world whose oil fields are drying up. I think the appeal to the jihadi's is more the instability of the region. Yemen was embroiled in a decades old civil war between the liberal, Westernized tribes of the South and the more rigid, Sharia following, radicals of the North, until 1999 when the two regions unified into what is now the Republic of Yemen. But there is much animosity between the two still and much intertribal tensions and old blood fueds that can be inflamed and exploited by those who would like to see the recent unification overturned. It is much like Afghanistan pre-Taliban. I think that the jihadis see it as the next safe haven. With the rigid fundamentalists in the North offering santuary to the islamist radicals.
