Adam Baron

The Yemeni government launched an ambitious ground offensive Tuesday targeting strongholds of al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula militants in the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa as President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi sought to draw public attention to the rising number of foreign fighters who’ve traveled to Yemen to fight for the group.

A series of U.S. government drone strikes in Yemen over recent days has brought into sharp relief divisions among the country’s rulers over how to rein in a program that they’ve long supported.

A Virginia lawyer has filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C., demanding records that might help him determine whether the FBI tapped into his law firm’s computers as part of an investigation into how he came to possess classified documents.

When a Yemeni judge sentenced him to death on Oct. 18, 2010, Saleh al Shawish showed little sign of defeat. He openly admitted his affiliation with Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based al Qaida franchise, and his participation in seven of the group’s operations.

More than two dozen escaped prisoners, including several convicted members of al Qaida’s Yemen affiliate, remained at large Friday after a daring attack on Sanaa’s Central Prison Thursday night.

An ambitious months-long summit tasked with sketching out Yemen’s future in the wake of the 2011 uprising that unseated the country’s longtime president held its final working session Tuesday, amid evidence that this impoverished nation’s security situation remains precarious.

The presence of so many Saudis among the militants bolsters the belief that the assault was the work of al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the al Qaida affiliate based in Yemen that was formed by the merger of al Qaida branches in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

More than 50 people were killed in a deadly attack in the Yemeni capital Thursday when militants penetrated the headquarters of the nation’s Ministry of Defense in a two-stage assault that began shortly after the start of the workday.

More than 50 people were killed in a deadly attack in the Yemeni capital Thursday when militants penetrated the headquarters of the nation’s Ministry of Defense in a two-stage assault that began shortly after the start of the workday.

The U.S. government-ordered closure of 19 U.S. diplomatic facilities in August has prompted a new controversy, this one about whether news reports at the time alerted al Qaida leaders that their communications were being monitored.

In the words of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, it was a plot that aimed to change history. Intercepted communications appeared to indicate an impending terrorist operation of mammoth proportions. European nations shuttered their embassies; the U.S. and the United Kingdom airlifted staff from the Yemeni capital. The apparent plot seemed a manifestation of the U.S. government’s greatest fears regarding al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which former CIA director David Petraeus once dubbed the “most dangerous node in the global jihad.”

CAIRO – Even as many of the U.S. diplomatic posts in the Muslim world reopened Sunday, some still remained closed and the threats that triggered action to shut them temporarily last week were unexplained.

The United States’ launching of eight drone strikes in Yemen in the span of 13 days has ignited widespread outrage in the country. The anger over the strikes, which came as an al Qaida-related threat shuttered U.S. embassies and consulates in Yemen and 15 other countries, has overwhelmed attention to the threat itself, which many here view skeptically anyway.