In the wake of a nearly fatal display of U.S. security and intelligence agencies inability to protect the United States from airborne terrorists, the White House has joined forces with its equally befuddled British counterpart and announced a roster of responses aimed at preventing similar slip-ups in the future.
Among the list of solutions proffered by the two governments is the funding of a specialized counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen created to aid that country’s own efforts to combat the reported rise in al Qaeda activity along its western coast. It is in one of those coastal provinces where Umar Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, is believed to have received training for his mission from operatives of the local branch of the worldwide terrorist organization.
Specifically, the United States has pledged to increase its counterterrorism aid to Yemen next year, from $67 million this year to as much as $190 million in 2010. According to reports made public by the Department of Defense, the small Arabic company has seen its funding swell from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million in 2009. The amount of money spent in that country on classified intelligence work is not included in the report, however.
For its part, officials in the United Kingdom refuse to disclose whether the money being devoted to training and equipping the Yemeni counter-terrorism force is beyond the more than $150 million already earmarked for that purpose through fiscal 2011.
Beyond the increase in funding, training, and outfitting of the Yemeni counter-terrorism police force, the two nations have dedicated themselves to similarly bolstering the small middle-eastern country’s coast guard. Recently, pirates have plundered four ships sailing through the waters between Yemen and Somalia, its neighbor across the Gulf of Aden.
A statement released by the office of U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown reports that he and President Barack Obama have requested the aid (financial and organizational) of Saudi Arabia, member countries of the European Union, as well as other countries in the region. To coordinate the multi-national effort to battle the supposed growth of al Qaeda in Yemen, Brown has scheduled a conference for January 28 in London. “The meeting will look at issues such as training of Yemeni forces and in encouraging economic, social and political reform in the country,” the statement reads.
Since the Christmas Day attempted bombing, President Obama has made Yemen the focus of his announced responses. “As President, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government-training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al Qaeda terrorists,” said the President during his weekly radio address on Saturday.
To demonstrate his resolve to nip Yemeni-based terrorism in the bud, President Obama dispatched U.S. Central Command commander General David Petraeus to consult with Yemeni military and civilian officials and to re-affirm to them the President’s commitment to making Yemen a priority in the on-going war on terror. Following the meeting, General Petraeus debriefed administration officials including John Brennan, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Brennan then brought President Obama up to speed on the results of Patraeus’s mission.
Finally, the White House and Downing Street agree that the best way to eliminate the threat of future, more successful, terrorist attacks on the West is to push the UN to deploy more blue-bereted peacekeeping troops in the region, especially in Somalia where a U.N. peacekeeping force has served on and off since 1992. Both the U.S. and the U.K. have promised a corresponding redoubling of budget contributions and manpower allocations to bolster the effort.
Given the globalist elite’s decades-old record of deftly manipulating the purported security weaknesses of its constituent states to justify the strengthening and further empowering of the United Nations, it is wholly unremarkable that President Obama and Prime Minister Brown would promote such a tried-and-true internationalist strategy as a viable solution to a difficult problem whose relevant factors are still unknown.
(Read also "U.S. Reaction to al-Qaeda in Yemen.)
Photo of Yemeni security forces: AP Images
