A Yemen Primer

I want to share a number of links to help people get up to speed with the extent of our participation in the war in Yemen. Most of our media breezes over the details or buries the lead under the 24-hour news cycle, but you can put it together if you read enough and cross reference. This is just scratching the surface.

The beautiful classical piece I used to soften the impact is Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.

The Origins of Al Qaeda in Yemen (AQY) and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

Video

Arming radical Sunni organizations is an American strategy that hearkens back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the Cold War. During the Soviet occupation, the CIA armed, trained, funded, and built tunnel complexes for groups of mujaheddin that eventually became both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. AQAP in Yemen is a direct successor to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.