Playing a Double Game in the Fight Against AQAP (Al Qaeda)

[TomSea]

Playing a Double Game in the Fight Against AQAP
In Yemen, the world’s most dangerous jihadi group is both the government’s enemy and its ally of convenience.
By Evan Hill, Laura Kasinof | January 21, 2015, 10:31 AM
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ADEN, Yemen — One morning in early October, Faisal Salem’s 28-year-old son took his father’s car and left the family home to drive two friends to work. The elder Salem, a security official in this southern port city, had received death threats from mysterious callers in previous years, and five months earlier, masked men whom he assumed belonged to al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen had attempted to gun him down outside a grocery store. Despite his worries, he still allowed his son these morning drives.

After picking up one of his friends at a gas station, Salem’s son wound the car through a roundabout and turned onto Aden’s sea road. To his left, dormant volcanic mountains framed the mouth of the shimmering bay. To his right, the remains of the Arabian Sea dried into mud flats stalked by flamingos.

As they neared the end of the sea road, a bomb planted beneath the car exploded up through the driver’s seat. The car swerved and jumped the median, slamming into a lamppost. In the passenger seat, Salem’s friend clutched his ears, momentarily deaf and blind, two of his ribs broken. Bystanders pulled him out. When he glanced back, Salem’s son appeared unconscious. The explosion had ripped into his lower back, killing him immediately.

Read more at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/21/playing-a-double-game-in-the-fight-against-aqap-yemen-saleh-al-qaeda/