ALGIERS, (Reuters) – Yemen is in danger of following Afghanistan down the path to becoming a safe haven for Islamist militants, the European Union’s anti-terrorism chief said in an interview yesterday.
Three foreign women were found dead in Yemen this week after they were kidnapped by an armed group, heightening long-standing fears the country could slip into chaos and provide a launchpad for militant attacks.
Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, said he had recommended that Yemen be ranked alongside Pakistan and the northern Sahara as regions that harbour threats to European interests.
“I was in Yemen a month ago. It’s a state that really needs to be assisted. It is confronted with many challenges and we have to avoid Yemen becoming another safe haven or another Afghanistan,” de Kerchove told Reuters.
“It’s a weak state, so indeed we have to mobilise the international community to avoid that happening,” he said on the sidelines of a counter-terrorism conference in the Algerian capital organised by the CAERT research centre.
Security analysts say they believe some al Qaeda militants, seeking new bases of operations after being squeezed out of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, are heading for Yemen.
The Arab world’s poorest state, Yemen is already struggling with al Qaeda militancy, along with with tribal rivalries and secessionist sentiment in the south, home to most of the country’s oil facilities.
If instability there deepens, al Qaeda could use it as a launching-pad for new attacks on neighbouring Saudi Arabia and further afield. Lawlessness in Yemen could also be exploited by pirates targeting shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa.
De Kerchove said the EU was concerned by the release this month by a Pakistani court of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of a militant group accused of last year’s attack on the Indian city of Mumbai.
