AQAP

Al-Qaeda in Yemen appears weaker now than at almost any point since its Saudi and Yemeni branches united to form Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2009. The group’s fortunes peaked in 2015 when it established a proto-state in the eastern port city of Mukalla, taking advantage of the security vacuum and increasing sectarianism…

The decline of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen over the past five years was unexpected. Indicators in the years prior to the onset of the current conflict showed a group primed to expand its influence. The wave of protests against then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011, and his subsequent resignation the following year, had left the country in disarray. A new president was at the helm and struggling with the ascending power of the Houthi movement. Conditions…

It’s the sort of embarrassing spectacle we’ve seen time and time again over the past 20 years. A terrorist leader is announced killed or captured, only to reappear days or weeks later, very much alive and free. This time it was the UN’s Al-Qaeda Monitoring Team that made the mistake. In a report dated February…

When Qasim al-Raymi mourned his predecessor and lifelong friend, he said the 2015 US drone strike that killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi had fulfilled the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader’s dream of martyrdom. Following Al-Raymi’s own death in a US military operation this January in Yemen, his assassination has stirred debate about whether AQAP can…

More than 15 years ago, in November 2003, the United States and the then Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh defeated the first iteration of Al-Qaeda in Yemen. That victory did not last long. Less than two-and-a-half years later, in February 2006, 23 Al-Qaeda suspects tunneled out of a prison in Sana’a and into…