Friday, January 22, 2010

Secret Cold War CIA project placed Trojan horse codes in Soviet targeting system


Secret Cold War CIA project placed Trojan horse codes in Soviet targeting system...?

http://www.isgp.eu/organisations/Le_Cercle.htm#160

WMR has learned of a super-secret CIA project that surreptitiously placed a hidden encrypted code into the firing codes that were designed to authorize the launch of Soviet submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) during the Cold War.

In the early 1980s, the CIA embarked on a risky highly-classified operation to place software bugs, known as Trojan horses and logic bombs, into software programs, as well as computer chips and other firmware, that the KGB was acquiring illegally from the West. President Ronald Reagan personally authorized the secret program.

According to several written accounts, the CIA's point man for the operation was Dr. Gus Weiss, who suspiciously plunged to his death from the Watergate complex in Washington, DC on November 25, 2003, after publicly condemning the U.S. war against Iraq.

The CIA program involved the selling of manipulated software and firmware to several KGB "Line X" officers tasked with obtaining high-technology components from the West. One KGB Line X agent arranged to buy a software program from a Canadian company that was to be used for the 2800-mile long Soviet Trans-Siberian Pipeline. However, the software program contained a Trojan horse that allegedly caused the pipeline's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) operational and control system to malfunction, resulting in a massive 3-kiloton explosion in March 1982 in western Siberia. However, there is an ongoing controversy between ex-CIA officials and Russian experts on what actually caused the explosion that disrupted the Trans-Siberian pipeline. The ex-CIA officials contend the explosion of the Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk was so powerful it was picked up by U.S. detection satellites in space. However, the KGB contends that an explosion occurred in 1982 but that it was on a pipeline connecting the Urengoy natural gas field in western Siberia to Chelyabinsk and occurred near Tobolsk and only shut down operations for one day. Some observers believe the story of the pipeline explosion from CIA sabotage was hyped by the late New York Timescolumnist William Safire as part of a CIA public relations operation.

According to the July 8, 1983, Toronto Globe and Mail, the Calgary-based engineering firm, Cov-Can Control Systems, Ltd., was installing SCADA software on the Trans-Siberian pipeline developed by Compagnie d'Informatique Militaire, Spatiale et Aeronautique (CIMSA) of France and installed on Mitra computers built by Societe Europeenne de Mini-informatique et de Systemes (SEMS), both subsidiaries of Thomson-CSF.

No other Canadian firm is mentioned as being part of the Trans-Siberian pipeline's computer operations. The Globe and Mail article states; "CIMSA, based in Velizy, west of Paris, has set up special project offices that it is sharing with Cov-Can - the only Canadian company involved in the pipeline's computerization." However, there is an interesting American connection to Cov-Can. A part-owner of Cov-Can at the time of the Soviet deal was Morris Covington, the president of CRC Bethany International Inc. of Houston, the software division of Crutcher Resources Corporation. After the U.S. State Department refused to grant an export license to sell computer software to the Soviet pipeline project, Covington arranged the deal between Cov-Can and CIMSA. After initially being pressured by the United States to refuse an export license to the Soviets, the Canadian government finally relented and a license was granted by the Canadian External Affairs Department after six-months during which time the secret Trojan horse deal between the CIA and the Canadians was being negotiated.

WMR has learned from well-informed sources of another more classified CIA program -- one that placed Trojan horses into the missile firing authorization codes of Soviet submarine-based nuclear-tipped ICBMs. During the same time frame as the CIA transfer of corrupted software to Line X KGB agents, a Soviet submariner who excelled in mathematics, while on patrol on a NATO-designated "Yankee"-class nuclear submarine, decided to examine the encrypted firing codes for himself. The codes were encrypted so submarine crewmen, including the commander and missile officer, could not determine the targets for the nuclear warheads. However, the math whiz conducted a series of unauthorized cryptanalysis attacks on the encrypted code and, to his surprise, discovered the Soviet missiles were all targeted at sites inside the Soviet Union. WMR learned from our sources that the entire matter was hushed up on orders from the Kremlin and KGB and the young submariner was never heard from again.

The mere idea that the CIA could have corrupted the Soviet nuclear command and control system and the super-secret nuclear launch firing codes sent shock waves throughout the Soviet military and intelligence hierarchy. In the United States, nuclear attack authorization codes are developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in a ultra-classified environment. In the Soviet Union, the nuclear strike authorization codes were developed by the cryptographers in the top secret Sixteenth Directorate of the KGB. For the CIA to have changed the targeting information so launched Soviet missiles would have hit the Soviet Union instead of their targets in the West would have taken a combination of technical stealth and well-placed agents inside the Sixteenth Directorate.

Victor Makarov was a Western agent inside the Sixteenth Directorate. During his time in the Sixteenth Directorate working as a cryptanalyst, Makarov passed classified KGB information on Soviet code-breaking and code-making abilities to Britain's MI-6. Makarov was eventually sentenced to a labor camp after being betrayed by a colleague in 1987. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Makarov moved to Britain where he was promised a pension by MI-6. The British intelligence agency reneged on its deal and Makarov was forced to protest in front of Parliament in London.

The history of the submarine Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union continues to harbor a number of secrets to the present day. Neither side is anxious to see any of these secrets reach the front pages of American or Russian newspapers.

  • Interview with Canadian ambassador who worked for the CIA. Iran’s Press TV has published an extensive interview with Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, who recently admitted that he secretly worked for the CIA in the late 1970s, after the US embassy in Iran was taken over by students during the Islamic Revolution. Part one of the interview is here. Parts two and three here, and parts four, five and six here.

  • US Pentagon’s black budget tops $56 billion. About $56 billion of the US Defense Department’s publicized 2010 budget goes simply to “classified programs” or to projects known only by their code names, like “Chalk Eagle” and “Link Plumeria”. That’s the Pentagon’s black budget, an it’s about $6 billion more than last year.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

North Africa a Transit Region for International Migration

Copyright (C) Hein de Haas (2007), The Myth of Invasion


http://eu-med.blogspot.com/2010/01/north-africa-transit-region-for.html

In the year 2009 the European continent saw a decrease of 17 percent in irregular border crossings from the Southern Mediterranean rim. This sharp drop of the immigration flow heading to the "privileged" shores of the European Union is caused by the EU's border control and externalisation policy against irregular immigration. In the consequence, the northern African states and Turkey are confronted with an increasing migration pressure which their authorities are unable to cope efficiently and according to international human rights rules.
The drop in the number of irregular migrants trying to enter the bloc in 2009 is partly caused by the global recession which had an effect on the motivation why people leave their country in order to start a better life elsewhere. Due to the economic downturn many migrants were less confident to find a job in the potential destination country and the costly crossing was further discouraging the emigration.

However, the main reason for the decreasing irregular immigration to Europe lies in the more repressive EU’s migration policy. Although the Member States’ economies are increasingly depended on migrant labor, the EU is today applying a strict policy on border and external relations. Immigration controls, measures for the detection and expulsion of irregular migrants, and other common procedures under both EU rules and the Schengen Treaty were implemented more comprehensibly in the last year. The external border security agency Frontex, which is operating since October 2005, contributed to the reduction of the number of would-be migrants in Europe by strengthening the sea patrols.


The key tools of the European externalisation policy are bilateral cooperation with non-EU countries of origin and transit which progressed over the last years to curb illegal migration in coastal areas and along land borders. The EU Member States demand in the bilateral and regional agreements with their neighbouring countries that restrictive immigration measures should be already implemented in the concerned transit countries before the migrants could reach EU mainland. The externalisation in the field of migration includes basically stronger border controls of coastal areas and land borders and the signing of readmission agreements to regulate the involuntary return of unauthorized migrants and refugees. Bilateral cooperation agreements are today the predominant strategy with the Southern Mediterranean states in the management of countering irregular immigration. Morocco and Spain have already joint naval patrols to catch boat migrants and there is a readmission treaty in place between the two counties that accepts the return of sub-Saharan boat migrants to Morocco. Italy signed a friendship Treaty with Libya in February 2009 which allows the Italian authorities to send migrant and potential asylum seekers back to the Libyan territorial waters. While these measures have some short-term effect for Europe there are crucial consequences for migrants and transit countries and the long-term effects of these policies are alarming.

Due to the increased border controls many migrants and refugees who fail to enter the European continent get stuck in transit countries in the EU’s neighbourhood. The numbers of sub-Saharan migrants have already overtaken North Africans as the largest category of irregular migrants intercepted by European border controls and in the North Africa states and Turkey the immigrant trend have lead to an emerging sub-Saharan community. According to Hein de Haas there are in Mauritania and Algeria more than 100,000 sub-Saharan migrants, l, 1 to 1.5 million in Libya, between 2.2 and 4 million Sudanese migrants in Egypt, and in Tunisia and Morocco several tens of thousands but this number is growing rapidly. Next to the growing numbers of immigrants who stay in the Southern Mediterranean Region in transition on their way to Europe or those who consider the North African countries as primary destination the region is facing with a huge number of mixed migration movements. The migration flow is diverse and composed of various sub-Sahara regions such as West Africa, the Horn of Africa or other countries affected by economic decline or civil wars such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Sudan. These migration flows are not only mixed in terms of diverse origin countries but also in terms of their migration type (e.g. labor migrants, asylum seekers and refugees). The North African states have been transforming during the 90s to mayor transit countries for migrants and refugees from other African countries and this new pattern of globalized migration is overtaking the traditional regional migration which has deep historical roots within the Mediterranean. (cf. Hein de Haas)

About 120,000 refugees from Africa are estimated who try to reach Europe via the Mediterranean each year. The North African States are not prepared to deal with this huge immigration inflow and they can not provide any suitable mechanism to deal with the composition of new immigrant populations. Therefore, all migrants are lumped together anyhow whether labor migrants, refugees or asylum seekers and considered as illegal. The conditions in the reception centres and detention centres are unfavorable. There are not policies in place which could facilitate their integration into the labor market and society but migrants are rather forced to leave the country and driven to other states in the region. There are not stable mechanism according to international human rights standards to deal with legal asylum claims and fair hearings and assessments of legal claims are often denied.

Oil and the Eruption of the Algerian Civil War


January 2010


A Context-sensitive Analysis of the Ambivalent Impact of Resource Abundance


This publication applies the concepts of the resource curse and the rentier state to the outbreak of violent conflict in Algeria in the 1990s, before adopting a context-sensitive approach. The author analyzes the causal mechanisms suggested by the theories as leading to violence, highlighting the impact of resource dependence and various non-resource-specific contextual conditions as especially relevant to the evolution of the conflict. These non-resource conditions include political ideology, socioeconomic factors and the quality of political institutions.

© 2010 Miriam Shabafrouz

Download:


Author:

Miriam Shabafrouz

Series:

GIGA Working Papers

Issue:

118

Publisher:

Logo German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Yemen: Behind Al-Qaeda Scenarios, a Geopolitical Oil Chokepoint to Eurasia


Yemen: Behind Al-Qaeda Scenarios, a Geopolitical Oil Chokepoint to Eurasia

WEngdahlHome04

http://engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Chokepoint_Yemen/chokepoint_yemen.html

By F. William Engdahl, January 2010

On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.

For some months the world has seen a steady escalation of US military involvement in Yemen, a dismally poor land adjacent to Saudi Arabia on its north, the Red Sea on its west, the Gulf of Aden on its south, opening to the Arabian Sea, overlooking another desolate land that has been in the headlines of late, Somalia. The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the world’s oil flows, Bab el-Mandab, and using the Somalia piracy incident, together with claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising from Yemen, to militarize one of the world’s most important oil transport routes. In addition, undeveloped petroleum reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly among the world’s largest.

The 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with the failed bomb attempt, Abdulmutallab, reportedly has been talking, claiming he was sent on his mission by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. This has conveniently turned the world’s attention on Yemen as a new center of the alleged Al Qaeda terror organization.

Notably, Bruce Riedel, a 30-year CIA veteran who advised President Obama on the policy leading to the Afghan troop surge, wrote in his blog of the alleged ties of the Detroit bomber to Yemen, “The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda's Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year…The weak Yemeni government of President Ali Abdallah Salih, which has never fully controlled the country and now faces a host of growing problems, will need significant American support to defeat AQAP.”1

Some basic Yemen geopolitics

Before we can say much about the latest incident, it is useful to look more closely at the Yemen situation. Here several things stand out as peculiar when stacked against Washington’s claims about a resurgent Al Qaeda organization in the Arabian Peninsula.

In early 2009 the chess pieces on the Yemeni board began to move. Tariq al-Fadhli, a former jihadist leader originally from South Yemen, broke a 15 year alliance with the Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and announced he was joining the broad-based opposition coalition known as the Southern Movement (SM). Al-Fadhli had been a member of the Mujahideen movement in Afghanistan in the late 1980’s. His break with the government was reported in Arab and Yemeni media in April 2009. Al-Fadhli’s break with the Yemen dictatorship gave new power to the Southern Movement (SM). He has since become a leading figure in the alliance.

Yemen itself is a synthetic amalgam created after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, when the southern Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) lost its main foreign sponsor. Unification of the northern Yemen Arab Republic and the southern PDRY state led to a short-lived optimism that ended in a brief civil war in 1994, as southern army factions organized a revolt against what they saw as the corrupt crony state rule of northern President Ali Abdullah Saleh. President Saleh has held a one-man rule since 1978, first as President of North Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic) and since 1990 as President of the unified new Yemen. The southern army revolt failed as Saleh enlisted al-Fadhli and other Yemeni Salafists, followers of a conservative interpretation of Islam, and jihadists to fight the formerly Marxist forces of the Yemen Socialist Party in the south.

Before 1990 Washington and the Saudi Kingdom backed and supported Saleh and his policy of Islamization as a bid to contain the communist south.2 Since then Saleh has relied on a strong Salafist-jihadi movement to retain a one-man dictatorial rule. The break with Saleh by al-Fadhli and his joining the southern opposition group with his former socialist foes marked a major setback for Saleh.

Soon after al-Fadhli joined the Southern Movement coalition, on April 28, 2009 protests in the southern Yemeni provinces of Lahj, Dalea and Hadramout intensified. There were demonstrations by tens of thousands of dismissed military personnel and civil servants demanding better pay and benefits, demonstrations that had been taking place in growing numbers since 2006. The April demonstrations included for the first time a public appearance by al-Fadhli. His appearance served to change a long moribund southern socialist movement into a broader nationalist campaign. It also galvanized President Saleh, who then called on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states for help, warning that the entire Arabian Peninsula would suffer the consequences.

Complicating the picture in what some call a failed state, in the north Saleh faces an al-Houthi Zaydi Shi’ite rebellion. On September 11, 2009, in an Al-Jazeera TV interview, Saleh accused Iraq’s Shi’ite opposition leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, and also Iran, of backing the north Yemen Shi’ite Houthist rebels in an Al-Jazeera TV interview. Yemen’s Saleh declared, “We cannot accuse the Iranian official side, but the Iranians are contacting us, saying that they are prepared for a mediation. This means that the Iranians have contacts with them [the Houthists], given that they want to mediate between the Yemeni government and them. Also, Muqtada al-Sadr in al-Najaf in Iraq is asking that he be accepted as a mediator. This means they have a link.”3

Yemen authorities claim they have seized caches of weapons made in Iran, while the Houthists claim to have captured Yemeni equipment with Saudi Arabian markings, accusing Sana’a (the capital of Yemen and site of the US Embassy) of acting as a Saudi proxy. Iran has rejected claims that Iranian weapons were found in north Yemen, calling claims of support to the rebels as baseless.4

centcom

What about al-Qaeda?

The picture that emerges is one of a desperate US-backed dictator, Yemen’s President Saleh, increasingly losing control after two decades as despotic ruler of the unified Yemen. Economic conditions in the country took a drastic downward slide in 2008 when world oil prices collapsed. Some 70% of the state revenues derive from Yemen’s oil sales. The central government of Saleh sits in former North Yemen in Sana’a, while the oil is in former South Yemen. Yet Saleh controls the oil revenue flows. Lack of oil revenue has made Saleh’s usual option of buying off opposition groups all but impossible.

Into this chaotic domestic picture comes the January 2009 announcement, prominently featured in select Internet websites, that al-Qaeda, the alleged global terrorist organization created by the late CIA-trained Saudi, Osama bin Laden, has opened a major new branch in Yemen for both Yemen and Saudi operations.

Al Qaeda in Yemen released a statement through online jihadist forums Jan. 20, 2009 from the group’s leader Nasir al-Wahayshi, announcing formation of a single al Qaeda group for the Arabian Peninsula under his command. According to al-Wahayshi, the new group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, would consist of his former al Qaeda in Yemen, as well as members of the defunct Saudi al Qaeda group. The press release claimed, interestingly enough, that a Saudi national, a former Guantanamo detainee (Number 372), Abu-Sayyaf al-Shihri, would serve as al-Wahayshi’s deputy.

Days later an online video from al-Wahayshi appeared under the alarming title, “We Start from Here and We Will Meet at al-Aqsa.” Al-Aqsa refers to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that Jews know as Temple Mount, the site of the destroyed Temple of Solomon, which Muslims call Al Haram Al Sharif. The video threatens Muslim leaders -- including Yemeni’s President Saleh, the Saudi royal family, and Egyptian President Mubarak -- and promises to take the jihad from Yemen to Israel to “liberate” Muslim holy sites and Gaza, something that would likely detonate World War III if anyone were mad enough to do it.

Also in that video, in addition to former Guantanamo inmate al-Shihri, is a statement from Abu-al-Harith Muhammad al-Awfi, identified as a field commander in the video, and allegedly former Guantanamo detainee 333. As it is well-established that torture methods are worthless to obtain truthful confessions, some have speculated that the real goal of CIA and Pentagon interrogators at Guantanamo prison since September 2001, has been to use brutal techniques to train or recruit sleeper terrorists who can be activated on command by US intelligence, a charge difficult to prove or disprove. The presence of two such high-ranking Guantanamo graduates in the new Yemen-based al Qaeda is certainly ground for questioning.

Al Qaeda in Yemen is apparently anathema to al-Fadhli and the enlarged mass-based Southern Movement. In an interview, al-Fadhli declared, “I have strong relations with all of the jihadists in the north and the south and everywhere, but not with al-Qaeda.”5 That has not hindered Saleh from claiming the Southern Movement and al Qaeda are one and the same, a convenient way to insure backing from Washington.

According to US intelligence reports, there are a grand total of perhaps 200 al Qaeda members in southern Yemen.6

Al-Fadhli gave an interview distancing himself from al Qaeda in May 2009, declaring, “We [in South Yemen] have been invaded 15 years ago and we are under a vicious occupation. So we are busy with our cause and we do not look at any other cause in the world. We want our independence and to put an end to this occupation.”7Conveniently, the same day, al Qaeda made a large profile declaring its support for southern Yemen’s cause.

On May 14, in an audiotape released on the internet, al-Wahayshi, leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, expressed sympathy with the people of the southern provinces and their attempt to defend themselves against their “oppression,” declaring, “What is happening in Lahaj, Dhali, Abyan and Hadramaut and the other southern provinces cannot be approved. We have to support and help [the southerners].” He promised retaliation: “The oppression against you will not pass without punishment… the killing of Muslims in the streets is an unjustified major crime.”8

The curious emergence of a tiny but well-publicized al Qaeda in southern Yemen amid what observers call a broad-based popular-based Southern Movement front that eschews the radical global agenda of al Qaeda, serves to give the Pentagon a kind of casus belli to escalate US military operations in the strategic region.

Indeed, after declaring that the Yemen internal strife was Yemen’s own affair, President Obama ordered air strikes in Yemen. The Pentagon claimed its attacks on December 17 and 24 killed three key al Qaeda leaders but no evidence has yet proven this. Now the Christmas Day Detroit bomber drama gives new life to Washington’s “War on Terror” campaign in Yemen. Obama has now offered military assistance to the Saleh Yemen government.

Somali Pirates escalate as if on cue

As if on cue, at the same time CNN headlines broadcast new terror threats from Yemen, the long-running Somalia pirate attacks on commercial shipping in the same Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea across from southern Yemen escalated dramatically after having been reduced by multinational ship patrols.

On December 29, Moscow’s RAI Novosti reported that Somali pirates seized a Greek cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast. Earlier the same day a British-flagged chemical tanker and its 26 crew were also seized in the Gulf of Aden. In a sign of sophisticated skills in using western media, pirate commander Mohamed Shakir told the British newspaper The Times by phone, "We have hijacked a ship with [a] British flag in the Gulf of Aden late yesterday." The US intelligence brief, Stratfor, reports that The Times, owned by neo-conservative financial backer, Rupert Murdoch, is sometimes used by Israeli intelligence to plant useful stories.

The two latest events brought a record number of attacks and hijackings for 2009. As of December 22, attacks by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia numbered 174, with 35 vessels hijacked and 587 crew taken hostage so far in 2009, almost all successful pirate activity, according to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center. The open question is, who is providing the Somali “pirates” with arms and logistics sufficient to elude international patrols from numerous nations?

Notably, on January 3, President Saleh got a phone call from Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in which he briefed president Saleh on latest developments in Somalia. Sheikh Sharif, whose own base in Mogadishu is so weak he is sometimes referred to as President of Mogadishu Airport, told Saleh he would share information with Saleh about any terror activities that might be launched from Somali territories targeting stability and security of Yemen and the region.

The Oil chokepoint and other oily affairs

The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. The US Government Energy Information Agency states that “closure of the Bab el-Mandab could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. The Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.”9

Bab el Mandeb

Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el -Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean.

An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el -Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars, as was recently reported by UKIndependent journalist Robert Fisk.

It would also be in a position to threaten China’s oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China’s national energy needs.

In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain “world class discoveries.”10 France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained “enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years.” Perhaps there is more to Washington’s recent Yemen concern than a rag-tag al Qaeda whose very existence as a global terror organization has been doubted by seasoned Islamic experts.




1 Bruce Riedel, The Menace of Yemen, December 31, 2009, accessed here

2 Stratfor, Yemen: Intensifying Problems for the Government, May 7, 2009

3 Cited in Terrorism Monitor, Yemen President Accuses Iraq’s Sadrists of Backing the Houthi Insurgency, Jamestown Foundation, Volume: 7 Issue: 28, September 17, 2009

4 NewsYemen, September 8, 2009; Yemen Observer, September 10, 2009

5 Albaidanew.com, May 14, 2009, cited in Jamestown Foundation, op.cit

6 Abigail Hauslohner, Despite U.S. Aid, Yemen Faces Growing al -Qaeda Threat, Time, December 22, 2009, accessed here

7 Tariq al Fadhli, in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 14, 2009, cited in Jamestown Foundation, op. cit

8 al-Wahayshi interview, al Jazeera, May 14, 2009

9 US Government, Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Bab el-Mandab, accessed here

10 Adelphi Energy, Yemen Exploration Blocks 7 & 74, accessed here