SANAA, Yemen, Nov 10, (AP): Yemen wants far more military aid than the US has promised in the fight against escalating terrorism — billions of dollars more than Washington has in mind.
And yet Yemeni authorities have little to show for the significant Western aid that has already poured into the impoverished country.
In fact, the al-Qaeda offshoot that claimed responsibility for the failed plot to send mail bombs from Yemen to the US appears more emboldened than ever. And Yemen’s government seems to feel more threatened by an increasingly restless secessionist rebellion in the south, where it has little control, than by militants linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Since the Oct 28 discovery of the two mail bombs, US officials are pressing Yemen for more and faster cooperation on intelligence-sharing and more opportunities to train Yemeni counterterrorism teams. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world and the government’s authority is weak in areas outside the capital of Sanaa.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said over the weekend that the US could do more to help train Yemeni forces to combat terrorists. US officials told The Associated Press last week that military aid to Yemen would double to $250 million in 2011 — underscoring the growing realization of the threat al-Qaeda poses to the fragile state.
President Barack Obama called President Ali Abdullah Saleh last week to say the aid is part of a broader, more comprehensive strategy to promote security as well as economic and political development.

Assistance
But Hesham Sharaf, a Yemeni deputy minister, said the proposed US assistance is “nothing” compared to what Yemen needs. Government officials are talking about a two-year program to develop the armed forces that would cost around $6 billion, he said.
Yemen says it needs to develop its coast guard and acquire more than a dozen combat helicopters, satellites and equipment such as night-vision goggles and spyware.
“Technology like satellites should be in Yemen’s hands, not images handed down to us,” Sharaf said. “We must have special Yemeni forces trained to use combat helicopters, not Americans. If they (Americans) go on the ground, people will criticize us and say we are weak.”
As part of its aid, the US provides equipment and training to Yemeni forces. But there are ongoing US concerns that Yemen could use the equipment and those forces against Shiite rebels who have fought government forces intermittently for years in the north or a separate front against secessionists in the south.
Many critics inside Yemen say the aid is going to fight government opponents, particularly the southern secessionists, and that Yemen is simply milking the West for money to carry out an agenda that doesn’t necessarily make fighting al-Qaeda its top priority.
Soon after the mail bombs were detected, other government officials echoed Sharaf’s call for more equipment and assistance to fight al-Qaeda.
The failed attacks exposed the government’s lack of success against al-Qaeda and its growing threat to the regime and showed that the group was using Yemen as a base to plot international attacks.
Yemen is clearly expected to show how it is using the aid it has been given. In addition to asking for more intelligence cooperation, a US official said Washington also wants to have access to prisoners allegedly from al-Qaeda.
Much Western aid has poured into Yemen’s security and military agencies in the 10 years since al-Qaeda bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the Navy destroyer USS Cole that was refueling at a Yemeni port, killing 17 US sailors.
In the past five years, US military assistance to Yemen has totaled about $250 million. That covered programs to train and equip Yemeni forces to combat al-Qaeda, as well as buy boats and other equipment for the airport and seaports. It also paid for training senior officers here and in the US.
About 50 elite US military experts are in the country training Yemeni counterterrorism forces — a number that has doubled in the past year.