AS THE name suggests, Yemen’s Empty Quarter is one of the most desolate and inhospitable places on Earth. Even the fiercely self-sufficient bedouin tribesmen who eke out a harsh living from well to well do not venture lightly into this barren land.

Beyond heat exhaustion, scorpion stings, quicksand and dehydration, an added peril has come to prey on the minds of those who see it as a bolthole in the war against terror: the threat of sudden death from the sky.

The bedouin, who have traditionally clung to the margins of Arab society in their struggle for survival, are helping some of the most wanted terrorists in the world to hide and, for the right price, will guide them through the dunes. Yet there is no cover here from the unmanned, missile-firing American Predator aircraft scanning the desert for targets.

Travelling on foot, on camels or, where possible, in Jeeps, the bedouin escorts stop regularly, calling out in high-pitched voices to announce that the coast is clear before moving on. They have every reason to be nervous.

In November, Ali al-Harithi, one of the three most wanted Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, and five of his followers, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator.

The Yemeni government believes the operation prevented a terrorist attack on an American-run oil refinery; the suspects were travelling towards a Hunt Oil facility in a Jeep loaded with explosives.

“The same man had fired a rocket at a Hunt Oil helicopter a week earlier,” said a senior Yemeni government official. “So what do you do? Wait for him to adhere to the law or hit before the crime is committed?” Even with the backing of high-technology American weaponry, however, the task of bringing suspected terrorist fugitives to justice is complicated by a daunting combination of factors, from the country’s complicated social composition to the geography of the place, which is huge and unforgiving.

Historically known as Arabia Felix, or Happy Arabia, Yemen has almost 19m inhabitants. They are among the poorest people in the world and live in a country the size of France. Its officials strenuously deny that Osama Bin Laden may have selected their country as a new home. They say he has never set foot there.

But his links with Yemen are indisputable. His father, who founded the Saudi-based family’s construction business, grew up here and one of Bin Laden’s wives is a young Yemeni, now under house arrest at an undisclosed location.

Many of the militants arrested in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban regime that shielded Al-Qaeda were Yemenis. More than 100 are being questioned at America’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.

Many more managed to flee home to Yemen, along with other Islamic religious mercenaries. Yesterday it was reported that two Yemenis believed to be high-ranking Al-Qaeda members — one a senior financier — had been arrested at a Frankfurt airport hotel.

All this has made Yemen one of the most important focuses of the war on terror, bringing about an unlikely collision of American know-how with time-honoured desert traditions. Only remarkable co- operation between the Yemeni government and Washington has averted all-out US military intervention. Instead, America has helped train Yemenis to make a contribution to the war.

A Yemeni special forces unit was established and in the past year has notched up some impressive successes. Safe houses of suspected Al-Qaeda cells in Sana’a, the capital, have been stormed and more than 100 suspects detained for questioning. Fierce gun battles have flared in the city’s tightly packed warren of streets.

One Al-Qaeda “big fish” wanted by the FBI was said to have killed himself in a grenade blast rather than surrender when his car, which was being pursued by security forces, skidded off the road and crashed.

Two other “most wanted” suspected terrorists, Mohammed Hamdi Al-Ahdal and Fowaz Al Rabe, have disappeared into the wilderness of the Empty Quarter. “It will be very hard to catch them,” said Abdul Karim Al-Eryani, a former prime minister advising Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president.

As told by prominent Yemenis, the country has been a victim of its own generosity of spirit. “Yemen innocently wanted to offer freedom and hope to all,” said Faris Sanabani, founder and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Observer, an English-language newspaper. “It embraced foreigners in the hope of mutual benefit and development.”

Thus at the end of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Yemen seemed a perfect home for worn-out “Afghan Arabs”, the term used to describe Arabs who enlisted in the decade-long battle to evict the Red Army.

Some, despite track records of extremism in their homelands of Egypt or Algeria, were welcomed as heroes and the newcomers soon began taking advantage of their hosts. They set up training camps in rural areas which the government wanted to close down.

Expulsions of some 5,000 foreigners were ordered between 1994 and 2000. Others remained, however, and by 1998 the problem had turned into a crisis.

A terrorist group, the so-called Islamic Army, kidnapped a number of foreign tourists. In a battle with security forces, four of the tourists were killed and two injured; the terrorist leader was executed.

British and French militants had also been arrested in possession of explosives. The British were said to have been sent to Yemen by Abu Hamza, an extremist Muslim cleric who preaches in north London.

The “wake-up call” came on October 12, 2000, when a small boat loaded with explosives and two men cut through the calm blue water in the port of Aden towards the mighty USS Cole. Witnesses said one of the men stood up, smiled and saluted before the little craft crashed into the side of the warship. Seventeen American sailors were killed.

An unannounced influx of American investigators, troops and armoured personnel carriers initially ruffled Yemeni government feathers. “Yemen was not sheltering terrorists or trying to cover anything up,” said Al-Eryani, adding that the country’s security services arrested several men who were charged with involvement in the attack, although the ringleader has yet to be found.

“It was a bumpy road,” he added, “but I think eventually Yemen was able to handle this crisis by co-operating and not by antagonising the US.”

At that stage, Al-Qaeda was not yet considered the global threat it was to become and Yemen’s requests for help in dismantling terrorist cells went unheeded.

“Because the Americans were concerned about terrorism from the American perspective, they were interested only in getting information and not necessarily in sharing it,” said Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, the foreign minister.

All that changed after September 11, but it took a good deal of negotiation by Saleh with Washington to prevent his country from becoming another Afghanistan.

“The president went to the US knowing there was a lot of danger hanging over his country,” Sanabani recalled. “He argued that even though there were major challenges ahead there was no point in war. Instead of spending millions destroying a country and then billions trying to rebuild it, why not work with those who were willing to co-operate?”



A partnership of sorts was struck with America, a difficult path for a Yemeni president only too aware of his people’s hostility towards American policy on Palestine and Iraq.

Saleh paid a visit to the fiercely independent tribes of Marib on the edge of the Empty Quarter, where guns have become an integral part of the national dress.

His overtures appear to be paying off. A regiment of 4,000 troops was sent into the Empty Quarter unmolested by the tribes. A coastguard force was also established along with an intelligence unit trained by about 30 American officers. Armed checkpoints have been set up around Sana’a and guns are being confiscated.

The impact on a fragile economy has been heavy, a dangerous trend in a country whose extremists are adept at exploiting poverty.

The number of vessels visiting Aden has shrunk dramatically as a result of a 300% increase in insurance premiums. The tourism industry has virtually collapsed.

The recent attack on the Limburg, a French oil tanker, and the killing of three American hospital workers show there is still a long way to go. Yet the extension of the battle into the wildest corners of Yemen shows that time may be running out for those on the run.

According to security sources, the bedouin guides are themselves infiltrated by spies: the Empty Quarter, for once, is giving up some secrets.