Word: lawlessness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Osama bin Laden As Obama sends 30,000 more troops to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for terrorists, it is obvious that al-Qaeda has set up franchises to wage offensive war against the U.S. in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Yemen, which has vast tracts of lawless countryside, has been harboring - and nurturing - terrorists for years. It is the site of the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors, as well as the stomping ground of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric and cyber-pen pal of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan...
Pirates operating off Somalia's lawless coast have taken in more than $100 million in ransom payments since 2007, and this year their attacks became ever more brazen. Somali pirates targeted close to 100 ships in 2009, ranging from supertankers to fishing boats. In April, a raiding party seized the U.S. cargo ship M.V. Maersk Alabama--the first American ship to be successfully hijacked since the 1800s--but all the pirates were killed or captured in the ensuing standoff with a U.S. Navy destroyer. The navies of more than two dozen nations now patrol the Gulf of Aden, and cargo...
...attacks on "the noble Yemenite tribes in Abyan and Arhab, and finally in Sibwa" in which "scores of Muslim women and children, and families in their entirety" were killed - assaults that took place in the preceding week. Under pressure in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, al-Qaeda began turning the lawless mountain areas of Yemen into a new staging area. That staging area is now sending more and more violent probes out into the world...
...Yemeni capital of Sana'a thunders at night with the sound of war planes taking off and heading north, toward a remote conflict on the Saudi border that the Yemenis and Saudis have stealthily managed to keep off-limits to journalists and aid workers. In the lawless frontier zone of Saada governorate, a fierce battle has raged for months between Yemeni troops and rebels belonging to the Houthis, a religious minority. Each side - Houthis on one, Yemenis and Saudis on the other - has offered conflicting reports on everything from air strikes to motives, and with Saada a no-go zone...
...much of Somalia before being ousted by the Ethiopian army in a U.S.-backed invasion in 2006. (Somalia has been without a strong central government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords in 1991. Conflict in the Horn of Africa nation - one of the world's most lawless - has killed more than 19,000 people in the past three years alone.) Al-Shabab's membership is estimated to number in the thousands; its fighters are identifiable by their red-and-white scarves. The group began fighting Ethiopian troops and the weak interim government almost immediately after the invasion...