Intel Report: al-Qaeda in Yemen Determined to Strike in U.S.

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The report is based principally on an analysis of online postings of Sada al-Malahim, described as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) online magazine. According to the report, before last October the magazine mainly talked about AQAP’s interest in promoting jihad and subversion in the region where the group is based: Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In an edition posted last Oct. 29, however, the document says, AQAP signaled a shift in its objectives, indicating it had now become interested in “targeting the U.S. homeland.” In the Oct. 29 posting, the intelligence analysis says, an article by one of AQAP’s leaders, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, in what the paper says was an “attempt to appeal to a broader audience” beyond the Arabian subcontinent, sought to encourage readers to launch violent jihad against the West. According to the intelligence paper, Al-Wuhayshi asserted in his posting that little effort and material support would be needed to reach this goal. He suggested that readers should use any means possible to launch attacks, including knives, and to target the “airports of the Western crusader countries … or in their aircraft, residential compounds or in the train tunnels, etc.”