About the attacks that is. Me and some friends have been talking about them and we think we see a pattern. We have seen the “claims of responsibility” that have been posted. These attacks are supposedly by a wing of Al-Queda here in Yemen. Well, if they are, they are certainly Yemenis doing it. These things do not look like an actual Queda event, they are really amateurish. So far, they have managed to wound 13 schoolgirls, kill one Yemeni, and break some people’s windows. Last night, someone threw a grenade at one of the oil companies’ buildings here in Sana’a. Of course that was done a little after midnight and they didn’t actually hit the building. The result? No injuries, no damage to the building.
These have all the hallmarks of some yokels with an agenda, not of some organized, trained organization. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still dangerous, but I’m not convinced that they could pull off a real damaging attack that required actual financial backing and training. Right now, they are relying on mortar rounds and grenades (in the middle of the night near an empty building), not car bombs… There’s even the possibility that it’s the same handful of guys doing these things, so if the authorities ever catch them, it should be the end of the problems.
Still, these events have me thinking. I am going to the states in June. I had planned on coming back, but now I’m not so sure. I will see how things are when I leave and then I will make my decision as to whether or not I should come back here.