Gregory Johnsen
Near East Studies Scholar, Princeton University
Gregory Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Johnsen has written for a variety of publications on Yemen including, among others, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, The Independent, The Boston Globe, and The National. He is the co-founder of Waq al-Waq: Islam and Insurgency in Yemen Blog. In 2009, he was a member of the USAID's conflict assessment team for Yemen.
Nasser Arrabyee, a good friend, is attending the Sundance Film Festival for the film “The Oath” about Yemen’s Guantanamo Bay detainees, as this post on his blog and this article […]
Early yesterday morning I woke up, fired up the computer, and began skimming through the news from Yemen. One of the first articles that caught my attention was this piece […]
More news coming out of Yemen about the bomber’s id. Faysal Mukrim in al-Hayat, reports what News Yemen had yesterday, although his math is off by about a decade. But […]
Numerous deadlines and upcoming trips have cut into much of the time I usually devote to blogging, but despite my absence the news continues to come in fast and furious. […]
Another explosion in Abyan kills two more and wounds at least ten.Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports on differences among the Huthi leadership on who can be a leader and who can’t, but […]
One of the things I have noticed over the past few years is that when it comes to the big three pan-Arab dailies – al-Sharq al-Awsat, al-Hayat, al-Quds al-Arabi – […]
I downloaded the new AQAP audio tape on Sunday, but I have yet to have a chance to either listen to it or to read the transcript that was also […]
“The international community has very little understanding of this crisis,’ OCHA Director Rashid Khalikov told the U.S. broadcaster after a four-day visit to Yemen.”The Sa’dah war doesn’t seem to be […]
For those with an internet connection and an interest, Minister of Information, Hassan al-Lawzi is on al-Jazeera at the moment. One of his statements stood out: “Yemen is suffering from […]
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to blog about this, because I would really like to. Instead, it will have to be a link dump. First there is the audio tape […]
Both Brian at Always Judged Guilty and Clint at Selected Wisdom have weighed in with their opinions on the suspected debate over whether or not to use drone strikes in […]
The third time is the charm. 26th of September and a number of other newspapers are now reporting that Sunday’s suicide bomber has been identified as Abd al-Rahman Mahdi Ali […]
The papers, at least in my cursory read this morning, are fairly quiet, although there is this interesting brief from UPI Arabic that ran in al-Quds al-Arabi. The piece revolves […]
The BBC and other news outlets are reporting that Qasim al-Raymi has been killed in an air strike today. If true – and this is not the first time that […]
In today’s version of the daily papers – late, as usual- I attempt to comment on all three of Yemen’s security crises.Al-QaedaFirst, up is the al-Qaeda threat and the finances […]
The piece I wrote for The National on the attempted assassination of Muhammad bin Nayif is now on-line.
The center where al-‘Ujayri, the Shibam suicide bomber, was reported to have studied is denying any links to him.Al-Alimi is denying in public what some claim he reported in private, […]
Much like when I used to live in Yemen, a big part of my day revolves around reading whatever newspapers get posted to the internet on any particular day. Back […]
There has been much in the way of news since our last blog post a few days ago, but in Waq al-waq’s typical shotgun approach we will only discuss what […]
Muhammad al-Ahmadi a very bright and talented journalist, who does a good job of following AQ in Yemen and now the Arabian Peninsula, weighs in with a short article on […]
Hizb al-Haqq the Zaydi party that broke with Zaydi tradition to become a party, is showing how all the different schools of Islam can live together.News Yemen also reports on […]
Salah al-Shanfara, a MP for the YSP from al-Dhala’, has resigned from both Parliament and the YSP. His resignation will allow him to devote himself full time to the Southern […]
Thanks to the many readers who have written in with the news that the new issue of Sada al-Malahim is out. Unfortunately, I am still busy with a couple of […]
Read Khalid al-Hammadi’s excellent piece on some Yemeni military officers being sentenced to death for collaborating with the Huthis. This seems to come out of the incredibly poor job of […]
I’ll do a full recap of the yesterday’s events a bit later today, when I have time to read Khalid’s full article above the fold in al-Quds al-Arabi, but for […]
Thanks to everyone who came to the event yesterday at Carnegie, particularly to all of you who came up to talk about the blog. I believe Carnegie will have a […]
Khalid al-Hammadi, one of the best reporters out there, writes in al-Quds al-Arabi on electoral politics and the opposition warning the government (GPC) against playing with fire.(For another take, my […]
Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of al-Qaeda’s assassination of Muhammad Rubaysh, a security official in Marib. Mareb Press has an article about the event, which includes the kind of biographical […]
Well it has been a busy few days for Yemen and while we have been following the developments, I have refrained from blogging in order to spend time with the […]
The news is starting to come from various parts of the south about yesterday’s protests, which by most accounts were relatively low-key.Al-Tagheer has a story about 25 people arrested in […]