It couldn’t be more contrived were it a scene from a bad action film written in crayon on a napkin…

“Yemen has said it is not getting enough support from the West to tackle al-Qaeda, as details emerge of the suspected US jet bomber’s time there.

Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told the BBC that Yemen had the will and ability to deal with al-Qaeda, but was undermined by a lack of support.”

As Shaan Akbar over at The Insider Brief said to me a few days ago…

“Yemen’s military spending=40% of its GDP + it’s army has 600K personnel – surprising the government can’t extend its writ beyond cities.”

Add to that the tens of millions the US has gifted the Yemeni government this year, not to mention the inclusion of US assets in some operations, and you have to seriously wonder why it’s taken the failed attempt of a 23-year-old bomb mule to engulf the headlines in all things Yemen.

As pointed out a few days ago, the Yemeni government has been fighting the Houthis in the Sa’dah Governorate since 2004. In August of this year the Yemeni military launched a new offensive against the Houthis, one that was later supplemented by the US and Saudis most likely given Yemeni accusations that Iran has been covertly funding the group. This is a significant point being that the Houthis are a Shia based group with absolutely no affiliation with Sunni extremists in southern Yemen – and yet the United States has carried out over twenty air sorties against insurgents in the north.

The bottom line is that US assistance up to this point has been partially focused on aiding the Yemenis in their struggle against the Houthis, a group that is, in no way, affiliated with groups that share ideological similarities with al-Qaeda.