Summary: The New York Times reports that in the midst of two unfinished major wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 28, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Taliban, which had long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, had begun spreading north, encroaching on the capital city of Kabul.

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Summary: U.S. agencies are looking into whether al-Qaida extremists in Yemen directed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and provided him with the explosives used in the failed bombing of Northwest Flight 253. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 26, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported a new Homeland Security Threat Assessment for the years 2008-2013, which projects that the terrorism threat to the United States over the next five years will be driven by instability in the Middle East and Africa, persistent challenges to border security, and increasing Internet savvy — with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear [CBRN] attacks considered the most dangerous threats to U.S. national security.

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Summary: U.S. Navy warships fired missiles at suspected al-Qaida training camps in Yemen, with that government’s support, according to Pentagon sources. One U.S. official said President Barack Obama personally ordered the missile strikes in northern Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 20, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, Zimbabwe had collapsed and ran the risk of deteriorating into Somalia-scale chaos. He also featured a personality profile of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe that he developed in 2002 with Adam Beatty at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics and reported that for the sixth consecutive year, Iraq was the deadliest place in the world for journalists in 2008.

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Summary: On the ninth day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned it into a terrorist training ground for jihadists around the world, with militants converging on Iraq to learn increasingly sophisticated insurgency techniques and then exporting those tactics to other hotspots, including Afghanistan, turning the war against terror “global” in a way not foreseen by the Bush administration.

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