Summary: While ramping up the fight against al-Qaida with U.S. help, the Yemeni government has also escalated its own internal conflicts with Shi’ite rebels in the north and Sunni secessionists in the south, threatening to throw the fractured country into greater chaos and nourish the growth of al-Qaida. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 9, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had called on the Iraqi resistance to stage “revenge operations” against American forces to protest Israel’s Gaza offensive.