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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.
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Today Foreign Policy published the first excerpt from The Last Refuge. The piece is largely drawn from Chapter 13 of the book, entitled Policy Shift: Here is the opening as […]
Today Abigail Fielding-Smith published what I think is a fantastic piece of journalism on southern Yemen and Aden. I encourage all of you to read her fine piece. Indeed, as […]
For those of you who live in New York, I would like to invite you all to come out to the Overseas Press Club in Manhattan on Monday, November 12 […]
Hurricane Sandy hit Waq al-waq hard – although, mercifully, not nearly as hard as many who are still suffering – knocking out power and forcing us to become one of […]
This week the Washington Post published a three-part series it entitled “Permanent War.” The first piece, by Greg Miller, talks about the disposition matrix and sets the stage for the […]
Fall is a busy time, school starts and big books you’ve been waiting to read for months finally get published. For myself, and by extension Waq al-waq this fall has […]
Feelings are difficult to quantify and contextualize. By nature they are fleeting and nearly impossible to judge according to any accurate barometer and yet they are still there dancing around […]
As some of you may know, I recently took a short trip to Yemen to see for myself how things on the ground had changed since Salih was forced to […]
Despite appearances I have not forgotten about Waq al-waq, and while I’ll spare you the usual and tired excuses for my lack of posts I will direct you to the […]
Ed: Brian O’Neill, the co-founder of Waq al-waq, returns home with this piece on today’s attack on the US Embassy in Sanaa. (Before we start, I’d like to thank Greg […]
Today Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan gave a detailed overview of US policy toward Yemen at the Council on Foreign Relations. Marc Lynch over at Foreign Policy has provided the good […]
Postings at Waq al-waq will be suspended until some point in mid-July (depending on the fish and novels) at which point I will resume, what is for me, regular posting.
In Yemen, al-Qaeda often makes mistakes that open the group up to criticism. Most of the time this chance goes begging as the Yemeni government, popular clerics and tribal shaykhs […]
I wanted to highlight three different pieces on Yemen that have been published in the last couple of days, mostly because they are written by a trio of bright individuals […]
This morning Ibrahim Mothana, an incredibly smart and funny young Yemeni, has an op-ed in the New York Times on Drones, Yemen and blowback. I would encourage you all to […]
This morning Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman have a thought-provoking piece on US military involvement – yes, lets call it a war – in Yemen. At the end of their […]
Three interesting pieces on Yemen have hit the internet in the past couple of days, which people who follow Waq al-waq should definitely read. The first, and most important, is […]
Over the past few years as I’ve thought about al-Qaeda, Yemen and US policy I have returned time and time again to what I have termed “the Ghalib al-Zayadi problem.” […]
Earlier today an anonymous US official confirmed the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi. Now, I don’t have a lot to say about al-Libi – other than to say wait for […]
On December 17, 2009 the US carried out a missile strike against what it believed to be an al-Qaeda training camp in the south Yemeni governorate of Abyan. Unfortunately, what […]