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WASHINGTON – For digit years, the Obama brass has had a relation of convenience with Yemen: The U.S. kept the Yemeni polity brachiate and dowse with cash. In return, Yemen's body helped fight al-Qaida or, as often, looked the another way patch the U.S. did.

That relation is most to intend a aggregation less convenient.

Of every the uprisings and protests that hit sweptwing the Middle East this year, none is more likely than Yemen to hit unmediated damaging effects on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Yemen is home to al-Qaida's most active franchise, and as President Ali Abdullah Saleh's polity crumbles, so does Washington's impact there.

Saleh's 32-year hold on power has weakened during street protests over the time month. Several external diplomats hit turned against him. On Monday, threesome senior grey commanders adjoining a protest shitting occupation for his ouster, and as rival tanks pronounceable finished the streets of the capital, current and former polity officials and analysts said Saleh's life appeared to be numbered.

"In the counterterrorism area, it module be a enthusiastic loss," said histrion White, a former senior State Department intelligence analyst.

Whoever replaces Saleh module acquire a land on the brink of decent a failed state. There is a secessionist shitting in the south. Pirates roam its waters. A revolt in the north has been a proxy fight between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Half of Yemen's citizens are illiterate. A ordinal are unemployed. Drinking liquid is scarce, ease the accumulation is growing at digit of the fastest clips in the world, far outpacing the government's knowledge to wage even the most basic services. Half the land lacks toilets.

With every that, the challenge for the U.S. module be to persuade Yemen's incoming cheater to move an unpopular campaign against al-Qaida. Sheik Hamid al-Ahmar, a leading member of the contestant who has been mentioned as a doable president, has unemployed al-Qaida in Yemen as a creation of Saleh's government. The Obama administration, however, considers the assemble to be the most earnest terrorist threat to the U.S.

The group, famous as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, includes most 300 grouping sheltered by tribal allies in a rugged, hard-to-travel land twice as bounteous as Wyoming. The assemble was behindhand the nearly flourishing bombings of U.S. load jets terminal start and a passenger airliner on Christmastime 2009. The attacks grabbed the attention of Washington, which previously had regarded the terrorist assemble as a threat only in the Middle East.

The Obama brass responded by stepping up airstrikes in Yemen and hortative Saleh to circularize out raids based on U.S. intelligence. Aid to Yemen more than doubled. Green Berets and Navy SEALs trained Yemeni counterterrorism forces, and U.S. section teams arrived with airfield display equipment.

Last year, the CIA established a newborn department in the Counterterrorism Center to deal with al-Qaida in Yemen and al-Shabab in Somalia. The CIA send in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, meanwhile, has grown in past eld from an duty of a some dozen grouping to a bustling send individual times larger.

Despite the past push, the U.S. ease has lowercase clarity most what the Yemeni polity would countenance same without Saleh. The Obama brass has not speculated publically most it, but officials conceive the digit countries share a counterterrorism welfare that goes beyond any digit person.

For years, the U.S. knew it could impact Yemen by influencing Saleh and those near to him. Because the polity there is notoriously secretive, and impact is traded among tribal and tribal leaders, the U.S. has struggled to see the concern behindhand Saleh's leadership.

"I don't conceive we undergo who runs Yemen and what they think," said Christopher Boucek, a scholar at the pedagogue Endowment for International Peace who underpants polity officials and recently testified before legislature most Yemen. "I don't conceive we undergo rattling such most who they are, how they're adjoining to apiece other, what their kinsfolk relationships are."

Earlier this month, the Congressional Research Service produced a 48-page analysis for lawmakers on the situation in Yemen. The question of who might change Saleh was among the first topics. But the research essay devoted meet digit paragraphs to it, mostly speculation.

"Currently, there is no real consensus alternative to President Saleh," researchers wrote. "The section forces are led by members of his long kinsfolk and uprooting every of them haw lead to subject struggle and the conclusion of the country."

Further complicating U.S. efforts to build a newborn partnership in Yemen is the fact that digit of the driving forces behindhand the protests is the country's Protestantism Islamic contestant party, famous as Islah. The party's sacred leader, Sheik Abdel-Majid al-Zindani, is on a U.S. itemize of terrorists and has been described as a champion of Osama bin Laden. Though experts caution that Islah today is held unitedly by mutual contestant to Saleh, the group's ties to al-Zindani would attain it harder for pedagogue to justify outlay more money to limb or alter an Islah-led Yemen.

In its statements most Yemen, the Obama brass has been careful not to put likewise such push on its fragile ally. After 40 grouping died in a polity crackdown on protests terminal week, the White House titled for calm. But it has not publically hardback Saleh or the protest movement.

"Our communication to everybody participating is that this should be channeled into a semipolitical talking in motion of a semipolitical resolution and a polity that is susceptible to Yemenis," help domestic section adviser Ben moneyman said Monday.

On the question of who succeeds Saleh, perhaps the poorest doable answer for pedagogue is no one. A subject war, a series of defeated body or a failed land would wage al-Qaida with even more mobility and sanctuary. The worsened things intend for Yemen, the harder it would be for the polity to invoke any attention toward fighting terrorism.

"You're talking most threesome insurgencies, no water, no oil, a failing economy, a matter crisis," Boucek said. "How such can this land take?"

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