US forges alliance with Saddam officers to fight Qaeda: report

American counter-terrorism specialists and Saddam Hussein's former intelligence officers have forged an unlikely alliance in Yemen to tackle al-Qaeda. The two sides were enemies on the battlefield just seven years ago but have been brought together by the failings of Yemen's security and intelligence apparatus, according to diplomatic and military sources in the country.
Although mutual suspicions linger, the collaboration is said to have achieved some intelligence breakthroughs and helped instil greater efficiency and professionalism within the most elite Yemeni counterterrorism outfit.
Co-operation with the former Baathist officers, who fled Iraq in the wake of the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam, is expected to grow further in the wake of the failed terror attack in the skies above Detroit.
Both Britain and the United States have pledged to bolster Yemeni efforts to take on al-Qaeda's local affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), since it claimed responsibility for a thwarted attempt to bring down an American airliner on Christmas Day.
The US-Iraqi alliance was born out of frustration over the incompetence and suspected al-Qaeda sympathies of many within Yemen's domestic intelligence body, the Political Security Organisation, or PSO.
"We do not know where the allegiance of many in the intelligence apparatus lies," said a western diplomat.
According to many Yemen observers, the PSO was instrumental in the resurrection of al-Qaeda's fortunes after it was accused of complicity in the escape of 23 terror suspects from one of its prisons in 2006.
Nasir al-Wahayshi, AQAP's highly effective leader, and several suspects linked to the bombing of the US warship USS Cole of Aden in 2000 were among those who won their freedom.
Under pressure from the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, created the rival National Security Agency (NSA).
It has taken credit for providing intelligence that led to air strikes last month which, Yemen claims, killed dozens of AQAP operatives