Most people have either never heard of Yemen or know very little about it. The country is one of the world’s poorest, is home to Islamist terrorist groups and is beset by a war with the involvement of foreign actors.
Borealis is joined by Yemen specialist Gregory Johnsen to get a better understanding of how we got there and what the stakes are.
The Last Refuge: Yemen Al-qaeda And America’s War In Arabia
A gripping account of how al-Qaeda in Yemen rebounded from an initial defeat to once again threaten the United States.
Far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and al-Qaeda are fighting a clandestine war of drones and suicide bombers in an unforgiving corner of Arabia.
About the host Phil Gurski
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. and Programme Director for the Security, Economics and Technology (SET) hub at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI). He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation.
From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East.
Find out more about Phil Gurski

Is Saudi Arabia really ‘liberalising’?
Episode 284 – Can we deal with the ‘new’ Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to change its image from an ultraconservative Middle East oil power to a modern state. Much of this change is at the hands of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) who is the darling of the international community and…

Just how much of a national security concern is the Muslim Brotherhood?
Episode 283 – Why have more nations not listed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity? The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is one of the oldest Islamist organisations, dating back to 1928. It is conservative in its outlook and is seen by some as the inspiration for terrorist groups such as Hamas. And yet, few countries…
When a Soviet defector launched the Cold War…in Canada!
Episode 282 – How a cipher clerk opened the door on Soviet spying in the West Ah the Cold War! Those were the good old days when we knew the enemy and he knew us. Few know that the decades-long slowly simmering conflict began in Ottawa when Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet Embassy with…
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