Violence batters Yemen's image

An estimated 50 million fire-arms are in private hands

By Middle East correspondent Frank Gardner

Violence in the Middle East this year has not been confined to the Palestinian territories.

Yemen - the most scenic and perhaps the most hospitable country in the Arabian peninsula - has also suffered a heavy blow to its reputation and its economy with the deadly attack in October on a US warship in Aden.

The government is also facing the persistent problem of kidnapping Westerners.

Western security experts believe its reputation is well-founded.

Tempting hostages

Over the past five years more than 130 visitors and foreign residents have been kidnapped in Yemen at gun-point.

Seventeen US sailors died in the attack on warship Cole

The latest victim was a Swedish man held for nearly three weeks in November.

As with nearly all the kidnappings in Yemen, the tribesmen who seized him used him to bargain for economic concessions from the government, so they treated him well and he was freed peacefully.

But the ongoing abductions show that the death penalty for kidnapping has not deterred some tribesmen.

There are an estimated 50 million firearms in private hands.

Investigators believe Bin Laden has many sympathisers in Yemen

For impoverished but well-armed tribesmen from remote rural areas, an unprotected westerner can sometimes make too tempting a hostage.

But a deeper and more destabilising problem is the presence of armed Islamists hostile to the west.

Bin Laden base?

Two years ago they kidnapped 16 tourists, four of whom died in a shoot-out with government troops.

In October the Islamists struck again blowing a hole in a US warship in Aden and killing 17 US sailors.

Washington suspects the Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden was behind the attack.

The Yemeni government denies he has ever used Yemen as a base, but Western investigators believe Osama bin Laden has many sympathisers in the country.

They fear that these men have the means and the motivation to keep on hitting US and western targets in the region.