US to expand Yemeni military training

[ellenrr]

Excerpt from the AP article below.
My comments:
Is this expansion for the so-called war on terror, or is it to combat the forces for democracy so active in Yemen right now?
If the former, is Yemen the next Pakistan?

2/14 - WASHINGTON (AP) — Faced with an increasingly alarming threat from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the U.S. military will begin a new training program with Yemen's counterterrorism unit so it can move against militants believed to be plotting attacks on America from safe havens there.

The effort will mark the first time the U.S. has trained the counterterrorism unit, which has traditionally focused on protecting Yemen's capital, according to a senior defense official. Under the plan, the training would begin in the next few months, and the Yemenis could more than double the size of their counterterror force, which now numbers about 300.

The plans come as the U.S. watched rippling public unrest rattle many of its Middle Eastern allies, including autocratic leaders such as Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down Friday.

On Sunday Yemeni police used truncheons to stop protesters, many of them university students, from reaching the capital's central Hada Square. Witnesses said plainclothes policemen wielding daggers and sticks also joined security forces in driving the protesters back.

Mubarak and Saleh both worked with the U.S. to counter terrorism, and cooperation with Yemen is considered critical by U.S. national security leaders to combat AQAP.

The new training program would expand U.S. military assistance to Yemen, where AQAP has planned and launched several attack against the U.S., including the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas Day 2009 and the failed mail bomb plot involving cargo planes last summer.

Just in the last month, the U.S. delivered four Huey helicopters to Yemen and has been training the aviation units.

The helicopters also will eventually allow Yemen to do more operations that involve precise strikes with a small number of troops, the defense official said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jl7wn3_i-MTN5JgzbgGUFgfvTHbg?docId=2dcd5d0aaeb841e49354fd7bace607ac