Interactive Map: America’s War in Yemen

Most of Al Qaeda’s most significant, known terror plots directed at the U.S. homeland in the last several years — including the 2009 Christmas Day Bomb Plot or the 2010 Printer Cartridge Bomb Plot — originated in Yemen, where, since President Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. has ramped up a campaign of air, missile and drone strikes against the organization’s regional affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

“AQAP continues to be Al Qaeda’s most active affiliate, and it continues to seek the opportunity to strike our homeland,” CIA Director John Brennan said in an April 2012 speech justifying how U.S. officials decide to use drone strikes to target suspected terrorists.

This interactive map illustrates the two critical elements of the war in Yemen: the red dots represent 127 suspected U.S. drone, missile or other air strikes carried out since 2002, and the blue dots show 20 major terror plots against Western targets believed to be directed by Al Qaeda or AQAP since 2000.

You can explore by year, or zoom into the heavily clustered areas to see multiple events.

[The data on strikes has been drawn from a number of news reports, as well as from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Long War Journal, but as with all covert operations, it is difficult to verify the identities of those killed. We have included as much information as possible about controversial strikes, but cannot confirm all the identities or locations in question.]