Last known to operate in Yemen.

AAIA seeks the establishment of Yemen as an Islamist state.

Probably less than 50.

Officials familiar with Yemen's AAIA suspect that Osama bin Laden provided support to the Yemeni group in exchange for AAIA's public support of the Al-Qaida agenda. Links to Al-Qaida may have been indirect through the jihad network that resulted from mujahideen participation in the Afghanistan war against the Soviet Union.

The Aden Abayan Islamic Army has utilized kidnappings, bombings and propaganda in its efforts. Most of its violent attacks have been against Westerners or facilities associated with Western countries.

The Aden Abyan Islamic Army (AAIA) gained notice in 1998 when it issued statements in support of Osama bin Laden and called for the overthrow of the Yemeni government. The group also publicly backed operations against U.S. and other Western interests in Yemen. AAIA would turnYemen into a strict Islamist state.

Members of the group belong to the Salafi religious sect, a small Sunni Muslim group patterned after the strict Wahhabi theology practiced widely in Saudi Arabia. AAIA may be an offshoot of the Yemeni Islamic Jihad, a group believed to be funded by bin Laden. Yemen traditionally has been a source of mercenaries, many of whom migrated to Afghanistan in support of U.S. efforts to expel Soviet fighters. While in Afghanistan, the Yemenis embraced the Sunni-Salafi view, which they retained upon returning to Yemen in the early 1990s, where they continued to oppose "godless" communism gaining a foothold in southern Yemen. They were supported by the government and by parties in northern Yemen.

In 1994, the AAIA supported troops from northern Yemen in subduing the Yemen Socialist Party in what was essentially a civil war. After the war, the AAIA was rebuffed by the government in its request for obtaining prominent positions in the military. The government also rejected AAIA's calls for setting up an Islamist state. These rebuffs led the Islamic Army to seek the overthrow of the government and to oppose any Western presence in the country.

1998
May: The Aden Abyan Islamic Army established its public presence in Yemen by issuing statements calling for the overthrow of the government.

August: Terrorists attacked U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, leading to American reprisals in Sudan and Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden, the presumed instigator of the bombings. Yemen's AAIA praised the embassy attacks as operations "carried out by heroes of the jihad." It also announced its support for bin Laden following the U.S. reprisal raid on his camp in Afghanistan, and called on the Yemeni people to kill Americans and destroy their property.

November: AAIA's then-leader al-Mehdar, also known as Zein Al-Abideen, urged all members of the Yemeni Parliament and consultative council to resign and demanded that Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Salih "surrender" and face trial in accordance with sharia Islamic law. Al-Mehdar's hostility towards the Yemeni government seemed to stem from his position as a member of a minority sect, and from his view that sharia law was not applied properly in Yemen.

December: AIAI operatives kidnapped a party of 16 Western tourists in southern Yemen. Four later died during a botched rescue by Yemeni security forces.

1999
Oct. 17: Al-Mehdar was executed for his role in the December 1998 kidnapping.

2000
Oct. 12: Terrorists bombed the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen's Aden harbor, killing 16 and injuring 39. AAIA was suspected of launching the attack in coordination with Al-Qaida operatives.

Oct. 13: A bomb was lobbed into a window of the British Embassy in Yemen, shattering windows. Four AAIA members were later sentenced for the attack.

2001
September: AAIA was designated a terrorist financier by the U.S. as part of President George Bush's actions after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

2002