By Jeffrey Fleishman and Haley Sweetland Edwards
Reporting from Cairo and Sana, Yemen
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who once described ruling Yemen as dancing on the heads of snakes, has stayed in power for three decades through a clever mix of money, tribal ploys and government corruption.
But Saleh’s political capital is shrinking and his wiles are straining as Yemen struggles with a civil war in the north, secession troubles in the south and a battle against an Al Qaeda affiliate that has drawn the United States into a new front against the terrorist network.
As with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the U.S. regards Saleh more as a skilled operator than a trusted ally. For years, Washington paid sporadic attention and sent little aid to Yemen, but that changed after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the failed bombing of a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day.
Top American intelligence officials told Congress this week that Yemen’s terrorist network was a major threat to U.S. interests. The Obama administration is now warily increasing money and commitment to an Arab leader criticized for manipulating crises for political gain and tolerating militants as long as they unleashed their jihad in other countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Saleh is always maneuvering,” said AbdulSalam Qarari, deputy editor of Afaq Gadidah magazine in Sana, the capital. “He creates crises so he can play with them and use them for his interests.”
The 67-year-old Saleh, who wears a meticulous mustache and suits of muted colors, is facing increasing pressure amid tumbling oil revenues, a water shortage and the government’s diminishing grip on tribal lands scattered widely across mountains and deserts.
Saleh has long been adept at deciphering his country’s moods and passions. In recent years, however, he appears to have spent less time tending to national problems than on fortifying his family’s hold on power, most notably by preparing his son Ahmed, chief of the Special Forces and the Yemen Republican Guard, to succeed him.
The president’s political style follows that of other Arab leaders, such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who create facades of democracy while ruling as strongmen over states that run on patronage. In addition to his son, relatives holding key positions include his half-brother Mohammed, commander of the air force, and his nephews Tarek, head of the Presidential Guard, and Amar, deputy chief of Yemen’s National Security Bureau.
“Saleh’s a very good politician, but he hasn’t understood that there is a big change in our society,” said Mohammed AbdulMalik Mutawakel, a leader in a federation of opposition parties. “He used to manage the public in three ways: by satisfying with money, by using force, and by propaganda. All these tactics are ineffective now. He has no money. He is already using all the force he has. And with propaganda? People will believe him once, twice, but no one will believe him now.”
What troubles the West is Yemen’s strategic location in the crosscurrents where the Al Qaeda-plagued Horn of Africa meets the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. It is only in recent months, with increased U.S. pressure, that Yemen has moved to rout Islamic militants.
Airstrikes against Al Qaeda bases and training camps have reportedly killed more than 60 militants since mid-December. The U.S. is expected to double its military and counter-terrorism aid to about $150 million.
Saleh’s critics accuse him of exploiting Al Qaeda and other threats to attract foreign money, including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. Yet, at the same time, he shows independence from the West for fear of angering a populace disdainful of U.S. regional intervention.
It is a tricky strategy of a man playing both sides. Saleh recently said he would open a dialogue with Al Qaeda militants who renounce violence. The overture was received well at home but it left doubts in the West about the president’s zeal to destroy militant networks.
In 2006, Yemen’s police and security forces were suspected of helping more than 20 extremists escape from prison. That took pressure off Saleh’s government from radical Islamic Salafi voices, but now some of those escapees are fighting alongside a resurgent Al Qaeda group.
The fighting with the terrorist network and Houthi Shiite rebels in the north is the result of years of ineffectual government efforts to stem creeping dangers. The military campaigns have not diverted attention from malnutrition, corruption, failing schools, joblessness and other problems in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world.
Money has a tendency to disappear in Yemen. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted at a conference on Yemen in London last week that only a portion of $5.2 billion in international pledges to the country have been delivered, in part because of fear that the money will be misspent.
Reports by U.S. organizations and others have found systemic government corruption that includes thousands of “ghost workers,” kickbacks to officials for government contracts and bribes to judges. A U.S. report described Yemen as a “bandit” state where one-third of the country’s 100,000 soldiers exist only on paper, allowing their politically connected commanders to reportedly pocket extra salaries and sell guns and munitions on the black market.
“Grand corruption is not a tangential problem in Yemen. Rather, it is the glue that keeps things in place,” states the 2006 report prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The president’s “political mandate is nonexistent. The international attention and money and support may make him stronger in one way, but that’s not enough,” said Naif Gunas, a spokesman for Yemen’s parliamentary opposition coalition. “The power of the president depends on two elements: the military and the tribes. . . . But he has become less powerful with the tribes. They consider him a thief and oppose his bad politics.”
Al Qaeda is trying to capitalize on Saleh’s vulnerability. The organization has encouraged intermarriage of militants and tribal women, and casts itself as a champion of tribal rights.
In an audiotape released last year, Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, called upon the Yemeni tribes to protect Al Qaeda members, as their tribal “brothers” in Pakistan and Afghanistan had done. Tribes are tough to sway, though, and some clan leaders consider Islamic militants more of a liability than an unpopular president, even if he provides them with fewer paved roads and hospitals.
But strikes on Al Qaeda cells on tribal lands have infuriated sheiks. In one instance, a tribe in Marib province fired antiaircraft rounds at government forces that attacked the house of a militant leader. The assault was regarded as an affront to the sheik whose duty is to protect the kinsmen on his land.
“The confrontation is now open,” said Abdulelah Haider Shaeya, a Yemeni journalist covering militant networks. “Not the government versus Al Qaeda, but the government versus the tribesman.”
For years, Saleh, a former tank officer, has manipulated the incestuous nature of Yemen tribes and politics. He came to power in a divided Yemen in the late 1970s and became president of a unified country in 1990. But his talent for buying loyalty and taming enemies with favors is less assured these days.
“Saleh is in trouble,” Mutawakel said. “The U.S. will demand results and he’ll have to deliver, but I don’t know how.”
jeffrey.fleishman @latimes.com
Edwards is a special correspondent.
By Jeffrey Fleishman and Haley Sweetland Edwards
February 1, 2010
The terrorist who’s dead is still alive.
A perverse contradiction? No, just another day in the Yemen news cycle, where rebels, separatists, extremists and government officials conjure a surreal world of spin, lies and propaganda. It makes one wonder if reality exists at all in this cruel and beautiful land.
Yemen is a testament to the maxim that the first casualty of war is truth. And the conflicts here are many: Civil war in the north, secession pangs in the south, running battles with Al Qaeda across tribal strongholds rich in weapons and oil. Hunkered men with Internet connections and laptops post videos on YouTube and hyperbolic messages on extremist websites challenging the government’s take on everything from body counts to who captured whom when.
In the last month, since the government intensified its war against the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network’s affiliate in Yemen, news releases posted on the government’s news website killed off almost a dozen enemies of the state who later turned out to be alive. Or if they’re not alive, there’s no proof they’re dead.
“I don’t write anyone is dead until there’s a body,” said an exasperated local reporter. “You show me the body, I’ll write the story.”
New technology
In the good old days, rebels and militants literally were voices in the wilderness, hoping at best to finagle a fax machine or a telex. Today, before a missile explodes or a grave is dug, the music is cued and the word is out. Who to believe on any given afternoon amounts to a gulp and the toss of a coin.
Reportedly. Purportedly. Allegedly.
Words to live by.
The fog of scurrilous sound bites and dicey intelligence drifts through most wars. U.S. news briefings during the Vietnam War were known as the Five O’Clock Follies. Reliable information often takes a while to burn through scrims of calculated illusions and earnest mistakes. But Yemen has a mesmerizing and maddening panache for building puzzles where the pieces don’t quite fit.
In an attack in December, the government claimed to have killed Anwar Awlaki, the radical American-born Yemeni cleric who is said to have had ties to the suspects in the Ft. Hood shootings and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airliner bound for Detroit. He turned up alive a few days later.
The same goes for Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi, the Yemeni Al Qaeda leader, who the government claimed had been at a meeting raided by Special Forces in December. Either Wahishi escaped, or he wasn’t at the meeting in the first place, but at any rate, he survived a government press release.
Curioser…
Last month, the government announced it had captured Saeed Ali Shehri, the second in command of the group, when his car overturned while he was trying to evade a checkpoint. A handful of news organizations, including an English-language paper, the Yemen Observer, whose owner is close to the president, reported the story. Then later corrected it, saying that it was another Shehri, Yusuf, who had been killed.
Mmmm. It gets better. Yusuf had (reportedly) died back in October during a shootout in Jizan, Saudi Arabia. Another tidbit left twisting.
Days earlier, the government-run news agency released a statement that two high-level Al Qaeda operatives had been killed in an airstrike on two cars in eastern Yemen. The next day, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula hosted a “Thanksgiving dinner” to presumably express gratitude that the two were still alive, according local newspapers. The group published a statement saying no one had died and it warned citizens against believing the government’s “repeated lies.”
The government news agency, meanwhile, sort of pretended the whole thing hadn’t happened. It quietly stopped claiming that either militant was dead; their whereabouts, dead or alive, are unknown.
It’s not only Al Qaeda operatives who pull a Lazarus. In the last six weeks, Abdel Malik Houthi, the leader of the Shiite rebellion in northern Yemen, has been reported slain half a dozen times in government reports and by competing news agencies, only to reappear a few days later on the rebels’ website or YouTube.
The government claimed recently that Houthi had been killed “after he was seriously wounded in an air raid two weeks ago.” It later amended that to say Houthi wasn’t dead, but he had been severely wounded and had a leg amputated. Things got a bit fuzzy; speculation abounded.
Presto. A 38-second video popped up online on Jan. 22. It is not clear when it was made, but it shows Houthi with both legs intact and a dagger stuffed firmly in his belt, denying charges of his passing.
On Saturday, Houthi called for a cease-fire. On Sunday, government troops reportedly killed 20 of his men. Stay tuned.
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Edwards is a special correspondent.
Reporting for this story was funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/yemen-to-get-limited-attention-at-london-conference/19332732
By: Haley Sweetland Edwards
SAN’A, Yemen (Jan. 26) – The international community had better work fast. The portion of this week’s conference in London meant to address Yemen’s multitude of problems is scheduled to last only two hours.
For this Yemen power-session, tacked on Wednesday to a full-day conference on Afghanistan the next day, the assembled government officials and nongovernmental experts have a goal that is simple to state but hard to implement: They want to keep Yemen, often dubbed “the new Afghanistan,” from becoming a failed state and a haven for al-Qaida.
Yemen is expected to use the conference as a platform to ensure that countries make good on previous pledges of development and military aid. High-level representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and Gulf states, for their part, will likely try to extract from Yemen concrete promises on how aid will be used and how Yemen will cooperate with international counterterrorism efforts.
The discussion is complicated by Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi’s refusal to discuss political or economic reform. Yet problems in those realms contribute immensely to Yemen’s instability and to its inability to focus primarily on fighting al-Qaida. Yemen has been fighting a sporadic six-year battle against Houthi Shiite rebels in the north and an increasingly violent separatist insurgency in the south.
“If we divert … into other political issues that are within the domain of the Yemeni government, we will compromise the objectives of this conference,” al-Qirbi said in a press briefing earlier this month. “The issues of human rights and freedom of the press are all issues that come within the national agenda of reforms. … It doesn’t need to come through the London conference.”
In a statement published on the state-run news service Monday, Yemen’s deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, Hisham Sharaf, announced that Yemen would need $50 billion in development aid in the next 10 years, and called for the international community to take immediate steps to forgive Yemen’s debt by half. He added that Yemen has a “clear and honest reform vision.”
How clear and honest that vision is will remain the major concern of the West and Gulf states, as it has in the past. At a 2006 donor conference in London, the international community pledged $5 billion in aid to Yemen, but only $415 million of that was delivered, Sharaf told Bloomberg in an interview earlier this month. Yet foreign donors didn’t follow through in large part because of concerns over endemic corruption in the Yemeni government. They also contend that the government was using counterterrorism funds intended to fight al-Qaida to battle the Houthis and the separatists.
“The foreign [community] cannot change the way Yemen is run immediately. It wants to limit the growth of al-Qaida, but it cannot do that without helping to grow justice, democracy and the economy, and that takes time,” said Mohammed Abdulmalik al-Motawakei, a professor of political science at San’a University and an influential opposition leader. “They want fast results with al-Qaida, but keeping a nation from falling apart is not fast work.”
The U.S. has already pledged to double the $70 million in aid it gave last year, and in 2006, the United Kingdom planned to give $160 million from 2006 to 2010. Both countries currently provide military aid to Yemen’s security and counterterrorism forces in the form of training, technology and firepower, but have said that direct military involvement in Yemen in the fight against al-Qaida is not on the table.
Ali Muthana, Yemen’s vice minister of foreign affairs, also emphasized the importance of a holistic solution to Yemen’s terrorism problem, but was vague about exactly how international aid should be allocated or to what degree Yemen’s security forces will cooperate with international counterterrorism efforts. “We are open to partnership,” he said.
“At the London conference, we expect the international community to help Yemen overcome and face the challenges of security … and development,” he said in an interview last week. “We expect that fighting al-Qaida … includes overcoming economic difficulties and providing work for our people. If we want to tackle the question of terrorism, we have to tackle that problem in all of its aspects.”
The two-hour session could yield results, however, especially if the Western representatives are able – perhaps after the delegates retire to tea – to pressure the Gulf states to mediate Yemen’s internal crises. Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the war against al-Qaida, has been militarily involved in the war against the Houthis and could, perhaps with some Western encouragement, play a crucial role in propping up its neighbor to the south.
But, more probably, Yemen’s less immediate problems will again, as they have for the past nine years, be overshadowed by those of its larger, more troublesome Central Asian neighbor.
Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
A member of Yemen's counterterrorism police force directs an exercise on January 16th in the mountains outside of the capital, Sana'a. The special unit is trained by U.S. and British Special Forces. (Paul Stephens)
By Haley Sweetland Edwards
Published: January 24, 2010 08:22 ET
SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni policemen sprinted up a rocky dirt road, firing AK-47s, lobbing grenades and detonating explosives at a cinderblock house, a supposed Al Qaeda hideout.
The scenario was fake, but the firepower very real, as U.S. and U.K. military trainers put local counterterrorism forces through their paces northeast of the capital one morning recently.
The 200-person counterterrorism police force is trained daily by the foreign commandos, according to a Yemeni soldier who addressed a small crowd of journalists invited to watch the training.
U.S. and U.K. military personnel were not present, since they’re not allowed to be seen or photographed by the press to avoid drawing attention to their presence on the ground in Yemen, the Yemeni soldier said. His voice was muffled by a black nylon facemask. For his own safety, he said he did not want his identity revealed. He would not give his name or allow himself to be recorded on video.
The presence of Western military personnel in Yemen is “sensitive,” he said, gesturing with an unlit cigarette.
Behind-the-scenes U.S. military involvement in Yemen is not new, but it has been the focus of a heated and virulent debate in Yemen since government forces last month renewed their fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a local affiliate of the international terrorist group. The group claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
U.S. special forces have been training Yemen’s 200-strong counterterrorism police unit on the ground since 2002, when Yemen came under the scrutiny of U.S. and its allies in the newly declared “War on Terror.” It is one of three elite units trained by U.S. and U.K. special forces.
American officials have said that the U.S. provides training, intelligence and “firepower” to the Yemeni government, but does not participate in combat missions. President Barack Obama said earlier this month that the U.S. “has no intention” of becoming directly militarily involved in Yemen.
Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad Alimi said the U.S. has not been involved militarily in recent strikes against alleged Al Qaeda members.
“The operations that have been taken … are 100 percent Yemeni forces,” he said at a press conference earlier this month. “The Yemeni security apparatus has taken support, information and technology that are not available here, and that’s mostly from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and other friendly countries.”
He called the U.S. a “valuable and important ally” in the fight against terrorism, but ruled out the possibility that there would be U.S. boots on the ground in Yemen.
In an attack last week, Yemeni security forces allegedly killed five suspected Al Qaeda members, including high-ranking commander Qasim Raymi, while they were traveling in moving vehicles, according to a government news agency.
The deaths have not been corroborated by any other source. The circumstances surrounding the attack have fueled widespread rumors that U.S. unmanned drones had been used in recent attacks on Al Qaeda members in Yemen, but the Yemeni government has denied their use.
“There are no unpiloted planes in Yemen. I can confirm this for you,” said Alimi, the deputy prime minister. Yemeni security forces receive “pictures and intelligence” from satellites operated by the U.S. and other countries, and small, surveillance drones are used to monitor Yemen’s long coastline, he said.
In 2002, the U.S. used unmanned drones to kill top Al Qaeda militant Salim Sinan al-Harithi.
Ahmed al-Aswadi, a high-ranking member of al-Islah, a conservative political party in Yemen, said “it is believed by most Yemenis” that the strikes reportedly carried out by Yemeni forces in December and January were “actually carried out by U.S. forces.”
“U.S. policy in this region of the world is no secret. If the government doesn’t comply with U.S. demands, then they bring in drones,” he said.
There is powerful opposition to U.S. military involvement in Yemen, where polls consistently show the highest levels of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world. Last week, a group of 150 sheikhs, imams and Islamic scholars issued a statement condemning “any foreign political, security or military intervention in Yemen’s political affairs.” The statement ended with a threat: “If Yemeni foreign policy allows any foreign military or security interference, Islam permits citizens to call jihad to expel its attackers.”
Naif al-Gunas, a member of Yemen’s parliamentary opposition coalition, worries that any new foreign involvement — or discovery of old foreign involvement — could catalyze a backlash against the government.
“We have people in Yemen who are Al Qaeda, and their neighbors oppose them,” said. “But if there is a hand from outside, people will support them — they will join their side.”
In January, Yemeni security forces launched a series of attacks on alleged Al Qaeda strongholds, and claimed to have killed or arrested a number of suspected militants. Yemeni security forces also had ramped up the war on Al Qaeda before the attempted bombing on Christmas Day, attacking suspected Al Qaeda strongholds in Shabwa and Abyan provinces, and in Sanaa, the capital city.
During the half-hour training session, watched by about 30 reporters, cameramen and photographers perched on cement bleachers, three dozen policemen practiced sniping, ambushing and bombing a moving vehicle, driven by a mock Al Qaeda operative, through the desolate training grounds a few miles northeast of Sanaa.
In an effort to broadcast its renewed commitment to the war against Al Qaeda, perhaps to secure additional international aid and military support, the Yemeni government has allowed journalists in recent weeks to visit the training sessions. “Usually, we would do these trainings differently,” said the masked Yemeni soldier. “But it is important for the media to see.”
Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
I shot some photos for The National for an article about Yemen’s population explosion.
Many people in Yemen still believe that Islam forbids family planning. Bahaja al Hamily, centre, a mother of nine, says: ‘We didn’t intend it.’ Paul Stephens for The National
Haley and I have received a generous grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to continue working in Yemen through the spring. We will be blogging and posting articles on the Pulitzer Center site. You can see our project page, a work in progress, here.
Another work in progress: my photo website.
by Haley Sweetland Edwards
SAN’A, Yemen (Jan. 15) – An air strike in northern Yemen on Friday killed at least six al-Qaida militants, including an important military commander, according to the Yemeni government news agency.
The commander, Qassim al-Raymi, was killed in a strike on two cars traveling between the villages of Taibat al-Ism and al-Buqa in the province of al-Jawf, near the Saudi Arabian border, the government reported.
The government claims to have killed or arrested numerous members of the local branch of al-Qaida in recent weeks, but al-Raymi has been the most high profile of those targets. If al-Raymi was killed, experts say, the strike would be a significant blow to the al-Qaida organization in Yemen.
Al-Raymi is said to have been one of three top leaders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the entity that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 en route to Detroit on Christmas Day.
Al-Raymi was imprisoned in 2005 for plotting to bomb several foreign embassies in Yemen, but escaped with 22 other militants in a prison break in 2006. Nasir al-Wuhayshi, another leader of AQAP, also escaped in that prison break, which led to the formation of the group.
Yemeni authorities have accused al-Raymi of helping to plan a 2007 suicide bombing that killed eight Spanish tourists and two Yemenis in the city of Marib.
The government also claimed to have killed several other suspected al-Qaida members in the strike Friday, including Aidh al-Shabwani. He was wanted in connection with the kidnapping of nine foreigners last June in the region of the country where the air strike took place.
Since the attempted attack on Christmas Day, Yemen has been under international pressure to fight AQAP, which has been using the country’s ungoverned regions as a safe haven to plot attacks. But leading that fight is complicated by the deep penetration of AQAP into Yemen’s tribal structures.
On Thursday, the government declared “open war” on al-Qaida elements in the country and warned that there would be imminent attacks on militants and anyone harboring them. On the same day, roughly 150 Yemeni Islamic scholars published a statement declaring that any foreign involvement in the country would “permit its citizens to call jihad to expel its attackers.”
The United States has in the past few months admitted to providing intelligence and air support for strikes against al-Qaida targets in Yemen but has not acknowledged any involvement in the most recent strikes.
SAN’A, Yemen (Jan. 14) – As the Yemeni government steps up its fight against al-Qaida, its task is complicated by the militant group’s longstanding, familial and often intimate relationship with Yemeni tribes.
“You cannot have a conversation about al-Qaida in Yemen without having a conversation about the tribes. It’s a natural alliance,” said Abdulelah Hider Shaea, a journalist with sources in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. “Both tribes and al-Qaida are socially and morally conservative, both like to acquire weapons and both are at odds with the formal authority.”
Ahmed al-Aswadi, director of the Islamic Center in San’a, said the close relationship between militants and tribal members in Yemen was established in the late 1980s, when Yemeni jihadists returned home from the U.S.-funded war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. These young, radicalized men were “welcomed as heroes,” he said, and many later married women from the families of prominent government leaders and tribal sheiks.
“People were very proud to have them in their family,” al-Aswadi said.
Edmund J. Hull, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, calls it the “mujahedeen fraternity” – a powerful network of former jihadist fighters, linked to cousins, sisters and uncles by marriage and family. Many members of the Yemeni parliament are tribal sheiks, and many ex-jihadists occupy positions within Yemeni security and military forces.
“Yemeni politics is a tangle of alliances,” said parliamentary member Mohammed al-Qobati, of the Yemeni Socialist Party. “If you pull one string, you get 10 more.”
These relationships can confound the government’s attempt to root out al-Qaida members in Yemen’s tribal-dominated countryside. In the past month, government forces have launched several attacks against the Arhab, a well-connected tribe with homelands just north of San’a. They killed several tribal members while trying to capture alleged al-Qaida militants such as Mohammed Ali Haniq, a former jihadi in Afghanistan who is the brother of an Arhab tribal sheik and member of parliament. As the death toll mounts, so do tensions between the tribe and the government.
“Both the U.S. and Yemen should be extremely careful about whom they target in Yemen, as going after the wrong people risks turning a two-sided conflict between the government and al-Qaida into a much more murky and multifaceted conflict that could potentially involve a number of tribes in what would become a war that could never be won,” Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University, wrote on his blog.
According to tribal custom, any killing that tribal leaders deem “illegitimate” would be grounds for a claim by the tribe against the government. “There are certain tribal norms and customs that should be taken into account,” said Sheikh Abdullah al-Qadi of Khawlan, a region in northwest Yemen. “If a man comes to the sheik to seek protection and it is granted, then the tribe has an obligation to protect him. But if that man has committed a crime, the rules change. It is complicated.
“If the government comes to a tribe and kills innocent people or children, this is totally rejected. It is rejected by all Yemeni people, let alone tribesman. There would definitely be opposition,” he said. “This is the kind of event that will create more al-Qaida, not less.”
In some cases, though, the tribes are more pragmatic about their loyalties. As Hull, the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, pointed out in a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, when Abu Ali al-Harithi, the then leader of Al-Qaida in Yemen, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2002, his tribe claimed no grievance against the government. One of his tribesman reportedly said at his funeral that “he had chosen his path, and it had led to his death.”
The government has also sometimes pursued the more pragmatic strategy of asking permission from tribal sheiks to go after al-Qaida members in their territory.
But even these negotiations sometimes go terribly wrong, as was demonstrated in July when Yemeni security forces traveled to Marib, in the eastern desert, to ask permission from local tribal sheiks to attack alleged al-Qaida operatives living in their land. The government troops accidentally bombed the wrong house, tribal members retaliated, both soldiers and tribesmen were killed, and seven soldiers were captured. A video of the battle was later widely circulated on jihadist Web sites as al-Qaida propaganda.
Al-Aswadi, the director of the Islamic Center and a member of the president’s appointed council, said the government’s relationship to tribes is not as simple as “if you attack them, they will retaliate.” He said that many of the tribes had an allegiance to the government, and the president, that might supersede any perceived injustice.
Other analysts and politicians say the relationship between al-Qaida and the tribes is overstated. “People don’t just join al-Qaida. They grow to support it because they hate the government more than they hate al-Qaida,” said Shaea, the journalist with ties to al-Qaida in Yemen. He said that tribal members who support al-Qaida do not necessarily believe in al-Qaida’s ideology.
“If the government was able to amend its bad policies and provide for them, they would not support al-Qaida,” he said.
The government’s fight, as complicated as it is, continues. On Wednesday, Yemeni government forces attacked the house of a suspected al-Qaida leader in Shabwa, a southern province. A firefight ensued and nine soldiers were killed or wounded. On Thursday morning, the government issued a statement warning citizens – tribal members, too – against hiding or protecting al-Qaida militants.
Reporting for this article was partially funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
LA Times’ Babylon & Beyond: Clerics condemn foreign intervention, threaten global jihad
A group of 150 Islamic scholars, sheiks and imams in Yemen issued a statement today condemning foreign intervention in the nation’s affairs, with one leading cleric calling for global jihad if Washington sends forces to battle Al Qaeda.
The statement, distributed on glossy yellow brochures and CDs to taxi drivers and passersby, was designed to remind Yemenis and Muslims worldwide that this Arabian peninsula nation will not be a puppet of the United States, said Sheik Ali al Warafi, a member of Yemen’s conservative Islamist party.
Sheik Arif bin Ahmad al Sabri, a member of parliament who read the document aloud to a group of several hundred men and women in a mosque in Yemen’s capital, Sana, called it a crucial step to maintaining freedom and independence in Yemen.
The statement consisted of nine tenets, including denouncing the Yemeni government’s recent military action against alleged Al Qaeda members in Yemen, rejecting further foreign military aid and condemning a recent rumor that foreign powers would be allowed to set up military bases in the country or use its territorial waters.
On Sunday, President Obama announced that the United States has no intention of sending troops to fight militants in Yemen. The clerics acknowledged Obama’s message, and asked that officials involved in the upcoming international conference on Yemen, scheduled for Jan. 28 in London, respect Yemen’s sovereignty.
The Islamic scholars’ statement was presented after a morning sermon by Sheik Abd al Majid Zindani, a radical Salafist cleric, who told his followers that any U.S. military involvement in Yemen would invite global jihad. The last paragraph in the statement reminds Muslims that Islam permits its citizens to call jihad to expel attackers.
Zindani, who the U.S. considers a global terrorist, is said to have been Osama bin Laden’s spiritual leader when both men were in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He also has close ties with Anwar al Awlaki, the Yemeni American cleric who exchanged e-mails with Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Zindani’s sermons are often nearly packed and, this morning, a crowd of 200 men milled outside the crowded mosque.
In the women’s section on the second floor, about 200 women, all wearing floor-length black gowns and head scarves, sliced pastries and poured tea, and waited for the sermon to begin. “Zindani is our sheik. All Yemeni people, they love him,” said a young woman in a black veil covering everything except her glinting black glasses’ frame. “I don’t know why they say he is dangerous. He is just fighting for his country, that’s all. That’s what we should all do.”
– Haley Sweetland Edwards in Yemen
Some snapshots from our travels around Yemen over the past few months. Just a reminder of what a beautiful, if troubled, country it is.
