Qaeda card to
settle personal disputes and further political objectives.
The time
By Casey Coombs / Sana'a
Tribal militias have joined the campaign against the local franchise of the
radical movement. It may have helped oust Al-Qaeda from a few cities but it may
not guarantee peace in the long run
Even amid the escalating suicide bomb campaign across Yemen, the attack on a wake in Jaar in
southern Yemen’s Abyan province was particularly grisly and premeditated,
designed to inflict maximum damage. It took place on Aug. 4, at around 11 p.m.,
as some 150 neighbors and relatives gathered outside the home of local tribal
Sheikh Abdulatif Sayed following the funeral of his close relative. While they
were grieving, a young al-Qaeda recruit from Jaar infiltrated the crowd, resting
on a cooler he had brought with him. Then, according to several survivors, he
detonated his suicide vest and that blast ignited the cooler, which was packed
with more explosives and metal ball bearings. Shrapnel killed some 50 guests,
including the sheikh’s two brothers.
However, the intended target, Sheikh Sayed, survived. Al-Qaeda had
particularly wanted to assassinate him. Sayed had defected from the terrorist
organization three months earlier to head a growing force of anti-Qaeda tribal
militias, also known as Popular Committees, sweeping the region.
If the tribal uprising against al-Qaeda sounds familiar, then you are hearing
echoes of Iraq. Aysh Awas, director
of Security and Strategic Studies at Sheba, a think tank in Sana’a, told TIME
that Ansar al-Shari’a — the political front of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP) — is doing in Yemen what Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) did following the U.S.
invasion in 2003: wage suicide bomb-led jihad to derail the country’s nascent
Washington-supported democracy and replace it with an Islamic state based on
shari’a law. And just as anti-Qaeda, U.S.-backed tribal sheikhs in Iraq banned
together to secure their territory from AQI, Popular Committees are popping up
across Yemen to combat the local franchise of the movement founded by the late
Osama bin Laden. “In light of the recent attacks, it seems that anything is
likely to happen and the situation in Yemen may be turning into the Iraqi
model,” Awas says.
Unlike Iraq, however, the tribal Popular Committees don’t seem to be getting
the big boost that Iraq’s Sunni Awakening groups did. In the last couple of
weeks, the suicide-bombing campaign has led local Popular Committees to abandon
their patrols and refuse to return unless Yemen’s new government provides them
with greater autonomy, salaries and other benefits enjoyed by government troops.
But President Rabu Mansour Hadi, who succeeded Ali Abdullah Saleh earlier this
year, is mired in a military reform battle with the country’s top brass, and
unwilling or unable to act on those demands.
Amid the tumult of last year’s Arab Spring-related popular uprisings in
Yemen, AQAP and Ansar al-Shari’a seized Jaar and neighboring towns like Lawder
along the Gulf of Aden. It took the government months — with the help of the
Popular Committee militias — to take back Jaar and the AQAP-occupied towns.
But morale has broken down. Popular Committee fighters from Lawder have
stopped cooperating with government soldiers in their pursuit of Ansar
al-Shari’a, claiming that it is their land and they are responsible for
protecting it. “My men won’t continue to fight alongside the military. We have
shown that we can handle Ansar al-Shari’a ourselves, and we are prepared do it,
but not for nothing,” said Popular Committee leader Ahmed Ashawi from Lawder.
Ashawi argues that the tribesmen need to be accommodated soon, before their
allegiance shifts to other power brokers in the region.The tension has fueled
mutual distrust between the two groups, leading some government troops to return
to Sana’a.
Soldiers in the region took another blow on Aug. 6, when President Hadi
placed Lawder’s Republican Guard brigade, along with more than a dozen others,
under a new commander. The move was seen as part of Hadi’s attempt to tip the
country’s balance of power toward himself and away from its top two military
commanders: the former president’s son, Brigadier General Ahmed Ali Abdullah
Saleh, head of the elite Republican Guards; and his chief rival General Ali
Mohsen al-Ahmar who broke away from Saleh’s forces during last year’s uprisings,
taking the First Armored Division with him. Hadi designated himself the head of
the Presidential Protective Forces, which is made up of three Republican Guard
brigades and one from the First Armored Division.
Ahmed al-Zurqa, independent political analyst and AQAP expert, described
Hadi’s decree as a farsighted measure. “It’s an initial step toward rebuilding
the military away from personal loyalties to make it capable of conducting the
war against al-Qaeda without parties playing the al-Qaeda card as a weapon in
their own conflicts,” he says. Both Generals Saleh and Mohsen have been
suspected of playing the al-Qaeda card to settle personal disputes and further
political objectives.
Like other observers, Zurqa would rather the war against al-Qaeda not depend
on tribal militias. “The role of the Popular Committees must be terminated or
they must be incorporated within the security forces because at the moment they
are militias with independent loyalties. They may soon become a source of
problems.” The long-term solution to Islamic extremism, according to Awas, would
involve conducting a “smarter war based on intelligence and enforcing the state
through public services, job opportunities, resettling conflict refugees and
rebuilding what the war destroyed.”
The problem, however, is that the government must quickly establish itself as
the chief power-broker in the Abyan — otherwise, allegiances cannot be
guaranteed. “Like Sheikh Sayed, people here will change sides if they see an
opportunity. Life’s tough in Abyan, they take what they can get,” a Yemeni
intelligence official from the area told TIME. Though it has been displaced from
the cities it once occupied, Ansar al-Shari’a has in the past proved adept at
winning local support through a combination of iron fisted-rule, the provision
of basic necessities and lucrative payouts to fighters. It is far from
implausible that the group and al-Qaeda will surge back into power in
Abyan
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