Yemen still close to al-Qaeda's
heart By Michael Scheuer
Osama bin Laden has always had a very soft
spot in his heart for Yemen, saying that it is
"one of the best Arab and Muslim countries in
terms of its adherence to tradition and the faith
... [its] topography is mountainous, and its
people are tribal and armed, and allow one to
breathe clean air unblemished by humiliation".
Yemen is, of course, also the site of his
family's origin and he has often praised the
Kindah tribe of which his family is part. The bin
Ladens hail from the village of al-Rubat in the
Hadramaut region, and bin Laden took his fourth
wife from there. Bin Laden also has referred often
to the religious importance of Yemen, noting the
Prophet Mohammad's high regard for Yemen because
of its quick adoption of Islam after the faith's
founding and because he
believed that from Yemen
"would come 12,000 [fighters] who would support
God and His Prophet, and they are among the best
of us".
Abundant manpower But
affection is always overruled by the requirements
of war-fighting in bin Laden's mentality and Yemen
has long figured prominently in the conduct of the
defensive jihad in terms of manpower and
geographic importance.
Yemenis, for
example, have had significant representation in
al-Qaeda since its founding: Tariq al-Fahdli, from
southern Yemen, fought alongside bin Laden against
the Soviets and was on Yemeni President Ali
Abdullah Salih's senior council; Nasir Ahmad Nasir
al-Bahri (Abu Jandal), who was the longtime chief
of his bodyguard unit, is also from Yemen.
After the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan, moreover, bin Laden and several of
his colleagues sent guns, money and Arab veterans
of Afghanistan into Yemen to fight alongside the
Salih-led insurgents who eventually defeated the
communist regime of southern Yemen to reunify the
country in 1994. Al-Qaeda's first anti-US attack -
against US troops on the way to Somalia - was
conducted in Aden, Yemen, in December 1992.
More recently, 80% of those involved in
the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole were
Saudis of Yemeni origin. The members of the
al-Qaeda cell that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation dismantled in Lackawanna, New York
in 2002 were all Yemenis. Furthermore, a
significant number of the non-Iraqi mujahideen
fighting US forces in Iraq are Yemenis.
Indeed, in late 2007 the leader of
al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir, called
specifically on the Yemeni Islamists to provide
more fighters to support the Iraqi mujahideen. On
November 29, 2007, al-Qaeda's chief in Yemen,
Nasir al-Wihayshi (aka Abu Basir), publicly
answered that he would immediately send more
fighters. "Oh Abu Hamzah, here we come, oh, Iraq,
here we come," Abu Basir pledged.
Lasting geographic
importance Beyond "the extended manpower
fighting for God in happy Yemen", bin Laden and
al-Qaeda have always valued what they refer to as
"the strategic depth" that Yemen affords. While
bin Laden and his organization were based in Sudan
from 1991 to 1996, for example, they established a
sort of "naval bridge" that permitted the flow of
guns and fighters between Yemen and Port Sudan in
support of Hasan al-Turabi's Islamist regime in
Khartoum.
In the other direction, bin
Laden sent al-Qaeda operatives from Port Sudan to
Yemen and from there infiltrated them into Saudi
Arabia across the imperfectly guarded Saudi-Yemeni
border as well as into Oman. In Yemen, bin Laden
also cultivated ties with Salih and prominent
Islamist sheikhs - including Sheikh Abdul Majid
al-Zindani, head of the Yemen Reform Party - and
by doing so facilitated the growth of substantial
al-Qaeda infrastructure across the country.
Al-Qaeda's presence in Yemen also brought
it into closer contact with the Egyptian Islamist
groups based there: the Gama'a al-Islamiyah and
Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the
latter of which later united with al-Qaeda.
Finally, al-Qaeda has found that some of its
Yemeni members are of great assistance in
inserting al-Qaeda operatives into the states of
East Africa, the Indian Ocean and the South
Pacific, because of the Yemeni diaspora that was
established centuries ago in those regions by
Yemeni sailors and commercial traders.
Operational key and base of
last resort For al-Qaeda, Yemen provides a pivotal,
central base that links its theaters of operation
in Afghanistan, Iraq, East Africa and the Far
East; it also provides a base for training Yemeni
fighters and for the rest and refit of fighters
from multiple Islamist groups after their tours in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.
Today, it
appears to be an especially important safe haven
for Somali Islamist fighters and the leaders of
the Union of Islamic Courts who fled their country
after the late-2006 invasion of Ethiopian forces.
Some of these Somali fighters - after having
regrouped and rearmed - have returned to Mogadishu
from Yemen and are contributing to the growth of
the Islamist insurgency there.
Al-Qaeda's
organization in Yemen seems to have stabilized
after the period of turmoil and governmental
suppression that followed the November 2002 death
of its leader Abu Ali Harithi. Under the
above-mentioned Abu Basir - who escaped from a
Yemeni prison in early 2006 - al-Qaeda in Yemen
clearly has found its legs and is becoming more
active.
In late June 2007, for example,
Abu Basir issued a warning that al-Qaeda would
attack in Yemen if its members were not released
from prison; on July 4, 2007, al-Qaeda attacked,
using a suicide car bomb to kill seven Spanish
tourists at an ancient pagan temple east of San'a.
Then, on January 13, the Yemen wing again warned
that it would attack if the Salih regime did not
release imprisoned al-Qaeda members; on January
19, al-Qaeda killed two Belgian tourists and their
drivers in the Hadramaut area.
Abu Basir's
organization is thus showing some of the same
sophistication demonstrated by al-Qaeda groups
elsewhere: targeting the tourism industry that
earns the country foreign exchange; establishing
credibility by making threats and then making good
on them; and improving intra-Yemen and
international communications by using the
Internet. In regard to the latter, al-Qaeda in
Yemen published the first issue of its Internet
journal Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of
Battles) on January 13.
Attacks by
al-Qaeda in Yemen are likely to continue at a
level that does not lead to an all-out
confrontation with Salih's regime. In all
likelihood, al-Qaeda intends to cause just enough
sporadic damage to persuade Salih's regime that it
is best to curtail its efforts to destroy al-Qaeda
and to allow the group to operate relatively
freely in and from Yemen as long as no major
attacks are staged in the country.
Indeed,
such a modus vivendi may be in the works as San'a
officials have experimented with putting
imprisoned Islamists through a re-education
process that shows them the error of their ways
and then releases them on the promise of good
behavior. This almost certainly equates to a
license for the militants to do what they want,
where they want, as long as it is not in Yemen.
Possibly signaling a growing rapprochement
between Salih and the militants, al-Qaeda in Yemen
spokesman Ahmad Mansur recently claimed that the
government had solicited al-Qaeda's support in
fighting Shi'ite rebels in the north in return for
"easing the persecution of our members".
Finally, Yemen has long been regarded by
Western and Muslim commentators as a possible
refuge-of-last-resort if bin Laden ever has to
flee South Asia - bin Laden also has stated such a
possibility - and for this reason al-Qaeda must
seek to maintain a viable presence in the country.
Al-Qaeda in Yemen is particularly strong
in the governorates of Marib and Hadramaut - the
attacks described above and others have occurred
there - and both share a remote, mountainous
topography that is much like that of Afghanistan.
The two provinces also are inhabited by a welter
of deeply conservative Islamic tribes - Marib
alone has four powerful tribes with over 70 clans.
As in Afghanistan, the mores of these
Yemeni tribes cause their members to "think they
must do their duty to protect those who are in
need for protection whatever they have done. This
feeling becomes even stronger if those who need
protection are religious people, because the
tribesmen here are greatly affected by religious
discourse".
Michael Scheuer
served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in
2004. He served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit
at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.
He is the once anonymous author of Imperial
Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin
Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.
Dr Scheuer is a senior fellow with The
Jamestown Foundation.
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