Yemen: Fear of Contagion
By Philip McCrum for ISN
Saudi Arabia has long had an ambivalent relationship with its troubled southern neighbor. Although never publicly iterated, for many years the Saudi government was of the belief that an unstable Yemen was in its best interests. It often actively pursued policies to that end.
This position has now been consigned to the past. In August, a Saudi national affiliated with al-Qaida external pageattempted to assassinate Prince Mohammad bin Naif, the Saudi assistant interior minister for security affairs. The prince’s attacker was trained in - and launched his attack from - Yemen, confirming to the Saudi authorities what they already knew; that instability in Yemen today poses a serious security threat to Saudi Arabia.
But the Saudi authorities must take some blame for Prince Mohammad’s assailant being in Yemen in the first place. The Saudi state security service has been very successful in purging its own territory of home-grown jihadis - Islamist militants -primarily through a rehabilitation program external pagedesigned to re-integrate them back into society.
While a hard core of jihadis have resisted the program, the rate of recidivism amongst those who have ‘graduated’ is estimated at 10 percent at worst. Its success has prompted the return of most of the Saudi inmates from the US prison, Camp Delta, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Of the 138 Saudis having been incarcerated in Guantanamo, only 13 remain.
Militant shell game
But Saudi Arabia’s approach hasn’t eradicated the problem entirely, merely displaced it. Die-hard Saudi jihadis have regrouped next door in Yemen. Long a haven for foreign jihadis, attracted to the country’s remote regions which lie beyond the writ of the government, Yemen has also incubated its own breed of militant.
These two groups came together earlier this year, establishing a new militant cadre called ‘Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’ (AQAP). It is led by Nasser al Wuhayshi, a Yemeni who was formerly Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant in Afghanistan. He appointed two Saudis as his deputies, both of whom had been released from Guantanamo and subsequently from the Saudi rehabilitation program. AQAP’s first victims, in March this year, were four South Korean tourists, blown up by a suicide bomber in the historic city of Shibam in the Hadhramawt.
If further proof is needed of Yemen’s contribution to the global jihadi network, then one need look no further than Camp Delta. external pageAround 100 Yemenis still reside there, constituting the largest national contingent and making up more than 40 percent of the remaining inmates. They are becoming a serious political irritant for US President Barack Obama, given that one of his key campaign pledges was to close the camp at Guantanamo within a year of taking office.
But he doesn’t want to send the Yemenis back to Yemen. His reluctance is based not just on the growing al-Qaida influence within the country, but also on Yemen’s poor record in dealing with its captured militants. For instance, Nasser al-Wuhayshi has been under lock and key before. But in 2006, he and 22 other al-Qaida suspects staged a sensational jailbreak from a Sana’a prison. One of his fellow escapees was Qasim al-Raimi, who was subsequently suspected of planning an attack on a group of Spanish tourists in July 2008, external pagewhich resulted in the death of seven Spaniards and two of their Yemeni guides.
If Yemen’s ability to keep its jihadis in jail has been shown wanting, then its own rehabilitation program has proved little more effective. Yemen in fact pioneered the rehabilitation experiment; initially lauded, it was later shown to be flawed. Yemeni ‘graduates’ soon reappeared among insurgents in Iraq.
Intrastate conflict, fertile ground
Wider domestic strife in Yemen is providing AQAP with some breathing space. Concerns over pervasive unrest in the south of the country have been eclipsed by intensifying conflict in the north. A sporadic insurgency, external pageongoing since 2004, has resisted all attempts at negotiated settlement. Both the government and the insurgents - a group of Zaydi Shia adherents who are seeking to revive the Yemeni imamate, which was swept away in the Yemeni civil war of 1963 -have reneged on various ceasefire deals. The most recent round of fighting is fiercer than ever. The number of deaths is well into the thousands and more than 150,000 local inhabitants have been displaced.
The conflict has inevitably sucked in other groups; even local Sunni tribes have taken up arms alongside the Zaydis, aghast at the wanton destruction caused by the government. For its part, the government has sought the support of the country’s so-called ‘Afghan-Arabs,’ radical Sunni militants who gained military experience in the Soviet-Afghan war during the 1980s.
Of greater concern is that the conflict is also dragging in outside parties. In particular, there is increasing speculation that Saudi Arabia and Iran are supporting opposing sides in the conflict, external pagethrowing up fears of a proxy Sunni-Shia war being played out in Yemen. Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of providing jet fighters to support Yemeni government forces, while the Yemeni authorities accuse Tehran of providing financial assistance to the Zaydi Shia rebels.
Saudi authorities believe they have good cause to join the fray. Ever paranoid about Shia expansionism, the Saudi government is clearly alarmed at a Shia group on its border flexing its muscles. It particularly wants to prevent the Yemeni Zaydis linking up with the minority Saudi Ismaili Shia group, who reside in Najran, a Saudi province abutting the Yemeni conflict zone.
But more worrisome for the Saudi authorities, as shown by the attempted assassination of Prince Mohammad, is the increased lawlessness within Yemen that the country’s various conflicts are fostering. Not only does this provide the space that al-Qaida needs to regroup and retrain, but it also deflects state resources away from counter-jihadi operations. From the Saudi perspective, therefore, a swift military solution to the Zaydi rebellion would be in its interests.
Given Washington’s concerns over AQAP’s activities within Yemen and its wider regional reach, it would also like to see the Zaydi conflict brought to a quick conclusion. In early September, Obama wrote a letter to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in which he stated that “the security of Yemen is vital for the security of the United States.” Such strong language seems to indicate that the US is increasingly determined not to let Yemen become a haven for al-Qaida.
The letter also pointedly made no mention of the Zaydi conflict, thereby signalling Washington’s implicit support for Saleh’s military operations. And with Saudi Arabia most likely covertly assisting the government against the Zaydis, it is clear that Yemen’s travails now have everyone worried.
This position has now been consigned to the past. In August, a Saudi national affiliated with al-Qaida external pageattempted to assassinate Prince Mohammad bin Naif, the Saudi assistant interior minister for security affairs. The prince’s attacker was trained in - and launched his attack from - Yemen, confirming to the Saudi authorities what they already knew; that instability in Yemen today poses a serious security threat to Saudi Arabia.
But the Saudi authorities must take some blame for Prince Mohammad’s assailant being in Yemen in the first place. The Saudi state security service has been very successful in purging its own territory of home-grown jihadis - Islamist militants -primarily through a rehabilitation program external pagedesigned to re-integrate them back into society.
While a hard core of jihadis have resisted the program, the rate of recidivism amongst those who have ‘graduated’ is estimated at 10 percent at worst. Its success has prompted the return of most of the Saudi inmates from the US prison, Camp Delta, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Of the 138 Saudis having been incarcerated in Guantanamo, only 13 remain.
Militant shell game
But Saudi Arabia’s approach hasn’t eradicated the problem entirely, merely displaced it. Die-hard Saudi jihadis have regrouped next door in Yemen. Long a haven for foreign jihadis, attracted to the country’s remote regions which lie beyond the writ of the government, Yemen has also incubated its own breed of militant.
These two groups came together earlier this year, establishing a new militant cadre called ‘Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’ (AQAP). It is led by Nasser al Wuhayshi, a Yemeni who was formerly Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant in Afghanistan. He appointed two Saudis as his deputies, both of whom had been released from Guantanamo and subsequently from the Saudi rehabilitation program. AQAP’s first victims, in March this year, were four South Korean tourists, blown up by a suicide bomber in the historic city of Shibam in the Hadhramawt.
If further proof is needed of Yemen’s contribution to the global jihadi network, then one need look no further than Camp Delta. external pageAround 100 Yemenis still reside there, constituting the largest national contingent and making up more than 40 percent of the remaining inmates. They are becoming a serious political irritant for US President Barack Obama, given that one of his key campaign pledges was to close the camp at Guantanamo within a year of taking office.
But he doesn’t want to send the Yemenis back to Yemen. His reluctance is based not just on the growing al-Qaida influence within the country, but also on Yemen’s poor record in dealing with its captured militants. For instance, Nasser al-Wuhayshi has been under lock and key before. But in 2006, he and 22 other al-Qaida suspects staged a sensational jailbreak from a Sana’a prison. One of his fellow escapees was Qasim al-Raimi, who was subsequently suspected of planning an attack on a group of Spanish tourists in July 2008, external pagewhich resulted in the death of seven Spaniards and two of their Yemeni guides.
If Yemen’s ability to keep its jihadis in jail has been shown wanting, then its own rehabilitation program has proved little more effective. Yemen in fact pioneered the rehabilitation experiment; initially lauded, it was later shown to be flawed. Yemeni ‘graduates’ soon reappeared among insurgents in Iraq.
Intrastate conflict, fertile ground
Wider domestic strife in Yemen is providing AQAP with some breathing space. Concerns over pervasive unrest in the south of the country have been eclipsed by intensifying conflict in the north. A sporadic insurgency, external pageongoing since 2004, has resisted all attempts at negotiated settlement. Both the government and the insurgents - a group of Zaydi Shia adherents who are seeking to revive the Yemeni imamate, which was swept away in the Yemeni civil war of 1963 -have reneged on various ceasefire deals. The most recent round of fighting is fiercer than ever. The number of deaths is well into the thousands and more than 150,000 local inhabitants have been displaced.
The conflict has inevitably sucked in other groups; even local Sunni tribes have taken up arms alongside the Zaydis, aghast at the wanton destruction caused by the government. For its part, the government has sought the support of the country’s so-called ‘Afghan-Arabs,’ radical Sunni militants who gained military experience in the Soviet-Afghan war during the 1980s.
Of greater concern is that the conflict is also dragging in outside parties. In particular, there is increasing speculation that Saudi Arabia and Iran are supporting opposing sides in the conflict, external pagethrowing up fears of a proxy Sunni-Shia war being played out in Yemen. Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of providing jet fighters to support Yemeni government forces, while the Yemeni authorities accuse Tehran of providing financial assistance to the Zaydi Shia rebels.
Saudi authorities believe they have good cause to join the fray. Ever paranoid about Shia expansionism, the Saudi government is clearly alarmed at a Shia group on its border flexing its muscles. It particularly wants to prevent the Yemeni Zaydis linking up with the minority Saudi Ismaili Shia group, who reside in Najran, a Saudi province abutting the Yemeni conflict zone.
But more worrisome for the Saudi authorities, as shown by the attempted assassination of Prince Mohammad, is the increased lawlessness within Yemen that the country’s various conflicts are fostering. Not only does this provide the space that al-Qaida needs to regroup and retrain, but it also deflects state resources away from counter-jihadi operations. From the Saudi perspective, therefore, a swift military solution to the Zaydi rebellion would be in its interests.
Given Washington’s concerns over AQAP’s activities within Yemen and its wider regional reach, it would also like to see the Zaydi conflict brought to a quick conclusion. In early September, Obama wrote a letter to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in which he stated that “the security of Yemen is vital for the security of the United States.” Such strong language seems to indicate that the US is increasingly determined not to let Yemen become a haven for al-Qaida.
The letter also pointedly made no mention of the Zaydi conflict, thereby signalling Washington’s implicit support for Saleh’s military operations. And with Saudi Arabia most likely covertly assisting the government against the Zaydis, it is clear that Yemen’s travails now have everyone worried.