Al-Qaeda makes a new mark in
Yemen By Gregory D Johnsen
Editor's note: This report was
written prior to the killing of seven Spanish
tourists and two Yemenis in a suspected al-Qaeda
suicide car-bomb attack on their convoy in the
Yemeni province of Marib on Monday. The attack
followed an al-Qaeda statement last week demanding
the release of some of its members jailed in Yemen
and warning of unspecified actions.
In
November 2002, the United States dealt a
devastating blow to al-Qaeda in Yemen when it
assassinated Abu Ali al-Harithi with a
missile from a Predator drone.
One year later, in November 2003, Yemeni
forces arrested Harithi's replacement, Muhammad
al-Ahdal, on a tip from an al-Qaeda member. The
two operations in effect crippled the
organization, removing its head of operations and
its chief financial officer.
Yet more
recently, the group has been reorganizing itself
and, once again, appears capable of carrying out
attacks. On May 1, al-Qaeda in Yemen told Yemeni
correspondent Faysal Mukrim that it was preparing
to strike certain officers within the country's
security establishment whom it accused of using
torture against al-Qaeda suspects in Yemeni
prisons.
As proof of the seriousness of
its claims, al-Qaeda in Yemen said it was behind
the March 29 assassination of Ali Mahmud Qasaylah,
the chief criminal investigator in the governorate
of Marib in central Yemen. The unnamed source
claimed that the assassination was in retaliation
for Qasaylah's role in the attack on Harithi,
which also occurred in Marib. Yemeni security
forces denied that Qasaylah, who was transferred
to Marib at the beginning of 2002, had anything to
do with the operation that killed Harithi.
Initially, al-Qaeda's claims were met with
skepticism, since they came more than a month
after Qasaylah was killed and they were relayed
through Mukrim, who is seen as close to the
government and is not often the reporter of choice
for militants in the country.
They also
followed calls by Hood, a local human-rights
organization, and the Marib branch of the Islah
Party for an investigation into Qasaylah's death.
This led some to believe that Mukrim's sources
were overreaching in an attempt to play on the
unknown. Yet in the weeks following the al-Qaeda
claims, the Ministry of the Interior announced
that it was looking for three men in connection
with Qasaylah's death.
Throughout mid-May,
the Ministry of the Interior took out half-page
ads in official newspapers, offering a reward of 5
million Yemeni riyals, roughly US$25,000, for
information leading to the capture of the three
suspects: Naji Ali Salih Jardan, Ali Ali Nasir
Doha and Abd al-Aziz Said Muhammad Jardan.
To make matters worse for the government,
the latter two suspects had been in prison from
2004-06 on suspicion of being involved in
transporting Yemenis to Iraq to fight against
US-led forces. Both Doha and Abd al-Aziz Said
Muhammad Jardan were arrested in Yemen on their
return from Syria, where they claimed they were
seeking medical treatment. Their eventual release
has, as the "wanted" posters indicate, proved
premature.
Qasaylah's death and the
subsequent claim of responsibility by al-Qaeda in
Yemen suggest that the group is reforming with the
help of members trained in Iraq and is returning
to settle old scores. This could prove to be a
dangerous revival of the security threat in Yemen.
Gregory D Johnsen, a former
Fulbright fellow in Yemen, is currently a PhD
candidate in Near Eastern studies at Princeton
University.
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