Hunt for al-Qaeda intensifies in Yemen
By Brian M Downing
A top al-Qaeda commander was reportedly killed on Wednesday by government
forces in Yemen's southern Shabwa province, coinciding with a top United States
official suggesting that the US should launch air strikes there and Iran
ramping up tensions with Saudi Arabia.
Yemen's Saba news agency reported that Abdullah Mehdar, described as a leader
of an al-Qaeda cell, was killed and four militants captured after Yemeni troops
surrounded a house in Shabwa where he and other militants had gathered. On the
same
day, the chairman of the US Senate Armed Services committee, Carl Levin, said
the US should consider using unmanned aerial drones, clandestine actions and
air strikes against the "proven threats" of "al-Qaeda extremists" in Yemen.
Fears that the unrest could destabilize the region were strengthened after
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad publicly criticized Saudi Arabian raids
against Shi'ite Houthi rebels fighting the Yemen government from bases in north
Yemen. "We were expecting Saudi officials to act like a mentor and make peace
between brothers, not enter the war and use bombs, cannons and machine guns
against Muslims," said Ahmadinejad on Wednesday after a senior Saudi defense
official said Saudi forces had killed a large number of the rebels who were
holding a border post inside Saudi Arabia.
International concern over the Yemeni government's ability to deal with a
raging Shi'ite insurgency in the north and al-Qaeda cells operating in the
south has intensified since a Christmas airline bombing plot was traced to the
group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is primarily active in
Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Yemen's proximity to oil resources, Iranian involvement
in the country and several other geopolitical and humanitarian factors have led
to comparisons with Afghanistan.
The political forces that once attracted al-Qaeda to Afghanistan are also
apparent in Yemen. The weakness of the government in Sana'a means it has little
control over large parts of the country. Many tribes are indifferent to the
central government while others are hostile to it and moving toward secession
and civil war. Tribal leaders have parleyed agreements with al-Qaeda leaders,
much as the Taliban did with Pashtun tribes of the Afghan south and east, much
as the US is trying to do there, albeit belatedly. There are many similarities
between Yemen and Afghanistan that readily occur, and invite caution.
The movement of al-Qaeda's center to the Arabian Peninsula is being brought on
by external events in Iraq and Afghanistan. American and Saudi efforts turned
the Iraqi insurgents against al-Qaeda, which was seen by locals as haughty and
disrespectful of tribal customs in the Sunni center. Although many al-Qaeda
fighters have found havens in Arab enclaves of the Kurdish north, many others
have left Iraq for other opportunities, to the south.
Al-Qaeda has now become a minor player in the insurgency along the AfPak
frontier, where leader Osama bin Laden and the remnants of his base ensconced
themselves after 2001. There, al-Qaeda is much smaller than the Afghan Taliban,
Tehrik-i Taliban, Hizb-i Islami, and perhaps even the Haqqani network. Those
groups once relied on al-Qaeda, but over the years they have developed
independent funding sources and acquired their own skills in bomb-making and
other guerrilla techniques.
The Taliban have also recently issued (largely unnoticed) statements distancing
themselves from "foreign" militants. After all, al-Qaeda was responsible for
the Taliban's ouster from power in 2001. The Taliban might well see al-Qaeda as
a useful bargaining chip in secret negotiations, which some reports assert have
already begun. The al-Qaeda leadership cannot readily leave their hideouts in
Waziristan and Balochistan, but the rank and file can move on to other theaters
and avoid betrayal amid the intrigue along the Durand Line.
So Western successes have displaced al-Qaeda from Iraq and Afghanistan but not
eliminated them. Jihadis have been able to exfiltrate losing theaters and find
new havens and bases of operation in Yemen. A protracted Western presence in
the Islamic world has strengthened concerns that the US seeks to dominate the
region and humiliate the faith - all to al-Qaeda's benefit. Not since the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 has the global cause had greater
propaganda to exploit. And Yemen is becoming the center of global jihad today.
Interventionist rationales
A host of reasons for increasing the US presence in Yemen are surfacing in
policy making circles and the general public. Foremost among them is that AQAP
is linked not only the Detroit plane incident, but also to the Fort Hood
shootings. Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 fellow soldiers at the army base in
Texas, reportedly had ties to radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who lives
in Yemen and is believed to be a spiritual adviser to AQAP.
The assassination attempt by a Somali man on Danish cartoonist, Kurt
Westergaard, known for his infamous caricatures of Muslim extremism, has also
been linked to Yemen as has another attempt on US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton.
Yemen is close to oil fields and shipping lanes. Iran is backing the Houthi
rebellion that straddles the Saudi-Yemeni frontier, which is part of a Shi'ite
revival that threatens to destabilize the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq,
especially in oil-producing countries with oppressed Shi'ite minorities.
Islamist tribes in Yemen have kith and kin in Saudi Arabia who see the House of
Saud and its Wahabbi clerics as Western puppets and defilers of Islam. Prompt
action, then, is seen vital to US national security
American idealists see Yemenis in desperate political and economic straits.
Their economy is weak; oil revenue (never strong) is diminishing; the state is
unable to deliver services; and a drought hangs over the country. This will
strengthen American humanitarian concerns and lead to different but no less
important calls for intervention. Over the past century or more, geopolitics
and humanitarianism have been the yin and yang of American interventionism in
many parts of the world, from Cuba to Afghanistan. Yemen offers another dual
justification.
Non-Interventionist rationales
At present, calls for further intervention in Yemen are not strong. Escalation
of forces will have several adverse effects. A larger US/Western presence will
further destabilize the government in Sana'a by making its reliance on Western
powers more apparent - and repugnant - to much of the population. Indeed,
President Ali Abdullah Saleh has stated as much recently and his assessment
should not be lost in the West.
There is a risk of increasing Islamist ardor among tribes on both sides of the
frontier with Saudi Arabia from which support for the 1979 siege of Mecca came
and upon which many Saudi national guard units are based (and from which the
bin Laden family came).
The US would further enmesh itself in the Saudi-Iranian struggle for mastery in
the Gulf region - a conflict in which the US is already engaged, whether it
realizes it or not, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
A greater presence in Yemen would lead to numerous compassionate reports of
suffering people that would make further escalation, or at least
nation-building and mission creep, almost irresistible.
More troops will greatly strengthen the perception in the Islamic world that
the US is seeking to dominate the Middle East. This perception is one upon
which the al-Qaeda movement is based and with which it garners financial
support and new recruits from Morocco to Indonesia.
The US can degrade al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula without greater
involvement. Though largely unnoticed, the US has had military and intelligence
personnel in Yemen since at least 2002 when a Predator drone flown from
Djibouti killed a key al-Qaeda figure thought responsible for the attack on the USS
Cole two years earlier in the port of Aden.
Similar strikes can be carried out with the present numbers and from ships
offshore. The Saudi military can attack al-Qaeda targets, as they have already
attacked Houthi insurgents inside Yemen. The US can best achieve its goals by
working, as inconspicuously as possible, with Saudi and other regional military
and intelligence forces to target al-Qaeda leaders and win over tribal
allegiances through aid programs.
US escalation will only aggravate the Saudi-Iranian dimension to the Yemeni
conflict and increase the risk of fighting elsewhere in the region. Countries
in the Gulf region have, over the years, been skillful in containing the
Saudi-Iranian conflict, and today their mediations can be used to ease the
Sunni-Shi'ite aspect of Yemen's troubles. All of them have large Shi'ite
populations and none has any interest in seeing al-Qaeda further ensconce
itself in the region. The most effective response to Yemen will likely come
from regional powers with local knowledge, not distant ones without it.
Brian M Downing is the author of several works of political and military
history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and
The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to
Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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