From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Oct 06 2009 - 08:18:43 EDT
Yemen: Fear of Contagion
Long ignored next door, the spillover effect of the Yemeni conflict has
Saudi Arabia on the defensive as it seeks a way to keep the unstable
country's insurgency from rocking the region, writes Philip McCrum for ISN
Security Watch.
By Philip McCrum for ISN Security Watch
6 Oct 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=
106699
_____
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
<http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=127058&d=5&m=10&y=2009&pi
x=kingdom.jpg&category=Kingdom> attempted 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
<http://www.tradearabia.com/news/newsdetails.asp?Sn=DEF&artid=168164>
designed 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.
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aq6jSm.8jXhI> Around
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,
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2017836.ece>
which 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,
<http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/09/200992710220256541.htm
l> ongoing 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,
<http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/iran_e
025.htm> throwing 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.
_____
Philip McCrum is an independent Middle East analyst.
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