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Yemeni Tripartite Alliance of Evil: Al-Qaeda, Al-Houthi, and the Separatists
On Sunday, January 17, 2010, Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mujawar defined a Yemeni-specific Tripartite Alliance of Evil: “He said that Yemen is targeted by the tripartite alliance of evil, represented by al-Houthi rebels, al-Qaeda terrorist groups and the separation advocators.” (1) One observer noted about him, “Beyond his reputation as a self made academic and technocrat, and generally a decent and honest man, little is known about his political views.” (2) What does he mean by a tripartite alliance of evil represented by al-Houthi rebels, Al-Qaeda terrorists and separation advocators?
Dr. Ali Mohammed Mujawar (Mugawwar, Megwar) was born in Shabwa (Shabwah) governorate in the former South Yemen in 1953. In 1981 (age 28 years), Ali Mujawar earned his baccalaureate degree from the University of Algiers in Algeria. In 1987 (age 34), he earned his master of science degree in economic management from Grenoble University in France. In 1991 (age 38), he earned his doctorate in production management, also from Grenoble University, France. (2)
Before entering government, Dr. Mujawar worked in the business sector and academia. Between 1981 and 2006, he served as deputy general director of the “land transportation corporation” in Shabwa. Between 1999 and 2000, he was director general of one of three cement factories in Yemen in 2000. (4) Between 1994 and 1996, he was head of the business management section in the faculty of economy at Aden University (founded in 1970). (5) Between 1996 and 1999, he served as dean of the faculty of oil and minerals at Aden University. In 2001, he became dean of administrative sciences faculty at the University of Aden. Dr. Mujawar first served in government in 2003 as minister of fish wealth, a post he kept until 2006. He then served as minister of electricity (January 2006 to April 2007). Both posts were in the cabinet of Yemeni President Abdullah Saleh (born 1942), an extremely seasoned politician and leader. Saleh was president of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) from 1978 to 1990 and has been president of the united Republic of Yemen since 1990. He is a Zaydi Muslim, a branch of Shi’a Islam (more below). He was Yemen’s first directly elected president in 1999, winning 91.2% of the vote.
On April 1, 2001, President Saleh appointed Dr. Mujawar prime minister, asking him to form a new cabinet. Meanwhile, President Saleh sent “a thanking letter to the outgoing Prime Minister Abdul-Kader Ba Jmal. This change [came] after international pressures built up on the country to introduce reforms.” (2) President Saleh has led the Republic of Yemen since 1990 when Yemen (North Yemen) and People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) unified. Yemeni-American diplomatic relations, which date back to 1946, have been strong and the United States considers Yemen an ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda terrorism. Numerous photos of President Saleh with American presidents and other government officials is available elsewhere. (6) President Saleh’s selection of Dr. Mujawar as prime minister serves at least two purposes linked to his identity as a native-born Shabwan. First, in 2009, Shabwa province drew international security attention for the presence of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). On January 10, 2010, Shabwa’s governor Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi announced that Al-Qaeda fighters (Saudis and Egyptians), with leaders of AQAP including Nasir al-Wuhayshi, former secretary of Osama bin Laden, had arrived from Afghanistan and joined local members of the jihadist network in lairs in the rugged Kour mountain area in the southern part of Shabwa (more below). (3) Second, Shabwa was one of the six governorates of South Yemen before South Yemen combined with Northern Yemen to form the Republic of Yemen on May 22, 1990. There is unrest in South Yemen still, however, with the Southern Movement agitating for a change of government in Sana’a. Dr. Mujawar has strong ties to the southern part of Yemen. Thus, Dr. Mujawar might serve to appease Southern Movement members (he is a southerner) while ferreting out Al-Qaeda jihadists in his native province. The al-Houthi militants are Zaydi Shi’a Muslims who believe the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi Sunnis and the United States have too strong an influence in Yemen. (7) The al-Houthi group takes its name from Sheikh Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (1956-2004), its former commander and Zaydi religious leader. In June 2004, Mr. Houthi launched an attack on the Yemeni government (led by Zaydi President Saleh) in the mountainous Sa’dah governorate in northwestern Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia. His goal was to set up a monarchy (Shi’a Zaydi theocracy, a Shi’a State) in Northern Yemen, by force. (8) He desperately wanted a return to autonomous rule under a Zaydi imam, akin to the political situation from when 1918, when North Yemen became independent of the Ottoman Empire, until the violent and long civil war in Yemen that lasted from 1962 to 1969.
The Yemeni Government accused Mr. Houthi of organizing unlicensed religious centers in Sa’dah and forming an armed group that staged violent protests against the United States and Israel. President Saleh accused Mr. Houthi and his supporters of being “foreign agents” (i.e., Hezbollah in Lebanon) seeking to foment sectarian strife. Hezbollah denied any links with the al-Houthi rebels in Sa’dah, though some people thought Iran is backing the al-Houthi insurgents. (8) The Yemeni government insisted it was not targeting Zaydi Shi’a in general in a country that is otherwise mainly Sunni. In September 2004, Yemeni security forces finally found and killed Mr. Houthi after months of fighting. (8-9) The Yemeni Government “offered an olive branch to the Shi’a Islamist (Shi’a Islamist?) opposition. A joint communiqué from the country’s Defense and Interior ministries urged Yemeni clerics to avoid incitement, “shun all types of extremism,” and “take part in developing the county.” (8) The al-Houthi militants have refused to cooperate in spite of numerous cease-fires and mediation attempts. The brothers and father of Mr. Houthi took over leadership of the group. Fighting resumed on April 1, 2005 in the northern area of Nishour after rebels tried to attack an army camp.
The al-Houthi group continues to fight for its cause of forming a Shi’a State in northern Yemen, as of this writing. (10) The Saudis are involved in the suppression of northern Yemen Shi’a at the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have denied hitting targets inside Yemen. (11) The bottom line is that al-Houthi militants are causing unrest in the northern part of Yemen. On May 22, 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic (Northern Yemen), which emerged in 1969 from its long civil war (1962-1969), as noted above, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) (Southern Yemen) unified into one country, “one Yemeni homeland,” the Republic of Yemen, amid much enthusiasm on both sides. (12) The PDRY had been a socialist republic modeled after the Soviet Union. (12) The PDRY included six governorates: ‘Adan, Lahij, Abyan, Shabwah, Hadhramaut, and al-Mahrah. Unfortunately, in the years after unification, “high inflation, inefficiency in running the state fiscals, [socialist] centralization of state bureaucracy and the accompan[ying] marginalization of Southern administrative centers formed the basis of dissatisfaction,” noted Dahlgren. She continued: Once World Bank policies started to frame socio-economic development, impoverishment befell not only the poor but also many among the middle sectors of society. These were accompanied by kidnappings, house robberies, and murders of Southern politicians – presumably linked to president Saleh. By 1993 it became clear that the unity was not on a solid ground and the Southern leaders withdrew to Aden. The short but devastating civil war was fought in early summer of 1994 between the Northern and Southern army factions. Emerging from the war, Southern popular sentiment was that the honeymoon was over and what had come to replace it was simply Northern occupation. With unity came also a political culture unfamiliar to the South. Corruption and dishonesty substituted earlier good governance. It also became evident that the multi-party system actually meant choosing the “right” party, one that has access to state funds and can deliver everything from development schemes to land properties and government jobs. Ever since the harmony of the early years of unity when government posts were distributed evenly between Southerners and Northerners, there has been no question that the party that delivers is the People’s General Congress, the party of the Republic’s President [Saleh]. To the disillusionment of the Southerners, the authoritarian system of one party rule was simply replaced by clientelism which demanded unreserved loyalty to the government in exchange for personal benefits such as a government jobs, expensive cars, or pieces of land; a practice they imagined to have originated in the North. Moreover, hard-line religious moralizing that spread among the Southerners has contributed to the marginalization of women’s earlier visible roles in the public sphere. (13) Dissent between the North and South derives in part from differences in cultures between the two parts of the country. In the early years of unity, Northerners believed Southerners were “disbelievers” and that their women were “loose,” notes Dahlgren. By contrast, Southerners tended to view Northerners as “ignorant” and “looters of state property.” (13) Despite early hope that the two Yemens [would] slowly come together in terms of customs and psychology, Southerners now think that it is impossible to live with “those people” since their culture is entirely different from that of the South. This attitude is visible in the manner in which the “South” is symbolically constructed in the popular dissent. Bad governance and corruption is thought to be characteristic of the Northern culture at large. According to this constellation, the North is imagined as a community of tribes and tribal thinking while people in the South are adherents of a nation state ruled by state law. Thus the new Southern state is not designed to replicate the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen but to be built according to principles of equal citizenship. (13) In late spring of 2007, popular discontent in the southern part of Yemen erupted in protests in which adherents of the so-called Southern Movement shouted the slogan infisal (separation). Dahgren writes: The movement is particularly strong in Hadhramaut governorate to the east where most of oil wealth comes from. The activities there have included stopping Northern people from buying or confiscating land, erecting road blocs to harass drivers with Northern license plates, and pushing demands for getting at least twenty percent of the oil income. The Southern movement has no national leadership or joint organization and locally takes a variety of forms. It has been most active in small towns in Dhala’ governorate, some hundred kilometres north of Aden where the 1963 Southern revolution had its starting point. The movement unites people of all social strata. It was sparked in spring 2007 by popular protests organized by the Yemeni Retired Military Consultative Association, formed by former military commanders and army men. Following the 1994 reorganization of the army, these men feel they have faced systematic discrimination. Often accompanied by unemployed youth, former civil servants and factory workers, as well as human rights activists, demonstrations have been staged in front of local government premises. Due to lack of job opportunities and discrimination in access to foreign education, youth with university and high school diplomas have also joined the movement. (13) What do members of the Southern Movement want? They believe that “a change” is necessary, but cannot agree that secession would be the right solution. Another scheme tossed about is “federation where each governorate is autonomous, including deciding on its own norms for public morality. A group of religious personalities recently demanded the establishment of a state body to monitor public virtues in the manner of Saudi Arabia, causing alarm among Southerners.” (13) The bottom line is that members of the Southern Movement are causing unrest in the southern part of Yemen. Yemen is the ancestral home of the Bin Laden family, a fact that somehow resonates with setting up a jihadist training facility there. Yemen is politically and religiously divided and stressed. Saudi Arabia and the United States are allies of Yemen’s current government under President Saleh. Thus, Al-Qaeda Sunni fighters relish the opportunity to commit jihad inside Yemen and to use Yemen as a base to commit atrocities abroad. Indeed, recall that Al-Qaeda-inspired Yemenis bombed the American destroyer U.S.S. Cole in Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. “Thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of Yemenis fought in Afghanistan or trained in Al-Qaeda’s camps there. Yemeni officials say that not every Yemeni veteran of the war in Afghanistan is an al-Qaeda member; nevertheless, Yemeni prisoners make up one of the largest national contingents of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” (14)
Al-Qaeda reportedly had several major training camps in Yemen until the late 1990s, when the Yemeni government uprooted them. However, they seem to be back in operation, judging from the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, aka, the Christmas Day bomber (2009), who is now in U.S. federal prison. Abdulmuttalab received his training in Rafadh, Shabwa, Yemen. (15) Also, as noted above, Al-Qaeda fighters (Saudis and Egyptians) and leaders have moved in to Shabwa recently (January 2010). Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, mentor of Nadal Hasan, the U.S. Fort Hood murderer, was in Wadi Rafadh, Shabwa, which U.S.-backed forces bombed on December 24, 2009, but did not kill him. (16) Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mujawar has fingered the potentially implosive and explosive situation in Yemen today. While Shi’a al-Houthi rebels and secularist Southern Movement protesters work separately to destabilize the current government of Yemen, Sunni Wahhabi Al-Qaeda jihadist leaders are setting up a new base in the remote mountains of Shabwa governorate where they can train fighters and suicide bombers to commit jihadist atrocities around the world. Meanwhile, the government of Yemen President Saleh, who is in office at least until 2013, is fighting again for its existence in a very troubled time. Notes:
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