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Yemen from nepotism to
jihad
By: Jane Novak
 The
Yemeni Ministry of Defence recently published a fatwa on its website
justifying the use of deadly force against the Believing Youth, a band
of Shi'a Zaidi rebels. Essentially Yemen's military leadership declared
a jihad on the group.
The war in Yemen's Sa'ada region rekindled
for the third time early in 2007. The enduring nature of the conflict
can be explained in part by the increasing influence of Salafism on
Yemeni policy. Another root cause of the fighting can be traced to
military policies and tactics. These two factors are inter-related.
Yemen's military leadership is comprised of President Saleh's nephews,
relatives and tribesmen, as are the security forces. Presidential
relative General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar is leading the assault on the Shi'a
rebels. Al-Ahmar is the powerful commander of Yemen's North West
military region and a reputed Salafi who recruited fighters for Osama
bin Laden in the 1980s. In Yemen's fractured authoritarianism, some
power centers are co-opted by hard core Salafists and others are not,
leading to an often irrational, contradictory policy. For example, the
regime granted amnesty to the Believing Youth in 2005 and then itself
violated the terms. Undoubtedly, the Believing Youth also violated the
amnesty with infrequent, unprovoked attacks on the Yemeni military.
However in February, a governmental committee listed military practices
as contributing to the failure of the amnesty. (The Yemeni government
subsequently disbanded the committee, accusing it of bias.) Among the
rebels' main grievances was that security forces systematically
continued to arrest and imprison them after the amnesty. Military
personnel occupied rebel homes. Soldiers physically and sometimes
intimately inspected Zaidi women in markets. The rebels turned to the
Governor of Sa'ada for help, and when none was forthcoming, they sought
refuge in the mountains. Ultimately the soldiers' commanders and General
al-Ahmar are responsible for the soldiers' actions whether explicitly
authorized or a resulting from absent discipline. In the current round
of fighting, the Yemeni military has augmented its ranks with child
soldiers, tribesmen and jihadists. Several induction centers have been
opened and local media report children as young as 14 have been given
weapons and sent to the front with no training. Tribesmen from President
Saleh's tribe, the Hashid Confederation, have also volunteered and been
inducted for service in the thousands. As the Believing Youth are from
the Bakil Tribal Confederation, military deployment of tribal irregulars
has increased the threat of all out tribal warfare. Yemeni jihadists,
unlike Yemen's child soldiers, are extremely well trained. Many are
veterans of prior conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other
jihaddist campaigns. Some receive their military training in Yemen.
Saleh's use of Salafist proxies dates back at least to Yemen's 1994
civil war when jihadists targeted Southern Socialist forces that had
been labelled as apostates. In 2007, a variety of Salafi jihadists
joined Yemen's military efforts against the rebels even before the
Defense Ministry published the fatwa. These included members of the
Abyan Aden Islamic Army and its leader Khalidabdul Nabi according to
local reports. (In 2003, the Yemeni government reported to the U.S. that
Nabi was dead when he was in fact released from custody.) In February,
Yahya al-Houthi, exiled Member of Parliament for the Sa'ada region and
brother of rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi, reported that "foreign
gangs that escaped Egypt, Jordan, Syria, (and) Somalia" were also
fighting against the Believing Youth. Clearly President Saleh and
General al-Ahmar have sacrificed significant command and control
capacity by unleashing roving bands of Salafi jihadists in the region
populated by Shi'a civilians. The potential of indiscriminate targeting
of civilians remains high. Some of Saddam's former henchmen are also
alongside the Yemeni military in Sa'ada. Numerous Iraq generals were
recruited into the Yemeni military in 2003 from among the nearly thirty
thousand Iraqis who fled to Yemen including a significant number of the
former regime. The Iraqi insurgency is thought to maintain a significant
base in Yemen, and Yemenis comprise one of the largest contingents of
foreign fighters in Iraq. Yemeni law does not criminalize violent acts
committed beyond its borders as long as they occur in a country deemed
"Muslim" and "occupied" and can be classified as jihad. As military
causalities rise to the dismay of Yemenis, public sympathy is also
focused on the civilians in Sa'ada. The military has targeted the rebels
with notoriously imprecise weaponry, including Katuysha missiles,
destroying civilian homes and property. During the 2005 outbreak of
hostilities, Sa'ada residents said in a pamphlet that the fighting had
displaced 65,000 citizens (about 10,000 families and ten per cent of the
total population of the governorate). Currently the Yemeni regime, as it
did in 2005, is blocking shipments of food, oil and medicine to the
region. It has cut all telecommunications. Over 10,000 citizens are
estimated to be internal refugees and without shelter. Wounded civilians
have little medical care as the hospitals are overwhelmed with military
casualties. Food is in critically short supply. The siege of Sa'ada,
while intended to weaken the rebel logistics, can also be seen as a
policy of collective punishment. Since fighting began in 2004, the
totality of Zaidism has been under attack. The Yemeni regime has
prohibited some mainstream Zaidi religious literature, replaced Zaidi
preachers with Salafis at gunpoint, banned some Zaidi religious
festivals, and those in civil society charged with supporting the
rebellion receive harsh sentencing as contrasted with al-Qaeda elements
which routinely receive short sentences, amnesty or manage to escape
multiple times. Zaidi and other schools have been closed as "extremist"
but Wahabbi ones are flourishing. Jihadists making their way to Iraq
seem to have little difficulty hopping a Yemenia flight to Damascus;
however several journalists and opposition politicians have been
prohibited at the airport from leaving the country. With the recent
outbreak of clashes in Sa'ada, the regime cracked down on journalists
reporting the Sa'ada events, accusing prominent editor Abdulkarim
al-Khaiwani, among others, of supporting the rebellion. Some Salafi
mosque preachers recently increased their rhetoric against Zaidis in
general, reportedly on orders from the regime. The repetitive wars in
Sa'ada and the broader actions of the state targeting Zaidism can be
seen as part of a systematic effort to eliminate the only effective
barrier to the full domination of Salafism in Yemen, in both the
religious and political arenas. However sectarian tensions have been
imposed on Yemenis rather than rising spontaneously from Yemeni society.
While Salafism is gaining in popularity and is entrenched in the overt
and covert power centers in Yemen, Shafi Sunnis comprise about 60
percent of Yemenis. Zaidi Shi'a (who make up 30 percent of Yemenis) and
Shafi Sunnis are both moderate denominations which historically have had
excellent relations. However the inculcation of Salafism in the
military, judiciary and the intelligence services has had a chilling
effect on the previously open sense of religious pluralism in Yemen. All
states have the right to a monopoly on the use of force and President
Saleh, declaring no prospect of further negotiations, has vowed to crush
the rebel group. What remains to be seen is if Sa'ada's Zaidi population
and Zaidism in Yemen will be crushed as well. The writer is a political
analyst and an expert on Yemeni affairs. She maintains the website
www.armiesofliberation.com and can be reached at jane.novak@gmail.com
Source: The Arab American News
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