As I've mentioned in recent posts there has been a great deal of speculation (at least in the world I inhabit) about what, if any, are the exact links between AQAP and Ansar al-Shariah.
And while my full thoughts on these links are still forthcoming, today we have another, and I believe crucial, piece of evidence to throw into the mix.
This video shows Tariq al-Dhahab, the Ansar al-Shariah leader and Anwar al-Awlaki's brother-in-law, receiving the bay'a or oath of allegiance on behalf of Nasir al-Wihayshi (the AQAP commander) and Ayman al-Zawahiri (the head of AQ).
Obviously recorded at some point in the last couple of weeks, the video was shot when al-Dhahab was in Rada'a, and it appears as though he is standing in the courtyard of the recently restored Amarriya mosque and school.
(On a side note, I attended the Amarriya's grand opening and have visited it several times - both before and after - and the last thing I ever though I would see was an al-Qaeda induction ceremony taking place in the building that the Dutch, US and others had helped to restore.)
There are still a lot of questions, how binding is an oath of allegiance that is given as a matter of course, and possibly under some sort of duress, real or imagined?
But leaving that and other questions aside for the moment, the video is the latest indication that al-Qaeda is continuing to grow in Yemen.
If I were an official in the US government this video would be keeping me up nights. For all the recent years of focus on AQAP in Yemen and US efforts there, the evidence continues to suggest that the group is getting stronger in terms of numbers instead of weaker.
(Please don't misread this and think AQAP or Ansar al-Shariah is about to take over the state, Yemen is a huge place and these groups remain unpopular in many parts of the country, but the evidence continues to show that they are making gains.)
For me this begs two questions: 1. Why is this? Why instead of growing weaker is AQAP and Ansar al-Shariah attracting more members? And 2. Is the current US approach to Yemen a part of the problem, is what the US is doing in Yemen actually making the problem worse instead of better?
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
What's in a Name
Late last night, apparently not having much of a social life, I was catching up on some reading when Haykal Bafana linked to a story on twitter about how al-Qaeda had banned the sale of qat in the center of Ja'ar.
As interesting as the story was, what really caught my eye was the fourth and final picture, which shows a building that is labeled Ansar al-Shariah's Police Department in the Emirate of Waqar.
This, I thought, was interesting for a couple of different reasons. First, Ansar al-Shariah is running its own police department. Wow. Hard to overstate the significance of that.
Second, I was confused by the name Emirate of Waqar - it wasn't a name I'd heard of earlier, and the story referred to Ja'ar - a major city in the governorate of Abyan. So, as happens a number of times every day, I was driven back to my trusty Mu'jam al-buldan of Tribes and Places in Yemen.
The two references to Waqar in the geographical dictionary were both to families and neither was in Abyan, so, surprisingly, no help there.
But today Ansar al-Shariah released issue 7 of its newsletter - dated December - in which it announced that it has changed the name of Ja'ar to Waqar. Yep, that's right, Ansar al-Shariah is changing the names of cities in Yemen, a very obvious way of saying the old is gone and the new is here.
According to the newsletter, this is the first city to come under the rule of Ansar al-Shariah, and it appears as though the group is doing what it can to implement its own laws in the city, and that includes establishing a police force.
Now there is still much we don't about what is happening in Abyan - even more than what we usually don't know - but one thing seems clear: now that Ansar al-Shariah is established to such a degree in Ja'ar (Waqar) that it has its own police force and is controlling the sale of qat it is going to take a concentrated effort on the part of the Yemeni government to uproot them. That is if the Yemeni government ever returns to a time when it has the strength to go after them directly.
Right now Yemen's central government is more fiction than fact, at least outside of the major urban areas.
This is just one more piece of evidence that suggests Ansar al-Shariah is following the Taliban model and attempting to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Yemen's government in Abyan. Ansar al-Shariah has put down roots and it is going to take a lot more energy and effort than Yemen can currently produce to get them out. Ansar al-Shariah isn't going away anytime soon.
As interesting as the story was, what really caught my eye was the fourth and final picture, which shows a building that is labeled Ansar al-Shariah's Police Department in the Emirate of Waqar.
This, I thought, was interesting for a couple of different reasons. First, Ansar al-Shariah is running its own police department. Wow. Hard to overstate the significance of that.
Second, I was confused by the name Emirate of Waqar - it wasn't a name I'd heard of earlier, and the story referred to Ja'ar - a major city in the governorate of Abyan. So, as happens a number of times every day, I was driven back to my trusty Mu'jam al-buldan of Tribes and Places in Yemen.
The two references to Waqar in the geographical dictionary were both to families and neither was in Abyan, so, surprisingly, no help there.
But today Ansar al-Shariah released issue 7 of its newsletter - dated December - in which it announced that it has changed the name of Ja'ar to Waqar. Yep, that's right, Ansar al-Shariah is changing the names of cities in Yemen, a very obvious way of saying the old is gone and the new is here.
According to the newsletter, this is the first city to come under the rule of Ansar al-Shariah, and it appears as though the group is doing what it can to implement its own laws in the city, and that includes establishing a police force.
Now there is still much we don't about what is happening in Abyan - even more than what we usually don't know - but one thing seems clear: now that Ansar al-Shariah is established to such a degree in Ja'ar (Waqar) that it has its own police force and is controlling the sale of qat it is going to take a concentrated effort on the part of the Yemeni government to uproot them. That is if the Yemeni government ever returns to a time when it has the strength to go after them directly.
Right now Yemen's central government is more fiction than fact, at least outside of the major urban areas.
This is just one more piece of evidence that suggests Ansar al-Shariah is following the Taliban model and attempting to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Yemen's government in Abyan. Ansar al-Shariah has put down roots and it is going to take a lot more energy and effort than Yemen can currently produce to get them out. Ansar al-Shariah isn't going away anytime soon.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Rada'a Solution (Updated)
A very Yemeni thing happened yesterday. A group of tribal mediators injected itself into a troubled situation and managed to work out a solution that avoided the loss of life.
The tribal mediators were attempting to resolve the brewing conflict in Rada'a, which I wrote about two days ago, and which was threatening to erupt into open fighting with the government sending tanks and troops south.
In a lengthy meeting with Tariq al-Dahahb, a leading figure from the local tribe al-Qayfah, the tribal mediators worked out a deal. From the way the deal has been described in this al-Masdar piece, it was basically the same deal Tariq proposed a week ago that the Yemeni government rejected.
There are, as I read it, three main parts to the deal.
1. 15 militant (and/or al-Qaeda suspects, including Tariq's brother Nabil) are to be released from prison in Sanaa. The names of the 15 are here.
2. The implementation of Islamic law.
3. That three representatives from every district in al-Baydha will be selected, and who then in turn will select new officials to run the governorate, in the process firing the current officials.
In exchange for this Tariq and his militants, who are identifying themselves as members of Ansar al-Shariah have agreed to withdraw from Rada'a.
As I mentioned above this was the same deal Tariq initially put on the table that the Yemeni government said it wouldn't agree to, but it apparently has now, so why the change?
It is unclear, at least to me, who is calling the shots in Sanaa.
But someone has released the prisoners, as Nabil and five others are already free and the rest of the men are on their way south. (This is not, as this foolish headline has it, tribes driving al-Qaeda out of the town.) A much better English version of the events is this one from Reuters.
The Reuters piece also gets at the fiction that allowed both sides to agree to the deal - that of Islamic law and its implementation in Yemen. The term, as forests of academic works have shown, is a vague and ambiguous one. But what allowed the deal to progress is that Tariq and his men had one idea of what Islamic law is and how it should be implemented, while the tribal mediators were willing to agree to it, and get the government to at least tacitly accept the deal, because Yemen claims that its laws are based on Islamic law.
Obviously, Tariq and Ansar al-Shariah don't believe this to be the case, and indeed Tariq was very clear in warning the mediators that he and his men would return to Rada'a if the government didn't abide by the agreement. Releasing 15 prisoners is one thing, implementing Islamic law as Ansar al-Shariah understands it is something else entirely. (Mareb Press has a photo of Ansar al-Shariah's three demands, which they posted in the beautifully restored mosque and school in downtown Rada'a.)
There are a number of things about the deal that still aren't clear, no timeline was agreed upon for the implementation of the deal, or at least reported. And it is unclear whether Tariq is negotiating from a position of strength or weakness. He got his brother and the others released is that enough? Did Ansar al-Shariah encounter more resistance than they expected from the tribes and citizens in Rada'a and thus the deal offers them a face-saving exit, and they don't plan on returning (Tariq's strong words aside) even if Islamic law as they understand it isn't implemented?
My guess on the last question would be no. Again, the deal Tariq agreed to is the one he has been saying he would agree to for a number of days.
So what does this tell us?
I think Ansar al-Shariah came off fairly well in this whole exchange. It got its men released, it acted within the accept norms of behavior in Yemen - taking control of something to right a perceived injustice - and it once again brought attention (in a very dramatic way) to its key issue: that Yemen is a corrupt, miserable place for its people because the country isn't being run by Islamic law.
There is also, I think, a dangerous precedent here that not many people are talking about, and that is now that Ansar al-Shariah has shown it can get what it wants by a display of force in an urban area is this something that we can expect more of in the future?
The Yemeni government, such as it exists, is obviously overwhelmed as the country continues its slow fragmentation, but once it opens door to negotiating with and acquiescing to Ansar al-Shariah's demands its hard to close it again. Of course, the other option it contemplated, a military assault to free the town would have been a disaster, as it continues to be in Zanjubar.
Another interesting point, I doubt this deal would have been possible if Tariq's men had been calling themselves AQAP instead of Ansar al-Shariah. Even though the men they wanted released from prison were AQAP suspects, calling themselves Ansar al-Shariah was, in this case, another useful fiction.
Update: CNN is reporting that only 4 prisoners were released, at least according to VP Hadi's office. This differs from what Reuters and others have reported, as well as what Tariq al-Dhahab requested.
The tribal mediators were attempting to resolve the brewing conflict in Rada'a, which I wrote about two days ago, and which was threatening to erupt into open fighting with the government sending tanks and troops south.
In a lengthy meeting with Tariq al-Dahahb, a leading figure from the local tribe al-Qayfah, the tribal mediators worked out a deal. From the way the deal has been described in this al-Masdar piece, it was basically the same deal Tariq proposed a week ago that the Yemeni government rejected.
There are, as I read it, three main parts to the deal.
1. 15 militant (and/or al-Qaeda suspects, including Tariq's brother Nabil) are to be released from prison in Sanaa. The names of the 15 are here.
2. The implementation of Islamic law.
3. That three representatives from every district in al-Baydha will be selected, and who then in turn will select new officials to run the governorate, in the process firing the current officials.
In exchange for this Tariq and his militants, who are identifying themselves as members of Ansar al-Shariah have agreed to withdraw from Rada'a.
As I mentioned above this was the same deal Tariq initially put on the table that the Yemeni government said it wouldn't agree to, but it apparently has now, so why the change?
It is unclear, at least to me, who is calling the shots in Sanaa.
But someone has released the prisoners, as Nabil and five others are already free and the rest of the men are on their way south. (This is not, as this foolish headline has it, tribes driving al-Qaeda out of the town.) A much better English version of the events is this one from Reuters.
The Reuters piece also gets at the fiction that allowed both sides to agree to the deal - that of Islamic law and its implementation in Yemen. The term, as forests of academic works have shown, is a vague and ambiguous one. But what allowed the deal to progress is that Tariq and his men had one idea of what Islamic law is and how it should be implemented, while the tribal mediators were willing to agree to it, and get the government to at least tacitly accept the deal, because Yemen claims that its laws are based on Islamic law.
Obviously, Tariq and Ansar al-Shariah don't believe this to be the case, and indeed Tariq was very clear in warning the mediators that he and his men would return to Rada'a if the government didn't abide by the agreement. Releasing 15 prisoners is one thing, implementing Islamic law as Ansar al-Shariah understands it is something else entirely. (Mareb Press has a photo of Ansar al-Shariah's three demands, which they posted in the beautifully restored mosque and school in downtown Rada'a.)
There are a number of things about the deal that still aren't clear, no timeline was agreed upon for the implementation of the deal, or at least reported. And it is unclear whether Tariq is negotiating from a position of strength or weakness. He got his brother and the others released is that enough? Did Ansar al-Shariah encounter more resistance than they expected from the tribes and citizens in Rada'a and thus the deal offers them a face-saving exit, and they don't plan on returning (Tariq's strong words aside) even if Islamic law as they understand it isn't implemented?
My guess on the last question would be no. Again, the deal Tariq agreed to is the one he has been saying he would agree to for a number of days.
So what does this tell us?
I think Ansar al-Shariah came off fairly well in this whole exchange. It got its men released, it acted within the accept norms of behavior in Yemen - taking control of something to right a perceived injustice - and it once again brought attention (in a very dramatic way) to its key issue: that Yemen is a corrupt, miserable place for its people because the country isn't being run by Islamic law.
There is also, I think, a dangerous precedent here that not many people are talking about, and that is now that Ansar al-Shariah has shown it can get what it wants by a display of force in an urban area is this something that we can expect more of in the future?
The Yemeni government, such as it exists, is obviously overwhelmed as the country continues its slow fragmentation, but once it opens door to negotiating with and acquiescing to Ansar al-Shariah's demands its hard to close it again. Of course, the other option it contemplated, a military assault to free the town would have been a disaster, as it continues to be in Zanjubar.
Another interesting point, I doubt this deal would have been possible if Tariq's men had been calling themselves AQAP instead of Ansar al-Shariah. Even though the men they wanted released from prison were AQAP suspects, calling themselves Ansar al-Shariah was, in this case, another useful fiction.
Update: CNN is reporting that only 4 prisoners were released, at least according to VP Hadi's office. This differs from what Reuters and others have reported, as well as what Tariq al-Dhahab requested.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Rada'a, AQAP, Ansar al-Shariah, and the al-Dhahab Family
Nine days ago, on Saturday January 14, several dozen armed men streamed into the historic city of Rada'a, just over 100 miles south of Sanaa.
The men were under the command of Tariq al-Dhahab, a leading shaykh from the powerful al-Qayfah tribe, which is based in the area. Al-Dhahab just happens to the brother-in-law of the late Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a US drone strike last September. Some reports even have al-Dhahab providing shelter to, and traveling with, Awlaki in the months before his death.
That first evening al-Dhahab's men reportedly took over the historic Amarriya mosque/school in the center of town. (I have visited this mosque several times, pic here, which was restored by the late Selma al-Radi with substantial funding from the Dutch, US and others.)
Tariq al-Dhahab gave the sermon in the Amariya, attacking the Huthis and calling for solidarity among Muslims. Al-Masdar Online (Arabic) has the most detailed account of that first evening. After prayers, the men reportedly withdrew to the citadel (pictured above) which has a commanding view of the city.
Along the way, several prisoners (estimates vary widely) managed to escape. Tariq al-Dhahab would later claim that his men weren't responsible for the prison break - unsurprisingly he blamed the Huthis - saying that his men had only freed three prisoners.
Regardless of who actually set the prisoners free, the ease in which Tariq and his men flowed into the city and took control of certain areas (saying its a "takeover" of the entire city is misleading) led a number of Yemenis, including Tariq's own brother, Khalid, to suggest that the men were cooperating with Yemeni security services and under the command of President Salih, who wanted to use them in a desperate last-ditch attempt to remain in power in Yemen.
This theory, I believe, is overblown. President Salih has certainly manipulated the presence of AQAP and Islamic militants to gain support from the west, but then, so has the opposition. Both sides uses them as a stick to whack each other with. But that doesn't mean that AQAP doesn't exist independently of both; they do.
A short video of Tariq, appealing for unity and claiming that the Arabian Peninsula would soon be liberated (rhetoric that tracks closely with what AQAP has been saying) made the rounds first on You Tube and then on Yemeni news sites. Shortly after that recording went live, Tariq appeared on BBC Arabic. Although only a phone interview, Tariq seems much more conciliatory and dances around the questions he doesn't like.
Throughout his various interviews, Tariq has made some cutting critiques of the current political system in Yemen. He laughed off the allegations of many that he was working with Yemen's security forces, asking sarcastically why he should work with people who were cooperating with the Americans in trying to kill them. Good point.
When one tribal mediation team attempted to get Tariq's men to withdraw by saying that the upcoming elections in Yemen were the way to get his grievances dealt with, Tariq basically told him to get real, arguing that GPC and the opposition were both part of the problem in Yemen. Again, no matter what one thinks of Tariq's overall points, it is hard to argue with his critique of contemporary politics.
Tariq has said his men would withdraw from Rada'a if Yemen released 15 prisoners believed to be members of al-Qaeda, including his brother Nabil, who was arrested in Syria in 2006 for trying to cross over into Iraq. (Today, al-Masdar Online published the names of the 15.) The government refused the offer, and today their are reports that tanks and troops are headed south to deal with Tariq.
Meanwhile, the al-Dhahab family, which includes the Shaykh mashaykh of the al-Qayfah tribe is publicly distancing itself from Tariq.
So what all does this tell us?
Well, I think a number of things, including I believe an insight into the AQAP-Ansar al-Shariah links that have many asking questions.
At the same time Tariq al-Dhahab and his men in Ansar al-Shariah were holding down positions in Rada'a, farther south in Abyan a member of Ansar al-Shariah was giving a press conference - or at least what passes for a press conference - in Abyan. Several interesting things came out of the interview.
But the two that stuck out to me were 1. The commander, Abu Hamza, said Ansar al-Shariah was consciously modeling itself on the Taliban. This confirmed, at least to me, what I had suggested earlier on twitter (and with a full analysis in a piece I just submitted). Abu Hamza also avoided questions about AQAP, saying he was "only authorized" to speak about issues in Abyan. For someone trotted out to give an interview, this is a fairly narrow brief.
Additionally, over the past several days, Ansar al-Shariah have released several newsletters and one video, all dated November 2011. Most of them aren't much to speak of, but the pair released this morning - Newsletter No. 6 and a video - are different. The newsletter and video both claim to show pictures of US soldiers stationed at the Sheraton Hotel in Sanaa, and the newsletter names other hotels around the country where US soldiers have been spotted.
The argument Ansar al-Shariah is attempting to make is the one AQAP attempted to make in 2009 and 2010 - that Yemen is under western military attack/occupation, which requires Yemenis to take up arms against foreign/non-Muslim soldiers in the country.
AQAP hasn't had as much success as it would have liked with this argument, and Ansar al-Shariah is clearly hoping that the pictures of US soldiers (some in full combat gear) will outrage Yemenis.
There is a lot more here, but for the moment I think it is safe to say that we are seeing the crystallization of a strategy that AQAP has been working on as 2011 uprisings swept across the Arab world.
More to come in the piece, I teased above.
The men were under the command of Tariq al-Dhahab, a leading shaykh from the powerful al-Qayfah tribe, which is based in the area. Al-Dhahab just happens to the brother-in-law of the late Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a US drone strike last September. Some reports even have al-Dhahab providing shelter to, and traveling with, Awlaki in the months before his death.
That first evening al-Dhahab's men reportedly took over the historic Amarriya mosque/school in the center of town. (I have visited this mosque several times, pic here, which was restored by the late Selma al-Radi with substantial funding from the Dutch, US and others.)
Tariq al-Dhahab gave the sermon in the Amariya, attacking the Huthis and calling for solidarity among Muslims. Al-Masdar Online (Arabic) has the most detailed account of that first evening. After prayers, the men reportedly withdrew to the citadel (pictured above) which has a commanding view of the city.
Along the way, several prisoners (estimates vary widely) managed to escape. Tariq al-Dhahab would later claim that his men weren't responsible for the prison break - unsurprisingly he blamed the Huthis - saying that his men had only freed three prisoners.
Regardless of who actually set the prisoners free, the ease in which Tariq and his men flowed into the city and took control of certain areas (saying its a "takeover" of the entire city is misleading) led a number of Yemenis, including Tariq's own brother, Khalid, to suggest that the men were cooperating with Yemeni security services and under the command of President Salih, who wanted to use them in a desperate last-ditch attempt to remain in power in Yemen.
This theory, I believe, is overblown. President Salih has certainly manipulated the presence of AQAP and Islamic militants to gain support from the west, but then, so has the opposition. Both sides uses them as a stick to whack each other with. But that doesn't mean that AQAP doesn't exist independently of both; they do.
A short video of Tariq, appealing for unity and claiming that the Arabian Peninsula would soon be liberated (rhetoric that tracks closely with what AQAP has been saying) made the rounds first on You Tube and then on Yemeni news sites. Shortly after that recording went live, Tariq appeared on BBC Arabic. Although only a phone interview, Tariq seems much more conciliatory and dances around the questions he doesn't like.
Throughout his various interviews, Tariq has made some cutting critiques of the current political system in Yemen. He laughed off the allegations of many that he was working with Yemen's security forces, asking sarcastically why he should work with people who were cooperating with the Americans in trying to kill them. Good point.
When one tribal mediation team attempted to get Tariq's men to withdraw by saying that the upcoming elections in Yemen were the way to get his grievances dealt with, Tariq basically told him to get real, arguing that GPC and the opposition were both part of the problem in Yemen. Again, no matter what one thinks of Tariq's overall points, it is hard to argue with his critique of contemporary politics.
Tariq has said his men would withdraw from Rada'a if Yemen released 15 prisoners believed to be members of al-Qaeda, including his brother Nabil, who was arrested in Syria in 2006 for trying to cross over into Iraq. (Today, al-Masdar Online published the names of the 15.) The government refused the offer, and today their are reports that tanks and troops are headed south to deal with Tariq.
Meanwhile, the al-Dhahab family, which includes the Shaykh mashaykh of the al-Qayfah tribe is publicly distancing itself from Tariq.
So what all does this tell us?
Well, I think a number of things, including I believe an insight into the AQAP-Ansar al-Shariah links that have many asking questions.
At the same time Tariq al-Dhahab and his men in Ansar al-Shariah were holding down positions in Rada'a, farther south in Abyan a member of Ansar al-Shariah was giving a press conference - or at least what passes for a press conference - in Abyan. Several interesting things came out of the interview.
But the two that stuck out to me were 1. The commander, Abu Hamza, said Ansar al-Shariah was consciously modeling itself on the Taliban. This confirmed, at least to me, what I had suggested earlier on twitter (and with a full analysis in a piece I just submitted). Abu Hamza also avoided questions about AQAP, saying he was "only authorized" to speak about issues in Abyan. For someone trotted out to give an interview, this is a fairly narrow brief.
Additionally, over the past several days, Ansar al-Shariah have released several newsletters and one video, all dated November 2011. Most of them aren't much to speak of, but the pair released this morning - Newsletter No. 6 and a video - are different. The newsletter and video both claim to show pictures of US soldiers stationed at the Sheraton Hotel in Sanaa, and the newsletter names other hotels around the country where US soldiers have been spotted.
The argument Ansar al-Shariah is attempting to make is the one AQAP attempted to make in 2009 and 2010 - that Yemen is under western military attack/occupation, which requires Yemenis to take up arms against foreign/non-Muslim soldiers in the country.
AQAP hasn't had as much success as it would have liked with this argument, and Ansar al-Shariah is clearly hoping that the pictures of US soldiers (some in full combat gear) will outrage Yemenis.
There is a lot more here, but for the moment I think it is safe to say that we are seeing the crystallization of a strategy that AQAP has been working on as 2011 uprisings swept across the Arab world.
More to come in the piece, I teased above.
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