By: Nasser Arrabyee
March 24, 2012
Al Qaeda in Yemen has been trying
to stay a few steps ahead of the newly elected President and his bewildered and
vulnerable new government in terms of controlling and expanding their network.
Since February 25, when the new
President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi took the constitutional oath as a new elected
president, Al Qaeda implemented more
than 10 operations against military and security forces in a number of
different provinces, especially in the
southern provinces of Abyan, Al Baida
and Hudramout where its presence is more concentrated and overt.
Earlier this week in Aden, the
main southern city, the secret police (intelligence) arrested a man protesting
in the streets among activists demanding the separation of the south from the
north.
After being arrested, the man
tried to shoot the officers with a firearm he was hiding.
The officers immediately shot him
dead, put his body in their car and left. The man was wanted as an Al Qaeda
operative, security sources confirmed to The Weekly later that day.
Dozens of angry youths from the Al
Malla area in Aden started blocking the roads and setting fire to tyres,
demanding the dead body of their 'brother'.
The incident clearly proves that
Al Qaeda is stationed in Aden with supporters and sympathizers who are
exploiting the chaos because of the separatist sentiment on the one hand, and
the general political crisis of the entire country on the other.
Al Qaeda has tried numerous times
before to take control over Aden but always failed because the coastal city is
considered as a " red line" by the Yemeni government and its western
friends.
If Aden falls under the control of
Al Qaeda, the whole south and the Gulf of Aden will be under its control. This
may mean the control of the maritime roads through which and estimated 2
million barrels of oil pass every day.
" Al Qaeda is
everywhere, here in Aden too, but it is not as overt as in Abyan, here it is
working secretly," said Hussein
Othman, a tribal leader from Abyan who is based in Aden.
" You can also
find them among those who fled the war," said Othman.
About 130,000 people from
Zinjubar, the capital of Abyan, and the neighboring areas, are still away from
their homes, the majority of them in the city of Aden, since May 2011, when Al
Qaeda declared their areas a Taliban-style Islamic Emirates.
The 32-year old Raidan Anwar
Kahtan, along with his 10-member family have been living in a secondary school
in the coastal city of Aden, with about 1000 people ( known as internally
displaced persons, IDPs), for nine
months, dependant on aid from charities and organizations.
Like most of the IDPs, Raidan said
he is fed up of living in government buildings and very eager to return home to
Zinjubar.
Last month, Raidan Kahtan decided
to go to Zinjubar, which only 45 km away, to see if he could return with his
family.
Raidan Kahtan told the Ahram Weekly reporter who
visited the the IDP’s centers in Aden on March 17, 2012, that two guards, a
Pakistani and a Somali, prevented him from entering his house.
The partially destroyed house has
become a weapons store for Al Qaeda, and the two non-Yemeni guards were
safeguarding the weapons which were looted from the military camps in the areas
under the control of Al Qaeda in various battles over the past few months.
" I said 'This
is my house' and they said no, 'this is
a weapon store, and we are assigned to safeguard it'," said Raidan
sad and angry.
"When I went
to their high commander, Jallal Beleidi, who was previously my neighbor before
we were displaced and whom I knew very well, and he immediately ordered the
guards to let me go in my house," said Raidan.
" I was
shocked to see my house full of weapons and our city filled with
foreigners," he exclaimed.
Raidan decided to return to Aden
and leave his city to Al Qaeda, who call themselves Ansar Al Shariah
(supporters of Islamic Shariah), in an attempt to attract more young people and
support from both inside Yemen and
abroad. The term Ansar Al Shariah, a seemingly "good" name, improves
the image of the terrorist orientated Al Qaeda.
" I took some
of my stuff, which we need here, and returned to this depressing place,"
said Raidan
Umm Mohammed is a mother of four
residing in an IDP centre in the area of Crater, Aden.
The 38-year old woman said she
tried four times to return to her house in Zinjubar after which she had become
extremely fed up and depressed. The last time she went back was last February.
" Getting killed in my house is much better than
staying here indefinitely," said Umm Mohammed, who has been in the IDP centre for about nine months, a
high school full of people just like her who fled the war in the beginning. Now
there is almost no war, but they cannot live with Al Qaeda.
The zealous Taliban-style treatment by Al Qaeda
toward the people of her city made Umm Mohammed change her mind about staying
in her house with these “strangers who prevented from living her life as she
wants.”
Every time she went out, they ask
her about her 'Mahram' a male relative who
should be always with her.
Umm Mohammed, a widow, has been
earning money by doing some work to support her four children, raising them and
sending them to school.
"The last time
I was there in February, Al Qaeda prevented me from going out with my red
shoes," she said.
They proclaimed that red
shoes would attract the attention of the
men, and that Umm Mohammed is violating their interpretation of Islam.
She went back to the house and
took an old pair of brown shoes, but they stopped her and forced her to return
home again.
" Then I
decided to go barefoot, because my children were very hungry and I needed to
bring some food from the market," she said.
While walking in the street of the
war-ravaged city with her body completely covered in black, one of Al Qaeda men
saw a toe of her foot and he started to yell at her to go home or she will be
beaten.
" Then I
decided to return here, this camp however bad it is, it cannot not be worse
than treatment of those strange people," she told the weekly.
On Sunday March 18, 2012, Al Qaeda
operatives killed an American teacher in the south central city of Taiz. Al
Qaeda claimed responsibility, saying the American man was a Christian
missionary.
On Friday March 16, 2012,
tribesmen from the southern-eastern province of Shabwa, mostly controlled by Al
Qaeda, kidnapped a Swiss woman from the west coast city of Hodeidah.
"The Swiss
hostage is safe somewhere here, and the kidnappers are waiting for negotiations
for her release," Sheikh Ali Abdul
Sallam, a tribal leader close to
kidnappers, said on Tuesday.
The ministry of interior said 6
Somalians who were fighting with Al
Qaeda in Abyan were arrested.
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