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The Yemeni army may have
successfully rousted AQAP from its strongholds but now the group's operatives
have increased their assaults on Sana'a itself
By Sam Kimball / Sana'a | July 12,
2012
The doctor’s trembling hands were
still wrapped in blood-stained surgical gloves. Outside the gate of the Yemeni
capital’s police academy, Dr. Ahmed Idrees was speaking to a crowd of cameras
and microphones about the latest assault on Sana’a. Two hours earlier, an
assailant later identified as Mohammed Nasher al-Uthy, 20, hurled an explosive
into a crowd of cadets leaving the academy for a weekend at home. Ten were
killed and fifteen wounded. Al-Uthy himself lost several limbs in the blast,
dying in a hospital an hour after the attack. Noting similarities with an
incident in May, Idrees said, “The characteristics of this attack are the same
we saw in Saba’een Street.” The suicide attack on Saba’een had been massive: 96
soldiers were killed while rehearsing for a military military parade
commemorating Yemen’s unification. In both cases, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based franchise of the terrorist organization,
claimed responsibility.
After the Yemeni army’s lighting
campaign forced Al-Qaeda from its strongholds in the south of the country, AQAP
is striking at the heart of the government. Assaults in Sana’a are on the rise.
In the space of less than two months, five bombings have been attempted by
Al-Qaeda-affiliates. The first was Saba’een Street. Weeks later, a bomber
wearing an explosive belt panicked moments before blowing himself up in a post
office, throwing his belt over a wall and fleeing. Early this month, Colonel
Mohammed Al-Qudami of Yemen’s Political Security was killed by a car bomb as he
drove through the capital. Two days later a Sana’a police chief, Saleh
Al-Mustafa, watched his car explode minutes after getting out. The police
academy is only the latest target in a wave of attacks Al-Qaeda has vowed to
keep up.
As Doctor Idrees spoke to the
cameras, dazed cadets, forensic specialists, and riot police in body armor were
still sidestepping the puddles of blood beginning to blow over with trash. The
anger with the new government’s seeming inability to prevent the violence was
palpable. Marwan Al-Sabai, a cadet who narrowly escaped the bomb attack, told
TIME: “There are Yemenis who carry out these attacks to show that this
government is not able to control the country.” Saleh Ali, a soldier, shouted
out against the Yemeni government in front of the police academy’s gates: “It’s
a failure. A complete failure. We want the intelligence services to arrest
criminals like this before they succeed.”
“If the political situation remains the same,
then we are definitely going to witness more and more attacks,” notes Abdullah
al-Faqih, a political science professor at Sana’a University. He points out
that Yemen’s government remains weak, fragmented by loyalties to former
president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Ali Muhsin, commander of the 1st Armored
Division, which sided with protestors during last year’s uprising. “The new
government has no power whatsoever. They’re either with Muhsin or with Saleh.”
Al-Faqih went on to say that
attacks like the one targeting police cadets in Yemen’s capital are carried out
while security forces turn a blind eye. Pointing to the persistent ambitions of
the former president, who was finally forced from office in February after more
than three decades in power, Al-Faqih says: “It’s in the interest of Saleh’s
camp to convince the international community and regional powers that he’s the
only guy who can save this country, and keep it relatively stable.”
Arafat Mudabish, editor of
Al-Tagheer Net news website, agrees. “Sana’a remains divided among followers of
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Brigadier Ali Muhsin Al Ahmar, and Sheikh Sadeq Al
Ahmar”–another notable in last year’s uprising and the head of an influential tribal
group. Mudabish said that each of these figures use the attacks to discredit
forces loyal to the other, or to instill a sense that they are the only player
capable of saving Yemen from the Al-Qaeda threat.
Troubled by pending reforms
threatening their interests, the factions spin the assaults on government
personnel to distract both the international community and Yemen’s new
president, Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi. In the past, critics often accused Saleh of
allowing Al-Qaeda and its affiliates to carry out attacks and claim territory
in Yemen in a desperate bid to divert attention from the popular uprising that
eventually forced him from the presidency.
The trick hasn’t lost its appeal,
some say. A Yemeni journalist specializing in military and security issues, who
asked to go by the alias Ahmed, notes that the restructuring of the armed
forces, a key tenet of the power transfer deal that ushered in the Hadi
government, poses a threat to the powers of Saleh, Muhsin, and others. “In
order to distract the President from the army restructuring, they make him busy
with attacks,” Ahmed says.
According to Al-Tagheer Net’s
Mudabish, the only way to bring stability to the volatile country is through
international pressure, especially from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s
powerful neighbor. Without a concerted international effort, the outlook is
bleak. Ahmed says grimly, “If the situation remains as it is, Al Qaeda will
walk right into the presidential palace.”
