5 April 2012
Mohamed Bin Sallam
Ansar Allah is the military wing of the Shiite Houthis Movement, who
fought six wars against Yemen’s army between 2004 and 2010. They currently
control and run the northern governorate of Sa’ada, some parts of Hajja and
areas within Amran.
Ansar Al-Sharia is an organization comprised of Islamists and jihadists
that made its first appearance in Abyan, south Yemen in May 2011. This is when
armed men took control of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan, after security
personnel abandoned their positions and weapons in the governorate.
Most members of Ansar Al-Sharia are former jihadists who fought in
Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and returned to Yemen in 1990. The
connection between Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and this new group
remains uncertain.
Ansar Al-Sharia is a mixture of fighters that are commanded by Khalid
Abdul-Nabi, a Yemeni jihadist who was once part of the Islamic Army of
Aden-Abyan. The ‘army’ was a jihadist group headed by Abu Al-Hassan Al-Mihdar,
who was executed in 1999 on charges of abducting and killing westerners.
The Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan carried out many terrorist operations in
Abyan including bombings and the abduction and killing of western tourists in
1998 before the emergence of Al-Qaeda in its present structure.
In the early 2000s Abdul-Nabi appeared to leave jihad activities and
retreated to his own farm near Jaar in Abyan. Here he stayed for about six
years theorizing about Jihadist Salafi ideology. In 2005, a top Yemeni official
declared Abdul-Nabi fully rehabilitated and living the life of a peaceful
farmer.
Abdul-Nabi was arrested along with 28 supposed Al-Qaeda supporters in an
operation in Abyan governorate in August 2008. In an apparent meeting with then
president Ali Abdullah Saleh, Abdul-Nabi agreed to support the Yemeni regime
against its enemies, the Houthi rebels in the north and southern separatists.
Abdul-Nabi was released in a general amnesty in early 2009.
With ambiguous attempts by the regime to contain Abdul-Nabi, his
followers appear to commit to his ideology and created what was to become Ansar
Al-Shariah. The organization announced itself when it seized control of
Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan.
The nature of the relationship between Al-Shariah and Al-Qaeda is
unclear, but Al-Shariah shares many similarities with what is known as Jihadist
Salafism. Abdul-Nabi has denied any relation with Al-Qaeda, a denial that
sounds authentic. However, his ideological perspective seems to a large extent
to be close to Al-Qaeda, especially as his group explicitly endorses the Jihad
movement.
Ansar Al-Shariah appears to be the ideological extension of the Jihad
movement, that in turn was a natural extension of the Islamic Army of
Aden-Abyan previously led by Al-Mihdar.
Abdul-Nabi has recently denied the existence of the Islamic Army of
Aden-Abyan in a press interview, a denial that at times has also been repeated
by the state. However, the name was in common use in 1990s.
The militants of Ansar Al-Shariah view themselves as better than other
militants. Their belief in their own superiority is reminiscent of the Houthis
theory of Devine Selection.
The groups of Ansar Al-Shariah and Ansar Allah are opposites in the
sense that the former represents Sunni fundamentalism and the other Shiite
extremism. However, their way of thinking is similar as both groups tend to use
violence to achieve their aims.
Jihadist experience in Yemen
The older jihadists in Yemen have more experience than those who named
themselves the Jihadist Youth supported by Saudi organizations. This experience
came as a direct result of their participation in the war in Afghanistan
against the Soviet Union.
The original experience was a consequence of being part of the major
jihad groups led by Osama Bin Laden and Tariq Al-Fadhli. That experience
increased during the1994 civil war in Yemen. Hundreds of former jihadists in
Afghanistan took part in supporting the military of Ali Abdullah Saleh against
the Yemeni Socialist Party.
Some of the jihadists from the above conflicts joined with Abu Al-Hassan
Al-Mihdar, and others with Abu Ali Al-Harithi, who was the suspected master
mind behind the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Al-Harithi was killed by a US
drone in Marib in Nov. 2002. That assassination can be seen as the real launch
of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Ansar Al-Sharia instead of Al-Qaeda of Jihad
Many analysts claim that Al-Sharia is merely Al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula changing its name to become a Yemeni organization. The claim is that
the name change will have a positive media impact locally and abroad in favor
of the group’s expansion.
Such a change of name may reduce pressure on Yemen to fight the new
group, as it is ‘not Al-Qaeda’, which as an ally to the US ‘war on terror’,
Yemen is committed to fighting.
A local group, with a local name, will attract less pressure from the
United Nations on Yemen. It will become a Yemeni affair, and there will be less
justification to intervene in Yemeni internal affairs, as the organization will
not play a role in the Al-Qaeda versus the West conflict.
The former leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, had expressed a
willingness to change the name of the organization. This suggestion was found
in a letter on Bin Laden’s computer, confiscated after his assassination on May
2, 2011.
Bin Laden expressed in the letter that name ‘Al-Qaeda’ was not
sufficiently religious, and did not express the message that the group was
engaged in a holy war against the enemies of Islam. A name change would also
put some distance between the criticism Al-Qaeda had attracted for killing a
large number of Muslims.
While the Houthis’ Ansar Allah group expands their military presence in
north Yemen, the Ansar Al-Shariah group intensifies their fighting against the
Yemeni army in south Yemen.
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