"The Brotherhood of Yemen"... and the future of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
English - Monday 11 October 2021 الساعة 09:45 am
Aden, NewsYemen, Saleh Abu Odal:
Al-Qaeda in Yemen has been known during the past three decades to be the most extremist branch of the organization in the Arabian Peninsula, given its extensive operations that hit international interests in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, most notably the attack on the US destroyer USS Cole and the US embassy in Sanaa. And other attacks that took place during the past two decades, leading to the establishment of Islamic emirates in conjunction with the popular uprising against the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the late Yemeni president who was killed by the Houthis in late 2017, after his coup against the alliance with them.
Al Qaeda Yemen ”, which is the name and the most common term, given to the Arab Afghans who were integrated into the Yemeni army (the forces of the 1st Armored Division), led by General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, after their return from fighting in the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, to participate in the fight against the regime Aden (the Socialist Democratic Republic of South Yemen), which had entered into a fragile union with the Yemen Arab Republic, (Sana'a regime), on May 22, 1990 .
The Sana’a regime took advantage of (the enthusiasm of the Afghan Arabs) in fighting the southern socialists, by excluding the partner of “unity.” Al-Qaeda began mass liquidations against southern officials in Sana’a, until it reached the liquidation of more than 150 civil and security officials, and this led to the protest of the head of the Aden regime. Mr. Ali Salem Al-Beidh, who left the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, in protest, to Aden.
The crisis of qualifying for the southerners prompted the intervention of the late King of Jordan, "King Hussein", in a mediation that culminated in the signing of the "Covenant and Agreement" document, but that agreement did not see the light of day due to the Arab Afghans continuing the series of liquidations and assassinations of southern officials, leading to the war that was declared on the 27th of April 1994 AD, the south and the occupation of Aden on the 7th of July of the same year.
The battle to occupy Aden gained al-Qaeda a great ability to recruit, taking advantage of fatwas issued by the sheikhs of the Yemeni Brotherhood, "Abdul-Majid Al-Zindani and Abdul-Wahhab Al-Dailami", which stipulated that the Aden regime must be fought on the grounds that it is a socialist regime that represents an extension of the Soviet Union, and the religious fatwa was published in the official press and radio stations in addition to To another similar fatwa published in the German press, it considered the residents of the south "outside the Islamic religion, and permitted the plundering of their rights on the grounds that they are spoils of war."
Since the mid-nineties, al-Qaeda has been the strongest and most extremist branch of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as a result of the interim alliance between the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh (the conference) and the Muslim Brotherhood (the Reform), an alliance that temporarily disintegrated after the death of the tribal leader and the first president of the Brotherhood in Yemen, Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, in late 2007 AD, after al-Ahmar had been supportive of Saleh, and directed the Brotherhood's bases in 1999 to the elections of Ali Abdullah Saleh, and warned against deviating from the party's trends.
The Brotherhood has launched a media campaign, led by Dr. Najeeb Ghanem Saeed, head of the media department, aims to support the election of Saleh as president for a new term (without conditions), and the Brotherhood was then facing the Yemeni Socialist Party, which was demanding a change in Saleh, hoping to reform the path of Yemeni unity, and the Brotherhood succeeded in that, and this success is like a blow Fatal for the Yemeni Socialist Party, which failed to register any political presence after that.
The death of the leader of the Yemeni Brotherhood, prompted the organization to split from its alliance with "Ali Abdullah Saleh", and went on to conclude alliances with other Yemeni parties, including the Yemeni Socialist Party, which previously described its leaders and members as "outside the Islamic religion", and culminated in a transitional alliance called The "Joint Meeting", the opposition to the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, and then began the war of "Saleh" against al-Qaeda and the leaders of the Brotherhood, until the United States of America put the religious leader of the Yemeni Brotherhood, Sheikh Abdul Majeed al-Zindani on the lists of American terrorism, but with that, Saleh refused to hand him over to Washington, In the hope that the Brotherhood would stop opposing him, and indeed (Saleh) was able to "twist the arm of the Brotherhood" a lot, but he granted the United States of America "permission", to pursue al-Qaeda elements in Yemen, and the United States had killed with a drone weapon many prominent al-Qaeda leaders in the semi-autonomous region. Arabian island.
The most prominent of those killed by the United States was the American citizen "Anwar al-Awlaki", whom he described as the spiritual inspirer of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, when it raided him while he was traveling between Marib and Hadramawt in 2011.
With the Saleh regime, the Brotherhood tried to stop targeting al-Qaeda, and more than once called for the necessity of dialogue with the extremist organization and its leaders, and al-Zindani (personally) led a reconciliation dialogue between the Saleh regime and al-Qaeda, but the United States continued to kill al-Qaeda leaders, which prompted the Brotherhood To go out with demonstrations against the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, claiming that it is a corrupt regime, although they have been in a strategic alliance with it for nearly two decades.
Al-Qaeda is classified (locally) as the military wing of the Yemeni Brotherhood, and with the coup of the Houthi rebels against the regime of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi (behind Saleh) in 2012, Al-Qaeda participated in the fighting alongside the government forces affiliated with the Brotherhood on the grounds that it was the ruling party that overthrew Saleh and he brought Hadi as president.
Al-Qaeda has incited for about a year to fight the Houthis “on the grounds that they are Shiite rejectionists.” However, in 2016, with the arrival of Brotherhood military leader Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar to the position of Vice President, al-Qaeda’s anti-Houthi rhetoric declined, and the fighting actually declined on many fronts, The organization has not carried out any suicide operations against the Houthis since then until today.
Al-Qaeda operations turned into what can be described as reprisals against the forces that participated in the fight against the Houthis in Aden and other cities of the south, but with that, the Arab coalition led by the UAE armed forces was leading a "decisive" battle against the extremist organization, starting from Aden through Balhaj and Abyan all the way to To Shabwa and the coast of Hadhramaut, and the latter was a "main emirate of al-Qaeda", since April 2015, when the Houthis invaded the cities of the south, "al-Qaeda" overthrew the coast of Hadhramaut, which is rich in oil wealth and huge economic resources, without fighting or resistance from the government forces that disintegrated by Houthi coup in Sanaa.
In the first third of June 2015, and during the announcement of al-Qaeda of the Emirate of Hadhramaut (the coast), the United States of America succeeded in killing the leader of the organization and the former private secretary of Osama bin Laden, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, who was killed in a drone strike in the city of Mukalla, the capital of the province. coastal Hadhramaut.
Al-Qaeda's occupation of Mukalla did not last more than a year, until the UAE armed forces (the active partner in the Arab coalition) decided to fight the battle to liberate it, relying on the local elite forces and the UAE Air Force. Indeed, the base was expelled from Mukalla, the city of Sayun, which is under the control of forces loyal to the Vice President Yemeni Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, and part of the organization fled towards the governorates of Ma'rib and al-Bayda, which are under the control of the Brotherhood and the Houthis, respectively.
In 2017, with the outbreak of a Gulf and Arab crisis with the Qatar regime, the official sponsor of the Brotherhood in Yemen, al-Qaeda in Yemen concluded a prisoner exchange deal with the Houthis. In August 2019, before Al-Qaeda leaders appeared fighting in the ranks of the Brotherhood, which returned to fight in the liberated south, under the pretext of defending the legitimacy of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
The Yemeni Brotherhood’s control of Shabwa, which is rich in oil wealth, contributed greatly to the return of al-Qaeda, which carried out many operations by targeting the Emirati and Bahraini forces operating within the Arab coalition in Shabwa, in addition to targeting security barriers for the Security Belt forces affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council, and represented the Brotherhood’s control areas. Safe areas for al-Qaeda movements.
In late January 2020, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula suffered a fatal blow, similar to the killing of Al-Wuhayshi, when the United States of America succeeded in reaching the hideout of the Emir of Al-Qaeda (the successor) Qassem Yahya Mahdi Al-Rimi, who hails from the Ali Mohsen area. Red (Sanhan).
The killing of al-Rimi led to the dispersal of the leadership of al-Qaeda, after which the organization split into two streams, the first led by Saudi Khaled Batarfi, and the other led by Abu Omar al-Nahdi, who is described as the legitimate official in al-Qaeda.
The differences escalated when Khaled Batarfi installed himself as the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to succeed Qasim Al-Rimi, which prompted Al-Nahdi to object to this, and a large stream of Al-Qaeda still rejects Batarfi’s succession. Abu Dawood Al-Sharroi Al-Sa’iri, and Abu Al-Waleed Al-Hadrami.
These differences were not exploited by the Saudi-led coalition. After the withdrawal of “the UAE, which withdrew from the Yemeni file to a large extent, efforts to combat terrorism have stopped completely, and Riyadh, which also leads an Islamic coalition, to combat terrorism, has been required, since the beginning of May, to disclose About the fate of al-Qaeda leader Khaled Batarfi, who a United Nations report said was arrested in the city of al-Ghaydah in al-Mahra Governorate in October 2020, and his deputy, Saad Atef al-Awlaki, was killed in that operation.
The UN report issued by the team specialized in monitoring extremist groups represented the first official confirmation of Batarfi’s arrest after a report by the American Center for Monitoring Jihadi Websites “SITE” which announced in October of the year 2020, that Batarfi was arrested by Yemeni security forces before being extradited To Saudi Arabia". It is
Saudi Arabia did not comment on the reports of Batarfi’s arrest, before Yemeni Brotherhood channels broadcast from Turkey, alleging that al-Qaeda denied the arrest of its leader, Khaled Batarfi, and the killing of his deputy, Saad al-Awlaki.
Al-Mahraya Brotherhood channel claimed that "the Al-Mahra operation was carried out by Saudi planning, with the aim of portraying the governorate as an incubator for terrorist groups to win American and international support as a cover for their expansionist practices and ambitions."
Despite the assurances that al-Qaeda, which was recently expelled or withdrew from the town of al-Suma’ah in al-Bayda Governorate, to Shabwa and Marib, has become weak and disjointed, its future remains contingent on the alliance between the Brotherhood and the Houthis. The interests that intersect between the two groups consider it important to rearrange Al-Qaeda ranks, which indicates that an emir of the organization may be installed in the coming months to succeed Khaled Batarfi, who faces strong opposition from the Nahdi movement.
And if al-Qaeda succeeds in rearranging its ranks, the responsibility will fall on "Saudi Arabia", which is directly responsible for the Yemeni file, and the organization's disintegration or reunification "is a matter that determines the future of the organization in the Arabian Peninsula."
And Saudi Arabia’s seriousness in combating terrorism begins with stopping financial and military support for the Yemeni Brotherhood, especially since the support provided by Riyadh to fight the Houthis goes, in one way or another, to al-Qaeda, and the US Treasury has put prominent Yemeni government officials on terrorist lists after it was proven that they were involved in financing the organization. Al-Qaeda and the opening of training camps in Ma'rib and Al-Bayda.
Stopping the Saudi financial, military, political and media support for the Brotherhood is an important step in understanding the future of extremist organizations, and proves Riyadh’s seriousness in combating extremism, especially since the Brotherhood had already concluded a new agreement in Shabwa, which stipulated stopping any resistance to the Houthis who took control of large parts of the oil province .
It remains to be confirmed that the future of al-Qaeda in Yemen is closely related to Saudi Arabia’s continued adoption of the “Brotherhood of Yemen” as a local ally to fight the Houthis, and the justifications for breaking up this alliance are widely available, as the organization has not fought any real war against Iran's arms that Saudi Arabia is fighting against, not to mention that they They handed over the areas and weapons of the Arab coalition to the Houthis, in a way that reveals the secrets of alliances and the intersection of Yemeni interests in the south.
