Author: Adrian Blomfield
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: January 11, 2010
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/6968221/Yemeni-officials-admit-they-are-losing-the-battle-against-al-Qaeda.html
Yemeni officials have admitted they are losing
the battle against al-Qaeda and the terror group is extending its reach into
remote regions where state control has all but disappeared.
Regional politicians have presented a much bleaker prognosis than the authorities
in the capital Sana'a, who have repeatedly sought to play down the threat
posed by extremists in the wake of the Detroit terror attack.
They say al-Qaeda has forged its strongest
relationship with local tribes in the sparsely populated mountains and desert
of the south, where long simmering resentment of the government has given
way to near-rebellion.
On the outskirts of Zinjibar, the ramshackle
principal town of Abyan province, the gates of an ageing villa set deep in
a banana plantation are guarded by more than a dozen Yemeni soldiers and policemen.
Sitting inside his heavily protected official
residence, Ahmed al-Misri, Abyan's governor, is a gloomy man who frankly admits
he regrets ever having taken up the job.
As well he might, Yemen observers say. Along
with the provinces of Shabwa and Marib, Mr Misri's fiefdom forms an ungovernable
crescent east of Sana'a and Aden, Yemen's main cities, which many commentators
have described as "the new Waziristan".
With al-Qaeda growing ever stronger and local
secessionists gaining such momentum that many commentators predict civil war,
Mr Misri is so besieged by enemies that he is said rarely to leave his residence.
That is not entirely true. Protected by a
local tribal code under which his kinsmen would be entitled to avenge his
death, Mr Misri does venture out into the province.
The same is not the case, he conceded, for
government forces, who were so weak and poorly equipped that they had effectively
surrendered control of much of Abyan to al-Qaeda militants.
"To speak plainly, [government control]
is not so strong," he told The Daily Telegraph from Abyan, normally a
closed security zone.
"We don't have enough weapons. We don't
have enough soldiers. Our resources are so few that if something happens in
the countryside, we can't respond because there are no helicopters or aeroplanes."
Such analysis will cause deep disquiet in
Washington, which has indicated it has no choice but to leave Yemeni forces
to lead the fight against al-Qaeda.
Since the Detroit attack, responsibility for
which has been claimed by Yemen's al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, government
officials in Sana'a have been quoted as saying thousands of troops had been
deployed to provinces like Abyan.
But in a disclosure that will raise worrying
questions about the Yemeni's government's commitment, the governor claimed
the deployment was a charade, with troops being rotated between provinces
to give the impression that a major offensive was under way.
Al-Qaeda has emerged as a particularly potent force in the past eight months
after it was reinforced by an unknown number of new arrivals from Saudi Arabia
who had access to considerable funding.
Dividing themselves into small cells, they
embedded themselves among nomadic Bedouin tribes in the mountains so cut off
from the modern world that many had not heard of al-Qaeda, the governor said.
The new arrivals, with assistance from their
Yemeni counterparts, found it easy to win acceptance. Introducing themselves
as religious scholars, they proved they had deeper pockets than the government,
digging wells, offering religious schooling to unemployed youngsters and doling
out AK-47s to weapons-hungry tribesmen.
Mr Misri conceded the government had been
outmanoeuvred: "If the government gives them $50, al-Qaeda gives them
$100," he said.
With unemployment in his region at 50 per
cent, the American and Yemeni governments may find that outbidding al-Qaeda
for tribal loyalties may be the most effective course to victory.
The use of force has so far has had mixed
consequences. An air strike against a Bedouin mountain encampment called Maajala
on Christmas Eve killed 14 al-Qaeda members, including the leader in Abyan,
the governor said. But it also killed 45 tribesmen, among them 18 women and
15 children, who may have had no idea of whom they were sheltering, he added.
Yaslam Abu-Sit, the first Abyan official to
reach the encampment said he discovered a scene of carnage: "There were
just five survivors; three girls, a woman and a youth of 16."
News of the attack enraged many southerners.
Future strikes, analysts warn, only risk deepening sympathy for al-Qaeda and
turning people both against the United States and the Yemeni government.
Already deeply disillusioned, the ranks of
the south's main secessionist group, the Southern Movement, could swell, tipping
the country into full-scale civil war - an outcome that would make the task
of defeating al-Qaeda much more difficult than it already is.
