al-Qaeda in Broad Daylight
Update: again I forgot to say this article was also published in Yemen in Arabic by that editor al-Khaiwani we made the petition for. For the regular readers this is a/k/a Yemen 12. (also at BNNand Townhall in the foreign policy section and the national security section. Also at Middle East Transparent, Front Page Magazine, Religion Journal. Then again at Townhall, this time in the email alert. It was fun getting myown article . Also at World Press.org This is why its good not to get paid: better distribution. )
Yemen: al-Qaeda in Broad Daylight
So did you hear the one about Yemen? They are “reforming” the press law. The proposed law now includes the death penalty for journalists. How about this one? To unify the country, the government is confiscating Shia religious material. How about this? This ally in the War on Terror is perpetuating an al-Qaeda jihad.
Recent public statements about Yemen paint a dire picture. Ayatollah al-Sistani and the religious establishment in Najaf, Iraq said there is a “brutal massacre” of Shiites going on. The defecting Yemeni Ambassador has stated that high ranking members of the Yemeni government and military are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Putting together the massacre with the al-Qaeda, it’s like another 9/11 unfolding slowly in the mountains and cities of Yemen.
The Yemeni Ambassador to Syria, Ahmed Abdullah al-Hasani, is attempting to defect to the UK. He says that members of Al-Qaeda are in the highest ranks of Yemen’s military and security forces. Al-Hasani says that it is very likely that President Ali Abdullah Saleh “knew in advance of the Cole explosion” which killed 17 US servicemen. Indeed, Freedom House in 2003 reported that Saleh refused to even investigate the Cole bombing until the US threatened military action. Also in 2003, al-Qaeda praised President Saleh as the only Arab and Muslim leader who is not an agent for the West or the East.
Currently President Saleh is refusing to act against terrorist financing, probably earning him more praise. Only one bank account in Yemen was frozen in response to a 2003 UN Security Council Sanctions Committee directive to the freeze 144 terrorist affiliated accounts of persons, companies, and organizations. The other 143 terrorist associated bank accounts in Yemen remain fully functional. In 2004, the UN Sanctions Committee list of al-Qaeda owned Yemeni bank accounts was not even issued by the Yemeni government to Yemeni banks.
Next is Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, President Saleh’s half-brother. He is currently a prominent military commander in Yemen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was an ally of Osama Bin Laden and helped him to recruit Yemenis to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan reports indicate. Later these fighters set up terrorist training camps in Yemen.
Ambassador al-Hasani says that Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was complicit in the kidnapping of 16 western tourists in December 1998. “Two days before the killings, members of the terrorist group were in al-Ahmar’s house in Sana’a,” al-Hasani said. “They were also in telephone contact with Sana’a just before the shootings.” Three British citizens and one Australian were killed as a result of the kidnapping.
Yemen’s gun illicit trade is thought controlled primarily by military officers, with weapons imported legally for the purpose of supplying the army. In 2002, the US military seized and released a Yemeni ship containing North Korean scud missiles, conventional warheads, and nitric acid. The North Korean Foreign Trade Minister is scheduled for an official visit to Yemen at the end of June, 2005. Yemen is noted by Israeli intelligence as one of the chief suppliers of weapons to Palestinian insurgents in Gaza. “The weapons are smuggled by private gangs but with full knowledge of the authorities of these countries,” an Israeli military source said. “There’s no secret here.” Prince Mohammed bin Nasser bin Abdul-Aziz, said in 2003 that Saudi authorities captured Yemeni arms smugglers “on an hourly basis.” The Yemeni gun running operation has many endpoints.
Then there is Zindani. Open source intelligence analysis from Power and Interest News Report describes Sheik Zindani as Osama bin Laden’s personal mentor. Zindani was a key recruiter in Yemen during the Afghan war against the Soviets. Currently Zindani is the leader of the radical faction of Islah, the Islamic reform party. He is well known for his fiery sermons against the US. Zindani is also a prominent businessman in Yemen.
In 2004, the US Treasury designated Zindani as a “Major Terrorist” for his active support of al-Qaeda. Zindani, according to the US, influences and supports “many terrorist causes.” He is also noted as a contact for Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group which contains the faction Ansar al-Sunna operating in Iraq. Ansar al-Sunna has claimed responsibility for the beheading of 12 Nepalese hostages and for the explosion at a US base in Mosel, Iraq which resulted in the deaths of 22 people with 60 more injured.
The Iraqi religious scholars’ statement about internal events in Yemen describes a widespread attack, a kind of jihad, on the Shiites: “What happened in Yemen during the recent months, such as official resolutions, the economic blockade several areas, and the continuous acts of killings, arrests, oppression and chasing, reveal only a part of the concealed picture of reality in Yemen.” Shia sermons are banned. Shia religious literature confiscated. Shia religious schools are closing. Their teachings have been termed “blasphemous.” There are ongoing mass arrests by village and several thousand men are trapped in the gulag of hellish Yemeni prisons incommunicado, without charges. Their families left without financial support. And then there is Sa’ada.
Chasing a few hundred followers of slain “rebel” cleric, Hussein al-Houthi, the Yemeni military has turned Sa’ada, a Shia region, into a place of blood and tragedy. One mother describes the conditions, “Sa’ada now is being subjected to ethnic cleansing with out any reason. We are starving and thirsty because we can not get out of our houses, every one who gets out of the house will be killed. Our neighbor’s house was demolished by a missile. Two families were in the house. All of them were killed.”
“I am in the ninth grade” a girl in Sa’ada relates. “I was in school when they started shooting. I saw the girls of 7 to 15 years student were crying because they were frightened, scared. The teachers called the fathers to come and get their daughter from the school, but they could not because of fire shooting. Even the school was targeted by tanks.” The Iraqi religious leaders have labeled the conditions in Sa’ada as”genocide.”
But the jihad in Yemen today, like any good jihad, also targets democratic reformers, journalists, secularists, and socialists. Within the last few weeks, the Shia led Popular Forces Union Party headquarters was stormed. The Secretary General of the party, Rashad Ali Salem, was held in the building for days. Abdul Mohsen, a founder of a democratic reform movement, was arrested and after days finally charged with drunk driving. The Socialists party headquarters was bombed. The computers for the Popular Forces newspaper were confiscated. And a member of the Popular Forces Union party was kidnapped. Yemeni security forces made no attempt to recover him and have taken no action against his kidnappers since his release.
It is both a civil jihad and a bloody jihad. The Yemeni Socialist Party has termed the severe attack on opposition parties as “political terrorism.” The arbitrary arrests continue daily, dead bodies burnt and are dragged behind government vehicles, and the bombing of villages goes on. It is an al-Qaeda jihad in broad daylight by America’s ally, Yemen.
Footnotes:
Works cited
Power and Interest News Report: (I have written permission for this citation) http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_printable&report_id=153&language_id=1
US State Dept, terrorist financing: http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2005/vol2/html/42395.htm
Sistani statement: http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=840&p=front&a=3
Ambassador al-Hasani statement re Mohsen: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1602813,00.html
Ambassador al-Hasani statement re Saleh: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=827510&C=america
Witness testimony: http://www.alwasatnews.com/ Al-Wasat newspaper, issue 50, May 4, 2005, page four, (translated from Arabic)
Freedom House Report 20003: http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2003/countryratings/yemen.htm
Schools blaspheming: http://www.yobserver.com/news_6002.php
Ongoing violence against Shiites: http://www.yobserver.com/news_6018.php
US State Dept: mass arrests: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41736.htm
Bodies dragged behind cars, books confiscated, arbitrary arrests, sermons banned: http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=838&p=front&a=3
Death penalty for journalists: http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=838&p=front&a=1
Zindani, US Treasury: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/js1190.htm
Ansar al-Islamm ansar al-sunna http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/ansar-al-sunna.htm
Al-Qaeda praise for Saleh: http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=671&p=front&a=2
Kidnapping: http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=843&p=local&a=1
PFU headquarters stormed: http://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/e_default.asp
Mohsen reformer: http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/yobserver/exec/view.cgi/1/6746
PFU: secretary general detained: http://www.yobserver.com/news_6876.php
YSP “political terrorism” http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=843&p=front&a=2
Saudi quote hourly, Yemeni military & gun trade: http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369685
Israeli intell quote: http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2005/may/05_18_2.html
North Korean visit: http://www.albawaba.com/en/countries/Yemen/183994
2002 North Korean interception: http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/4710183.htm
