al Nabi
One of my favorite stories demonstrating the duplicity of Saleh’s regime involves Khaled Abdul Nabi, leader of the Abyan Aden Islamic Army. The Yemeni regime told the US in 2003 that they killed al-Nabi in a shoot-out. Yemeni officials admitted that they let al-Nabi go after he was spotted breathing. In 2005, top Yemeni officials claimed Nabi was completely rehabilitated and living the life of a peaceful farmer. Beginning in 2005 and into 2006 and 2007, local media reported Nabi and his band of fanatics were training a tribal paramilitary for the government to battle Shiite rebels in Sa’ada. In 2007, a newspaper (Al-Sharie) that covered the topic of jihaddists in Sa’ada was brought up on charges of revealing state secrets, and the editor faces the death penalty. Al Nabi was again reported spotted in Sa’ada. In 2008, the Yemeni government announced with great fanfare that they had captured the dangerous terrorist al-Nabi after an intensive five year manhunt. The tickers all said, “Yemen captures al-Qaeda terrorist after five year hunt.” In January 2009, Nabi was at the meeting in Sana’a with Saleh. In March, Nabi (who is from Yafea tribe if i recall correctly) was fighting on the side of the regime in the Ja’ar battle (or as we call it now, Ja’aristan). The April 2009 prison release of 100+ jihaddists was defended by the Yemeni embassy here, which said they were mostly aged members of the Aden Abyan Islamic Army and not real al Qaeda. Update: now Tariq al Fadhli is saying the release was a good faith offering to al Qaeda as part of a deal where President Saleh asked them to leave Yemen for Somalia or Saudi Arabia.
Wahishi is a mediahadeen and was in Shabwa, before that Marib. Al Nabi has had a gun in his hands for years and commands a jihaddist/tribal army in Sa’ada in the service of Saleh.
General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar (President Saleh’s half brother) “holds the jihaddists file” and he is a Wahabbi. Commander of the North West Region, he has been fighting a war against Shiites using extremists and bombing civilians since 2005, but the war extends beyond the battlefield into the courts and mosques. Lets recall the connection between General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar and the Aden Abyan Islamic Army going all the way back to the 1999 tourists kidnapping. In Sa’ada today, we have General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, Khaled al Nabi and three murdered and six missing tourists in what looks like an al Qaeda operation.
There have never been any reports of Wahishi or his faction of al Qaeda in Sa’ada, and Wahishi has denounced those jihaddists who fight for Saleh. Other al Qaeda factions have made statements that Saleh asked them to fight in Sa’ada.
Sa’ada contains a lot of terrorist training camps, state allied terrorists, and extremist mosques and schools including Dammaj, the Ivy League of hard core Salafi institutes- and a media black out and no access since 2004. Sa’ada is an al Qaeda blackhole, Saad bin Laden could be there and no one would know. The fact that this al Qaeda haven is under the command of “US ally” General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar isn’t that reassuring.
If we were going to get really esoteric, we could also discuss the US intercept that includes a reference to Zawahiri sending fighters to Sa’ada for Saleh, and then a few months later there was an influx of Arab and non-Arab foreign fighters reported in Sa’ada by several media outlets.
