The kidnapping and murders may be the work of the group of the foreign (Arab and non-Arab) al Qaeda that began arriving in Sa’ada in April, as we reported here at the time and I think its in one of the articles. It was a substantial number and independently reported by multiple outlets.
If so, it would account for the deviation from the pattern of terror attacks established previously by the indigenous al Qaeda group, which has been to murder foreign tourists by suicide bombing or in one case, by strafing them with gunfire. Kidnapping foreign female aid workers is a standard and current tactic of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. The arrival and amassing of foreign terror operatives in Sa’ada was certainly not a haphazard occurrance, and this may be not either.
The drug dealers story also seem a reasonable explanation, and it has a lot of resonance on the ground, but it wouldn’t account for the torture and mutilation. The story is that a large shipment of drugs was confiscated by security, who refused to release the drugs back to the dealers after negotiations. The kidnapping was a method of leveraging the talks. The kidnapping of nine persons is certainly the work of a group with prepared logistics, not a temporarily insane person overcome with jihaddist fervor and armed with a jambia.
If the back story relates to negotiations over confiscated drugs, it would account for the Yemeni government’s early and conflicting announcements of the kidnappng itself and the rush to blame the Houthis. As we know, many drug smuggling rings have some association with and support of regime affiliated individuals. The concerns of the Yemeni mafia often run counter to standard governmental administration and violently conflict with other aspects of the regime (like the Coast Guard). There’s big money involved in drug smuggling in Yemen; one shipment of hashish confiscated after an external intel tip had a street value of USD 20 million.
Then of course, as with all terror attacks in Yemen, there is the false flag theory- where some element of the Yemeni security has involvement. This thinking shakes out into two forms- 1) subverted security directs and/or provides logistical assistance to al Qaeda and 2) deliberate acts by the Yemeni government under the guise of al Qaeda (or in this case the Houthi rebels) to manipulate Western sentiment and analysis. In the current scenario, the regime by blaming the rebels for the kidnapping ultimately legitimizes the resumption of the Sa’ada war and gains recognition of the rebels as “terrorists”, something the international community has not done. It also would serve, as it has, to take oxygen away from the growing southern protests and calls for dissolution of the unified Yemeni state. The “false flag” conceptualization as an overall theory of Yemeni government practice has been advanced in Yemen by persons ranging from al Qaeda operatives themselves to mainstream opposition leaders and the former president of South Yemen Ali Salem Beidh.
Independent: The bodies of three women hostages found in Yemen are believed to show signs of torture and extensive mutilation, it emerged yesterday as security officials investigated whether the reasons for the killings were religious rather than purely political.
Two of the murdered women belonged to a Bible school in Germany and had links with a Baptist charity operating in Yemen. The third victim was a Korean who worked for an aid organisation with religious affiliations.
Diplomatic sources said that the savage way the murders were committed did not conform to hostage-taking scenarios associated with a local Shia group, the Houthis, who the Yemeni authorities are blaming, or al-Qa’ida and their associates, who the Americans say have been infiltrating the country.
