Now that Saudi Arabia has disengaged itself from Jihadists in Syria over fear that such a policy will in the longer term actually generate more instability across the region, analysts have come out of the woodwork, warning that Syria’s veteran jihadists could now be flocking to Yemen.
If the United States of America and the Saudi government thought prudent to back moderate militias in Syria by offering military aid and training, it appears now that such policies could have played directly into the hands of al-Qaeda, as the group found in Syria rebel fighters a precious recruitment pool. Hardened by months of ground operations, well-trained and very capable Jihadist are said to have been enrolled by the terror group in order to feed its global terror war machine.
Sources within Yemen intelligence and military services have told media under cover of anonymity that Yemen’s recent run-ins with terrorists in the capital, Sana’a were actually the result of such a terror migration.
With yet more fighters at its disposal, al-Qaeda Yemen (AQAP) is looking to implement the next stage of its Islamic program by bringing down the country’s institutions and lines of defence as it prepares to self-proclaim the inception of a new Islamic caliphate.
As per reported by Reuters last week, “Dozens of Saudi Islamist militants have left the battlefields of Syria and Iraq for Yemen, where their experience appears to have contributed to a spate of lethal al Qaeda attacks.”
The recent increase in both frequency and magnitude of al-Qaeda attacks in Yemen act as a confirmation to such theory. One only needs to look back at al-Qaeda’s assault against the Defence Ministry last December or the numerous attempted take-overs of military bases and outposts in the southern territories to understand that the phenomenon is linked to the arrival of new terror recruits into Yemen.
Keen to underscore the severity of the threat posed to Yemen, officials told Reuters, “Now the Saudi who comes here is an experienced fighter from the war in Iraq or Syria and is ready to be martyred … They know how to build weapons and bombs, and they are teaching others.”
A geo-strategic treasure, Yemen has become al-Qaeda’s coveted crown jewel. Should the group managed to establish a permanent base in the impoverished, or better yet, succeed into affirming itself as a sovereign state, it would be able to coordinate attacks across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It would also have geographic oversight over the World’s oil route: Bab al-Mendab.
Looking back at al-Qaeda’s increasing activities in Yemen southern territories it is not difficult to see a pattern emerge. Al-Qaeda has its eyes set over Yemen’s richest and most strategic region – the South.
Analysts all seem to agree that terror migration has become too much of an issue to ignore, especially since the battlefield has moved to Yemen, the poorest and most unstable nation in the Arabian Peninsula. A political and social tinder box, Yemen stands at a critical juncture of its history, something al-Qaeda is determined to exploit to its advantage.
It is crucial to remember is that if al-Qaeda has indeed seen its recruiting pool expand exponentially thanks to Syria, southerners’ frustration with Sana’a central government could yet prove to be a determining factor in the terror group’s future. If al-Qaeda could manage to broker a tactical alliance with die-hard secessionists, offering al-Harak the military backing it so desperately lack to harden its secession claim, Sana’a would face an insurmountable beast.
If back in 2012 at the height of Yemen’s political crisis al-Qaeda managed to established several strongholds in the southern province of Abyan, one can only wonder how much damage the terror group could inflict the state should it gain popular ground support.
Abdulrazzaq al-Jamal, a Yemeni journalist who has interviewed AQAP members told Reuters he believes AQAP is aligning its strategy with that of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Giving that ISIL actively seeks to establish itself as a sovereign entity by creating its own state, Yemen’s terror threat could just have gone up a notch.
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