Unpacking Terrorism, Revolution and Insurgency in Yemen: Real and Imagined Threats to Regional Security
Recent months have seen a seeming escalation in the international threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a terrorist network that has taken Yemen as its regional base of operations. In light of recent attacks, and resulting embassy closures, Yemen is a rising priority in the Western-led War on Terror. However, this has resulted in a side-lining of other security threats in Yemen, which may cause serious challenges to the authority of the Yemeni Government. In reality, the role of AQAP has been heavily manipulated throughout Yemen’s contemporary history: this was most evident during the 2011 Arab Spring, when both sides in the conflict claimed that Al Qaeda operatives were working with members of the other. Two years later, the true nature of the AQAP threat in Yemen is rarely questioned by external observers, yet remains largely shrouded in mystery. There is a need for more critical approaches to the AQAP challenges, which take the broader context of Yemeni security into account.
Yemen's War on Terror
Yemen has emerged of late as one of the more fertile locations for Al Qaeda activity. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate, the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan (IAA), has executed a number of spectacular attacks against Western interests in recent years. It was responsible for the 1998 kidnapping of sixteen Western tourists in the southern province of Abyan, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, and an assault on the French tanker the Limburg in 2002, among other attacks. Despite these international strikes, the IAA is the classic Al Qaeda affiliate: a local phenomenon that assists the larger jihadi network in its war against the West. Historically, Yemen has often been the site of proxy battles among foreign powers, from Pan-Arabists to communists. Not surprisingly, Al Qaeda has also used Yemen as a staging ground. The network has been active in Yemen since its inception: Al Qaeda’s first-ever attack took place in Aden in 1992. What started as a loose network of Yemeni Afghans—soldiers who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then brought radical Islam back to Yemen when they returned home in the early 1990s—slowly became a node in the Al Qaeda system. More than fourteen years after the end of the Soviet withdrawal in 2003, government officials in Yemen confirmed that several senior Al Qaeda operatives were still at large in Yemen, with dozens of lesser militants roaming the countryside. 1 While Yemen has cooperated with the United States on counterterrorism issues, making significant arrests and thwarting several plots, Al Qaeda is nonetheless likely to maintain deep roots there for years to come.
Stereotypes and Political Styles: Islamists and Tribesfolk in Yemen
An outbreak of fighting in May 1994 put Yemen in the world's headlines when, from one point of view, the unity of Yemen proclaimed in May four years earlier was confirmed by force. One topic which straddles that period has been Islah, an Islamist party of unusual form. The present article explores the rhetorical axes that defined Islah. Briefly put, a supposedly “fundamentalist,” even “radical,” party, was in fact more a party of the establishment center. Its public identity, however, depends on terms and arguments that are centered elsewhere than Yemen, and they misrepresent, to many Yemenis as to others, what is happening. The problem is not resolved by such standard academic moves as avoiding “stereotypes” or sticking to “local terms.” The terms at issue are widely shared among Yemenis and foreigners alike.