A Yemeni soldier mans a checkpoint in Sanaa, on July 21, 2013 (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]
With the recent closure of American embassies across the world, focused on a threat from Yemen, it seems appropriate to look at the threat that is said to be lurking in Yemen’s rugged terrain: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Despite the media spotlight on the embassy closures, the stream of American drone attacks on Yemen has continued in the background, with the explosion of drone-fired missiles and bombs an omnipresent feature.
Among those killed in America’s relentless efforts to stamp out the organization was its deputy chief, who was one of reportedly forty AQAP suspects killed in the recent drone attacks carried out over a series of ten days.
The Saudi national Ibrahim Al-Rubaish, deputy head of AQAP, was the second target of attacks that took place on July 30, 2013 in the Nakabah area, in the Sayeed district of the southern province of Shabwah.
Earlier this month, amid the media frenzy over imminent terror attacks, the Yemeni government published the names of twenty-five men labeled as the terrorists behind recent assassinations of security and military officers, as well as the terror threats that caught the attention of the world’s media.
At the top of that list was Al-Rubaish, who replaced another slain Saudi, Saeed Shihri, as deputy chief of AQAP. If the death of Al-Rubaish is confirmed, this would be a significant success to come out of the recent drone attacks.
“I am not excluding the death of Ibrahim Al-Rubaish in the Nakabah drone strike, but we have to wait for statements from Al Qaeda,” said AQAP expert Abdul Razak Al-Jamal, a Yemeni researcher who has gained access into the inner circles of the organization and interviewed many leaders of Al-Qaeda.
Security sources also said that three of the twenty-five wanted men were arrested this week in the neighborhood of Sunainah, a western district of the capital Sana’a, where some young people have begun calling themselves Shabab Mujahid (Jihadist Youth). There are at least two other similar neighborhoods in the city: Musaik and Sawan, known to many locals as centers of jihadist activity.
Although the US embassy remained closed and non-essential staff had been evacuated, meetings between US diplomats and Yemeni officials have continued. Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi met US Ambassador Gerald Feierstein on Tuesday August 13, the day after Eid Al-Fitr holidays ended.
The minister of defense, Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, sought to play down the terror threat after the meeting between Hadi and Feierstein, describing it as “limited,” and saying that the security forces had dealt with them wisely and capably, and would continue to do so.
Security sources, however, said that authorities are taking seriously some specific threats released this week by AQAP’s top leader Nasser Al-Wuhayshi to storm prisons and rescue his men. The sources said that approximately sixty Al-Qaeda prisoners were transferred from the intelligence service’s maximum security prisons in Sana’a and Aden to secret places in the country as a precautionary measure.
“We ask God to make us a cause for unlocking your incarceration and relieving your agony,” Wuhayshi said in a statement published Monday, August 12, on an AQAP-linked website that was described by experts as reliable.
Al-Jamal said the statement was an attempt to remind the world that AQAP was still active, and raise the morale of its remaining fighters and give hope to prisoners and sympathizers. He also described the terror alerts issued by the Yemeni and US governments as scaremongering designed to justify drone attacks.
“The US and Yemen governments were very skillful in creating justifications for these drone attacks this time, only to reduce the reactions of the people,” said Jamal. “The new thing this time is that the Americans, with Yemeni cooperation, recorded many targets and they wanted to strike them all at once, but before the strikes they were concerned about angry reactions,” he added.
The recent drone attacks caused a lot of anger and resentment, especially after Yemenis saw drones flying over Sana’a during the Eid holidays. However, while AQAP is able to operate within the country, Yemenis hold a range of opinions about the organization and its members.
