Daily Times

Collateral damage is a jihadist’s best friend. In Yemen, as Operation Decisive Storm intensifies, there can only be one winner: the terrorist recruitment agenda. Bombs are indifferent to friends or foes and any civilian deaths will be celebrated by al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). The pan-Arab, Saudi-led coalition seeks to erase the Shia Houthi rebels or force them to negotiate. However, with no infantry support, the vanquished Houthis will simply give way to the jihadists, who lurk in the periphery. In the latter case, there is the precedent of last year’s UN-brokered peace deal that quickly went south.
This is a classic catch-22 situation. The Houthi insurgency in north Yemen has been long drawn and seesawing. It has steadily gained steam since 2004 but was filed away as manageable chaos. While Shia ex-dictator Abdullah Saleh helmed Yemen, his royal namesake, the Saudi King Abdullah, was happy to live and let live. The US also happily picked off local al Qaeda targets with its drone programme. Even when the Arab Spring claimed Saleh in 2011, no one panicked. The new Sunni president, Mansur Hadi, was Saleh’s former deputy and the US and Saudis expected business as usual.
Somewhere along the line, this equation changed. In September 2014, the Houthis seized Sanaa, the Yemeni capital and Hadi fled southwards to Aden. Amid his pleas for outside intervention, the rebels marched down country and took the city of Taiz. When they appeared on Aden’s horizon, the Yemeni president set sail for Saudi Arabia. This jolted the Saudis and the new King Salman into action. Now the threat of renegade fighters mobilising south of their border and indeed crossing over became very real. Much worse was the thought that Iran, their schismatic nemesis, could gain spiritual ground nearby for the long haul.
Historically, sectarian strife in Yemen has been a non-issue and the two main sects, Shia Zaidi and Sunni Shafi, are considered moderate. The rebels themselves, of the northern al Houthi clan, emerged in the 1990s as a peaceful theological movement. Supposedly, the US invasion of Iraq radicalised them and a subsequent face-off with then President Saleh led to open hostilities. Ironically, before the Iranian ayatollahs, Saudi Arabia aided and sheltered a Shia Yemeni King in the 1960s. Imam al-Badr was overthrown by the republican leader Abdullah al-Sallal and the country plunged into a long civil war.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a lesser-known outpost of the original terror outfit. It became newsworthy when one of the Charlie Hebdo perpetrators reportedly trained with the group in Yemen. AQAP is happy to fan sectarian flames, hoping for an Iraq reprise. Many Yemeni Sunnis are disgruntled with the rise of Shia Houthis and want in on the fight. In a recent show of power, the group overran the southern city of Al-Houta before being expelled by government forces. Fernando Carvajal, from the University of Exeter, believes that by framing this conflict as a “sectarian war on apostates (Houthis),” AQAP wants to “gain world exposure” for itself and spiritual leader Ma’moon Abdulhamid Hatem.
IS also joined the sectarian fray with a bang. It engineered the recent suicide bombings in Sanaa’s mosques, which killed over 140 Shias. Its Al-Bayan radio, meanwhile, took credit for the execution of 29 Yemeni soldiers in Al-Houta. US intelligence officials admit that IS is successfully recruiting among Sunni extremists but those are “midlevel AQAP militants who are sympathetic but have not broken ranks”. However, they admit the group’s superior finances, with over three million dollars earned daily, may help them win over potential AQAP recruits. IS is also happy with the global focus shift towards Yemen. With many regional and international powers contributing to the Saudi campaign, IS’ embattled fighters in Syria and Iraq can take a breather.
More alarmingly, recent reports suggest that both groups may become allies in Yemen. Some mainstream politicians even approve of IS, with Mohammed Al-Yadomi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, demanding political forces in the country welcome the group. Tellingly, AQAP recently expressed its support for IS in Iraq and Syria, and referred to its fighters as “brothers”. If both elevate the Yemen conflict to a new ground zero for global jihad, extremist recruits will start pouring in from all over. Yemen, Carvajal adds, could become the new “centre of gravity for jihadists”. Additionally, with the like-minded Somalian al Shahbab just across the Gulf of Aden, sea piracy could ground all maritime trade through the important Mandeb Strait.
As with Syria, the Saudis and US let a problem linger long past its solve-by date. Even if the rebels are persuaded to ceasefire, the graver consequences of a semi-failed state have surfaced. The only fighting force capable of tackling the jihadists, former President Saleh’s loyalist army units, have sided with the Houthis on his orders and will, for now, focus on getting him back into power. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has reported $ 500 million worth of US armament missing in Yemen and the jihadists may well own a piece of that loot.
A far more ominous outcome was recently suggested by the Houthis themselves on Iranian FARS news. Mon’em al-Qurashi, of the Houthis Executive Committee, threatened with “conducting martyrdom seeking operations inside Saudi Arabia” if the Kingdom did not back off. Now, who better to train them in such warfare than the sultans of suicide jackets, AQAP and IS? As farfetched as this sounds, desperate men do desperate things, and insurgents are no different. If the Saudi coalition harasses them enough and Iran has as little sway as it claims, Yemen could permanently go down the rogue pipe. After all, even in a game of semantics, the US “infidel” trumps all common enemy definitions.

The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad