Showdown with al Qaeda

The terrorist attack on the US embassy in Yemen last Wednesday which killed 19 Yemenis including six attackers has shown a strong and serious confrontation between al Qaeda militants and the Yemeni government. 

The attack, in which no American diplomats were harmed, came weeks after threats from armed groups threatened to take revenge for Hamza Al Quaiti, a self-proclaimed al Qaeda leader, who was killed with four other operatives in a large scale confrontation with Yemeni security forces in Tarim, Hadhramout, in the east of the country on August 11th.

In the early morning of Wednesday September 17th, two car bombs with six men wearing explosive belts on board exploded nearby the gate of the heavily fortified American embassy killing themselves, eight other Yemeni guards, and five people who were waiting to enter the embassy. Two women were among the dead, one Indian, and the other was Yemeni American national. In addition to the explosives, the car was loaded with gas cylinders which made a series of small explosions after the main explosion.

Despite the fact that an unknown group calling itself the Organization of Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility hours after the attack, investigations in which FBI investigators are taking part, did not directly accuse anybody or reveal any further details on the attack; the biggest in Yemen since the suicide bombing on the American USS Cole destroyer in harbor of Aden in 2000 in which 17American sailors were killed. 

The government arrested about 30 men suspected to have links with terrorist groups and six others accused of releasing internet statements claiming responsibility for the US embassy attack and threatening with more attacks against the British, Saudi Arabia and Emirates embassies in Yemen. The British embassy closed after that threat.  The government officials considered the attack a retaliatory act for its “continuous crack down” on the al Qaeda militants.

However, Abdul Elah Haidar, an analyst specialized in terrorism affairs, said the attack on the American embassy was evidence that al Qaeda presence was getting stronger and stronger.

“Al Qaeda is no longer in the remote and isolated areas only as it was in the past, it is everywhere now including the capital Sana’a,” Haidar told the Yemen Observer.

“The attackers of the embassy came from Sana’a, and they were not known to the security agencies, they were new faces,” said Haider

He attributed the increasing activity of al Qaeda and its recruitment of the new elements to the support of the tribesmen who provide a safe haven for the al Qaeda operatives and fugitives.

“The tribesmen believe in what al Qaeda people say more than what the government says. Al Qaeda speaks about the issues in the minds of the people like Palestine and Iraq,” said Haidar.

The extremist religious discourse was behind the recent violent attacks in Yemen including the last one against the US embassy, says Ahmed al Sufee, director of the Yemeni institute for development of democracy, a local NGO. “We should think of removing the sources of terrorism which are related to our system of education, mosques, schools and curriculums,” al Sufee told the Yemen Observer.

The so-called new generation of al Qaeda in Yemen was blamed for the attack on the US embassy by Nasser al Bahri, alias Abu Jandal, who worked as the  body guard of Osama bin Laden for about three years in Afghanistan before he came back to Yemen where was arrested immediately after the USS  Cole bombing in October 2000. "It's the act of the new generation who do not understand what Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda wants," Abu Jandal told the Observer.

"This is not the act of al Qaeda I know, the strike of the embassy had no strategic goals, it was a random and childish act," he said in interview in Sana'a three days after the attack.

"Any action carried out by the real al Qaeda so far always had strategic goals," said al Bahri who has been under loose house arrest since he was released from prison in 2002. 

Related Content

•  Labor laws to be amended
•  Establishment of Arab Open University in Yemen discussed
•  NPC, UNFPA discuss population issues
•  Yemen to participate in Indo-Arab cultural gathering in Delhi
•  Course discussing risks of child trafficking held
•  President visits Abyan
•  Yemen, Jordan discuss developing agricultural exports
•  Official Yemeni press institutions joins GPA
•  Murderers of Judge al-Shuaib and American citizen al-Saidi sentenced
•  AIDS patients speak of their agony