New al-Qaeda leader emerges in Yemen, after Tariq Al-Dhahab killed in clashes over elections and power

Kaid Al-Dhahab, seems to be grooming himself as the new leader of Al-Qaeda after his brother Tariq was killed in clashes with a senior brother over ruling their areas, said a local tribal leader on Thursday.

After al-Qaeda leader Tariq al-Dhahab was killed his brother Kaid emerged as a new leader.

 “Now Kaid is the one who is regrouping Al-Qaeda elements after his brother Tariq was killed,” said the tribal leader from Kaifa tribe, Zaid Al-Reyami.

 Kaifa tribe is part of the Al-Dhahab family tribe in the province of Al-Baidha. A name calling erupted between Tariq Al-Dhahab, top leader of Al-Qaeda in Radaa’ and his brother Hizam, the leader of Kaifa tribe.

It started between the two brothers immediately after two officials of elections and four bodyguards were killed by Tariq’s militants of Al-Qaeda.  The name calling and shouting erupted between the two brothers immediately after two officials of elections and four bodyguards were killed by Tariq’s militants of Al-Qaeda.

 “When Sheik Hizam failed to convince his brother Tariq to send away his gunmen from their villages, he killed him and went to his fort,” said Al-Reyami. The fight between the two brothers happened about midnight on Wednesday.  About two hours before that, Al-Qaeda operatives of Tariq, killed two senior officials working in the committee of elections in Al-Baidha province and four of their bodyguards.

 Tariq’s followers went and surrounded the family’s fort in the village of Al-Manaseh , where Hizam tried to hide after he killed his brother Tariq. The clashes continued until about 10 am on Thursday. 

“When Sheik Hizam was killed, the clashes quieted down and tribal mediation started to prevent any further fighting,” said Al-Reyami. “Now it’s quiet but tensions are still high, and we’ll try to prevent any further bloodshed.”

 The government’s special forces surrounded the areas but did not interfere. The brothers Tariq, Hizam, and Ahmed Al-Dhahab were killed. At least two nephews, Ahmed Ali and Ali Hizam, were also killed in the family fight. Ahmed Saif, who is a respected cousin, is trying now to prevent any further killing between the family members.


 Kaid and Nabil, who were fighting with their brothers, are now trying to regroup Al-Qaeda elements.  Nabil is the brother who was released by the Yemeni government earlier this year in return for Al-Qaeda withdrawing from Radaa’.

  The tribal leader Hizam was the guarantor that his brother, Tariq, would send away his gunmen from the areas. Tariq not only broke his promise to his brother Hizam and the government but he sent his gunmen to kill the election officials.

 The top leader of Al-Qaeda in Al-Baidah province, Tariq Al-Dhahab, was killed early morning Thursday, after election officials were killed by Al-Qaeda operatives, said security sources. Al-Qaeda denounces the presidential elections, to be held on February 21, 2012. Posters of elections are almost everywhere in Yemen. No elections fever, because there is only one candidate to be elected.

 Instead, there seems to be a big determination from Yemeni political players and their outside supporters to make this a success despite all challenges of such an exceptional election. In the posters you can read slogans like “Vote to build new Yemen” and “Election is the only way for power-transfer.” “New President for new Yemen,” is found written under huge pictures of the only candidate Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi.


 Pictures of the outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh are also put together with some of the pictures of Hadi to encourage Saleh’s supporters to vote.  Three considerable groups refuse the nationally, regionally and internationally supported presidential election.

Two of these three groups try to prevent elections by rioting and violence anywhere they can.  Although the three groups represent only a small minority, the main Yemeni political players and their outside supporters are concerned of any violence that may stop or spoil the election, the essence of the political solution to rescue the country from a civil war.

The three groups that refuse elections are: the Shiite fighters, known as Al-Houthis in the northern province of Saada, and those who demand the separation and independent states between the north and south as it was before 1990, known as Hirak.

Al-Qaeda is the third group that refuses not only elections, but also every political thing outside their thinking of establishing a Taliban-style Islamic Emirates in the framework of their final dream to establish what they call the Islamic Caliphate.

 The top leader of Al-Houthi Shiite fighters, Abdul Malik Al Houthi, declared clearly earlier this week, he and his supporters will boycott the elections but he also said he would not prevent people in his areas from voting if they like.

The Hirak, the separatist movement in the south, is not one united effort. Some leaders declared they would participate in the elections because the new elected President will be from the south and, they say, the problems that made them demand the separation will be solved after the elections. Another group within Hirak, declared they would boycott the elections.

 The least but the most dangerous fraction within Hirak, is that group that threatened to prevent the elections by force. On Tuesday February 14, a 28-year old man from this violent group within Hirak, named Amir Othman Al-Yari killed himself early in the morning when he failed to plant explosives inside the place of the elections committee in the city of Aden.

No one else was injured because he was alone.

This violent group is rejected by the majority of the separatists and it is loyal to the German-based former president of the south, Ali Salem Al-Baidh, who is reportedly receiving support from Iran. For Al-Qaeda, the election and solving the political crisis is not in its interest because it expands only in the chaos not in the stability that election will supposedly bring.

To frighten people from participating in the election, Al-Qaeda beheaded three of its members and hanged and crucified one of them in a public place in a Taliban-Style Al-Qaeda-declared Islamic Emirate town in the south, about one week before election day.


Two Yemenis were executed by Al-Qaeda for charges of spying for American, Saudi and Yemeni intelligence, according to Al Qaeda statements after the executions. 

The Taliban-style executions took place in two different towns controlled by Al-Qaeda south of Yemen in presence of hundreds of local people and Al-Qaeda operatives.

An Al-Qaeda appointed judge was reading the verdict against Yemeni Ramzi Mohammed Al-Areeki, 30, early morning Sunday February 12, in the same place where American drones killed the 16-year old son of the American-Yemeni slain extremist cleric Anwar Al Awlaki, in Azzan, Shabwa, in southern Yemen.


 Families of the victims of that drone attack, which happened last October, were among the sympathizers and local residents who were chanting “Allahu Akabar, Allahu Akbar” as Al-Areeki was being beheaded by the sword. For the second, the 28-year old Yemeni, Saleh Ahmed Saleh Al Jamily was executed and crucified close to Khanfar Stadium in Jaar, in the southern province of Abyan.

 In the two Al-Qaeda-held towns, the militants distributed to local residents hundreds of copies of what they called confessions from the executed Yemenis. According to the confessions, Al-Areeki said that two Saudi intelligence officials recruited him to spy on Al-Qaeda’s movements and activities in Yemen.

 Hussein Bin Saad Al-Kahtani, and Ibrahim Sulaiman Al-Dailami met him in the Saudi city of Abha and agreed with him to work as a spy in return for money. Al-Areeki was the agent who sent the information about the son of Anwar Al-Awlaki, Abdul Rehman, and a number of Al-Qaeda operatives, who were in Mafrak Azzan last October before the US drone killed them.


The second man executed, Al-Jamily, said in the confessions that the Yemeni intelligence officer Mueed Nasser Abdullah recruited him to collect information about nine Al-Qaeda operatives including three prominent leaders who were killed by US drones in Zinjubar, Abyan and Mareb.

 He gave the information that led to the killing of Ali Bin Saeed Bin Jamil, and Abu Osama Ali Mubarak Feras in Zinjubar late last year.

Jamil was from Abida tribe of Marib province, and Feras was from Jehm tribe from the same province. Al-Jamily, who is originally from Mareb, also said he was behind the killing of seven other Al-Qaeda militants from Mareb over the last few years.

 Earlier this month, in Zinjubar, Al-Qaeda executed a third man called Abu Eisa Hassan Naji Al-Nakeeb, who was the money man for the two executed agents.

  Al Qaeda threatened to do the same thing to anyone who gives information about them to “the enemies of Allah.”

Al-Qaeda also declared names of three men who, as they said, still work with the Yemeni and American intelligence.    

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