Tribes and Global Jihadism by Collombier Virginie; Roy Olivier;

Author:Collombier, Virginie; Roy, Olivier;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2017-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Strategy changes: al-Qaeda’s second generation

In Yemen’s extreme north, AQAP has suffered a disastrous defeat from which it has not yet recovered. However, in the southern and eastern regions—notably Abyan, Shabwah and Ḥaḍramawt—al-Qaeda has managed to expand enormously. This has mainly been for two reasons: after 2011 both the political situation in Yemen and al-Qaeda’s strategic approach underwent fundamental changes. AQAP has been able to expand its support among the population through the military threat emanating from the Ḥūthīs’ expansion and its increasing use of ‘soft approaches’ in Yemen’s tribal and non-tribal areas.

After 2011, Yemen’s ‘Change’ Revolution led to profound transformations in the country’s political landscape. range of complex issues merged at the national level: the Ḥūthī conflict in the north; the secessionist Ḥirāk movement in the south; the fight against corruption; and partisan, sectarian, civil society, gender and youth movements. The political turmoil caused mass defections and the resignations of politicians and military officers formerly loyal to the Ṣāliḥ regime. Among the defectors was General ʿAlī Muḥsin, who in March 2011 joined the revolution and change axis.34 In November 2011, after much prevarication, President Ṣāliḥ agreed to leave office under the terms of a ‘transition agreement’ mediated by the Gulf Cooperation Council. This so-called GCC initiative forced Ṣāliḥ to resign and regulated the transfer of the presidency to former vice president ʿAbdrabbuh Manṣūr Hādī in return for domestic immunity for Ṣālih. UN-sponsored transition roadmap included three principal tasks: holding a National Dialogue Conference (NDC), addressing issues of transitional justice, and both unifying and reforming the security sector. However, after the conclusion of the NDC in January 2014 the political transition process slowed down and political decision-making again began to follow the old exclusive patterns rather than the new required inclusive patterns.35 The confrontation between the Ḥūthīs and the interim government hardened as the Ḥūthīs accused the government of purposefully delaying the transition process. Meanwhile, the Ḥūthīs—now allied with their former nemesis Ṣāliḥ against interim President Hādī—continuously expanded their military dominance. In September 2014 they seized the capital. While continuing to expand their dominion southwards and eastwards, they began to press forcefully into the Sunni-dominated areas of lower and eastern Yemen.

The expansion of the Ḥūthīs into territories that were predominantly Sunni created a new threat situation and pushed some of their adversaries into the arms of jihadi groups like AQAP and, later on, the Islamic State (we will return to this). The majority of Yemen’s population, including its tribal strata, remained opposed to all forms of extremism, and many tribes and tribal militias remained opposed to AQAP.36 Nevertheless, the front line of the anti- Ḥūthī fight combined with the power vacuum left by the failing Yemeni state became the opportunity for AQAP to earn de facto acceptance in some tribal areas because of the fighting capabilities that jihadis were able to bring to bear against the Ḥūthīs. The Ḥūthī expansion helped AQAP to join with and integrate into some tribes, as both had a common goal: the fight against the Ḥūthīs.

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