Al Qaeda executing chaos strategy in Yemen

NY Times:

The ancient port city of Aden is now virtually surrounded by roving gangs of Islamist militia fighters — some linked to Al Qaeda — who have captured at least two towns, stormed prisons and looted banks and military depots in southern Yemen.

Yet the Yemeni government, still busy fighting unarmed protesters farther north, has done little to stop these jihadists. Members of the military, the police and local officials have fled their posts across much of southern Yemen. The country’s American-trained counterterrorism unit has not been deployed. It is no surprise that many Yemenis believe the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, intended it all to happen.

Asked whether the jihadists could soon attack or even overwhelm this strategic coastal city of 800,000, Gen. Muhammad al-Somli — the one commander who has made any serious effort to fight them — said, “I cannot rule anything out.” The governor of neighboring Abyan Province, Saleh al-Zawari, who fled almost a month ago after militants captured the provincial capital, said the area would turn into “another Taliban state like Afghanistan” if something were not done soon.

Yemeni government officials blame the rising chaos on the political crisis, which has kept Mr. Saleh’s forces in Sana, the capital. But interviews with local people here suggest that Mr. Saleh himself — now recovering in Saudi Arabia from wounds suffered in an attack on his palace mosque — is at the root of the problem. His government, based in the north, has for years carried out brutal and discriminatory policies toward the people of south Yemen. The northern military commanders who dominate his army are widely hated and increasingly isolated here, incapable of carrying out the kind of counterinsurgency operations that could ease the crisis.

And given the long history of backdoor collusion between Al Qaeda and Yemen’s security agencies, it is impossible to know whether Mr. Saleh or his surrogates are actively encouraging the jihadists as a scare tactic, or merely tolerating them. The United States is now urging Mr. Saleh to cede power so that the current political stalemate can come to and end, but it was not clear whether that would happen anytime soon.

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Many residents of Zinjibar say they were appalled by the Yemeni military’s quick retreat from the town and other areas in Abyan Province, just north and east of here.

“These Al Qaeda people — they are mostly kids, young men,” said Ali Omar al-Qurshi, 49, camped out on the cement floor of a school in Aden along with several hundred other displaced people. “Are you telling me the army can’t defeat them? It’s a very strange thing. Honestly, we feel Ali Abdullah Saleh is behind it.”

Some officials from the town said that they had no choice but to leave, and they denied that they had received orders to do so.

“It was a war — they came with so many armed men,” Mr. Zawari, the governor of Abyan Province, said as he sat in an empty hotel lobby here. “They took advantage of the situation. Everything is divided now, the government, the army.”

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There are some similarities to how the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. It is a strategy that al Qaeda attempted but failed to execute in Iraq. The Yemeni army should be able to recapture the cities. Al Qaeda does not have the force to space ration to control territory.

There are also some opportunities for the US to attack al Qaeda operatives who are out in the open now. I am surprised there have not been more drone attacks in recent days.