POLITICS, LIKE nature, abhors a vacuum. With a five-year rebellion by Shia tribesmen in the north, separatist protests and “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” training camps flourishing with impunity in the south, the writ of Yemen’s government hardly runs outside its capital. And terrorist recruiters thrive. Despite limited success in government raids against al-Qaeda over the new year, and the reported, though unconfirmed, death of Abdul Malik al-Houthis, leader of the northern rebels, the prospects for breaking the cycle of violence or growing grip of jihadism in this weak, deeply conservative country, the poorest in the Arab world, look grim.
Over the weekend both the US and Britain announced that their embassies in the capital Sanaa would be closed because of the enhanced terrorism threat. The US has been training Yemeni security forces, and supplying them with money and intelligence, and had already promised to step up its engagement by supporting a new anti-terrorism unit and doubling aid this year. There have been reports of US drones being used to support operations against al-Qaeda, and one is blamed for significant civilian deaths in mid-December.
And now the local branch of al-Qaeda has been identified as the recruiter and supplier of would-be plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. President Obama has promised that the group, alleged to number between 200 and 300 inside Yemen but involved in increasingly effective attacks on the government and western targets, will be “held to account”. But increased military involvement by the US and Saudi allies, even without boots on the ground, is deeply resented and may serve only further to isolate the government and provide recruits for al-Qaeda or the country’s rebel groups.
“Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” has thrived in the last couple of years after several years in the shade. It has been energised by a new leadership drawn from participants in a local spectacular – and suspiciously easy – jail escape in 2006, and the recruitment of several Saudi former Guantánamo veterans. Its ranks have been swelled by Somali refugees, experienced Yemeni former fighters from Iraq, and Saudi exiles, its influence, by cash and teachers for the poor.
For the US the challenge is – not unlike its engagement in Pakistan – battling by proxy an elusive enemy, securely hidden in rugged and rebellious tribal homelands, and propping up an inefficient resource-starved government. A dangerous hornets nest.