AP Investigation: US allies, al-Qaida battle rebels in Yemen
https://apnews.com/f38788a561d74ca78c77cb43612d50da/Yemen:-US-allies-spin-deals-with-al-Qaida-in-war-on-rebels
ATAQ, Yemen (AP) — Again and again over the past
two years, a military coalition led by Saudi
Arabia and backed by the United States has
claimed it won decisive victories that drove
al-Qaida militants from their strongholds across
Yemen and shattered their ability to attack the West.
Here’s what the victors did not disclose: many of
their conquests came without firing a shot.
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=177746#177746
That’s because the coalition cut secret deals
with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key
cities and towns and letting others retreat with
weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash, an
investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.
These compromises and alliances have allowed
al-Qaida militants to survive to fight another
day — and risk strengthening the most dangerous
branch of the terror network that carried out the
9/11 attacks. Key participants in the pacts said
the U.S. was aware of the arrangements and held off on any drone strikes.
The black al-Qaida flag is sprayed on the wall of
a damaged school in Taiz. (AP Photo)
The deals uncovered by the AP reflect the
contradictory interests of the two wars being
waged simultaneously in this southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.
In one conflict, the U.S. is working with its
Arab allies — particularly the United Arab
Emirates — with the aim of eliminating the branch
of extremists known as al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula, or AQAP. But the larger mission is to
win the civil war against the Houthis,
Iranian-backed Shiite rebels. And in that fight,
al-Qaida militants are effectively on the same
side as the Saudi-led coalition — and, by extension, the United States.
“Elements of the U.S. military are clearly aware
that much of what the U.S. is doing in Yemen is
aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that,”
said Michael Horton, a fellow at the Jamestown
Foundation, a U.S. analysis group that tracks terrorism.
“However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia against what the U.S. views as
Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling
AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen,” Horton said.
The AP’s findings are based on reporting in Yemen
and interviews with two dozen officials,
including Yemeni security officers, militia
commanders, tribal mediators and four members of
al-Qaida’s branch. All but a few of those sources
spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing
reprisals. Emirati-backed factions, like most
armed groups in Yemen, have been accused of abducting or killing their critics.
Coalition-backed militias actively recruit
al-Qaida militants, or those who were recently
members, because they’re considered exceptional fighters, the AP found.
The coalition forces are comprised of a dizzying
mix of militias, factions, tribal warlords and
tribes with very local interests. And AQAP
militants are intertwined with many of them.
Adnan Rouzek, center, stands with fighters in Taiz. (AP Photo)
One Yemeni commander who was put on the U.S.
terrorism list for al-Qaida ties last year
continues to receive money from the UAE to run
his militia, his own aide told the AP. Another
commander, recently granted $12 million for his
fighting force by Yemen’s president, has a known
al-Qaida figure as his closest aide.
In one case, a tribal mediator who brokered a
deal between the Emiratis and al-Qaida even gave
the extremists a farewell dinner.
Horton said much of the war on al-Qaida by the
UAE and its allied militias is a “farce.”
“It is now almost impossible to untangle who is
AQAP and who is not since so many deals and alliances have been made,” he said.
The U.S. has sent billions of dollars in weapons
to the coalition to fight the Iran-backed
Houthis. U.S. advisers also give the coalition
intelligence used in targeting on-the-ground
adversaries in Yemen, and American jets provide
air-to-air refueling for coalition war planes.
The U.S. does not fund the coalition, however,
and there is no evidence that American money went to AQAP militants.
A look at al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, its
roots, motivations, and role in Yemen’s civil war. (AP Video/Peter Hamlin)
The U.S. is aware of an al-Qaida presence among
the anti-Houthi ranks, a senior American official
told reporters in Cairo earlier this year.
Because coalition members back militias with
hard-line Islamic commanders, “it’s very, very
easy for al-Qaida to insinuate itself into the
mix,” the official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity under the terms of the briefing.
More recently, the Pentagon vigorously denied any
complicity with al-Qaida militants.
“Since the beginning of 2017, we have conducted
more than 140 strikes to remove key AQAP leaders
and disrupt its ability to use ungoverned spaces
to recruit, train and plan operations against the
U.S. and our partners across the region,” Navy
Cmdr. Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, wrote in an email to the AP.
A senior Saudi official commented by saying that
the Saudi-led coalition “continues its commitment
to combat extremism and terrorism.”
An Emirati government spokesman did not reply to questions from the AP.
But on Monday, Emirati Minister of State for
Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that the
UAE-backed counter-terrorism strategy is working.
He said it had “removed” thousands of militants
and deprived them of safe havens.
AQAP is “at its weakest since 2012,” he wrote,
adding that the UAE and its allies “have all lost troops in the fight.”
The coalition began fighting in Yemen in 2015
after the Houthis overran the north, including
the capital, Sanaa. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are
determined to stop what they consider a move by
their nemesis, Iran, to take over Yemen, and
their professed aim is to restore the
internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Al-Qaida is leveraging the chaos to its advantage.
“The United States is certainly in a bind in
Yemen,” said Katherine Zimmerman, a research
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “It
doesn’t make sense that the United States has
identified al-Qaida as a threat, but that we have
common interests inside of Yemen and that, in
some places, it looks like we’re looking the other way.”
Within this complicated conflict, al-Qaida says
its numbers — which U.S. officials have estimated
at 6,000 to 8,000 members — are rising.
An al-Qaida commander who helps organize
deployments told the AP that the front lines
against the Houthis provide fertile ground to recruit new members.
The black al-Qaida flag and the slogan in Arabic
“al-Qaida passed here,” on the right wall, are
sprayed on a damaged school that was turned into
a religious court in the southern city of Taiz.
“Meaning, if we send 20, we come back with 100,” he said.
The well-known commander communicated with AP via
a secure messaging app on condition of anonymity
because he had no authorization from the group to talk to the news media.
___
The Associated Press reported this story with
help from a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
___
A FAREWELL DINNER FOR AL-QAIDA
In February, Emirati troops and their Yemeni
militia allies flashed victory signs to TV
cameras as they declared the recapture of
al-Said, a district of villages running through
the mountainous province of Shabwa — an area
al-Qaida had largely dominated for nearly three years.
It was painted as a crowning victory in a
months-long offensive, Operation Swift Sword,
that the Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef
al-Otaiba, had proclaimed would “disrupt the
terrorist organization’s network and degrade its
ability to conduct future attacks.”
The Pentagon, which assisted with a small number
of troops, echoed that promise, saying the
mission would weaken the group’s ability to use Yemen as a base.
But weeks before those forces’ entry, a string of
pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and
loaded with masked al-Qaida militants drove out
of al-Said unmolested, according to a tribal
mediator involved in the deal for their withdrawal.
The U.S. has killed al-Qaida’s top leaders in a
drone strike campaign that accelerated in recent
years. But in this victory — as in the others
touted by the coalition — the mediator said armed
U.S. drones were absent, despite the large, obvious convoy.
Under the terms of the deal, the coalition
promised al-Qaida members it would pay them to
leave, according to Awad al-Dahboul, the
province’s security chief. His account was
confirmed by the mediator and two Yemeni government officials.
Al-Dahboul said about 200 al-Qaida members
received payments. He did not learn the exact
amounts, but said he knew that 100,000 Saudi
rials ($26,000) were paid to one al-Qaida
commander — in the presence of Emiratis.
Under the accord, thousands of local tribal
fighters were to be enlisted in the UAE-funded
Shabwa Elite Force militia. For every 1,000
fighters, 50 to 70 would be al-Qaida members, the
mediator and two officials said.
Saleh bin Farid al-Awlaqi, a pro-Emirati tribal
leader who was the founder of one Elite Force
branch, denied any agreements were made. He said
he and others enticed young al-Qaida members in
Shabwa to defect, which weakened the group,
forcing it to withdraw on its own. He said about
150 fighters who defected were allowed into the
Elite Force, but only after they underwent a “repentance” program.
A former al-Qaida commander, Harith al-Ezzi,
walks through streets destroyed in fighting in
the southern Yemeni city of Taiz. (AP Photo)
The clearing of al-Qaida from Shabwa and other
provinces did not completely take place without
fighting. Clashes erupted in some villages,
usually with al-Qaida remnants that refused to play ball.
One former al-Qaida member told the AP that he
and his comrades turned down an offer of money
from the Emiratis. In response, he said, an Elite
Force squad besieged them in the town of Hawta until they withdrew.
Overall, deals that took place during both the
Obama and Trump administrations have secured
al-Qaida militants’ withdrawal from multiple
major towns and cities that the group seized in
2015, the AP found. The earliest pact, in the
spring of 2016, allowed thousands of al-Qaida
fighters to pull out of Mukalla, Yemen’s
fifth-largest city and a major port on the Arabian Sea.
The militants were guaranteed a safe route out
and allowed to keep weapons and cash looted from
the city — up to $100 million by some estimates —
according to five sources, including military,
security and government officials.
“Coalition fighter jets and U.S. drones were
idle,” said a senior tribal leader who saw the
convoy leaving. “I was wondering why they didn’t strike them.”
A tribal sheikh shuttled between AQAP leaders in
Mukalla and Emirati officials in Aden to seal the
deal, according to a former senior Yemeni commander.
Coalition-backed forces moved in two days later,
announcing that hundreds of militants were killed
and hailing the capture as “part of joint
international efforts to defeat the terrorist organizations in Yemen.”
No witnesses reported militants killed, however.
“We woke up one day and al-Qaida had vanished
without a fight,” a local journalist said,
speaking to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Soon after, another accord was struck for AQAP to
pull out of six towns in the province of Abyan,
including its capital, Zinjibar, according to
five tribal mediators involved in the negotiations.
Again, the central provision was that the
coalition and U.S. drones cease all bombings as
AQAP pulled out with its weapons, the mediators said.
The agreement also included a provision that
10,000 local tribesmen — including 250 al-Qaida
militants — be incorporated into the Security
Belt, the UAE-backed Yemeni force in the area, four Yemeni officials said.
For nearly a week in May 2016, the militants
departed in trucks. One of the mediators told the
AP that he threw the last of the departing
fighters a farewell dinner among his olive and
lemon orchards when they stopped at his farm to pay their respects.
Another mediator, Tarek al-Fadhli, a former
jihadi once trained by al-Qaida leader Osama bin
Laden, said he was in touch with officials at the
U.S. Embassy and in the Saudi-led coalition,
keeping them updated on the withdrawal.
“When the last one left, we called the coalition
to say they are gone,” he said.
___
‘WE WILL UNITE WITH THE DEVIL’
To think of al-Qaida as an international terror
group is to miss its other reality. For many
Yemenis, it is simply another faction on the
ground — a very effective one, well-armed and battle-hardened.
Its members are not shadowy strangers. Over the
years, AQAP has woven itself into society by
building ties with tribes, buying loyalties and marrying into major families.
Power players often see it as a useful tool.
Hadi’s predecessor as Yemen’s president,
long-ruling strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, set the
model. He took billions in U.S. aid to combat
al-Qaida after the 9/11 attacks, even as he
recruited its militants to fight his rivals.
Hadi’s current vice president, Ali Mohsen
al-Ahmar, a military chief for decades, also has
been accused of enlisting jihadis.
An explosion raises a cloud as coalition-backed
fighters advance on the Red Sea port town of Mocha. (AP Photo)
In that light, it would almost be more startling
if the militants were not involved against the
Houthis, especially since al-Qaida militants are
extremist Sunnis seeking the defeat of the Shiite rebels.
Al-Qaida militants are present on all major front
lines fighting the rebels, Khaled Baterfi, a
senior leader in the group, said in a previously
unpublished 2015 interview with a local journalist obtained by the AP.
Last month, Baterfi said in a Q&A session
distributed by al-Qaida that “those at the front
lines for sure know of our participation, which
is either actual fighting with our brothers in
Yemen or supporting them with weapons.”
Al-Qaida has reduced attacks against Hadi’s and
Emirati-linked forces because assailing them
would benefit the Houthis, Baterfi said.
The branch is following guidance from al-Qaida’s
worldwide leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, to focus on
fighting the rebels, another top AQAP member said in written answers to the AP.
In some places, militants join battles
independently. But in many cases, militia
commanders from the ultraconservative Salafi sect
and the Muslim Brotherhood bring them directly
into their ranks, where they benefit from
coalition funding, the AP found. The
Brotherhood’s Yemen branch is a powerful
hard-line Islamic political organization allied to Hadi.
Two of the four main coalition-backed commanders
along the Red Sea coast are allies of al-Qaida,
the al-Qaida member said. The coalition has made
major advances on the coast, and is currently battling for the port of Hodeida.
Video footage shot by the AP in January 2017
showed a coalition-backed unit advancing on
Mocha, part of an eventually successful campaign to recapture the Red Sea town.
Some of the unit’s fighters were openly al-Qaida,
wearing Afghan-style garb and carrying weapons
with the group’s logo. As they climbed behind
machine guns in pick-up trucks, explosions from
coalition airstrikes could be seen on the horizon.
An AQAP member interviewed in person by the AP in
May viewed the video and confirmed the fighters
belonged to his group. His affiliation is known
from his past involvement in AQAP’s rule over a southern city.
The impact of the intertwining of al-Qaida
fighters with the coalition campaign is clearest
in Taiz, Yemen’s largest city and center of one
of the war’s longest running battles.
In the central highlands, Taiz is Yemen’s
cultural capital, a historic source of poets and
writers and educated technocrats. In 2015, the
Houthis laid siege to the city, occupying
surrounding mountain ranges, sealing the entrances and shelling it mercilessly.
Taiz residents rose up to fight back, and
coalition cash and weapons poured in — as did
al-Qaida and Islamic State militants, all aimed at the same enemy.
One liberal activist took up arms alongside other
men from his neighborhood to defend the city, and
they found themselves fighting side by side with al-Qaida members.
“There is no filtering in the war. We are all
together,” said the activist, who spoke on
condition of anonymity. He said commanders
received weapons and other aid from the coalition
and distributed it to all the fighters, including al-Qaida militants.
Abdel-Sattar al-Shamiri, a former adviser to
Taiz’s governor, said he recognized al-Qaida’s
presence from the start and told commanders not to recruit members.
“Their response was, ‘We will unite with the
devil in the face of Houthis,’” al-Shamiri said.
He said he warned coalition officials, who were “upset” but took no action.
“Taiz is in danger,” al-Shamiri said. “We will
get rid of the Houthis and we will be stuck with terrorist groups.”
Coalition-backed fighters help a wounded man
during an advance on Yemen’s Red Sea port town of Mocha. (AP Photo)
The activist and officials in the city said one
of the main recruiters of al-Qaida fighters is
Adnan Rouzek, a Salafi member tapped by Hadi to be a top military commander.
Rouzek’s militia became notorious for kidnappings
and street killings, with one online video
showing its masked members shooting a kneeling,
blindfolded man. Its videos feature al-Qaida-style anthems and banners.
Rouzek’s top aide was a senior al-Qaida figure
who escaped from a prison in Aden in 2008 along
with other AQAP detainees, according to a Yemeni
security official. Multiple photos seen by the AP
show Rouzek with known al-Qaida commanders in recent years.
In November, Hadi named Rouzek head of the Taiz
Operations Rooms, coordinating the military
campaign, and top commander of a new fighting
force, the 5th Presidential Protection Battalion.
Hadi’s Defense Ministry also gave Rouzek $12
million for a new offensive against the Houthis.
The AP obtained copy of a receipt for the $12
million and a Rouzek aide confirmed the figure.
Rouzek denied any connection to militants,
telling the AP that “there is no presence of al-Qaida” in Taiz.
Another coalition-backed warlord is on the U.S.
list of designated terrorists due to his ties to al-Qaida.
The warlord, a Salafi known as Sheikh Aboul
Abbas, has received millions of dollars from the
coalition to distribute among anti-Houthi
factions, according to his aide, Adel al-Ezzi.
Despite being put on the U.S. list in October,
the UAE continues to fund him, al-Ezzi told the AP.
The aide denied any links to militants and
dismissed his boss’s designation on the U.S.
terror list. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that
“al-Qaida has fought on all the front lines alongside all factions.”
Right after the AP team spoke to him in Taiz, the
team saw al-Ezzi meeting with a known senior
al-Qaida figure, warmly hugging him outside the
home of another former AQAP commander.
Aboul Abbas runs a coalition-funded militia
controlling several districts in Taiz. A 2016
video produced by al-Qaida shows militants in
black uniforms with al-Qaida’s logo fighting
alongside other militias in districts known to be under his control.
A former security official in Taiz said militants
and Aboul Abbas’ forces attacked security
headquarters in 2017 and freed a number of
al-Qaida suspects. The officer said he reported
the attack to the coalition, only to learn soon
after that it gave Aboul Abbas 40 more pick-up trucks.
“The more we warn, the more they are rewarded,”
the officer said. “Al-Qaida leaders have armored
vehicles given to them by the coalition while
security commanders don’t have such vehicles.”
___
Wilson contributed from Washington. Keath
contributed from Beirut. AP correspondent Desmond
Butler also contributed to this report.
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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