January
17, 2003, 9:35 a.m. In
Too Deep
Terrorism in
Yemen.
By Evan Kohlmann
n
recent days, German authorities have arrested two Yemeni men at the request
of the FBI. The suspects were accused of organizing significant fundraising
activities on behalf of al Qaeda, though they were not thought to have
held any official positions within the terrorist organization itself.
Both men were also known members of the Yemeni Al-Islah political party,
which immediately proclaimed their innocence and denounced their arrest.
Yet Al-Islah party membership seems to form a common link between not
only these men, but a host of other Yemeni terrorist suspects linked to
both Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
In fact, in the past
few weeks alone, two other Islah party members, Ali Jarallah and Abed
Abdul Razak Kamel, have been arrested for committing violent terrorist
acts. On December 28, Ali Jarallah, a known Islamic extremist and Islah
partisan, assassinated the deputy secretary-general of the Yemeni Socialist
party. Jarallah was finally found and arrested by local authorities at
the house of parliamentary speaker and Islah party leader Abdullah al-Ahmar.
Barely two days later, Al-Islah activist Abed Abdul Razak Kamel rampaged
through the Jibla Southern Baptist missionary hospital in southern Yemen,
killing three American volunteer aid workers in a bid "to get closer
to God." The attacks were later found to be connected and are believed
to have been carried out on the orders of senior al Qaeda operatives.
Most unsettling of
all, the links between Al-Islah and al Qaeda run to the very top of the
two groups. Shaykh Abdul-Majid az-Zindani is the longtime ideological
leader of the Al-Islah party and is also a celebrated veteran Arab mujahedeen
commander. From 1984 to 1990, Zindani brought between 5,000 and 7,000
Arabs — including many Yemenis — to al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan
for military training and religious teaching under his personal guidance.
He was an integral part of the Arab-Afghan movement and is reputedly a
close confidant and friend of Osama bin Laden.
In the aftermath
of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, Zindani encouraged refugee Arab-Afghan fighters
loyal to al Qaeda to resettle and continue their training in the mountainous
regions of Yemen. There he started his own religious university, the very
same institution where future American Taliban John Walker Lindh was to
study before traveling on to Pakistan. Moreover, in 1994, according to
a Jordanian criminal indictment, Shaykh az-Zindani gave $10,000 on behalf
of Osama bin Laden to help finance a radical Islamic terrorist cell in
Jordan that committed several fatal bombings.
Cassette tapes of
Zindani's fiery sermons in the wake of September 11 show him alleging,
among other things, that President George Bush conspired with the Jews
to destroy the World Trade Center and then blame it on Muslims. A year
later, in September 2002, Egyptian television played a lecture of Zindani
brandishing an AK-47 and openly denouncing "George [Bush], the [infidel]
governor" of the Muslim world. Though Zindani went on to note that
currently "[a]ll the Muslims lands are under the control of the infidel
Christians," he happily added that, in time, "Islam will achieve
victory and overwhelm the world."
All this presents
something of a problem for the relatively mainstream secular Yemeni government.
As part of its major platform, Al-Islah has both advocated and staunchly
defended fundamentalist religious schools in Yemen — such as the
one operated by Shaykh Abdulmajeed Az-Zindani — that feed the Arab-Afghan
recruiting pool. An official statement released by the Al-Islah party
called these militant schools "one of the greatest achievements of
the revolution and of Yemeni unity." In fact, they serve most notably
as a breeding ground for ignorance and anti-Western hatred.
Though heavily influenced
by hard-line Islamic and tribal elements, Al-Islah is nonetheless still
the largest and most-influential opposition party in the county, and its
support has been vital to keeping Yemen's Left-wing parties in check.
Overall, it is a powerful local political force with a broad base of well-armed
tribal proponents. Thus there is little official enthusiasm for forcing
major changes on this recalcitrant group of conservatives. Should President
Ali Abdullah Saleh and his security forces continue to permit al Qaeda's
oldest friends to find legitimacy and safe haven in the ranks of Al-Islah,
the overall Yemeni commitment to the international war against terrorism
must be brought into serious question.
—
Evan Kohlmann is a senior terrorism analyst at the Investigative Project,
a Washington D.C.-based counterterrorism think tank established in 1995.
He is currently writing a book, The Martyrs
of Bosnia: Al-Qaida's War of Terror in Europe.
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n
recent days, German authorities have arrested two Yemeni men at the request
of the FBI. The suspects were accused of organizing significant fundraising
activities on behalf of al Qaeda, though they were not thought to have
held any official positions within the terrorist organization itself.
Both men were also known members of the Yemeni Al-Islah political party,
which immediately proclaimed their innocence and denounced their arrest.
Yet Al-Islah party membership seems to form a common link between not
only these men, but a host of other Yemeni terrorist suspects linked to
both Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
