Al Qaeda re-integrated in Yemen or gone?

By Nasser Arrabyee,03/07/2012

Al Qaeda is not finished. It's only regrouping with new tactics. Al Qaeda says  that the so-called Arab Spring must end only with the Islamic Caliphate they have been fighting for. Al Qaeda also says that it is the essential component of the revolutions in Yemen and all the Arab Spring countries. 

" But we would not allow the Americans to tailor our revolutions as it wishes," said A.M.A, a member of Al Qaeda who shaved his beard and reintegrated in the society after Al Qaeda announced last month what it callec "withdrawal" from towns in the south of Yemen previously declared as Taliban-Style Emirates. 

"The Americans and their agents will not defeat us except if they kill all Muslims," said A.M.A in an interview in the Yemeni capital Sanaa where he lives with hundreds of his comrades who call themselves Ansar Al Shariah, supporters of Shariah. 

He said that he faces no problem at all going wherever he likes in the city of Sanaa or any other city in Yemen. " The people like us, and the people hate America, and the people are ready to hide us in their eyes," He said " and I am not afraid if I am killed or put in prison." 

" The US drone attacks are attacks on Yemen and all Muslims and not only on us," He said. 

"We must establish Islamic government here in Yemen which must pave the way for establishing an Islamic Caliphate based on  freedom and justice, and Jaar and Azzan were the best example for that," He said referring to the two Emirates that Al Qaeda was driven out from them last month after a year and a half of  Taliban-Style rule. 

The Al Qaeda member A.M.A is one example of thousands of supporters who disappeared all of a sudden after the Yemeni government restored many areas in The southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwah with direct American and Saudi support.
 
In Jaar, 65 km east of Aden,  many people told me last week, that they had liked Al Qaeda and they now want it to return.

  " Al Qaeda provided many basic services to us, like water Quranic schools, teaching people how to pray, and obligate every one to go to the mosque,  and security, and  now what this government would give  us, nothing,"  said Khaled Mohammed, a local resident from Jaar. 

Al Qaeda in Yemen can be integrated into the society very easily whenever it wants to do that for tactical  reasons like the time being. 

Shiekh Abdul Majid Al Zandani who is accused by US and UN of supporting the global terrorism, said this week that he and a numbers extremist scholars must be appointed by the new President Hadi as  the supreme guides for the coming national dialogue.  Al Zandani insists that Al Qaeda must be involved in the dialogue. 
The  coming national dialogue would the second and the last stage of the transitional period that is supposed to end in February 2014 according to the Saudi-led and US-supported deal that ended the Yemeni crisis. 

Al Zandani said in a statement issued by a religious organization established by him last year, that the scholars of this organization would be telling all those involved in the coming national comprehensive dialogue what is the right to do and what is the wrong not to do.

 Al Zandani's party, the Islamist party, Islah ( Yemen Muslim brotherhood), has been demanding the release of at least 26 men accused of having links with Al Qaeda. Islah is saying that these men were put in prison for their political point of views and they were only kidnapped from the protests squares during the protests of 2011.

The Yemeni Socialist Party is complaining from being marginalized and excluded by the Islamist party, Islah. In a statement issued Monday July 2,2012, by its political bureau, the YSP said that Islah is trying to dominate everything in the South.

Al Qaeda is very active in the capital Sanaa and other main cities like Aden  now after hundreds if not thousands of its fighters returned from battles  with their beards shaved or at least trimmed. 

The intelligence official, Colonel Mohammed Al Kudami, was assassinated on Monday July 2, 2012, in the capital Sanaa,  only few days after about 10 suicide bombers were arrested before they implemented terrorist acts against Yemeni and Western officials and interests in the Yemeni capital. 

Two camps at least are still in operation now by Al Qaeda, one in Al Mahfad,  mountaneous area between Abyan and Shabwah, and it is the main, and the other  is in Wadi Bin Ali, in Sayoun, Hudhrmout province. 
But even these camps, Al Qaeda is also trying integrate into the society to avoid the air strikes .