According to the U.S. State Department, Yemen is one of the 10 countries in the world
where Americans are most at risk of being kidnapped. In 1998, Yemeni tribesmen kidnapped
and released more than 60 foreign nationals for ransom or other reasons.
The Yemeni Government issued a decree in August 1998
making kidnapping punishable with death. It also prescribed severe penalties for the
possession of unlicensed weapons. In the past, Yemeni tribesmen had also blown up
U.S.-owned oil pipelines and anti-Government opposition groups had bombed Government
targets.
On December 28, 1998, following a call issued by
Osama bin Laden, whose family had migrated to Saudi Arabia from Yemen, for attacks on US
and British targets following the US-UK aerial strikes on Iraq, a till then little known
Islamic organisation called the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army had supported his anti-U.S.
threats and kidnapped 16 Western tourists, including two Americans. The group called for
the establishment of an Islamic state in Yemen and "an end to the aggression against
Iraq and the withdrawal of the U.S. and British forces from the Gulf region."
When the Yemeni security forces raided the
kidnappers' hideout 175 miles south of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa the next day, three
British and one Australian were shot dead by the kidnappers. Two other hostages, including
an U.S. citizen, were wounded. Three kidnappers were killed in the shootout and three
others, including the ringleader, Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar, captured. Two other
kidnappers were captured in January 1999.
Subsequent reports indicated that the southern
province of Abyan had emerged as a base for the activities of Yemeni mercenaries belonging
to a group called Jaish-e-Mohammed (Mohammed's Army), which had been trained by the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, armed by the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) of the US and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS--popularly known as the MI-6) of
the UK and used under the leadership of bin Laden in the USA's proxy war against the
Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and that these mercenaries had formed the
Aden-Abyan Islamic Army.
It was also reported that a Yemeni associate of bin
Laden, Tariq al-Fadhli, had established several terrorist training bases in southern Yemen
and that these mercenaries, who had turned against the US and the UK after the withdrawal
of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, had bombed, in 1992, two hotels in Yemen where U.S.
troops proceeding to Somalia were staying. The reports also indicated that Maulana Masood
Azhar, who was released by the Government of India on December 31,1999, in response to the
demand of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) terrorists, who had hijacked an Indian Airlines
plane to Kandahar, had assisted Tariq al-Fadhli in running the training camps in Yemen.
Before his arrest in 1994, Maulana Masood Azhar
belonged to the HUM. After his release in 1999, he has formed an organisation of his own
called Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has since then been having a number of violent clashes with
the HUM in Pakistani territory. The reasons for the clash are not known since both
belonged to bin Laden's International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel.
Before 1998, the Yemeni members of the
Jaish-e-Mohammed also used to operate under the name Islamic Jihad. The Aden-Abyan Islamic
Army was suspected to be an offshoot of the Yemeni Islamic Jihad. Officers of the USA's
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who had come to Yemen to investigate the kidnapping
incident, were reported to have told the Yemeni authorities that they suspected a link
between the kidnappers and bin Laden. Following the U.S. bombing of suspected bin Laden's
camps in the Sudan and Afghanistan in August 1998, the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army had issued
a threat to attack U.S. interests in Yemen.
According to the Egyptian authorities, the
Yemen-based Islamic Jihad cells were responsible for the 1993 assassination attempt
against the Egyptian Prime Minister and the 1995 assassination attempt against the
Egyptian President, Mr. Hosni Mubarak. According to Yemeni officials, one of the
kidnappers killed during the shoot-out was an Egyptian wanted in Cairo on charges of
terrorism.
It was also alleged that some of the Yemeni
mercenaries, under the leadership of Maulana Masood Azhar, had participated in the attacks
on the US troops in Somalia in 1993.
Despite strong indications that since 1992 Yemen had
become an important sanctuary, outside Pakistan and Afghanistan, for terrorist elements
allied to bin Laden, the Yemeni Government did not take strong action against them because
these mercenaries under Maulana Masood Azhar had helped the government troops of President
Ali Abdullah Saleh to win Yemen's civil war in 1994.
The Islamic Jihad group of Yemen, ostensibly
unconnected to the Al-Jihad of Egypt or Palestine, came into being during the
pre-unification era when Aden was the capital of the pro-Soviet Socialist Republic of
South Yemen to oppose the secular policies of the Communist regime in the South.
Under the leadership of Tariq Al-Fadhli, the group,
many of whose members had been to Afghanistan where they received military training and
ideological indoctrination, joined the North Yemeni troops during the war of 1994, which
almost completely wiped out the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) which sought, but failed, to
undo the unity between the two parts of the country.
After the war, the Yemeni Government, having
prevailed throughout Yemen and having weakened its Marxist opponents with the help of the
Islamic Jihad, rewarded Al-Fadhli and several of his followers by admitting them into the
ruling Congress Party, but rejected their demand that the members of the Islamic Jihad
should be recruited to the Army and given appropriate ranks. Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar
(known also as Abu-Hassan) and others turned down offers of civilian posts. This led to a
parting of the ways between the Government and the Islamic Jihad.
When the Government refused, fearing their negative
influence on the rest of the army, the group opened an unauthorised military training camp
in the province of Abyan, from where most of its members came, and changed its name as the
Aden- Abyan Islamic Army.
The five captured kidnappers -- Yemeni Zein
al-Abideen al-Mehdar, known as Abu Hassan, 28, Ahmed Mohammad Ali Atef, 26, Saad Mohammad
Ali Atef, 18, Saleh al-Junaidy, and Mohammed Saleh Abu Huraira -- were charged with
kidnapping and murder and forming an extremist Islamic group with the aim of harming
Yemen's security and safety.
At his trial in January 1999, Abu Hassan admitted
that he was the "managing mind" for the kidnapping operation and that he had
ordered his men to kill the tourists if the security forces approached their hideout.
According to "The Times" of London, he told the court: "I did everything in
the name of God so I am sorry for nothing.... I am very famous now, but let everyone know
I only gave orders to kill the men, not the women.... My pistol jammed. If I could have
shot more, I would have done so." When asked about the kidnappers who had escaped,
Abu Hassan said, "I hope those who are at large will continue the Jihad... I hope God
strikes you all."
In February 1999, Abu Hassan told the court that his
group had planned other anti-Western operations including an attack on a church and that
he was not sorry for the death of a single Christian.
It came out during the investigation and trial that
earlier, on December 24, 1998, the Yemeni authorities had arrested five British nationals
(all Muslims) and a French-Algerian on charges of planning a series of bombings in Aden
during the Christmas-New Year's holiday. Allegedly found with weapons and explosives, the
six suspects were reported to have been recruited, trained and armed by al-Mehdar in a
plot to attack the British Consulate, the Christchurch Anglican church and two hotels used
by Western tourists, in retaliation for the US-UK air strikes on Iraq. In January 1999,
four more alleged members of the bombing gang, three Britons (all Muslims) and a
French-Algerian, were captured at what was described by the Yemeni authorities as a
terrorist training camp in Shabwa, 240 miles northeast of Aden.
According to the Yemeni authorities, the bombing
suspects were recruited in Britain in July 1998 by a London-based Mullah called Abu Hamza
al-Masri (real name Mustafa Kamil), an Afghanistan war veteran, who was the leader of an
Islamic organization in London called the Supporters of Sharia (SOS). He was originally an
Egyptian national, but obtained the British nationality by marrying a British woman, whom
he later divorced. It also emerged that the entire kidnapping was aimed at securing the
release of this group.
Abu Hamza used to deliver incendiary sermons from
the Finsbury mosque in northern London, denouncing the "Great Satan" (the US)
and all who helped it and calling for U.S. planes to be blown up in mid-air by
"flying mines hanging from balloons." According to the "Christian Science
Monitor" of the US, in a television interview in January 1999, he said that he
supported violent actions if they were carried out "for the sake of God" and to
end " state terrorism by Britain and the United States." It was alleged by some
observers that Abu Hamza was running weekend military training camps for Islamic youth in
Britain, including for volunteers to go to Kashmir, with the help of former British army
officers and that the British authorities did not take any action against him since he had
actively collaborated with the SIS in Afghanistan against the Soviet troops.
According to Yemeni officials, two of the British
bombing suspects were related to Abu Hamza: Mustapha Kamal, 17, being his son, and Mohsin
Ghalain, 18, being his stepson. At the kidnapping trial, Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar
described how he used to send statements to Abu Hamza in London to be passed on to the
media and, according to press reports, Abu Hamza too admitted being in contact with the
kidnappers and warned of reprisal attacks if al-Mehdar was executed after the trial.
In January 1999, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh
officially asked the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, to arrest and hand over Abu
Hamza al-Masri to be tried in Yemen for instigating terrorist acts in Yemen and other Arab
states.
In March 1999, British authorities arrested Abu
Hamza along with two others in London and held them in custody for a few days under
Britain's Prevention of Terrorism Act. They were released on bail pending further
inquiries.
During the trial of the 10 bombing suspects, which
began in April 1999,one of the suspects, Shahid Bat, a Briton of Pakistani origin, told
the Yemeni court that he had received military training in Yemen before his arrest, but
claimed that he was not planning any violent activities in Yemen. Bat also testified that
Abu Hamza had recruited him at the London mosque he attended and sent him for military
training to Yemen so that he could participate in jehad outside Yemen..
Mohsin Ghalain, Abu Hamza's stepson, reportedly
admitted to the Yemeni authorities that he had received $2,000 from the SOS to detonate
bombs against British and Western targets in Aden. He also admitted meeting with
al-Mehdar. Defendant Malik Nasser Harhra admitted that he was trained in the use of
firearms and explosives at a training camp run by al-Mehdar. The other suspects, including
Abu Hamza's son, confessed to various crimes as well but later retracted their confessions
claiming that they were made under torture.
In May 1999, the Yemeni court sentenced three of the
kidnappers, Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar, the self-proclaimed leader of the group, Abdullah
Saleh al-Junaidy and Saleh Abu Huraira, to death for their part in the abduction and
killing of the Western tourists. A fourth defendant, Ahmed Mohammad Atef, was sentenced to
20 years in jail and a fifth was acquitted, as were nine others tried in absentia.
After the verdict, al-Mehdar called upon the
Aden-Abyan Islamic Army to resume its holy struggle against the West. At the end of the
month, the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army issued a statement threatening to kill foreigners if
the Government of Yemen carried out the death sentence against its leader and two of its
members. The statement, which was apparently sent to the media through the SOS, said:
"If negotiations fail, all foreigners in Yemen from Western Ambassadors, experts and
doctors to tourists have to leave Yemen. The Aden-Abyan Islamic Army will not kidnap them
but will kill them.... "
In July 1999, Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar told an
Appeals court that he would order the killings of state officials if the court did not
rule according to the principles of Islamic law.
In London, Abu Hamza told an Arabic newspaper that
supporters of the militants must take revenge if the executions were carried out and
added:"I consider anybody who contributes to the killing of Mehdar as a legitimate
target."
Abu Hamza's fatwas are based by him on the ideology
of takfir according to which all those who do not rule by Shari'ah, are apostates and
infidels who deserve to die.
According to UK-based Islamic scholars, Abu Hamza's
connection with the Yemeni hostage-takers alarmed the Muslim community in Britain more
than it alarmed the British authorities. According to them, his statements, including
several TV and newspaper interviews, only confirmed the fears of many leading
personalities in the British Muslim community that dubious fringe groups - such as the
SOS, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun led by Omar Bakri - and extremist individuals -
such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri - through the propagation of irrational ideas and the
instigation of violence made the Muslim community as a whole suspect in the eyes of the
ordinary British people.
According to these scholars, what worries the
Muslims in Britain is that individuals like Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri, also like Abu
Qatadah (al-Falastini) and Abu Mus`ab (as-Suri) before them, issue fatwas which misguide
small groups of frustrated young Muslims, mostly non-Arabs, who lack knowledge of the
Arabic language and who have not had the right guidance nor the appropriate training in
Islamic knowledge. It is as a result of the work of these persons that such young men as
those now detained in Yemen have been embroiled in futile and harmful activities believing
what they set out to achieve to be Jihad in the cause of Allah.
These scholars also express their surprise over the
perceived inaction of the British authorities in connection with the activities of these
extremist and irrational individuals. Abu Hamza had expressed public support for the
killing of British nationals in Yemen and Omar Bakri for the 1998 bombings in Nairobi and
Daressalam. The latter is also alleged to have once issued - in public - a death sentence
against the former British Prime Minister, Mr. John Major. They suspect that in view of
the past association of these extremists with the SIS in Afghanistan in the 1980s and
their assistance to the SIS in smuggling heroin to the Soviet troops, the British
authorities find it difficult to act against them.
The leader of the Islamic Army of Aden Abyan, Zein
al-Abideen al-Mehdar, was executed by a firing squad on October 17,1999, after the
rejection of his appeal. The three other defendants each received 20-year prison
sentences. In a separate case, a Yemeni court convicted in August, 1999, 10
terrorists--eight Britons and two Algerians--of conspiring to commit terrorist acts,
including attacks targeting US citizens.
Before the rejection of the appeal, the Aden Abyan
Islamic Army had warned the Ambassadors of the US and the UK to leave Yemen immediately,
threatening a strike that ``will be painful for the enemies of Islam.'' The warning was
made in a hand-written statement sent to the Saudi-owned, London-based
"al-Hayat" newspaper by the Army. It was signed by ``Abu al-Mohsen,'' supposedly
the new Amir of the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army.
Despite these threats, the US authorities have been
developing close relations with the Yemeni Govt. in order to obtain naval base facilities
in the country. Last year, the Yemeni authorities arrested Mr.Abdul-Latif Omar, Editor of
the weekly "Al Haq" and Assistant Secretary-General of the opposition Sons of
Yemen League, after he published an article alleging that the US had been provided
military base facilities on the Soqatra Island. They strongly denied this, but, however,
released him after some time.
"The Times" of London
reported on June 1,1999, that the American military chiefs feared that the terrorist
violence in Yemen might jeopardise their secret deal with the Yemeni authorities to
establish an important naval base at Aden. It said that the Pentagon planned to use the
former British colony to bunker 600,000 barrels of marine diesel and aviation fuel which
would be used to service its naval operations in the Gulf against President Saddam Hussein
of Iraq and that the first US warship docked in Aden under the deal in May, 1999. The
paper quoted a senior US official as saying: "This eruption of Islamic terrorism in
Yemen could not have come at a worse time, when we are considering hundreds of American
military personnel walking around Aden on shore leave."
The paper also reported as follows: "The US Navy needs the (Aden) port because it is
closing its operation at Djibouti and the Pentagon is worried about the future use of
bases in Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia. The fuel bunker is being constructed by
British technicians next to the terminal for the new Aden Freeport that will open in
March. The US base should have been operating by now, but the first fuel is not due in the
tanks until next month. The Americans also want to refurbish a nearby refinery so that it
can produce the quality of marine diesel and aviation fuel they need to store. "
It added: "American sources said that they will review plans to allow sailors
and airmen shore leave during daylight; the decision will upset local traders and bar
owners who had expected business not seen since the British occupation. American security
officials, conscious of the security threat in the region, wanted to train units of Yemeni
troops in hostage rescue, but were forbidden to do so by American diplomats concerned
about the Sanaa Government's human rights record. Washington was also unimpressed by
Yemen's recent criticism of Operation Desert Fox against Saddam. US officials thought that
President Saleh's Government had learnt its lesson after condemning the Gulf War and then
seeing two million Yemenis expelled from Gulf states and the cutting of Western aid.
British authorities are believed to have asked Yemen about using its former barracks at
Fuqum in Little Aden as the West seeks bases in the Gulf."
The terrorist violence against US and UK interests
in Yemen and other places is orchestrated by bin Laden from his base in Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan, which is today a veritable Pakistani colony. The Taliban is a phantom
consciously created by the Pakistani military through its religious allies for assuming
and maintaining control of Afghan territory. The obscurantist religious fervour of the
Taliban, which has alarmed and antagonised the West, has assumed a certain independent
momentum of its own beyond the control of the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment. Despite the long-term negative implications of this fervour for Pakistan
itself (dangers of Talibanisation), Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment is
prepared to go along with it so long as the Taliban serves its strategic interests.
Sections of the Pakistani elite and political
leadership look upon Afghanistan as a bridge to the Central Asian Republics (CARs) and
Pakistan's suzerainty over Afghanistan as a means of facilitating the emergence of
Pakistan as the commercial gateway of the CARs, but the military-intelligence leadership
looks upon it as a strategic and tactical tool in its proxy war with India. Control over
Afghan territory provides the long-sought-after strategic depth. It also meets the
post-1993 need for a deniable means of involvement in Kashmir from sanctuaries in Afghan
territory from behind the cloak of the Taliban. In Pakistan's cloak and dagger war in
Kashmir, the dagger is of Islamabad, but the cloak is of the Taliban and its religious
mentors in Pakistan.
It suits Pakistan that the rest of the world has
started looking upon Afghanistan and not Pakistan as the hub of jehadi terrorism and the
Taliban as the villain. The real villain is Pakistan. Afghanistan is just a manipulated
appendage. Nothing happens and can happen in Afghanistan without the knowledge, complicity
and involvement of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment. Since the imposition
of the UN sanctions against the Taliban in November, 1999, inter alia, banning all flights
to and from Afghanistan, no jehadi, whether from Yemen, Southern Philippines, Myanmar,
Bangladesh, India, China, the CARS or Russia, can go to the Taliban's camps without the
knowledge of and facilitation by the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment. In
view of the Northern Alliance's active presence, if not control, over the areas bordering
the CARs and the presence of the Russian troops there, it would be very difficult for the
jehadi terrorist aspirants from Russia and the CARs to cross over into Taliban-controlled
territory. Almost all non-Indian jehadi terrorists reportedly go to either Saudi Arabia
under the pretext of Umra or to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as tourists and are taken
from there to the Taliban camps for training through Pakistan with the knowledge and
assistance of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment. It is not clear how the
weapons are reached to them. The use of LTTE ships is a strongly-suspected possibility.
Pakistan's colonisation of Afghanistan serves an
economic purpose too. Afghanistan serves as a rear base for the cultivation of opium,
extraction of heroin from the poppy gum and its use as a valuable foreign exchange earner,
without evidence of Pakistan's direct involvement in the heroin trade. It is doubtful
whether Pakistan's economy would have been able to survive the 1990 (Pressler Amendment)
and the 1998 (post-Chagai) economic sanctions and the May 1999 suspension of IMF
assistance for so long without the inflow of the heroin dollars. It is the heroin oxygen,
which has apparently been keeping the comatose Pakistani economy alive without collapse
for so long.
The geographical hub of the activities of bin Laden
and his supporters against other countries may be in Afghanistan, but the brain centre is
in Islamabad. Unless the US acts against this brain centre by declaring Pakistan as a
State-sponsor of international terrorism and imposing total economic sanctions against it
and by destroying the opium fields and heroin refineries of Afghanistan, it would continue
to lose the precious lives of its military personnel and other innocent citizens at the
hands of Afghan-based and ISI-nursed Jehadi terrorists.
(16-10-00)
