Dirty Wars (86 page)

On May 27, 2011, several hundred militants
laid siege to Zinjibar
, thirty miles northeast of the strategically important southern city of Aden, killing several soldiers, driving out local officials and taking control of the city within two days. Who exactly these militants were was a matter of some dispute. According to the Yemeni government, they were AQAP operatives. But the militants who took the city did not claim to be from AQAP. Instead, they
announced themselves as a new group
, Ansar al Sharia, or Supporters of Sharia. Senior Yemeni officials told me that Ansar al Sharia was simply a
front for al Qaeda
. They pointed out that the first known public reference to the group was made a month before the attack on Zinjibar by AQAP's top cleric, Adil al Abab. “
The name Ansar al Sharia
is what we use to introduce ourselves in areas where we work to tell people about our work and goals, and that we are on the path of Allah,” he said, adding that the new name was intended to put the focus on the message of the group so as to avoid the associations of the al Qaeda brand. Whether Ansar al Sharia had more independent origins or was merely a product of AQAP's crude rebranding
campaign, as Abab claimed, the group's significance would soon extend well beyond al Qaeda's historically limited spheres of influence in Yemen, while simultaneously popularizing some of AQAP's core tenets.

Months after Zinjibar was taken, I traveled to Aden, Yemen, where I met the Yemeni general whose job it was to retake the areas seized by Ansar al Sharia. General Mohammed al Sumali sat in the passenger seat of his armored Toyota Land Cruiser as it whizzed down the deserted highway connecting Aden to Abyan Province, where the Islamist militants had overrun Zinjibar. Sumali, a heavyset man with glasses and a mustache, was the commander of the 25th Mechanized Brigade of the Yemeni armed forces and the man charged with cleansing Zinjibar of the militants. Sumali's task carried international significance: retaking Zinjibar was seen by many as a final test of the flailing Saleh regime. The only real traffic on the road consisted of refugees fleeing the fighting and heading toward Aden, and military reinforcements moving toward Zinjibar. Sumali did not want to drive out to the front lines on the day I met him. “You know
there could be mortars
fired at you,” he told me. Twice, the militants in Zinjibar had tried to assassinate the general in that very vehicle. There was a bullet hole in the front windshield, just above his head, and another in his side window, the spider-web cracks from the bullets' impact clearly visible. When I agreed not to hold him or his men responsible for what might happen, he relented, and we piled in and took off.

As we rode along the coast of the Arabian Sea, past stacks of abandoned mortar tubes, Russian T-72 tanks dug into sand berms and the occasional wandering camel, General Sumali gave me his account of what had happened on May 27, 2011, when Ansar al Sharia took the town. Sumali attributed the takeover to an “intelligence breakdown,” explaining, “We were surprised in late May with the flow of a large number of terrorist militants into Zinjibar.” He added that the militants “raided and attacked some security sites. They were able to seize these institutions. We were surprised when the governor, his deputies and other local officials fled to Aden.” As the Yemeni military began fighting the militants, General Sumali told me, troops from Yemen's Central Security Forces fled, abandoning heavy weaponry as they retreated. The CSF, whose counterterrorism unit was armed, trained and funded by the United States, was commanded by President Saleh's nephew Yahya. A media outlet associated with the militants reported that Ansar's forces seized “
heavy artillery pieces
, modern antiaircraft weapons, a number of tanks and armoured transports in addition to large quantities of different kinds of ammunition.”

Sumali said that as his forces attempted to repel the attack on Zinjibar a week later, they were attacked by the militants using the artillery seized
from the CSF units. “Many of my men were killed,” he told me. The Islamist fighters also conducted a series of bold raids on the base of the 25th Mechanized on the southern outskirts of Zinjibar. In all,
more than 230 Yemeni soldiers
died in battles with the militants in under a year. “These guys are incredibly brave,” the general conceded, speaking of the militants. “If I had an army full of men with that bravery, I could conquer the world.”

Sumali said Zinjibar fell because of bad intelligence, but critics of the crumbling Saleh regime told me a different story. They alleged that President Saleh's forces allowed the city to fall. The fighting there began as Saleh faced mounting calls both inside and outside Yemen for his resignation. Several of his key allies had defected to the growing opposition movement. After thirty-three years of outwitting his opponents, they said, Saleh saw that the end was near. “Saleh himself actually
handed over Zinjibar to these militants
,” charged Abdul Ghani al Iryani, a well-connected political analyst. “He ordered his police force to evacuate the city and turn it over to the militants because he wanted to send a signal to the world that, without me, Yemen will fall into the hands of the terrorists.” That theory, while unproven, was not baseless. Ever since the mujahedeen war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and continuing after 9/11, Saleh has famously milked the threat of al Qaeda and other militants to leverage counterterrorism funding and weapons from the United States and Saudi Arabia to bolster his power within the country and neutralize opponents. A Yemeni government official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly about military issues, admitted that troops from the US-trained and -supported Republican Guard
did not respond
when the militants entered the town. Those forces were commanded by Saleh's son Ahmed Ali Saleh. Neither did those forces loyal to one of the most powerful military figures in the country, General Ali Mohsen, commander of the 1st Armored Division, move in. Two months before Zinjibar was seized, Mohsen had defected from the Saleh regime and was publicly supporting his overthrow.

General Sumali told me he could not “confirm or deny” that Ansar al Sharia was actually AQAP. “What is important for me, as a soldier, is that they have taken up arms against us. Anyone who is attacking our institutions and military camps and killing our soldiers, we will fight them regardless of if they are al Qaeda affiliates or Ansar al Sharia,” he told me. “We don't care what they call themselves. And I can't confirm whether Ansar al Sharia is affiliated with al Qaeda or if they are an independent group.”

Rather than fighting AQAP, the elite US-backed Yemeni units—created and funded with the explicit intent to be used only for counterterrorism operations—redeployed to Sana'a to protect the collapsing regime from its
own people. The US-supported units existed “mostly for the defense of the regime,” said Iryani. “In the fighting in Abyan, the counterterrorism forces have not been deployed in any effective way. They are still here in the palace [in Sana'a], protecting the palace. That's how it is.” At the time, John Brennan acknowledged that the “
political tumult
” had caused the US-trained units “to be focused on their positioning for internal political purposes as opposed to doing all they can against AQAP.” So it was left to General Sumali and his conventional forces to fight the Islamists who had taken over Zinjibar.

As we passed the first front line on the outskirts of Zinjibar, “Tiger 1,” and drove a half mile to “Tiger 2,” Sumali agreed to let me get out of the vehicle. “We will only stay for two minutes,” he told me. “It's dangerous here.” The general was soon besieged by his men. They looked thin and haggard, many with long beards and tattered uniforms or no uniforms at all. Some of them pleaded with Sumali to write them notes authorizing additional combat pay. One of the soldiers told him, “I was with you when you were ambushed. I helped fight off the attack.” Sumali scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to the soldier. The scene continued until Sumali got back into the Toyota. As we drove away, he spoke from his armored vehicle through a loudspeaker at his men. “Keep fighting. Do not give up!”

Whether it was a crass ploy on the part of a failing regime to allow the militants to overrun Zinjibar or an opportunistic power grab by AQAP, the taking of several towns across southern Yemen by Islamist forces was significant. Unlike the militant movement al Shabab in Somalia, AQAP had never taken control of significant swaths of territory in Yemen. But Ansar al Sharia was determined to do just that,
declaring an Islamic emirate
in Abyan. Once Ansar al Sharia and its allies solidified their grip on Zinjibar, they implemented an agenda aimed at winning popular support. “
Ansar al Sharia has been much more proactive
in attempting to provide services in areas in Yemen where the government has virtually disappeared,” Johnsen, the Yemen scholar at Princeton University, told me at the time. “It has claimed that it is following the Taliban model in attempting to provide services and Islamic government where the central government in Yemen has left a vacuum.”

Ansar al Sharia
repaired roads, restored electricity
, distributed food and began security patrols inside the city and its surroundings. It also established Sharia courts where disputes could be resolved. “Al Qaeda and Ansar al Sharia
brought security to the people
in areas that were famous for insecurity, famous for thefts, for roadblocks,” said Abdul Rezzaq al Jamal, the independent Yemeni journalist who regularly interviewed al Qaeda leaders and had spent extensive time in Zinjibar. “The people I met in
Zinjibar were grateful to al Qaeda and Ansar al Sharia for maintaining security.” Although the militants in Abyan brought law and order, the policies were, at times, enforced with brutal tactics such as limb amputations against accused thieves and public floggings of suspected drug users. In one incident in the Ansar al Sharia-held town of Jaar, residents said they were summoned to
a gruesome event
at which militants used a sword to chop off the hands of two young men accused of stealing electrical cables. The amputated hands were then paraded around the town as a warning to would-be thieves. One of the young men, a fifteen-year-old, reportedly died soon after from blood loss. In another incident, Ansar al Sharia in Jaar publicly
beheaded two men
it alleged had provided information to the United States to conduct drone strikes. A
third man was executed
in Shabwah.

AQAP took advantage of the Yemeni government's unpopularity, shrewdly recognizing that its message of a Sharia-based system of law and order would be welcomed by many in Abyan who viewed the Saleh regime as a US puppet. The US missile strikes, the civilian casualties, an almost total lack of government services and a deepening poverty all helped create the opportunity AQAP seized. “As these groups of militants took over the city, then AQAP came in and also tribes from areas that have been attacked in the past by the Yemeni government and by the US government,” Iryani, the Yemeni political analyst, told me. “They came because they have a feud against the regime and against the US. There is a nucleus of AQAP, but the vast majority are people who are aggrieved by attacks on their homes that forced them to go out and fight.”

As Ansar al Sharia took control of towns in the south, Washington debated how to respond. Some within the Obama administration agitated for the United States to jump into the fight. General James Mattis, who took over from Petraeus as CENTCOM commander, proposed that the president sign off on a
massive air assault
on the “Unity” Soccer Stadium on the outskirts of Zinjibar, where Ansar al Sharia fighters had created a makeshift base from which to attack the Yemeni military. President Obama shot down the proposal. “We're not in Yemen to get involved with some domestic conflict,” the president said. “We're going to continue to stay focused on threats to the homeland—that's
where the real priority is
.”

Instead, the United States would
fly supply runs
into southern Yemen via helicopter to back up General Sumali's conventional forces. The Americans also provided real-time intelligence, obtained by drones, to Yemeni forces in Abyan. “It has been an active partnership. The Americans help primarily with logistics and intelligence,” Sumali told me. “Then we pound the positions with artillery or air strikes.” On a few occasions, Sumali told me, the United States conducted unilateral strikes around Zinjibar
that “targeted al Qaeda leaders who are on the US terrorist black list,” though he added, “I did not coordinate directly in these attacks.” As cities throughout southern Yemen began to fall to Ansar al Sharia and the Saleh regime crumbled, in late 2011, the Obama administration
decided to pull out
most of the US military personnel in Yemen, including those training Yemen's counterterrorism forces. “
They have left
because of the security situation,” Abu Bakr al Qirbi, Yemen's foreign minister, told me at the time. “Certainly, I think if they do not return and the counterterrorism units are not provided with the necessary ammunition and equipment, it will have an impact” on counterterrorism operations.

The United States was shifting tactics. With the Saleh regime severely weakened, the Obama administration calculated that it had little to gain from that alliance at this stage. The United States would double down on its use of air power and drones, striking in Yemen at will to carry on its campaign against AQAP. The Obama administration began quick construction of a
secret air base
in Saudi Arabia, closer than its base in Djibouti, that could serve as a launching pad for expanded drone strikes in Yemen. Target number one remained the same: Anwar Awlaki.

THE KEY TO ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING
in Yemen is navigating its labyrinthine tribal system. For years, a tribal patronage network helped bolster Saleh's regime. Many tribes had a neutral view of AQAP or saw it as a minor nuisance; some fought against al Qaeda forces, though others gave them safe haven or shelter. The stance of many tribes toward al Qaeda depended on how they believed AQAP could forward or hurt their agendas.