Al-Qaeda, a New UAE Pawn in Yemen

The UAE which has made southern Yemen its sphere of influence since years does not want to share it with its big brother and is sparing no trick to drive the Saudis out of the south. 

A new BBC investigation has found that the UAE has recruited former Al-Qaeda members and American mercenaries for assassinations in Yemen. A whistleblower reportedly named 11 ex-Al-Qaeda members that cooperated with UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC). A BBC documentary revealed that one of the members of the terrorist organization said that Emirati officers proposed to release him from prison in return for assassinations for Abu Dhabi. 

Sources told the BBC that Nasser al-Sheiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda operative suspected of involvement in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in which 17 Americans were killed, is now working with one of the STC military units. 

Also, two employees of the American security company, Spear Operations Group (SOG), confirmed that they were hired by the UAE to carry out targeted killings in Yemen. STC head Aidarus al-Zoubaidi has denied the claim of Al-Qaeda’s role in his military forces, however. 

A deal was struck between UAE officials and SOG during a meeting in Abu Dhabi, which was attended by Abraham Golan, the Israeli-Hungarian founder of the security company, and Mohammad Dahlan, the exiled Palestinian politician and adviser to the UAE ruler Mohammad bin Zayed. 

Records of UAE assassinations in Yemen 

The Emirati assassinations in Yemen have a precedent, and in recent years, the Arab country conducted assassinations using various methods. 

In February last year, Hena Aden institute for strategic studies in a report said that the UAE has been conducting serial assassinations in Aden, the seat of the Yemeni opposition government, using mercenaries. The assassinations target hundreds of figures prayer imams, scholars, and missionaries of Aden, as well as military leaders, security officials, judges, activists, politicians, and experts. According to this report, 400 assassination operations have been carried out in Aden province over the past years, and no probe has been launched in this regard. 

A Buzz Feed investigation revealed in 2018 that the UAE hired mercenaries to assassinate prominent members of Al-Islah Party, a branch of Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood. The report included leaked drone footage of a failed attempt in December 2015 to strike Al-Islah member Insaf Ali Mayo and everyone present in his office. In a BBC documentary, former US Navy SEAL Isaac Gilmour admitted that Mayo was on the hit list. 

Al-Qaeda in Yemen has been one of the terrorist groups that has caught the attention of the aggression coalition in Yemen in recent decade. The group has always been at war with local powers in the past two decades, and before Saudi Arabia and the UAE waged their war, it was engaged in fighting against the central government. With the start of war, Al-Qaeda, which deemed Ansarullah revolutionary movement an enemy, drifted to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to seize parts of Yemen on the strength of these countries to make a stronghold in Yemen. 

Saudi Arabia, like the UAE, in recent years has abused Al-Qaeda to confront the forces of Ansarullah in order to fully occupy Yemen and remove Ansarullah from power. In September 2020, Salah bin Laghbar, one of the leaders of the STC, announced on his X page that Khaled Baatarifi, the leader of the terrorist group in the Arabian Peninsula, had arrived in Al-Maharah province in eastern Yemen to assist the Saudi forces. In the Ma’rib conflicts in 2020, when Ansarullah made gains in this province, the Saudis used Al-Qaeda forces to slow down Ansarallah. 

Emirati-Saudi face-off in the south 

Using Al-Qaeda to assassinate the Al-slah Party’s members who have close ties to the Saudis is a kind of declaration of war on the kingdom. Islah has close ties to Riyadh and since the start of war, it has turned Ma’rib into a stronghold for militias and intelligence activities of Saudi Arabia and some other foreign countries. According to a report published by Al-Masirah news network of Ansarullah in June, Islah arrests and tortures the forces opposed to the Saudis. It also damages national security by training spying groups and using militants to block roads and kidnap people to swap them with prisoners of war. So, assassination of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated leaders in Yemen is more an attempt to tighten the noose on Saudi Arabia than to confront Islah Party, showing that Abu Dhabi is now at daggers drawn against Riyadh in Yemen. 

The Emiratis are using their petrodollars to recruit mercenary and terrorist networks and put strains on the Saudis to force them out of Yemen to seize the control of the south, especially Aden, and rule it alone, as they find Riyadh a disruptor of their plans in Yemen. 

Southern regions, including the provinces of Hadramaut and Al-Mahrah and the Socotra Island, are energy and resource-rich, and the UAE has cut its teeth to capture them and is not afraid to take on its big brother, and to this end, it uses its puppet the STC which is an adept implementer of Abu Dhabi’s orders. 

Saudi Arabia currently holds the oil-rich provinces of Hadramaut and Al-Mahrah and has earned more than $15 billion from the sale of their energy over the past years, and the UAE is trying to annex these provinces to its spheres of influence. 

Leading the Arab coalition, the Saudis want the lion share from Yemen resources and do not approve that a country as small as the UAE causes trouble to them. Having started peace talks with Ansarullah since last year in quest of a solution to the 9-year-long war, Saudi Arabia has given in the north that is held by Ansarullah and is, thus, trying to get a foothold in the south. After the recent developments in the Red Sea, southern Yemen grew more important for both the Saudis and Emiratis who are trying to seize it by any means. 

In recent years, mercenaries of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have clashed in various parts of Yemen and so far hundreds were killed. In 2019, under Riyadh deal, they agreed to bury the hatchets and work together instead but the UAE declined to fulfill its obligations and resorted to a set of tricks to remove Saudi Arabia from the south. 

Through the STC, the UAE in March last year seized the state buildings belonging to the Riyadh-backed Presidential Leadership Council and expelled Rashad al-Alimi, the council’s head. Learning about the UAE’s lofty ambitions in the south, the Saudis last year formed a militia named National Shield Forces (NSF) of 14,000 men in opposition to the STC and equipped it with modern arms. These forces are reportedly to be distributed in Sa’ada and Al-Jawf borders in the north, in Shabwa and Hadhramout in the east, in Aden, Lahej and Abyan in the south, and in Hudaydah and Taiz in the west. The Saudis are trying to copy the Emirati strategy and strengthen their position in the south using mercenaries. 

Emirates’ moves should be named a political coup against Saudi Arabia, which can inflame the tensions between the two Persian Gulf monarchies. Just as it considered the Presidential Council obedient to Saudi orders, the UAE considers the Presidential Leadership Council, which has been formed in recent months, to be a puppet of Saudi Arabia. So, it resorts to assassinations and spread of terror via Al-Qaeda to scare away the new governing body’s members and pave the way for its occupation. 

Division between the Saudis and Emiratis plays into the hands of Ansarullah to seize this opportunity and force out the occupiers forever. Now the resistance movement has an upper hand in the Red Sea developments and, as it has recently launched attacks on the Western and Israeli interests and forces in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza, it showed it is powerful enough to punish the invaders. The Sana’a-based Ansarullah has repeatedly warned it will not allow Saudi Arabia and the UAE to occupy Yemeni territories and if they press ahead with their adventures, it will use force to push the aggressors out. At present, the movement is showing tolerance with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but if occupation of the south continues, it will review its policies, with the consequences never pleasant to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. 

The Saudi-Emirati competition in the south comes as these countries claimed they waged war on neighboring country to retake power from Ansarullah, but after 9 years of war and occupation, not only the country does not enjoy security, but also it is more insecure than before. That is why the southerners are not positive about the occupiers and the local governments backed by the two aggression countries have no legitimacy among the people— something showing the failure of the Saudi-headed alliance. On the other side, the Ansarullah-controlled north enjoys relative peace and security, with people backing the movement’s rule despite economic challenges.