PHOTO: Al Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters in Hadramaut Province, Yemen, May 2014


Amid the political and military crisis in Yemen, Middle East Eye reports on how Al Qa’eda’s local franchise is trying to rebrand itself to win the support of residents:


Three years after they were kicked out of several cities in south Yemen, Al Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula has come back and overrun two cities in the province of Abyan, local government officials and residents say. But people who lived through Al Qa’eda’s reign of Abyan in 2011 now talk about new “tolerant and friendly” militants.

In Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan Province, a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said that early this month Al Qa’eda militants quietly stormed military camps and police stations in the city without even drawing the attention of students in schools or public servants in their offices.

“Zinjibar is quiet. People are busy with their daily life,” the government officials said.

Many provinces in southern Yemen have been in a state of anarchy since Saudi-backed forces supporting President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and local tribesmen drove out rebel Houthis. Then separatists and Islamists aligned with the Saudi-backed forces failed to fill the vacuum left by Yemeni soldiers who headed north to fight the Houthis. So Al Qa’eda came in and took the place of the former government-run security agencies.

According to the government official, an alliance of convenience emerged between the militants and local fighters when Houthis seized many districts in Abyan. The two armed parties agreed to halt hostilities and collectively fight their common enemy, the Houthis, before the Saudi-led coalition kicked them out.

Al Qa’eda Becomes “Sons of Abyan”

To the astonishment of the locals, the militants have even rebranded themselves as the Sons of Abyan.

“They are acting like election campaigns,” the official said.

In Jaar, a current al-Qaeda stronghold in Abyan which the group also held in 2011, the situation is no different from neighbouring Zinjibar. The militants seized Jaar in late October according to Anwar al-Hadhrami, a local journalist who said that the militants are trying as hard as they can to convince people to accept them.

“The situation is normal and quiet. Al-Qaeda did not harass people like they did in 2011,” Hadhrami said.

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