Date Posted: 10-Feb-2011 Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor AQAP opens third front Key Points Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has opened a third front against Yemen's Huthis, militant Zaydi Shia who have embarrassed Saudi and Yemeni militaries in the past. While the group's new campaign may help rally support amongst the Sunni tribes who have suffered at the hands of the Huthis, AQAP is also trying to capitalize on more general fears of Iranian influence in the region. The anti-Huthi rhetoric could have major repercussions if it encourages another round of heavy fighting between the Zaydi rebels and government forces. Waging 'jihad' against the West and Muslim governments, AQAP has also set its sights on Yemen's Shia Huthis. Jane's assesses the reasons behind this new focus and its potential impact on regional security. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is now waging a 'jihad' against Al-Shabab al- Muminin, the Yemeni militant group popularly known as the Huthi movement. The Sunni jihadist AQAP has already claimed two suicide bombings against the Shia Zaydi militants, who have joined Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United States on its growing list of enemies. While these attacks are ostensibly diverting resources away from AQAP's war with its primary enemies, the anti-Huthi campaign is primarily aimed at embarrassing Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which have struggled to defeat the Zaydi militants. Scorched earth The Huthis effectively control much of the northern province of Sadah and have fought a series of wars with Yemeni government forces since 2004, the most recent of which began in August 2009, when the military launched Operation Scorched Earth. As in previous rounds of fighting, the Huthis proved to be tenacious opponents who use the mountainous terrain to their advantage. Yemeni officials have sought to explain their military setbacks by accusing Iran of fuelling the rebellion. In a 12 September 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks, Stephen Seche, US ambassador to Yemen, noted that Yemen had handed over a dossier of evidence linking Iran to the Huthis in 2008, but US analysts had dismissed it as inconclusive. He also wrote that the Yemenis had been unable to back up their claim that they had arrested an Iranian agent who had confessed to supplying the Huthis with USD100,000 every month or produce a video that purportedly showed the Zaydi rebels training with the uniforms and tactics of the Iranian- backed Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah. The Yemeni military also refused a request for US officials to view captured Huthi weapons that were supposedly manufactured in Iran. Seche noted: "If Yemen had any concrete evidence that the Huthis had connections to either Hizbullah or Iran, it would have produced it immediately." He concluded that "Tehran's reach to date is limited" even though the Iranians have "clear strategic interests" in nurturing a Hizbullah-style proxy group that could potentially be used against arch-rival Saudi Arabia. The potential for the Huthis to threaten Saudi Arabia was demonstrated two months later in November 2009, when the rebels launched a cross-border incursion, claiming the kingdom was allowing the Yemeni military to use its territory. The Saudis sent in their army to evict the Huthis, while their air force pounded targets from the air. Despite the Saudis' superiority in military equipment, they struggled to clear the rebels from their territory and suffered surprisingly heavy casualties. Prince Khalid bin Sultan, Saudi deputy minister of defence, said on 22 December 2009 that 73 soldiers had been killed, 26 were missing with 12 feared dead, and another 470 had been wounded. In a 30 December 2009 US cable released by WikiLeaks, James B Smith, US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, noted that the Saudis' were using "massively disproportionate force" in an operation that was "increasingly regarded within the Saudi military as an embarrassingly long campaign that was poorly planned and executed [and] brought unexpectedly high Saudi casualties." A ceasefire came into effect in February 2010, when the rebels agreed to withdraw from territory they had captured and return weapons taken from government forces, while pledging not to attack Saudi Arabia again. Although battered into agreeing to surrender their gains, the insurgents won a moral victory by embarrassing both the Yemeni and Saudi militaries. Since then, the Huthis have been repeatedly accused of violating the ceasefire by refusing to withdraw from land claimed by Sunni tribes. AQAP steps in AQAP said it was defending these tribesmen when it carried out two suicide bombings against the Huthis in November 2010. In subsequent statements, the group claimed the first bombing on 24 November targeted a convoy carrying prominent Huthis in Al-Jawf province and killed 31 people, including Badr-al-Din al-Huthi, the movement's spiritual leader. The Huthis refuted this claim, saying the Yemeni government carried out the bombing, not Al-Qaeda, and that Badr- al-Din died at home of natural causes the following day. The second bombing was carried out against another convoy of Huthis, this time travelling to Badr-al-Din's funeral in Sadah on 26 November. In a statement released that day, AQAP announced: "These operations were in defence of [Sunnis] when we saw them being killed, their honor violated, their homes destroyed and being evicted from their homes and land with no one to protect them." It noted "the failure of the apostate governments in Sanaa and Riyadh - with all the armies, resources and wealth they possess - in repelling the Huthi rafidah [a derogatory term for Shia Muslims]". Treating the claims that Iran backs the Huthis as fact, AQAP announced that it had formed "special teams" to defend Sunnis and "uproot this evil tree which was planted by the Iranian Shia in Sadah and its surroundings under the leadership of the rafidah Huthis". The January 2011 issue of Inspire , AQAP's English language magazine, continued this theme in an article titled Rafidah Focus , which announced that the group considered Shia Islam to be one side of an "evil triangle" that also included the "Zionist-Crusader alliance [and] the apostate regimes". The magazine clarified that the group was targeting only Iranian-style Shia Muslims, not Zaydis, who follow a different doctrine. "We would like to state that our war is only with the rafidah Shia sect, which is alien to Yemen and was only imported recently from Iran, and not with the Zaydi Shia sect, which is considered to be the closest sect of Shia to [Sunnis]." In the December 2010 issue of the group's Arabic-language magazine Sada al-Malahim , an article attributed to Said al-Shihri (alias Abu Sufyan al-Azdi), the group's Saudi deputy leader, accused Qatar of "facilitating rafidah affairs outside Iran" by mediating between the Huthis and the Yemeni government, as well as advancing Iranian interests in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Shihri added: "Iran is now racing against time to replace all the regional governments with client Shia governments. This will pave the way for them to destroy the Sunnis or convert them to the rafidah ideology." Shihri continued his argument in an audio speech released in late January, accusing the Saudi government of failing to act as a bulwark against Iranian influence, while cracking down on the 'mujahideen' to please the US. He said the Saudi and Yemeni governments had effectively surrendered to the Huthis, who continued to carry out attacks on Sunni tribesmen at Iran's behest. "Huthis make their living spilling the blood of the Sunni people," Shirhi said. He called on Yemen's tribes, saying: "It is your duty to support us and keep us. You must fight until you have cleansed your earth of the rafidah who have offended the honor of the Prophet." War of words While AQAP appears to be trying to boost its credibility by playing on increasingly widespread Sunni Arab fears of growing Iranian influence in the region, its attacks on the Huthis may also be a reaction to allegations that it is supported by Iran and allied to the Zaydi rebels. These claims were made most convincingly by Saudi national Muhammad al-Awfi, who served as a senior AQAP commander before surrendering in early 2009. In March 2009, Saudi television broadcast a 'confession' in which Awfi said he suspected Iranian agents controlled AQAP. He also said he met a Huthi who told him the two groups were coordinating their activities and offered him money. "I felt that there was an illusionary management other than ours," he said. The Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported on 12 January that Jabir al-Fayfi, a Saudi AQAP operative who surrendered in September 2010, had revealed that Awfi's revelations had "harmed and embarrassed" AQAP and caused a "state of mistrust" between its leadership and its members in the field. AQAP's anti-Shia campaign has not ended such claims. On 22 January, Al-Hayat , an Arabic newspaper owned by Prince Khalid, reported that the dispute between the Sunni jihadists and the Zaydi rebels had been "fabricated" by "the intelligence agencies of a regional country" (a reference to Iran) to help AQAP recruit more Saudis who can be turned against the kingdom. The newspaper cited "informed sources" as saying Shihri used to deal with the unnamed intelligence agency to get fighters into Afghanistan and that he continued to receive payments from it to carry out attacks against Saudi Arabia. While these claims may be dubious, they reflect how the Huthis, with their perceived links to Iran, have become the victims of a war of words between AQAP on one side, and the Saudi and Yemeni governments on the other.