City under siege
Al-Qaeda joins other factions to push back Houthis – but residents fear their agenda. By MICHELLE GHABRIAL in Taiz
Al-Qaeda joins other factions to push back Houthi rebels in the Yemeni city of Taiz
Mohammed Derham, a 50year-old shopkeeper in Taiz, a war-torn city in the Yemeni Highlands, had just finished reading his Koran when the rocket struck.
Walls collapsed overhead; twisted steel rods and cement chunks mingled with bodies of seven female relatives, including his two daughters. “In the hospital, I saw her brains,” he said of his daughter Somaiya, 17. He he did not recognise Mariam, 15, his other daughter, until “the head was found two hours later”. MrDerham is one of hundreds of thousands trapped in Taiz by a blockade of Shia Houthi rebels.
Yemen’s most densely populated city has become a crucible of the war between the Houthis, troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and a coalition of the resistance, almost half of which are Sunni Salafists. The resistance in Taiz includes an al-Qaeda branch which is now practising “integration” with other factions. By the summer the resistance had pushed the Houthi rebels from the centre, only prompting Houthis to tighten the blockade.
In Souk al-Samil, the district of Taiz where al-Qaeda rules, men guard checkpoints. “Theywarn us of al-Qaeda but in fact they are much better than Houthis,” said one resident. “At the very least, we move freely unlike the days under Houthis.”
The conflict has polarised Yemen, splitting it along sectarian, regional and tribal lines. On one side is President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his backers in the Saudi coalition, on another the Shia Houthi movement and elements still supporting former president Saleh.
Welcomed into the resistance against the Houthis is al-Qaeda. Nabil Wasil, the top Salafist commander of the resistance in Taiz, said that Salafists form around 40 per cent of the resistance and are the second largest after Yemen’s Islamist Islah party.
He said the number of alQaeda militants is around 50 and what worries him is the “random killing”. “Now the enemy is one [the Houthis],” he told The Independent. “AlQaeda, like all of us, have one goal: to fight this enemy.”
Mr Wasil said that while all resistance groups answer to tribal leader Hamoud alMekhlafi, al-Qaeda militants answer to the group’s leader Qassim al-Rimi, controlling areas in the city centre. Speaking to The Independent, Mr alMekhlafi said that he is fighting with only 10 per cent of his force’s capacity due to lack of weapons and funds.
The al-Qaeda commander of Taiz, Harith al-Ezzi, says alQaeda is mainly concentrated in Souk al-Samil, where they are in control of key state institutions. He said the group’s leaders are following a different strategy of “integration” with the rest of the resistance across the country without making announcements.
“We have our own sources of money and weapons, mostly from those seized from Houthis,” he said, adding “the resistance is fearful of giving us weapons for fear that we become stronger”.
Even if the Houthi are defeated, there may be more suffering for many of the city’s residents. Harith al-Ezzi said that the state buildings under the control of al-Qaeda will only be handed over to those implementing Sharia law. “If the resistance doesn’t implement Islamic Sharia, we will keep what we have in our hands,” he said.
But Osama Salama, a young activist, said: “Taiz is a modern, civilised city that won’t accept radicals. We have no doubt alQaeda will find itself isolated if it tried to impose its hardline ideology on society here.”