Al-Qaida entanglements tear apart one Yemeni family
SANAA, Yemen — Abeer al-Hassani’s ex-husband was famed for his beautiful voice. He used it, she says, singing poetic hymns to martyrdom and jihad to try to draw youth from their neighborhood of the Yemeni capital into joining al-Qaida.
“One woman complained to me that her son wanted to go fight in Iraq after speaking with him,” the 25-year-old al-Hassani recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
For most of her young life, al-Hassani has been entangled with al-Qaida through family bonds she has tried to shake off. Three of her brothers became fighters for the group, and all three are dead, two of them killed by U.S. drone strikes on consecutive days in January 2013.
Her story provides a rare look into one of the most dangerous branches of the terror network. It has moved to fueling conflict elsewhere in the region, sending fighters to Syria and to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Her ex-husband, Omar al-Hebishi, backed up his recruiting with cash. During their four-year marriage, she says, he received large bank transfers or cash delivered overland from Saudi Arabia — money, he told her, that was to support the families of “martyrs.” She and al-Hebishi divorced in 2010.
Amonth ago, he left for Syria to fight alongside alQaida-inspired extremists.
But al-Hassani’s tale illustrates the pull that alQaida has in a society where poverty is rife, the population is deeply conservative and many resent a corrupt government and abuses by security forces.
During and after her marriage, al-Hassani watched helplessly as her three brothers, Bandar, Abdullah and Abdel-Meguid, were drawn one by one into al-Qaida.
Bandar, seven years older than al-Hassani, was detained by the Political Security Agency for two years. When he emerged in 2006 he had become more religious — indoctrinated by militants he was jailed with, al-Hassani says.
In 2009, Abdel-Meguid, who was 16 at the time, was also arrested. He was held for three years, often in a cell with hardened militant fighters.
At about the same time, Abdullah — who was two years younger than alHassani, disappeared from home to join al-Qaida.
When
the
popular uprising against Saleh began in 2011, Bandar left home for the mountainous central province of Marib to join al-Qaida fighters, she said.
The following year, Abdel-Meguid was released from prison. The younger brother who loved dancing as a teen was now bitter.
“He only spoke about how much he wanted to blow himself up in the middle of Yemeni soldiers,” al-Hassani said.
Abdel-Meguid left to Marib to join his brother. From there, he went to the nearby province of alJawf for training in alQaida camps, al-Hassani said.
Bandar was killed by a drone strike in Marib on Jan. 20, 2013. The next day, a strike in al-Jawf killed Abdel-Meguid. Security officials confirmed the circumstances of their deaths to the AP.
Al-Hassani saw her brother Abdullah once before his death, in 2012.