Casey L. Coombs / Sana’a | August 10, 2012 
Tribal militias have joined the campaign against the local franchise of the radical movement. It may have helped oust Al-Qaeda from a few cities but it may not guarantee peace in the long run.
Even amid the escalating suicide bomb campaign across Yemen, the attack on a wake in Jaar in southern Yemen’s Abyan province was particularly grisly and premeditated, designed to inflict maximum damage. It took place on Aug. 4, at around 11 p.m., as some 150 neighbors and relatives gathered outside the home of local tribal Sheikh Abdulatif Sayed following the funeral of his close relative. While they were grieving, a young al-Qaeda recruit from Jaar infiltrated the crowd, resting on a cooler he had brought with him. Then, according to several survivors, he detonated his suicide vest and that blast ignited the cooler, which was packed with more explosives and metal ball bearings. Shrapnel killed some 50 guests, including the sheikh’s two brothers.
However, the intended target, Sheikh Sayed, survived. Al-Qaeda had particularly wanted to assassinate him. Sayed had defected from the terrorist organization three months earlier to head a growing force of anti-Qaeda tribal militias, also known as Popular Committees, sweeping the region.
If the tribal uprising against al-Qaeda sounds familiar, then you are hearing echoes of Iraq. Aysh Awas, director of Security and Strategic Studies at Sheba, a think tank in Sana’a, told TIME that Ansar al-Shari’a — the political front of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — is doing in Yemen what Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) did following the U.S. invasion in 2003: wage suicide bomb-led jihad to derail the country’s nascent Washington-supported democracy and replace it with an Islamic state based on shari’a law. And just as anti-Qaeda, U.S.-backed tribal sheikhs in Iraq banned together to secure their territory from AQI, Popular Committees are popping up across Yemen to combat the local franchise of the movement founded by the late Osama bin Laden. “In light of the recent attacks, it seems that anything is likely to happen and the situation in Yemen may be turning into the Iraqi model,” Awas says.
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Photo credit: MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
