Yemen ‘must resist foreign forces’

The Yemeni military is fighting al-Qaeda, Houthi rebels, and a separatist movement

A group of Muslim leaders have said Yemenis have a religious duty to resist foreign military intervention in the country.

“In the event of any foreign party insisting on hostilities against, an assault on, or military or security intervention in Yemen, then Islam requires all its followers to pursue jihad,” a statement signed by 150 clerics on Thursday said.

Foreign governments have voiced increasing concern about the situation in Yemen since an attempted attack on a US-bound airliner, after which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed it had armed the alleged bomber.

On Wednesday, Carl Levin, the chairman of the US senate armed services committee, said that Washington should use drone attacks, air raids or covert operations against al-Qaeda fighters in the country.

“Most options ought to be on the table,” short of invasion by US forces, the Democrat senator said.

The US and Britain have announced plans to fund Yemen’s counter-terrorism police force, but Barack Obama, the US president, has explicitly ruled out sending in troops.

Verdict ‘resonates’

Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, said that the religious leaders’ decision to oppose any miltary intervention would carry great weight in the country.

“In a highly conservative, highly religious society like Yemen, it is the word of the clerics and not that of the politicians that really resonates among the masses. And today the clerics of Yemen have announced their verdict,” Vall said.

The clerics said that their opinion was in line with that of most Yemenis and the Sana’a government, while also criticising the killing of foreigners in an apparent allusion to suspected al-Qaeda attacks.

The Yemeni government, which is also fighting a rebel group in the north of the country, and a secessionist movement in the south, has said it is engaged in an “open war” to clear al-Qaeda fighters from its territory.

“The war security forces launched against al-Qaeda elements is open whenever or wherever we find these elements,” a government news website reported on Thursday, quoting an unnamed security source.

It said the source had also warned Yemenis against “hiding any al-Qaeda elements”.

Sana’a has repeatedly denied that it will require foreign intervention to help it defeat the movement, an amalgamation of groups from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

“Yemen is not Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, where terrorists constantly launch attacks while the authorities try to respond,” Ali Anisi, Yemen’s head of national security, said on Wednesday.

“Here, we anticipate the threat. Yemen is not a hideout for the terrorists and will never be.”

‘Repressive government’

Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad and chief of the Iraq Issues Group, told Al Jazeera: “One of the difficulties that [the Americans] see in Yemen is, as we see in many places, is unrepresentative, corrupt and repressive government.

“At the end of the day, the only real solution to the problem of terrorism is to have responsible government, with the willingness and the ability to control its own territory.

“There are many who are inclined to view the Ali Abdullah Salehs [president of Yemen] of the world as American puppets. Well, in fact, maybe unfortunately, it is far from that. … [However], there aren’t really many good alternatives.”

Yemen has insisted that it is making advances against al-Qaeda, citing air raids in December that killed more than 60 people and a string of reported arrests of suspected al-Qaeda figures.

However, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has used the air raids to encourage anti-American feeling, claiming that they were carried out by US warplanes.

Tags: Yemen