AQAP

Since the summer of 2019, protests have become a fixture across Hadramawt in reaction to the poor provision of electricity. Although the governorate is far from the frontlines and home to most of the country’s oil reserves, it has not escaped destabilizing aspects of the conflict, including the erosion of the rule of law and the emergence of war profiteering.…

During the fighting in Shabwa last year and more recently in Abyan, forces affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council (STC) locked horns with Islah-affiliated government forces. Both sides accused the other of links to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Such claims have been a feature of the war since 2015, but are usually more rhetorical than real, lacking evidence…

When Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by a US drone strike in Afghanistan last July it had only limited impact for the group’s Middle East branches in North Africa, Yemen, and Somalia. This was in part a result of the internal cohesion created by organizational policies introduced since 2011 that gave regional branches significant autonomy. But it also spoke…

The past year has been one of extreme consequence for Yemen. The war has entered a new phase of low-level violence and economic warfare. Casualties are down since a truce was signed in April, and have remained relatively low even after its acrimonious expiration in October. The internationally recognized government has sworn in a new executive body, but it has…

When Mohammed Ayidh al-Harazi was detained in Sana’a’s high-security prison for political detainees in 2011, he had little reason to believe he would be out any time soon. As a senior figure in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) who had gone below the radar of authorities for several years, he was seized during the protests that swept Yemen during…

This paper will examine the relationship between AQAP and the Qayfah tribe, and the story of the rise, and eventual fall, of the pro-AQAP wing of the Al-Dhahab family within the tribe. The story highlights the manner in which AQAP dealt with the restrictions placed on it by the Yemeni tribal system, how they were able to capitalize on divisions within the Al-Dhahab family, as well as some of the contradictions of a tribal system operating within a modern state…

Al-Qaeda in Yemen appears weaker now than at almost any point since its Saudi and Yemeni branches united to form Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2009. The group’s fortunes peaked in 2015 when it established a proto-state in the eastern port city of Mukalla, taking advantage of the security vacuum and increasing sectarianism as Yemen’s civil war spiraled…

The decline of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen over the past five years was unexpected. Indicators in the years prior to the onset of the current conflict showed a group primed to expand its influence. The wave of protests against then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011, and his subsequent resignation the following year, had left the country in disarray. A new president was at the helm and struggling with the ascending power of the Houthi movement. Conditions…