| gulfnews.com | - |
Manama: Yemen's
security chief has told Iran to stop training and funding Shi'ite
Muslim rebels who, along with Al Qaeda-backed Islamists and southern
separatists, are staging one of three insurgencies threatening to pull
the chaotic country apart.
Gulf | Yemen
Iran should stop interfering in Yemen - official
Security chief details Iranian influence and presence of Al Qaida in Yemen
- Reuters
- Published: 12:31 December 10, 2012
Manama: Yemen’s security chief has
told Iran to stop training and funding Shi’ite Muslim rebels who, along
with Al Qaeda-backed Islamists and southern separatists, are staging one
of three insurgencies threatening to pull the chaotic country apart.
Major-General Ali Al Ahmadi,
president of Yemen’s National Security Board, also said Al Qaida
appeared not to number more than 700-800 in the country, including a few
hundred Saudis.
But the group’s Yemeni wing,
which has plotted attacks on international airlines and sworn to bring
down Saudi Arabia’s monarchy, had sleeper cells on top of this that
authorities had yet to track down, he said on Sunday.
Ahmadi accused Tehran of
backing the Houthi rebels who operate in northern Yemen near the border
with Saudi Arabia - the world’s top oil exporter which is competing with
Iran for regional influence.
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“Iran seized a chance to
broaden the conflict to play a certain role,” he said. “We have no
hostility to Iran; all we ask is that they don’t interfere.”
“We have processed evidence
of their presence and we have arrested a number of people and have
sufficient evidence they are interfering,” Al Ahmadi added in an
interview on the sidelines of a conference in Bahrain.
Iran has already denied interfering in Yemen’s affairs.
The Houthi movement, named
after the tribe of its leader, says it represents the claims of Zaydi
Shiite Muslims who ruled Yemen for over 1,000 years. Most Iranians
follow a different Shiite sect but Yemeni officials say Houthis have
travelled to Iran’s seminary city of Qom for indoctrination.
Yemen said in July it had
arrested members of a spy ring led by a former commander in Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard, the state news agency Saba said, adding that the
cell had operated in the Horn of Africa as well as Yemen. An Interior
Ministry official said all those detained were Yemenis.
Houthis have survived
repeated government attempts to crush them. They fought a brief war with
Saudi Arabia in 2009 after their conflict with Yemeni forces spilled
across the border.
Sanaa has invited them to
join Yemen’s national dialogue process aimed at reconciling the
disparate groups that emerged before and during a political crisis last
year.
Al Ahmadi also said the exact size of Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was unknown.
“Al Qaida seems to me to not
exceed 700-800 elements, but there are also sleeper cells we don’t know
about. The majority are Yemenis,” Ahmadi said. “The second group are
Saudis, of which there are hundreds, but it is very hard to be precise.”
Islamist militants exploited
protests last year against then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to
seize several towns in the south before a US-backed government offensive
drove them out. They included many Saudis who had fled after the
kingdom crushed a wave of attacks in 2006.
Saudi officials have
described AQAP as the kingdom’s most serious security threat and have
worked closely with Sanaa against the group.
Security analysts in the Gulf
say Saudis comprise much of the leadership of AQAP, but that a series
of recent defections and assassinations may have weakened morale.
“Saudis bring ideology,
funding and bomb-making expertise to AQAP,” Al Ahmadi said. “More than
13 nationalities have come to Yemen with Al Qaeda. Most fighters are
from inside the country but foreigners brought expertise and were
misguiding and misleading young Yemeni people.”
Early last month a group of
12 Saudis and a Yemeni killed two Saudi security guards in an ambush as
they tried to cross into Yemen, leading to the deaths of four of the men
and the capture of the others, Saudi state media said.
Security experts say Saudi
Arabia, under the direction of its Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin
Nayef and intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has a strong
presence in Yemen helping the government to infiltrate AQAP.
“There’s full coordination
between the counterpart services of the two countries to share
information. There are different forms of units to coordinate,” Al
Ahmadi said.
In April a Saudi diplomat was
kidnapped by Al Qaida in Aden and is still being held. Another was shot
dead near his home in Sanaa last month.
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