 Good afternoon. Thank you for coming to the New America Foundation. My name is Peter Bergen and really delighted to introduce Greg Johnson who Will be known to miss really one of the world's leading experts on Yemen We just wanted to mention Chris Busek who may have been known to many of you as friend of ours who? died tragically at a very young age and we just wanted to Because he was really the only other person out there writing on Yemen in a serious way Just mentioned that we are saddened by his death Greg is a former Fulbright fellow in Yemen And he's written for a number of publications including foreign policy American interests the independent the Boston Globe He's the co-founder of Waka Waka a Yemen blog. How do you pronounce them? Waka Waka And he's currently a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University where he is Dissertation is about the Yemeni 1960s civil war So very different from this book, which has just been published the last refuge Yemen al-Qaeda in America's war in Arabia Published by Norton So we thought we would have a kind of conversation and then open it up to you guys And and Greg, I guess the first question I had is There was a period when Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had taken certain towns in in the south and basically held those towns And I just saw there was an Amnesty International report saying that they were doing things like crucifying people You have said I think it publicly in the past that al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula has sort of been Amplified by the American drone program In a sense has been a recruiting tool yet on the other hand we've seen al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Lose these towns because of their Taliban like social policies and the efforts of CIA and JSOC and and the Yemeni government So where would you? Score al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula today in terms of its reach and influence and threat to the United States Right, that's a that's a great question And and in fact the last chapter in the book deals with this crucifixion I think that many of us saw on on the Amnesty International report and CNN has given some coverage in the Videos in the in the scenes that we see are very very gruesome and one of the things that I talk about and That the Amnesty report didn't mention is that the guy who was crucified Was an individual that al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia the sort of local face in in some of these southern provinces in Yemen Had charged and then convicted of spying for the Saudis and the Americans basically what they said he had done is is Place this electronic tracking chip within a car that the Americans then later used for for a drone strike And what al-Qaeda did and what I think is is very worrying to myself and others who pay attention Is one of the guys who died in that drone strike had this young son a boy by the name of Salim who? In the pictures he looks to be about six years old. He's still got his baby teeth He's got sort of hair curling around his ears a very Really just an adorable child and in this in this piece that al-Qaeda put out early in 2012 they have Salim going to this public crucifixion that's taking place and One of his late father's friends put Salim up on his shoulders during this crucifixion and Salim this young six-year-old boy Points up at the man hanging on this metal cross on the lamppost and says there's the traitor who killed my father and this you know That's sort of emblematic at least for me of what it is that I'm very concerned about because we know that the the current generation of leaders of Al-Qaeda people like Nasser al-Wahashi Who's the commander of the organization? Qasem al-Rami who it's sort of his brain child that led to these several underwear bomb plots Whether against Muhammad bin Naif in Saudi Arabia in 2009 or the one on Christmas Day 2009 or then again the one that was uncovered earlier in 2012 their world view was really shaped in the late 1990s when they went to these sort of Salafi schools They're in in southern Yemen, but the new generation the next generation the seeds of future generations of Al-Qaeda members young boys like Salim they're being sown today in what I think is a much more Radical environment than than what we saw take place in the late 1990s and this to me is a very worrying thing when we talk about Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula today. You're absolutely right. I mean the the Arab Spring the the sort of collapse of law and security within southern Yemen opened up this wide space for Al-Qaeda to move into towns in Abiyan and in Zanjibar and one of the things that we don't often talk about is is certainly Al-Qaeda You know, they brought a lot of draconian punishments. There's the crucifixion. There's executions. There was beheadings There was cutting off of arms for things such as stealing electrical wires and so forth, but the at the time in 2011 the Social structure the fabric had sort of disintegrated and the rules of the game were no longer known So in a sense, this is similar to what the Taliban did in Afghanistan in the 1990s in that they came in and they were able to Restore some sort of sense of law and security, which had been missing. It was a very draconian sense, of course But they not only did this but they also started to provide services to people which I thought was very interesting They talk a lot about, you know, stringing electrical lines to places that had never had electricity Providing teachers to schools There's some villages I know of in these areas that had been petitioning the central government for three years to send teachers and the central government never sent Any and finally Al-Qaeda shows up and within a couple weeks the organization sends a bunch of guys Who are then in schools teaching the teaching the young boys and you can imagine what it is that they're teaching them in these schools They're they're doing things like digging water wells and this is really how Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula I said I think sees itself and that is you know We tend to think of Al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization and there's certainly that but the organization I think particularly the group in Yemen sees itself as something broader They see themselves as a group that carries out terrorist attacks certainly But that they also want to be sort of this Governing body a body that is able to establish these Emirates and and and work this on on the ground the problem that they had and this This gets to what it is that you mentioned about the drone strikes and the air attacks is that when they did this They sort of had a return address and so they made themselves Much more vulnerable to US strikes from the air than they had been previously and the US has done I think a good job of Carrying out air strikes and drone strikes and killing members of Al-Qaeda But they've also killed a number of civilian casualties and I think we can probably get into this In a minute, but the situation of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula today is I think the organization is really at a crossroads They they were pushed out earlier this year from these towns and villages that they'd taken over But the fighters weren't captured and most of the fighters weren't killed so they're still in Yemen It's just they're no longer controlling these towns. They sort of went back into the mountains and the hills much like they did in 2009 2010 they'd like to do what they did in 2011 2012 But they have this this very sort of gaping vulnerability in that they can be hit very easily from the air when the US Knows where it is that they're located and so this I think is what the Organization has been doing for the past six months when we've heard very little from them are these internal debates and internal discussions about which way do we go do we continue to be what we were in 2009 2010 an Organization that is sort of hiding out and is able to carry out guerrilla attacks within Yemen Hopefully launch some attacks into the West or do we become the organization? We we want to be in and what we were in 2011 and the early part of 2012 an organization that can implement Islamic law as we see and actually take over territory and control this area and so I'm not sure how it is that they're going to work this out But I think that's where the organization is at the moment is this sort of very Interesting transition period where they're decide where they're attempting to decide which way to go So you're what you're saying is it's an insurgent group It really sees itself as an insurgent group that wants to control territory that employs terrorism as a tactic Rather than as a terrorist group per se for instance, I mean al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Saudi Arabia had no pretensions about establishing sharia law and Their interpretation is that didn't see it itself as an insurgent group, right? Yeah, I think I think we've seen a very interesting evolution And this is something that the group in in Yemen has talked about for for a long time But they weren't really able to implement some of these things Until they were able to control territory. So there was a there's this guy in al-Qaeda They're their chief cleric there in Yemen a guy by the name of Adal al-Bab and he gave this very interesting interview in 2011 and for a while it sort of reads like a typical al-Qaeda interview You know the same sort of shallow theology that you often read But then he starts talking about sewage and how this is a real problem And this is one of the things that al-Qaeda really needs to spend some time on is how to fix the the sewage problem in Places like Jaar and Zanjibar in in Abiyan And so I think we are seeing sort of an evolution of this group within Yemen and they realize I mean They realize that the name al-Qaeda is still fairly unpopular within Yemen And I think this is one of the reasons that we saw the group Attempt and sort of play with adopting the name of Ansar al-Sharia Is that they realize that the name al-Qaeda carries with it a certain amount of a baggage And so the upheaval and sort of the fragmentation in Yemen has opened up some space in which this group can Try different ways and sort of see what it is That's going to work in a way that allows them to carry out their their policy as they see it Is Ansar al-Sharia a kind of a brand name or a movement an organization? What is it? Yeah, it's it's I mean, I think it's a fairly crude rebranding attempt I mean the first time that we really heard the name was in April of 2011 and this is when this guy Adal al-Abab Gives this interview and he says look, you know, we know that we have problems with al-Qaeda, you know People hear al-Qaeda. They think beheadings. They think, you know, we're killing Muslim civilians and this is something that al-Qaeda has been very careful about in Yemen and it has What in my view is a great deal of sort of target discipline And the interesting thing there's been a lot of debate going back and forth about you know What is the relationship between Ansar al-Sharia and what is the relationship between al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? Both organizations are headed by Nasr al-Wahashi. I mean both of are very clear about that. I mean Adal al-Abab, I think put it best He said look Ansar al-Sharia is the name that we use to introduce ourselves to people who might not know us and then later when They know us as individuals when they can see sort of past the baggage that the name al-Qaeda comes with then we say well We're also al-Qaeda Tell us give us a sense of how you did the reporting for the book Right. Well, I first went to Yemen in 2003 2004 as a Fulbright fellow and and I had been a Peace Corps volunteer I was actually in Jordan as a member of the Peace Corps on September 11th And I was also there in November 2002 when the US carried out this drone strike in Yemen that killed The then head of al-Qaeda a man by the name of Abu al-Ali al-Harrathiy and I'd wanted to go to Yemen for a long time And that sort of started me thinking about writing this this narrative sort of you know long-form journalists Narrative nonfiction account of the organization, but it wasn't actually until 2008 and I was actually just up at DuPont sort of browsing through Kramer books when when everything sort of fell in place And I felt that I had enough information to to write I'd spent a year in Yemen Oh three and oh four went back in oh five and oh six and then more trips In 2009 and I was just there last month and and all of these One of the things that's been very helpful to me has been you know taking a variety of different sources So there's been great journalistic work done on sort of the US side And what happens in Washington, which is the area that I know the least amount about I mean you've done great work on this Daniel Klaidman has that killer capture book Which I think is is also very very good But for me using the Arabic sources that al-Qaeda puts out and then talking with people who were in al-Qaeda in Yemen people like someone that we both know Nasser al-Bahri Abu Jandal who has been laudan's bodyguard for such a long time There's been some great Yemeni reporters Khalid al-Khamadi Muhammad al-Ahmadi who do fantastic work in Arabic That really gets inside the organization and so being able to utilize their reports talking to them Doing interviews on the ground with a variety of people tribal leaders people who've been in al-Qaeda And then sort of putting this all together in a way that that makes sense I mean my goal was that my mother who has no interest in Yemen outside of what I do Would be able to pick up the book read it and enjoy that and I mean you know moms are nice It's a great Christmas gift. Yeah, absolutely. I mean you know put it in a put it in a stocking moms love it That's so you know to what extent was the Yemeni government? helpful or a hindrance in this effort obviously you would went there on a academic right visa That they get in the way and obviously there are areas in Yemen where it doesn't the government doesn't really control it You're at risk of being kidnapped and yeah tribal rivalries and how did you sort of deal with or negotiate all those hurdles? Well when I first went there in 2003 and 2004 this is right when sort of Al-Qaeda in Yemen is really being defeated by the United States and that drone strike in 2002 Really broke the back of the organization there and one of the things that I think is easy to overlook Is that this group in Yemen Al-Qaeda in Yemen was as surprised as we all were by September 11th They by and large didn't know it was coming And so when it happened and then when bin Laden sort of predicted uprising never took root They had to reorganize they had to you know attempt to do all of these different things on the on the run And the the death of Al-Qaeda really broke the back of that organization And so by the time I got there Yemen and the US were sort of wiping up this first phase of the war and it Initially looked as though Yemen was a success story One of the really early success stories in the in the war against Al-Qaeda And so when I got there I was able to travel around to all sorts of different parts of the country very very freely The Houthi rebellion hadn't started yet. In fact, it started in June of 2004 Almost a year after after I arrived And so I was able to travel in the north travel out in Marib out in Hadremout out in all these places That are much more difficult to get to today one of the things that all did you go to the bin Laden family village? I did not go to the bin Laden family village You know bin Laden is he's he's very important in the book in a in a sense particularly because Nasser al-Wahashi this leader of Al-Qaeda Was one of his main disciples and a guy who was really his personal aide and secretary for so long And so now there's I think there's almost this sense that if you if you study with with Wahashi And if you become a member of Al-Qaeda It's almost you become sort of a a disciple of the master's disciple And so there's that personal link that you have to Osama bin Laden and Wahashi's also been very good about sort of using the blueprint That bin Laden used in Afghanistan in the late 1990s and in tweaking that and adjusting it to the to the local To the local situation and also he has extra credit for being in Guantanamo Wahashi wasn't in Guantanamo. He was Sayid al-Shehri the Saudi was and there are a lot of Saudis who were in Guantanamo But Wahashi spent two years in an Iranian prison. He was one of the guys who was transferred back to Yemen in late 2003 and sort of put in this maximum security prison in Sana'a And I mean he's a very short guy is like five foot six very very low-spoken very soft boys very very thin You know sunken cheeks all of that He's sort of got a beard almost like a Billy go to sort of juts out from his face But he was one of the main guys who helped the 23 al-Qaeda suspects tunnel out of this maximum security and into this Into this mosque on the on the other side of the wall And it was that moment in February of 2006 that at least for me is really the genesis moment of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. That's when al-Qaeda I mean after 2001 it was sort of defeated over the over a period of two or three years and then we saw you know 2004-2005 there's almost no al-Qaeda violence in in Yemen which allowed the Yemeni government and the US government to really take their eyes off The ball the US is distracted and rock Yemen is distracted with the Houthi rebellion And so when these guys break out of prison they have like two years in which no one's paying attention in which they can really Rebuild and restructure their their organization. So for the the Yemeni government I mean one of the really interesting things about doing research in a place like Yemen is Because the government doesn't function particularly well Much like how al-Qaeda can sort of take advantage of some of these cracks Journalists and researchers can take advantage of them as well And there are a lot of people in the Yemeni government who've been particularly helpful to me not necessarily Because of their government status, but rather because of an individual relationship that we've been able to develop Over the years. I mean Yemen like most countries is a very small place And so when you go over the course of nine or ten years you tend to develop relationships With with people that I think matter more the personal relationship matter more than sort of the the professional year You have this position. They have this position It's a it's a personal trust and personal relationship. That's often forged in cotton shoes that is very helpful I mean if you didn't chew cat you couldn't do your research, right? I mean for you know cotton shoes is sort of It's it's what I imagine graduate school would be a bunch of people sort of sitting around Talking all the time graduate school turned out not to be I only met one Yemeni man Who didn't chew cut? Yeah, most most people do and even even those who don't I mean if you don't go to the kachu you sort of get left out of the Of the conversation and there there are some fascinating Fascinating kachus. I've been to kachus with you know sort of the poet laureates of Yemen and so forth when the Abu Ghraib Pictures came out or when Ahmed Yasin was assassinated and then you're sort of in the uncomfortable position of being an Unofficial spokesperson for for what's being done But Yemenis are so incredibly warm and generous and to be able to have so many in an enclosed space In which you can talk for six to eight hours, and they'll tell you whatever it is that you want to know I mean you have to sift some of it obviously given the given the circumstances But that is I think one of the things that makes research not only so enjoyable in Yemen But but can also be very very productive. It has I think a less productive aspect for the Yemen economy But for for an outside researcher During the UN General Assembly, we had the unusual spectacle of the president of Yemen coming to the UN to defend the use of drones Which is I think a first for a foreign leader Why did he say that what did he say how is there any obviously that the drone program is unpopular in Pakistan? And I think there's ways of measuring that right Other ways have people asked the polling question about drones in Yemen. Yeah, that that's that's very a series of very good questions I was actually in Yemen when President had he came to the UN and so it was very interesting to sort of sit and Talk with a lot of people and one of the things that had he said The new president who came in after Ali Abdullah Saleh was was overthrown after 33 years in power was that Drones are more accurate than the human brain things of this nature Which in Yemen didn't play particularly well and one of the things I think is important to to sort of When we talk about drones and drone strikes in here in the United States is to remember that at this point I mean I Yemen is a broken country. Yemen is a country that no longer really functions The the city of Sana'a has basically become a city of four different factions that are all struggling for power And one of the things that I'm really concerned about is the fact that President had he who has Very little domestic support in Yemen This is a guy who was sort of put in place by the GCC deal by the deal that had President Saleh stepped down in exchange for immunity And the only thing everybody liked about president had he is that his name wasn't Ali Abdullah Saleh and so he has a very weak base of support within Yemen and To counteract that he relies very heavily on the United States and on the international community And so there's almost a mutually dependent relationship That's developing in Yemen in which we see President had he allowing the US to do what it wants to do in Yemen Which is largely carry out drone and airstrikes and be focused on al-Qaeda and in exchange Then the US uses president had he and gives him full-throated support so that he can continue to rule The polling question is very is very interesting because I think if you look in places like Sana'a and it's not I Guess the thing that I've seen in traveling back and forth between the US and Yemen is that the debate in both Countries takes place slightly differently So in the US we talk a lot about drones and we're we're focused on technology Which makes sense and sort of how is it that we use drones the legal framework the ethical framework? How is this rule book going to play out in Yemen? That's less of an issue or at least my experience is that's less of an issue The Yemenis don't or at least the ones that I'm talking to and what it is that I've looked at Don't seem to care whether it's a drone that fires the missile or a plane that fires a missile or a ship off the coast What they know is that people are dying and it's it's not the drone strikes or the strikes It's the civilian casualties that are upsetting people in Yemen And I think this is one of the one of the key differences in sort of the debate One of the things that I would that I would suggest is that there are there are different types of drone strikes There are the high-value target strikes and then there are things that we've talked about Signature strikes and terrorist attack disruption strikes the TADs and so forth And I think if the US would sort of carve out the signature strikes and leave that aside And only utilize the high-value target would describe so that people understand what are what are signature strikes? Well, I mean the way I understand it and there's a lot of sort of debate and discussion And it's still a covert program And so we only get the anonymous officials speaking to us through the press which which sort of hampers what it is that we can We can actually know about the program High-value target strikes tend to be dependent upon a particular piece of intelligence That then knows the identity of the person in the car or at the at the suspected strike location Whereas signature strikes are based on what the US has in the past referred to as a pattern of life And the US doesn't necessarily need to know the identities of everyone on the ground And this also brings up an interesting sort of Disjunction between the United States and Yemen in that the US tends to count military age males on The scene of the strike those who have been killed as militants which in Yemen They're not always counted as militants because if they're tribesmen who might not necessarily be affiliated with Al-Qaeda Then they're counted as civilian casualties in Yemen, but in the US they're counted as militants and one of the Sort of give you an anecdote that I think illustrates the point when Are they treated as militants in the in the press accounts? In the US press accounts or in Yemeni press in either In the US press accounts, I think they they tend to be but I mean this is one of those areas where we have I think so little good information that Honest people tend to you know can easily import their own biases because there's so much gray area and We see this with the number of people that are being reported killed I mean, I don't think there are very good numbers in Yemen There's just so much that we don't know about the program. What are the Yemeni news organizations that you would say are doing the least bad job on this I'm not sure if I would say Organizations, I think there are reporters who are doing who in Yemen tend to write for for a variety of publications Hullad Al-Hammadi Hullad Al-Hammadi does a very good job Muhammad Al-Ahmadi who I also mentioned earlier. He often writes for Al-Qaeda Sometimes of Hayat the Pan-era paper in London, but even counting you know counting individuals that these strikes There's a young freelancer Adam Barron Who does a very good job in Yemen knows a lot of people and there was this strike that took place on November 7th Shortly after President Obama won re-election that killed an individual Adnan Al-Qaeda In Sun Han, which is where the former president Saleh comes from in Yemen And it's not far from Sana'a and originally the Arabic reporting suggested that four people had died in this attack Adam went to the place Two weeks later and found that only two people had actually died and so this is what we're we're often dealing with is is this sort of You know lack of information a lack of accurate information in the press Christopher Swift Who's at Georgetown has done some recent interviews with tribal leaders in Yemen and as correct me if I'm wrong the way I understand his reporting is that These tribal leaders are not necessarily posted drone strikes What particularly if they kill foreigners meaning other people non-Yemenis, but they're very You know they're very opposed to them if they end up killing 18 and 19 year old locals who being sort of recruited by Al-Qaeda Is that sort of does that fit with what you're sort of reporting is or yeah? I mean, you know Chris Swift did you know He took a trip and and he found a particular set of results in in the interviews that he did And I found something slightly different I mean I would agree with him that the economy plays a very big role in sort of the growth of Al-Qaeda I mean we've seen Al-Qaeda grow from say two or three hundred individuals These are our best estimates, but both by the US and Yemeni governments, but I think they're pretty accurate so about two or three hundred individuals on Christmas Day 2009 up to John Brennan has said a thousand today the State Department estimates a few thousand Which I think is fairly accurate So we've seen Al-Qaeda in Yemen grow very very big very quickly And I think there are a lot of factors that play into this the economy is certainly one But I think the the civilian casualties is is one of the major factors driving this and at least that's what I've seen And others others, you know like like Chris Swift have not have not found that what was the I mean What are the critical factors for the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula losing these towns in the south I mean Was it the is it is it an effective Yemeni army that seems sort of unlikely Is it JSOC is it right is it what some combination or locals rising up against them I mean I think it's a combination of all three that sort of came together as well as Some of what we saw in the amnesty report some of the people being frustrated with what Al-Qaeda was doing So you had these tribal councils that really stepped up and took the fight to Al-Qaeda You had the Yemeni military under the defense minister. We have to remember president had the is from Abiyan He's from the area that Al-Qaeda was taking over and he couldn't even visit his home village And so this was something that was important to him, but it was also very important to the US So you had US air power you had the Yemeni Yemeni military going in and you also had the Popular forces as they say in Yemen and this is one of the things that I think is really important Because I think in Washington in New York here in the US There's an unspoken, but I think very real assumption that this is a war that the United States can win on its own That we see this problem if we can only do more if we could do it better If we could be smarter about it that we could win this this war on our own And I don't think that's true. I think if it's the US against Al-Qaeda in Yemen That that's a war that the US is is is going to lose it has to be the Yemeni tribesmen in the Yemeni clerics They're the people in the position to really stand up and take the fight to Al-Qaeda and say look what it is That you're doing is against Islam look, you know Yemen is not a legitimate theater of jihad. It's not Iraq It's not Afghanistan and those are the people that I think have to be doing this one of the problems I think the US has is that the US can do a great deal to support that to support that effort But I think the way that current US policy particularly with things like signature strikes and so many different strikes I mean, we've seen 38 to 52 strikes By my count this year since president had he has taken office and that's an attempt to kill what the US says is 10 to 15 individuals so I mean, you know 38 to 52 strikes trying to kill 10 or 15 Individuals to me that suggests one of two things is happening either the drone strikes aren't as accurate as we're being told or That the US is doing something other than just going after these top 10 or 15 15 individuals and so I think the US if it would sort of carve out the signature strikes and limit itself to high value Target strikes could still do what it wants to do in going after these individuals and yet at the same time Not antagonize and not unnecessarily radicalized the situation By killing so many so many civilian casualties And I think that would also then open up more space for the tribesmen in the clerics to stand up against all quiet There's a sort of political ecosystem in Yemen This may not be an exact analogy, but the MMA which is the pro Taliban religious parties in Pakistan Essentially, I sort of enablers to some degree of the Taliban in the Northwest frontier now Kyber Pactunwa Describe for us a little bit about the role that shakes in Dhani this la party tariq al-Fadli who's an old comrade in arms They've been laden who is also a major political figure, right? What are they? How do they play? What are they doing now? Are they sort of fellow travelers sympathizers something different? Yeah. Yeah, this you you pick the two Two really most difficult people to talk about so shakes in Dhani is this guy Big red henna beard if you've ever seen a seen a picture very photogenic We love to see pictures and talk about him as being sort of the most popular cleric in Yemen He runs a university called al-Iman University. It's in Sana'a. I've visited it several times Talk to the students It's also a place that John Walker Lynn studied that other people with very questionable Associations have have studied on what a lot. I would like he gave some lectures there for a while and Zindani is someone who's a fascinating figure and I think that the US could actually play this slightly differently So in 2004 the US named him especially designated global threat terrorist and then the UN of course followed suit The problem with this I think is Zindani is not a he's not a great guy. He's not a nice guy He's not a guy who's necessarily an ally of the US But he also doesn't have to be an enemy of the US and that is I think that the US if it really is Focused and it wants to defeat al-Qaeda that it has to sort of draw the circle around al-Qaeda as narrow as possible And so while Zindani doesn't necessarily say things that are You know pro-us he also isn't an al-Qaeda member and he's not a member of a QAP and What it is that he's saying sometimes it sounds closer to a QAP sometimes it sounds much further away from what it is They're talking about so I think in addition to sort of you know Limiting the types of drone strikes and the frequency of drone strikes in Yemen One of the things that the US could do is removes Zindani from this terrorist list with the realization that he's not Necessarily an ally, but he doesn't have to be have to be an enemy and by doing that I think they would open up space for other sort of Salafi clerics and Salafi shakes Within Yemen to sort of stand up because the problem that we're having is that people like Zindani people like Hazel Maswari Who's a who's a young very very popular cleric in Yemen? People with the grovy toss aren't sort of standing up and talking about al-Qaeda and talking about what it is That the organization is doing even though we saw things like earlier this summer when a suicide bomber Carried out an attack there in Sana'a that killed 70 military recruits at a at a parade I mean these are things that the clerics can step up and talk about and I think by the US sort of Not pushing them towards al-Qaeda. It can do a lot to sort of free them up Tadak al-Fadali is a very interesting figure he fought with with bin Laden was injured in Jalalabad in fact in the book The the first couple of chapters sort of talk about this You know the Yemeni is going off to to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets Tadak al-Fadali is a is a prominent figure in that what he and bin Laden tried to do in the early 1990s And so he certainly was allied with al-Qaeda and in fact al-Qaeda's first attack took place in odds and in 1992 and but since then especially since the civil war in 1994 al-Fadali has has changed a bit and He's changed in very interesting ways. He's almost a bit of a political chameleon within Yemen Were you able to speak to him? I was not on this last trip. No, and this was after there was Have you spoken to him in the past? I have spoken it in the past Well, how does he is he a politician? Is he a tribal leader? What is he? He is a guy who's very interested in making sure that he has the best position for himself possible Which at times means being a politician at times means being a tribal leader Bobby worth of the New York Times a couple years ago wrote a great profile of him for the New York Times that talks about him sort of, you know Sneaking some scotch from time to time There was a case in 2011 where he raised the US flag Above his compound and sort of stood at attention and played the Star-Spangled Banner for a while There have been other cases Earlier this year where there are reports of his son fighting with Ansel al-Sharia So it he's he's a guy who's down in Abiyan He his his sister is married to Ali Musa and al-Ahmar who's one of the factions in Yemen And so it's a very complicated situation, but he's a guy who however the sort of prevailing political winds are blowing That's where he tries to position himself do In terms of Anwar al-Lawki You know was he It's interesting that you know bin Laden essentially nicks the idea that al-Lawki become the leader Was that a good decision? Is it where I mean was it? Well, I'll I'll look he's dead now So I mean what hey she was able to survive and I think what it is that bin Laden was saying or what he was saying to Hey, she is look. I know you I trust you. We've grown up together. I know what it is that you're doing I mean hey she is someone that bin Laden picked very early on when he got to Afghanistan as a guy that he wanted to sort of Take under his wing mold him And I think bin Laden was very concerned about what it is that on what al-Awlaki would would do there There in Yemen and one of the you know It's there's a lot of unanswered questions that we still have about on what al-Awlaki about what it is The US was doing what on what al-Awlaki was doing there there in Yemen For instance on Christmas Eve 2009. There was a there was a strike In which the US believed that they'd actually killed on what al-Awlaki at a At a meeting that he was supposedly having with Nasser al-Wahashi in Said al-Shahri This of course is Christmas Eve 2009 one day before The would be suicide bomber was on the plane Which is often the reason that we hear from the US that on what al-Awlaki became sort of this this target Is his intimate involvement in in that plot and yet here's the case where even before that plot took place He appears to have been a target for the US And so there's still just a great deal that we don't know the reporting in Daniel Clayman's book killer capture on on what al-Awlaki is very very interesting especially sort of the What it is that he quotes President Obama as saying is as viewing on what al-Awlaki is more of a threat than even I'm an al-Awlaki and and being saying this is a guy I absolutely want to get and the US tried to get him a number of times. There's there's a case in the book where right after the US the Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May of 2011 there was less than a week later The US spotted al-Awlaki And so the US was able to put several different You know some drones and different things up in the air above Sheba and they were going after al-Awlaki And a series of things went wrong They fired a couple of missiles and that missed al-Awlaki was able to call in sort of a couple of friends Who drove up with this truck and under some cloud cover? It's very early in the morning they they switch trucks the US follows the original truck and al-Awlaki sort of escapes in the others and there's this scene that that Al-Qaeda later writes about in which al-Awlaki is sort of taken refuge up in a cave And he's watching down on the valley floor and the truck that he was in is exploded and the two guys sort of die And al-Awlaki his comment to his friend at the time was well This just goes to show that when your time is up your time is up and Allah knows when your time is up And so al-Awlaki said that and then he laid down what do you buy the story in the g-lands post and Danish newspaper of that It was a Danish sort of agent inside Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that basically led The CIA J-Solk whoever to al-Awlaki Well, they were saying the Danish individual was saying that that he was it wasn't his tip that actually led to the death But he was one of the avenues I think that the CIA was was pursuing and I talked to the Danish reporters as they were sort of betting this story And they wanted to see you know is this guy is Morden storm story does this really make sense? And I I looked at the reporting they they did and and answered some questions for them And I mean, you know Everything he said the people he described the places he described matched up with what it is that I know Which doesn't necessarily mean that a story is true But there was no sort of blinking lights at least from what what he was saying about in Yemen That would say okay This guy is is off or what it is that he describes here didn't take place or this person isn't like that There there's no sort of evidence that would suggest this is definitely untrue That doesn't mean of course that it is true the threat from a QAP is largely because of this very skilled bomb maker Right with that if you take him out of the equation. I mean his name is a Siri, right? Is he do you know where he is? I mean Well, I don't know where he is. Yeah, right? Well, there's this place in Chabwa that if you yeah I mean if he was sort of killed or captured would that be the end of this or as he communicated his skills to others Yeah, I mean that's a that's a great question and one of the things You know, I think there there's a tendency that we have here in the US to sort of personalize our enemies and for a long time I think this was the sense with on what I'll outlucky that hey if we kill on what I'll outlucky Will diminish the threat and the desire from all guiding the Arabian Peninsula to carry out a tax against the US I don't think that's true I think the underwear bomb that we saw that was uncovered earlier this year goes to prove that that's not true despite On what I'll outlucky's death. I think Al-Qaeda is Continue is going to continue to attempt to target the United States and I think the same thing is the case with Ibrahim a Siri I mean, this is a guy who wasn't a member of Al-Qaeda on September 11th, 2001 There's there's he's one of the major characters in the book And I talk about how he and Abdullah his younger brother who becomes the suicide bomber who came very close to assassinating Muhammad bin Naif who's now the the minister of the interior in Saudi Arabia in 2009 by the way take us through that conversation brother. I really want you to be a suicide bomber Well, one of the things I mean, it's Abdullah is a guy. He's he was a very skinny individual Ibrahim was his older brother. They were very close growing up and Abdullah was always this very He had a what Al-Qaeda has described as sort of a very sensitive heart So even when they were sort of boys playing on the soccer field Abdullah would always be looking out for the weaker ones But because he was sort of weak and not necessarily as attractive as Ibrahim not the big popular individual He relied on his older brother to sort of be the be the enforcer and there's this there's this interesting story where the two of them are sort of driving through Riyadh together and Abdullah sees this this pile of trash on on the side of the street And he's sort of so overcome and so overwhelmed and he's like well There could be some of the names of God on there And so we have to go and we have to dispose of this properly And so Ibrahim's talking about this after his brother has died and he said, you know So we spend the next couple of hours digging through this trash and unwrapping old food and things to make sure that we disposed of the of the material of the of the paper correctly and these are I mean these are two guys Abdullah The the younger brother Looked at what happened in the 1980s He was somebody who watched a lot of jihadi videos from Afghanistan And then after the US went into Iraq in 2003 He really started to ask a lot of different clerics a lot of different shakes. What has changed? Why did Saudi support the people fighting a non-muslim military in Afghanistan in the 1980s? But why are you preventing us from going and defending Iraqi widows and orphans today? And it was that along with the fact that Ibrahim Attempted to go to Iraq was a he dropped out of college He was a chemistry student Attempted to go to Iraq was arrested by the Saudis put in prison He claims that he was sort of tortured what that means is open I think to interpretation but there was a there's a discussion in which Abdullah comes to visit Ibrahim in prison And Ibrahim essentially says look, you know, what it is that we thought about the Saudis and the Saudi royal family is not true They're not Muslims. They're essentially infidels in Muslim guard and both of them point to this as The instance in which the two brothers really become radicalized and there's they make their way sort of south through the desert in 2006 and cross over the border in August and when they cross over the border and join al-Qaeda in 2006 very shortly after this prison break Abdullah swears the the ba'a this oath of allegiance to Nasser al-Wahashi But he actually swears a second oath as well And he swears the second oath to be able to carry out a suicide attack within Saudi Arabia from the very beginning This is what Abdullah wanted to do and in fact There's there's a couple of different scenes in which some of the guys in al-Qaeda are up in the north And they're sitting around and talking about what it is that they want to do There's one guy who wants to start this sort of multimedia program and eventually publish some journals and he does that And when it comes up the last time to talk he says, you know what I want to do is carry out a suicide attack in Saudi Arabia and so when they start to have this idea of You know using one of the one of the sort of the successes of the Saudis and getting them to turn people in and Having a guy pretend to be a repented member of al-Qaeda and go back into Saudi Arabia Abdullah is the guy that they choose Ibrahim his brother is the guy who equips him with the bomb and in fact There's a piece on rock center recently that Richard Engel did about this and he actually shows the videotape footage Which al-Qaeda has put out of Ibrahim and Abdullah these two brothers sort of embracing for the last time Right before Abdullah heads over the border to to Saudi Arabia to turn himself in and then Undercover suicide bomber one final question before we throw it open to the audience You know the reason the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is in Yemen is a sense. They were basically defeated in Saudi Arabia You know what happened? Right? I mean Saudi did I think a very good job and particularly Muhammad did been knife of using hard power and using soft power In a way to get at al-Qaeda and also Saudi Arabia It took advantage of the mistakes that al-Qaeda made in Saudi Arabia and one of the major mistakes that that al-Qaeda made between 2003 and 2006 in Saudi Arabia is carrying out attacks within the kingdom that killed Muslim civilians And this really turned the population against them And so when you read the stuff that they're putting out in Arabic in 2004 2005 They're saying things like we there's nowhere for us to hide even our own families don't want to talk to us Even they're turning against us and it was that sort of environment that Muhammad bin Naif was able to use military raids to go After the organization and also use sort of soft pressure on their families on the women within their families in particular There are cases where even some of the guys in Yemen if they don't have their wives or children with them Sometimes they'll get messages from Muhammad bin Naif that say things like well It's a you know It's a real shame that that the women in your family don't have anyone back to protect them in Saudi Arabia because you know You never know what can happen to to women without without guardians around them. So I mean there there's a combination of powers or of Tactics that I think the Saudis used to great effect at that period But now of course they're in Yemen which as the title of the book suggests is a place where even even in the early days of Islam when the Prophet Muhammad was suggesting where to go when disaster threatens It was Yemen then because Yemen then just like Yemen today was a weakly governed place with with rugged territory in which bands of armed Heavily armed small groups of men would be able to find find refuge. And so I think that's what we've seen take place Sorry to open the questions if you have a question to state your name and your affiliation and questions are encouraged Not statements and wait for the microphone and we'll take from this gentleman over here Yeah David Eisenberg Huffington post you right toward the end of your book that the next step in the evolution of al-Qaeda in Yemen Is both the acquisition of territory and the political goal to govern? two points What territory? Beyond if any Yemen would they have in mind and what would be the goals policy wise, you know Either as a party or the administration in terms of government would they seek to implement? Right, so I mean what we see is that you know the territory in Abiyan and in Sheba is a place that Because of how Yemeni history has evolved and because of some of the personalities within al-Qaeda that was very attractive to the organization So before 1990 North and South Yemen are two different countries The socialist rule ruled South Yemen, which is where Abiyan and Sheba are and the socialists were very active in De-tribalizing that area of Yemen that after unification President Sala came back in and he attempted to sort of Re-tribalize that that southern area and Nasser al-Wahashi is a guy who's from Abiyan himself a lot of the a lot of the different Individuals within the organization are from that area. So that's territory. That's very attractive to them Outside of Yemen, I'm you know, I mean the good the organization may sort of have very broad Rhetoric and very grand rhetoric, but I I mean it's an organization I think that I was also looking to build step by step and I think that's why they're sort of at this Crossroads right now and attempting to decide which way is it that we go? That's what they'd ultimately like to go to but in doing that they open themselves up to such a heavy barrage from particularly from US Military might in the strength that that they're trying to work around how to how to do that And what it is that they want to implement is is their version of sharia law of Islamic law as they understand it I mean one of the frustrating things for me and I think for a lot of people who look at this is when you read all kind of stuff It's you know, theologically. It's very shallow. It doesn't measure up to to the Islamic tradition And yet despite this despite the power that the United States has despite the military might despite the money I mean, this is an organization that the Christmas Day attack they said cost $5,000 and they had to borrow half of that from an individual because they didn't have that much cash on hand So I mean despite an organization that's this financially Strapped that this is this self-evidently a terrorist organization And yet we still seem to be to be losing on the ground and that that's one of the real real frustrations that myself And I think a lot of other people have Here You will keep archer analytics and I have a question about inspire the online magazine and in the second issue I believe it was they issued a call for scientists to Come and assist with what they referred to as the stage of weapons of mass destruction and they mentioned that they would have Future information and upcoming issues I wonder if you placed a lot of attention or importance on that on that mention if you think there indeed have been a recruitment efforts in this direction and Just what you think of generally in terms of inspire's role. Do they have a connection to a QSL in Pakistan? Could that have been strategic communication? Yeah, those are all all good questions a lot, you know It's asking to speculate on on what it is that I don't know we know that inspire was I think most of the evidence suggests that inspire was edited by Samar Khan the American who was who was also killed in the drone strike in September 2011 that that killed on what I'll look He inspire has has some interesting things I mean one of the one of the interesting things for myself In looking at inspire was how much more attention inspire got because it was in English Then something like Saddam al-Ahm got which was in Arabic and they essentially said many of the same things I mean there there's a little tweak of course, but one of the things that I found very interesting is you know On what a lot like he certainly had a unique voice He appealed to I think Westerners in a way that Nasr al-Wahashi Kossum al-Rami, Said al-Shehri even Ibrahim Asiri did not because he was able to sort of speak this You know very idiomatic English and so forth, but in Yemen he wasn't particularly well known We see some interesting things coming out of inspire For instance, they talk about the bomb that they made For both the the Christmas Day 2009 bomb as well as the one into the parcel bombs in 2010 They say that they came from very sort of rudimentary rural Laboratories and in fact the same laboratory and they say after 2011 they were able to not only take over because they sort of overran some military bases in Zanjibar They were able to get many more weapons than they'd had previously and able to transform these labs into Into much more modern labs as far as the you know sort of weapons of mass destruction I think that's more of an open call and an aspiration You know something that we see al-Qaeda do from time to time make these very bold lofty calls without necessarily having You know, I mean there's a reason that they're making the call they'd like to move this way But I'm not sure they have the capability I Mean we've all we've only seen I believe two that have come out since on what I'll look he and both came out within very A very short time of one another and in some ways this parallel Saddam al-Ahim, which we saw We saw al-Qahtani who was editing Saddam al-Ahim he was killed and then after he was killed there was still sort of one post issue that came out But that was it and so we haven't seen either Saddam al-Ahim or inspire really have sort of The continuous and a reliable publication like they did when both of their editors were alive Now what we see taking place is Al-Madad for Ansar Ashiri is putting out newsletters In fact, they just put out number 26 a couple days ago Whereas al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is putting out through its al-Malahim wing a variety of different things They just put out something from a Saudi a Statement just earlier this week as well But by and large those are the first things that we've heard from al-Qaeda in several months After it is that they were pushed out of this out of this territory and to me that suggests that it's still a personalized Organization in that the editors if they make this their priority Then they're putting it out. But when they're removed from the scene Then the the magazine it it doesn't necessarily have the the lifespan to Succeed them on any sort of permanent and consistent basis two ladies here and Eric Schmidt New York Times We just go down the road Thank you Thank you for being here today. My name is Christine Vargas. I'm a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins ice And my question goes to the issue of communications with potential recruits I did some work in the Afghan immigrant community in Queens, New York as well as women's rights work all over the north of Afghanistan What do these clerics need from us Intel assets in order to communicate the right things to those potential recruits to get them To consider other options Are those needs? Possible can we meet them and have you seen the US Intel assets on the ground capable of delivering them So the the cleric sort of the not the clerics within al-Qaeda, but clerics on the ground to stand up to al-Qaeda, right? Is this okay? I don't think they need a lot from the US, but they need not to be killed so I'll give you I'll give you one one example Several months ago in in Hadremote. There was an anti al-Qaeda cleric Who was doing what it is that that I've suggested needs to happen and doing what I think the US wants to see happen And that is Standing up and really preaching against all al-Qaeda and and you know saying Yemen is not Iraq It's not Afghanistan. We can't have these suicide attacks here It's making a really big difference at least locally in this organization for the the recruits For al-Qaeda is recruiting in fact such a difference that al-Qaeda calls a calls a meeting and this is This is one of the interesting things that I think Yemen is different from places like Afghanistan in the 1990s Where al-Qaeda was primarily an Arab organization in a non-Arab country and yet in a place like Yemen It's mostly a Yemeni organization within Yemen So there's much more sort of freedom of travel for the members and they also have a multitude of different identities in which they Can drop on so they don't need necessarily, you know stand out as an al-Qaeda member They may just sort of be seen as a pious individual So there's a meeting that takes place and at least from the reporting putting as much weight as we can in the reporting This meeting of and there were al-Qaeda targets there this meeting between this the sort of anti al-Qaeda cleric and al-Qaeda in which You know al-Qaeda wants him to sort of tone down his rhetoric is attacked and and the the cleric is one of the individuals When it comes to US human intelligence on the ground, I think You know the US and Saudi From everything that we know seem to have a very close working Cooperation when it comes to what's taking place on the ground We or at least someone like myself who doesn't have access to classified intelligence can only sort of judge based on the results and The results or at least the civilian casualties would suggest that that our human intelligence is not as good as it as it should be Eric Schmidt Hi, great Eric Schmidt in the New York Times. Can you describe what you your sense is with the relationship now between a QAP and I'll show up to a sense where Sami was captured Right that that's a that's a good question and and it's one that that I've sort of wrestled with a lot and I think there's a I mean There's always the danger and there's always a temptation when we're in this sort of sort of field and looking at the types of Things that we're looking at you see different pieces of evidence that sort of bubble up to the surface and The temptation is to take all these little pieces and put them together in some sort of a coherent narrative that makes sense And yet I think you also have to keep in mind There's just a lot that we don't know and the the temptation is always there to read way too much into way too little evidence I think what we've seen is that there's certainly crossover and talk between the two how much sort of You know training you talked earlier about Ibrahim Asiri and I mentioned that he came in 2006 And I think you know when Ibrahim Asiri came to Yemen He had to learn his bomb-making skills from someone he didn't have them coming in and He's been there for six years, and I think that's that time and in fact Al-Qaeda has said this They said you know we think it's we think it's kind of funny that the US thinks we only have one bomb maker I think all evidence suggests that he's that he's passed his skills on how many of these skills are going back and forth to From Yemen to Somalia it's it's really hard to know periodically We'll hear of Somali being killed fighting with Al-Qaeda in Yemen There have been a couple of cases of Yemenis killed in Somalia But that's about all that we have to to go on And how this has changed after the individual you mentioned who was who was arrested and held You know it's it's really hard to hard to say and I'm like everybody else. I just don't know unfortunately So there you hear Rebecca Cataldi from the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy What do you think could be done by NGOs or even in the US government? To support and build the capacity of ordinary Yemeni citizens to counter violent extremism in groups like Al-Qaeda non-militarily Not just religious leaders, but you know teachers parents tribal leaders. What sort of skills or capacity do you think is needed? Right, that's I mean that's that's a good question. Obviously foreign NGOs and foreign diplomats I mean we've seen in Benghazi Bobby Worth had a great piece in the New York Times Sunday magazine a couple of weeks ago that sort of talked about bunker diplomacy And this is a real problem in Yemen right now because of the breakdown of security when I was just in Sunnah I mean essentially Unfortunately what we have in Yemen is sort of a mini green zone that has that has taken place in which Diplomats are going back and forth from the Sheraton which is right above the embassy to the embassy and they get out a bit within Sunnah But but when they get outside of the country, it's sort of a quick helicopter ride and back And this is a real a real problem for them for NGOs You know, I don't think there's a lot that it's not as though Yemenis need to be taught that Al-Qaeda is bad I mean the Al-Qaeda is doesn't have a theology that's particularly palatable to a lot of Yemenis And again, I think one of the reasons that we're we're seeing or that we've seen this rapid rise in the strength of Al-Qaeda is The civilian casualties and I had a very interesting conversation With the journalist a journalist who's Yemeni who's interviewed a lot of Al-Qaeda leaders talked with Ansel al-Sharia And he told me basically look what's happening is that these drone strikes there in these airstrikes. They're killing tribal Tribal figures and when they kill these tribal figures and again people that the US counts as militants, but Yemenis do not They're driving a lot of tribesmen into the arms of Al-Qaeda not because the tribesmen all of a sudden say oh Al-Qaeda you have a vision that I can get on board with But rather because Al-Qaeda is the only one who's standing up and allowing them to you know in Yemen They'd call it thought or this idea of revenge to get for for the individual. That's that's been killed in Sort of concrete ways I don't think there's a lot that has to be done to sort of allow them to step up and counter Al-Qaeda Just space has to be open for them and then in some of these rural districts places that don't have teachers obviously You know, I think this is something where the Yemeni government can do a much better job than it is because when you have Al-Qaeda coming in and Al-Qaeda doing a better job of governing than the Yemeni government has for the past three decades I mean the Yemeni government has set the bar incredibly low Al-Qaeda didn't do a great job But they didn't have to do a very good job to do better than the Yemeni government. By the way great in terms of polling about favorable or unfavorable attitudes United States in Pakistan the number is now 9% so it's close to zero What is the number in Yemen or is there and is it possible to do? valid polling in Yemen it would you know pulling in Yemen is is is really tough and I mean I've been in the rooms where the guys are sort of filling out several hundred little polling sheets in the Kachu Which always makes me a little little skeptical of some of the some of the polls that I see But I think it's even more difficult after sort of the collapse in 2011 and the breakdown because I think Yemen I'm not even sure it's possible to really talk about Yemen as the sort of unified country anymore to have this to maintain Faith in this in what to me seems a fiction in a unified country is really hard because in the north We have the Houthis who are sort of taken over this this large control of territory The capital is very very divided the central government might make decrees on paper, but on the ground It's whoever strong enough and so I think there are essentially a variety of different Yemen's and that in whatever Yemen you go to you're gonna get a much different result than the next one So I think drones, you know drone strikes and say killing al-Qaeda leaders if you ask a question like that in Sunnah It's very very popular because by and large they don't have drones in Sunnah But if you're asking the question in Abiyan or in Sheba you get a much different result And why so many members of al-Qaeda coming from Abiyan? Well, I mean I think there are a couple of different reasons so in the in the 1970s in the 1980s What we saw particularly after the revolution in in the 60s that overthrew the the zady imamate in the north We saw that the new Republican government imported a lot of teachers a lot of teachers from Saudi and a lot of teachers from Egypt And basically the idea was that they wanted to bring these individuals in to teach the Yemeni tribesmen that Republicanism was compatible with this law to teach sort of the the Zadis that this was the case After unification a lot of these schools were established in the south as a way of president Sulla sort of undermining his social as vice president who is also his rival and of course We saw this back-and-forth unification in 1990 and eventual civil war in 1994 when the south attempted to secede And those schools in the south are where many of al-Qaeda's leaders Nasr al-Wahashi went to Juan Kossim al-Rami They all went to them before they went off to Afghanistan in the in the late 1990s Howdy has a two-year term supposedly, okay, I mean is there supposed to be another there's gonna be a Supposedly an election supposedly an election in February 2014 Howdy, you know, it's it's a very interesting situation Howdy is almost a year into his term and He's attempted to restructure the military and he's certainly removed some people But he's kept both Ali Musin and Ahmed Ali who are sort of on these two factions And he's using them to sort of balance each other out. So one one Yemeni Figure explained it to me like this if he gets rid of Ali Musin Ahmed Ali will eat him If he gets rid of Ahmed Ali Ali Musin will eat him and so he's in a very very difficult place and not only is he in a difficult place, but he hasn't appointed a vice president and You know if God forbid if the worst happened and a president had he were to were to die Who knows what Yemen would look like because there there's there's no one sort of in a position and a lot of Yemenis right now Are comparing him to Hosni Mubarak, which is a very Worrying comparison for me in that Hosni Mubarak was Sadat's vice president refused to of course a point of vice president until It was well too late in Egypt And he had two sons had he has two sons these Jalal and Nasir who have all of a sudden become very very visible around Sana'a and very important power brokers So what's going to happen in in the future most people in Including the US and the UN are putting their hopes in what's being called this national dialogue I I don't see how the national dialogue is is going to work I mean the idea that all the Yemenis will sort of get together and to work out their problems and talk about it and find A workable solution. I don't see what brings a group like the Houthis to the table. What makes them sort of How they would make the difficult compromises and give up some of the power I mean they're in a strong negotiating who are the Houthis the Houthis are a Movement that in the late 1980s they felt as though they were sort of being eradicated This is a zady. It started out as a zady movement. They felt that who are the Zadis the Zadis are a Shia sect we just keep it's it's like traveling through suburbia right more and more subdivisions The the Zadis are a Shia sect but in in Yemen they're much closer to Sunni Islam than they are to Shia Islam They're often referred to as as fiber Shias, but some people also refer to them as sort of the fifth school of Sunni Islam Within Yemen traditionally there hasn't been a big difference between the Zady and Shafi There's a lot of intermarriage praying at mosques and so forth, but in contemporary Yemen The the Zadis in the north felt as though they were being eradicated that The government was siding with the Salafis and then Wahhabi imports were both sort of working together in this sort of two-pronged move to eradicate zady heritage zady learning and eventually this long-standing Conflict which goes back into the 1960s Moiled over in 2004 and then we had a series of wars in the north that the Yemeni government eventually lost and now the Zadis And the Houthis essentially control Most of the the north and to what extent is that a proxy war between Iran and Saudi, right? This is something You know initially it didn't appear That Iran had much involvement if if any, but I think over the years It's become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and so now both Iran and Saudi Arabia are putting money into the country And they're giving money to their allies But I you know one of the truths of Yemen or at least one of the things that I see both now and before is that you know These Yemeni figures will take the money But it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna act the way that their foreign sponsors want them to act So most of the time they're just gonna take the money and do whatever it is. They wanted to do anyways All right Hi, I'm Stan Watson. I'm an adjunct professor with Liberty University On this question of the Houthi Insurgency AQAP last year made sort of a big show of joining the fight against the Houthis Partly in a bid to gain Salafi support for their movement. What do you see coming of that? Have they gained? How much Salafi support are Salafi clerics coming over to a queue because they're fighting the Houthis or what do you see? Yeah, I mean that's a it's a good question a very interesting one I don't think we've seen sort of the Salafis You know I tend to think of Islamists in Yemen as sort of on a spectrum And I don't think we've seen some of the Salafis move over to join Al Qaeda But we see a lot that's taking place right now between the Houthis and Islam This is the Islamist political party up in the north There's been a lot of fights a lot of clashes over the past several months There were there were a number when I was there last month And what Al Qaeda has done and Al Qaeda has done a fairly interesting thing in 2010 in the pages of Sada Ramallah and they had a Saudi writer come out and essentially say You know, we have to go after the Houthis. We have to go after the Zadis. They're not they're not what you think They are they're actually it's not should ease they're 12 or she is and then the next issue They had a Yemeni say well In Sada Ramallah him in Al Qaeda's publication say well Let's make a distinction between the Houthis and the Zadis because if you start going after Zadis You run into a lot of problems in Yemen, but if you can sort of push the the Houthis out of the Zadie Zadie narrative so to speak and push them into Iran's camp then they become someone I don't think I would go that far. No, no Greg. Yes Why is it that Yemen has had the only peaceful transition and the Arab awakening? Well, I mean a lot of it has I mean peaceful in the sense for the leadership, right? So exile death jail Yeah, yeah, Sala Yeah, it's all I didn't think those were those were great options But you know we haven't also so what we had is this immunity deal and and Sala sort of gave up the presidency in exchange for immunity But unlike Tunisia where we had the exile or or Egypt and Mubarak goes to prison or Libya where Gaddafi is killed Sala's still a political player and so where is he now? He's in Sana'a He's the head. He's still the head of the gpc the political party that he founded and that he maintains So is this sort of a Putin-Medvedev deal? It's it's unclear what's what exactly is going to going to happen But he's very much still a player on the political scene Which is one of the reasons that I think we haven't really seen the full transition and one of the reasons that Yemen is so broken Is that what we saw happen in Yemen is not a defeat of president Sala? But rather president Sala was pulled down to the level of his enemies And so now the situation you have at least in Sana'a is that no one is strong enough to impose their will on anybody else But of these four factions everybody has enough power and enough guns to act as spoilers for anybody else becoming very Too powerful. And so it's this very tense very You know difficult balancing situation And this is a conflict that's been going on for some time even back to the 2006 elections, but most of it took place sort of behind the scenes You know under the table and what 2011 did is it brought it all out into the open And so for the first time we had Sala and the al-Ahmar tribal family actually shelling one another in in in open conflict But then the immunity deal came and so all of this has gone back under the surface And now that's what you see you see the al-Ahmar brothers moving and trying to get power Trying to position themselves had he's doing this Ali musin's doing this the former president as well as his eldest son are doing this So it's uh, we haven't really had Yemen has a new president, but Yemen hasn't really moved on But is one of the reasons that it had a Slightly more peaceful transition than in other places. I mean yemen Was regarded as one of the most democratic states in the middle in the arab world Obviously a low bar, but it did have a parliament that was semi-functional It did have an islamist opposition that actually ran the islam party It may be because the function of the weakness of the central government. So the fact that it was this sort of For one of a better term a quasi parliamentary authoritarian state has allowed it perhaps To transition more easily or are there other factors? Yeah, I mean that's that's a good point and one of the things that that I was always sort of intrigued by is that the us Sort of outsourced their yemen policy to Saudi and led a hereditary monarchy take the lead in the democratic transition in yemen Which I always found a little a little odd But one of the one of the things that I think yemen has working for it is that Yemen doesn't suffer we often hear that yemen is sort of this lawless place. There's no law. I don't actually think that's true I think yemen suffers from too many and competing law systems And so you have a very strong tribal system and there's you know, it's it's very sort of ingrained There's an escalation process to to violence within yemen and on that escalation process There are many different off ramps that one can take to sort of tone this down And that's why in this fight between the al-Ahmar's and president salla president salla at one point used a a sort of mediation team As cover he brought the mediation team into the al-Ahmar's compound as a way to pursue a truce And then his soldiers bombed the compound when his team was inside and this really I think violating sort of the norms of war within yemen in that way really frustrated a lot of people And you know different people suggest that this may have been one of the reasons that that salla Was actually attacked in in the mosque is that he broke so so flagrantly these sort of norms and I think it's the very Strong sort of social and tribal system that provides so many different off ramps on this escalation towards violence that allowed yemen to move out of that Take a couple of more brian fishman and back Hey, i'm i'm brian fishman with the new america foundation greg i've got two questions one is About a qap and ansar al sharia's ability to develop governance on the ground in yemen Do you think what did it do that other al qaeda branches haven't done and is that experience Can it be replicated elsewhere? And then the second one is what is the impact of especially the pole of syria as a new As a new home for traveling jihadis. What is the impact in yemen? Right those are good questions and many of them get You know we're already sort of hitting the limits of my intelligence and many of them I think sort of pass this this far by with the second question We've we've heard sort of you know a few things trickling out on the forums of different yemenis traveling to To syria how accurate that is is really hard to say we haven't heard al qaeda sort of come out and say that they're going there I mean al qaeda certainly uses what's happening in in gaza and elsewhere as a recruiting As a recruiting ploy and in fact the There's a scene in the book that talks about jabar al feifi one of the former guantanamo bay detainees Who's in saudi arabia in 2008 sort of the last time the situation in in gaza with israel really flared up And he he talks about this as being one of the reasons that that pushed him back into al qaeda Although of course later, you know a few years later than he reverted and went back to saudi arabia So one can make of that what you will but we it's still much too early I think to determine what's happening with with yemenis going to syria at least the evidence Is in keeping up with the speculation But I shouldn't stop you Actually, this has been very refreshing you're you're an evidence-based person When it comes to when it comes to government and governance within southern yemen, I mean AQAP I think has done things slightly different. You know much more about al qaeda in iraq than I do They were able to take over territory At least for a while, but they seem to have a much different approach to it then than the yemeni group And one of the things that I think makes al qaeda in the arabian peninsula unique in a way Is how they went to school on some of the previous mistakes that different branches of al qaeda have made Whether in saudi arabia and the muslim civilian casualties Whether in iraq and sort of the you know jihadi porn of these gory videos and stuff that we'll see even in the The execution video that Was put out in that amnesty international talked about when the guy is actually executed the screen goes black You don't see the execution You just sort of hear the the shot and then the rough chorus of voices screaming al hu akbar. So Take one more question then Hi andrea presso human rights watch. I was wondering if you could speak briefly about the role of women Women are not at the cot choose, of course And I know they don't play leadership roles in al qaeda But they're the ones educating the six-year-old boys who are growing up in this environment Of increased radicalization that you've described So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether that presented any Problems for your research as well as Generally your view on the role that women are playing in the the response to al qaeda as well as the drone strikes Right. Yeah. I mean women um within yemen is a Is a segment of the of the population that based on my gender by and large I don't speak with there There are a couple of very close friends that I have in yemen who I know their their wives and speak speak with them But by and large, it's uh, it's a male dominated world the one that I inhabit um in in that case Females who are working in yemen are able to sort of go back and forth between the the world's people like Sarah phillips april april ali who's with the icg. They both do Very great work politically and on a on a number of different aspects when it comes to al qaeda In many of the issues of saddam racham. There are women writing in the pages. There are Different articles that talk about What a woman's role should be in the jihad that al qaeda in the arabian peninsula is is carrying out We know or at least we think we know rather the nasa roheishi the commander has despite the Requests from different women within the organization has actually turned them down when they asked to carry out different attacks And so that we haven't seen a woman's suicide bomber But when in in the book it talks about this when the guys escape from prison It's actually a woman within sena that gives That that takes in nasa roheishi and fuwaz al rabbi one of the other escapies and hides them during the earliest days And there was a there was a very detailed article about two years ago That listed all sort of the the female heroes that al qaeda has in yemen how when these guys are on the run So often it's it's not the men who are providing help It's actually the women who are giving them help and I mean you can read this a couple of different ways And I I think a what they're saying was is probably accurate But it's also sort of an article that was being used to shame the yemeny men and say look You guys aren't pulling your weight and because you're not pulling your weight It's the yemeny women who are standing up and they're giving us the most help Uh, want to thank greg very much his book is on sale. I'm sure he'll be very much willing to sign it It was very well reviewed in your review books and washing them monthly. Thank you. Great. That was brilliant