Nadwa al-Dawsari discusses her recent Carnegie article on relations between tribes and Al-Qa‘eda in Bayda governorate.
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Michael Young: You recently wrote an article for Carnegie titled “Our Common Enemy: Ambiguous Ties Between al-Qaeda and Yemen’s Tribes.” What was your main argument in the article?
Nadwa al-Dawsari: My main argument was that tribes are not in bed with Al-Qa‘eda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as is often perceived. On the contrary, tribes have played a critical role in preventing AQAP from establishing a strong presence in the country and I gave an example from Bayda governorate. I argue that tribes still see AQAP as a threat but have come to tolerate the presence of the terrorist group during the war because they—the tribes and AQAP—have a common enemy in the Houthis. The essence of my argument is that for as long as the tribes are forced to push the Houthis outside their areas, they will not be able to keep AQAP at bay as they did before the war.
MY: How extensive is AQAP’s integration into tribal culture, so that it’s difficult to isolate the group from tribal society?
ND: The common narrative among Yemen analysts is that tribes are armed, violent, lawless, and anti-state. This perception has often led people to believe that tribes offer a welcoming environment to AQAP. This perception is also quite common among urban Yemeni elites who look down on tribes and see them as “uncivilized.” In reality, tribes are far from lawless and they are governed by customary law, a very sophisticated and well-developed system that helped them deal with conflict and maintain order over the centuries until today.
Just because the tribes are armed, it doesn’t mean they are violent. Yemeni tribes have arms, but they also have rules and customs that regulate the use of arms so that they don’t cause harm to tribal communities. Today, a tribal area such as Ma’rib, which has historically had an abundance of arms and a limited state presence, is relatively stable and safe, compared to Ta‘iz and Aden that had little arms before the war and are now devastated by violence and internal conflicts. The difference is that tribes have rules to govern the use of arms. Urban areas don’t.
Also, tribes resolve conflicts through mediation and peaceful conflict-resolution mechanisms. They rarely resort to violence and only do so when faced with a direct threat to their existence or when they want to defend their territories. What AQAP stands for—the ideology, the violence, the desire to undermine the state’s presence—goes against the essence of tribal culture and customary law.
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MY: How would you judge the role of the United States in trying to contain AQAP in Yemen? Has it been effective, or has it made matters worse?
ND: I think
if U.S. counterterrorism operations were effective we wouldn’t have sees AQAP still present in Yemen today. The U.S. has relied on short-term security operations in Yemen, rather than focusing on the underlying causes that allowed AQAP to expand. The drones have indeed killed most AQAP leaders in the country, but the group is hardly defeated. The U.S. provided military support to the late Ali Abdullah Saleh to fight AQAP. But Saleh was not serious about fighting the group and instead used it to undermine his political opponents and maintain a steady flow of counterterrorism assistance from the West. This, in turn, made him a stronger dictator, which fueled the grievances that AQAP tapped into to spread and gain influence in the country.
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