An affiliate of the Islamic State that
had not previously carried out any major attacks claimed responsibility
for coordinated suicide strikes on Zaydi Shiite mosques here that
killed more than 130 people during Friday Prayer, bringing to Yemen the kind of deadly sectarian fighting that has ripped apart Syria and Iraq.
The
bombings, apparently carried out by Sunni extremists against Shiite
places of worship, threatened to propel the conflict toward the kind of
unrestrained sectarian bloodletting that Yemen had so far avoided.
It also showed how drastically the situation has deteriorated in Yemen after Houthi rebels seized power,
galvanizing Sunni militants who opposed them at a time when
Washington’s ability to conduct counterterrorism operations was greatly
reduced.
Western counterterrorism officials fear a
security vacuum resembling Somalia’s would draw even more jihadists to
ungoverned territory in Yemen, where they would have the space and time
to plot attacks against the West.
Even Yemen’s powerful Al Qaeda affiliate had
been reluctant to carry out large-scale attacks against Muslim
civilians, despite its hatred of the Houthis, whose leaders are members
of the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam and are considered heretics by the
Sunni militants.
Instead, it was a rival jihadist group
affiliated with the Islamic State and calling itself “Sana Province”
that raised the specter of a destabilizing new brand of violence in
Yemen’s civil conflict. “This operation is but the tip of an iceberg,”
the group said in an audio statement. “The polytheist Houthis have to
know that the Islamic State soldiers will be not satisfied, or rest,
until we eradicate them.”
The attacks, the
deadliest against civilians in the country in recent memory, offered a
grisly illustration of how Yemen’s fracturing is undermining
counterterrorism programs that American officials consider pivotal at a
time of increasing attacks around the world. Some of those attacks
appear the result of an escalating rivalry between Al Qaeda and its
affiliates and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, a former
Qaeda franchise in Iraq.
“It’s hard to imagine
how things could be on a worse path in Yemen,” said Representative Adam
B. Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence
Committee. He said the panel had received recent classified briefings on
Yemen that were “pretty grim.”
In a sign of the deteriorating security, the
last 125 American Special Operations advisers were withdrawing from
Yemen on Friday as Qaeda fighters seized Huta, a town about 20 miles
from the base in the south where the Americans were operating, said a
United States official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss operations.
Al Qaeda has carried out
frequent attacks in the province, clashing with military units,
assassinating security officials and occasionally firing heavy weapons
at the military base, in Al Anad. The Pentagon declined to comment on
the withdrawal, which was reported in the Yemeni news media on Friday.
Coming
a day after violence spread to Aden in the south in rare factional
clashes over control of the international airport and a security base,
Friday’s attacks brought into sharp relief the mounting chaos that is
spreading through the impoverished country. Yemen, with no recognized
government, faces a possible breakup between rival factions in the north
and south, a spreading armed conflict that is displacing thousands of
Yemenis and a financial collapse.
The threat of
civil war also poses multiple challenges to the Obama administration,
which only a few months ago held out Yemen’s negotiated transition from
autocracy to an elected president as a model for post-revolutionary Arab
states.
With the beleaguered government of President
Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi decamped to Aden, the Pentagon has effectively
lost its major partner in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, which American intelligence officials say still poses the
most potent terrorist threat to the United States.
Many
Yemenis are harshly critical of American counterterrorism programs,
complaining of a relationship between the two countries based on
security issues, and opposing American drone strikes against Qaeda
militants that have killed civilians.
In
Yemen, fighters clash daily along several contested fronts. Sunni
extremists, including the Islamic State fighters and militants linked to
the Qaeda affiliate, have carried out a number of deadly attacks
against supporters of the Houthi rebel movement, which controls Sana and
since September has been Yemen’s most dominant force.
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