SANAA, Yemen — The withdrawal of security forces from some provinces has left a power vacuum that al-Qaeda is trying to fill, threatening the U.S.-backed fight against the country's terrorist network. The chaos that President Ali Abdullah Saleh has repeatedly warned was imminent because of an uprising against his rule has taken hold in at least four of the country's provinces.
In the southern province of Abyan, the stronghold of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Islamist militants have seized several towns after the Yemen army and its U.S.-trained counterterrorism unit was called back to help defend areas closer to the capital. On jihadist websites, the region is being referred to now as the "Islamic Emirate of Abyan."
Abyan's capture follows that of the capture of Jaar by al-Qaeda, according to Saleh. And the looting of a weapons factory that left 150 people dead on Tuesday, according to the army, has turned the area into a lawless province. Whether the militants can hold onto it is another matter, they say.
"Al-Qaeda is not well-equipped enough to take over these towns in a direct battle with Yemen's security forces," said Yemeni political analyst Abdul Ghani al-Iryani. "But without a security presence in these areas, al-Qaeda will make gains."
U.S.-born radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki said in a new article that violent Islamist groups will be able to take advantage of the Arab world's wave of popular unrest even if it leads to secular governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
"Even if the upcoming governments wanted to continue with a policy of appeasing the West and Israel, they would not have the strength and depth of power that the previous governments had developed over the past three decades," al-Awlaki writes in al-Qaeda's online magazine.
Whatever the outcome of the revolts, "our mujahideen brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya ... will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation," he writes.
Prior to the recent civil uprising, initially led by students calling for an end to Saleh's 32-year rule, the long-standing president was already battling a separatist movement in the south a northern Houthi rebellion as well as an ongoing al-Qaeda insurgency.
The U.S. has invested heavily in Yemen, providing President Saleh with $155 million in military aid last year, in addition to training the elite counterterrorism unit headed by the president's nephew Yahya Saleh.
Abyan has been the focus of U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the Arab world's poorest nation. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has described Yemen's Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as "the most active and at this point perhaps the most aggressive branch of al-Qaeda."
But Saleh's focus has switched to stalling negotiations with an opposition movement in the capital of Sanaa. Since the mass defection of a dozen military commanders last week, three-way negotiations have taken place between Saleh, the coalition of opposition parties and the most senior of the defected army leaders, Ali Mohsen Saleh Al-Ahmar.
Amid the growing fear of civil war between the two sides of the now divided army, the presence of the military has been centered in and around the northern capital, leaving a void across large parts of the country.
