Battle against Al Qaeda needs more than might

Last week, a video emerged from Yemen showing an Al Qaeda militant gunning down patients and medics in a government hospital, during an attack on the defence ministry. The callous, cold-blooded killings outraged Yemenis and compelled the terror organisation to issue an apology to the families of the victims. What this unusual move shows is that the group recognises the impact of such acts on its image. And there is a useful lesson in that for the Yemeni government: fighting terrorism is a battle of hearts and minds, rather than simply a security issue.

The militant group, known as Ansar Al Sharia, has long claimed that it only opposed the Americans and those who co-operated with them inside Yemen. The footage proved them wrong.

But the episode wasn’t a clean victory for Sanaa: the organisation insisted that the militant acted on his own volition and that the group targeted the defence ministry because it housed an operations room for drone attacks against civilians. It also, quite shrewdly, offered to compensate the victims’ families and be accountable in accordance with Sharia – both criticism of drone attacks and compensation for victims resonate well with many in Yemen. The government’s policies of supporting US drone attacks in the country, while failing to protect or compensate civilian victims, only play into the hands of extremists. And Al Qaeda has shown that it understands these dynamics better than the government.

The message is clearer if we consider what has also happened in Iraq over the last few days. At least 18 army officers and soldiers were killed in a bomb attack during an anti-terror campaign in Anbar, including the operation’s commander and his aide. The central government in Baghdad said it launched a seven-day campaign to sweep the desert of Anbar and end the presence of Al Qaeda there. At the same time, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki called on Sunni protesters in the province to end their protests and go home. Mr Al Maliki seems to be missing a fundamental point about his fight against extremists. Namely, that he cannot fight extremism in those areas without addressing the legitimate grievances of people there. Reform and services can achieve far greater results than a well-equipped army and countless military campaigns can ever do.

Al Qaeda affiliates across the region have evolved and they seek to work closely with provisional communities to win hearts and minds. They have shown they can create safe havens in those communities especially as states fail to play their role of protecting and serving them. If governments want to ensure that their countries are not breeding groups for extremism, they have to reach out to their communities and address their grievances.