The situation in Yemen is getting worse. Friday’s coordinated attacks on Zaydi Shiite mosques in Sanaa, which killed more than 140 worshippers, are the latest in a series of events that point to the immediate prospect of a sectarian civil war. The attacks came as war planes continued to target the presidential palace in Aden, where president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi has been held up since he fled the capital. With violence intensifying – Yemen has been leaderless since January, when Houthi rebels placed Mr Hadi under house arrest – a dangerous new player is keen to exploit the chaos on the ground: ISIL.
Coupled with last week’s attack on Tunisia’s Bardo National Museum, ISIL is moving beyond Syria and Iraq. While exploiting conflict zones such as Yemen and attempting to destabilise countries such as Tunisia might seem par for the course for emerging terrorist operations, inaction in the face of ISIL’s expanding terror operations threatens regional cohesion. But what can be done about the group’s emergence in the Yemen crisis?
The fight against ISIL has already begun with a broad international coalition. ISIL’s emergence in Sanaa should serve as a galvanising point of unity in the battle for Yemen. After all, defeating the group serves as a rallying point from Tehran to Cairo. Iraqi Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani called on Friday for better planning in the fight against ISIL in Iraq. In Tunisia, president Beji Caid Sebsi’s response to the museum attack has been to call for national unity “in the face of terrorism, like their forefathers did in the face of the colonisers”.
This paper has advocated Gulf unity in response to the Yemen crisis, with Saudi Arabia at the forefront of efforts to stave off full-scale civil war. Given the complexities and geopolitical contours of the crisis, however, prescribing a specific solution can be hazardous. Intervention, as shown in the case of Libya, is fraught with unseen obstacles.
Regardless of the progress of the US-led coalition’s fight against ISIL in Syria and Iraq, the Yemen and Tunisia attacks demonstrate the group’s expanding ideological reach. Recognising these expansion attempts for what they are and acting in unity to defeat them should form the backbone of any response to the bombings in Sanaa last week. Solidarity is our only path forward in this long fight.
