SANAA // Abeer Al Hassani’s former husband was famed for his beautiful voice. He used it, she says, singing poetic hymns to martyrdom to try to draw youth from their neighborhood of the Yemeni capital into joining Al Qaeda.
He sang at weddings of fellow members and held discussions with young men at local mosques.
“One woman complained to me that her son wanted to go fight in Iraq after speaking with him,” Ms Al Hassani, 25, said.
For most of her young life, Ms Al Hassani has been entangled with Al Qaeda through family bonds she has tried to shake off. Three of her brothers became fighters for the group, and all three are now dead, two of them killed by US drone strikes on consecutive days in January 2013.
Her story provides a rare look into one of the most dangerous branches of the terror network, which has withstood successive blows and yet continues to thrive. It has moved to fuelling conflict elsewhere in the region, sending fighters and expertise to Syria and to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Her former husband, Omar Al Hebishi, backed up his recruiting with cash. During their four-year marriage, she says, he received large bank transfers or cash delivered overland from Saudi Arabia – money, he told her, that was to support the families of “martyrs”. She and Mr Al Hebishi divorced in 2010.
A month ago, he left for Syria to fight alongside extremist rebels – but not before trying to recruit the older of their two sons, 8-year-old Aws, to come with him by showing the boy videos of Al Qaeda fighters jogging and swimming.
“Mom, I want to go because they have a swimming pool,” Aws told her.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen branch is known, has been hit hard in the past few years. A US-backed government offensive in 2012 drove it out of southern cities that it seized a year earlier. Relentless US drone strikes have killed several senior figures and dozens of lower-level fighters, keeping the group on the run.
Still, several Yemeni security officials say Al Qaeda has spread to operate in every province of the country of more than 25 million. Al Qaeda’s branch demonstrated its capabilities with a sophisticated and brutal attack in December on the defence ministry in Sanaa that killed more than 50 people.
The group benefits from Yemen’s political instability since the ouster of the longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh. While his replacement, Abdrabu Mansur Hadi, is battling the group, Mr Saleh’s loyalists still infusing security and intelligence agencies have quietly backed Al Qaeda fighters to keep the government unstable, security officials said.
“The former regime forged a close relationship with Al Qaeda,” said Fares Al Saggaf, an adviser to Mr Hadi. In the southern province of Abyan “entire army camps have been handed over to Al Qaeda”.
Mr Al Saggaf said Al Qaeda is on the ropes, in large part because of the drone strikes. He said sympathy for the group has fallen, particularly after the December attack, during which fighters broke into a hospital inside the ministry complex and killed patients, doctors and nurses. Mr Hadi ordered security camera footage of the bloodshed released to the public, a move Mr Al Saggaf said “dealt the image of Al Qaeda a serious blow”.
But Ms Al Hassani’s tale illustrates the pull that Al Qaeda has in a society where poverty is rife, the population is deeply conservative and many resent a corrupt government and abuses by security forces.
“I can guarantee you that my two sons, Aws and Hamza, will follow in the footsteps of their father if we stay in Yemen,” she said. “We need to get out of Yemen.”
Diminutive and soft-spoken, wearing a black niqab veil and robes that leave only her large dark eyes visible, Ms Al Hassani has lived under the full weight of Yemen’s patriarchal society. She was first married off at 15, but she kept running away from her husband, so they divorced after only a month.
Soon after, her older brother Bandar brought home a new husband for her – Mr Al Hebishi, a man 20 years her senior.
Mr Al Hebishi, known by his nom de guerre Abu Osayed Al Madani, is renowned in extremist circles as a “munshid”, or singer of Islamic hymns and anthems. His voice is often heard singing in Al Qaeda propaganda videos showing footage from their attacks and of martyrs.
“He was so courteous and convincing when he spoke to teenagers he wanted to recruit,” said Ms Al Hassani. In one case, he used the money he received to buy a car and house for a Yemeni who lost both his legs while fighting alongside miltiants in Iraq.
At home, he was abusive, striking her and the children. After their divorce, her brothers forced her at one point to hand custody of their sons to Mr Al Hebishi. During the time they were with him, Mr Al Hebishi told her he burned matches on their younger son, Hamza, as part of his toilet training, Ms Al Hassani said, showing photos of her son with the burns.
She said she received word two weeks ago that her ex-husband was now in Syria.
During and after her marriage, Ms Al Hassani watched helplessly as her three brothers, Bandar, Abdullah and Abdel-Meguid, were drawn one by one into Al-Qaeda.
Bandar, seven years older than Ms Al Hassani, was detained by the Political Security Agency for two years. When he emerged in 2006 he had become more religious – indoctrinated by militants he was jailed with. For the next several years, he associated with Al Qaeda members, while security agents harassed him, trying to turn him into an informant.
In 2009, Abdel-Meguid, who was 16 at the time, was also arrested. He was held for three years, often in a cell with hardened militant fighters.
At about the same time, Abdullah – who was two years younger than Ms Al Hassani, disappeared from home to join Al Qaeda.
When the popular uprising against Mr Saleh began in 2011, Bandar left home for the mountainous central province of Marib to join Al Qaeda fighters, she said.
The following year, Abdel-Meguid was released from prison. The younger brother who loved dancing as a teen was now bitter.
“He only spoke about how much he wanted to blow himself up in the middle of Yemeni soldiers,” Ms Al Hassani said.
She pleaded with him to stay at home, but after three days, Abdel-Meguid left to Marib to join his brother.
Bandar was killed by a drone strike in Marib on January 20, 2013. The next day, a strike in Al Jawf killed Abdel-Meguid.
Al-Hassani saw her brother Abdullah once before his death, in 2012.
She and her mother drove 19 hours to visit him in a village near Al Jaar, one of the southern cities that Al Qaeda took over. Abdullah was there helping treat wounded fighters.
It was their first meeting in three years – but it was a cold one. Abdullah scolded her for not wearing gloves and for not covering her eyes with a mesh.
“Every time I tried to give him a big hug, he would move away,” she said. “It was like he disapproved of me and what I stood for.”
Less than a week after they returned to Sanaa, Abdullah was killed in fighting with security forces.
* Associated Press
