ISIS on the march in Yemen - Another Obama "victory"

Obama's Secret Yemen War Explodes

(Business Insider) - Militants affiliating themselves with the terrorist group ISIS are taking advantage of a power vacuum in Yemen to establish an increasingly strong foothold there as the government focuses on fighting other rebels, experts say.

ISIS-linked terrorists have launched deadly attacks on mosques, carried out car bombings, and exploited sectarian tensions to lure new recruits, using extreme brutality and violence to bring in new blood and distinguish themselves from the powerful Al Qaeda branch in Yemen, The New York Times reported earlier this week.

"A video released recently by the branch underscored its determination to showcase its brutality," The Times reported. "In one section, the video shows masked gunmen leading prisoners to a small boat that was set out to sea and then blown up. Another vignette showed four captives made to wear what appeared to be mortar shells, draped around their necks, then pose for the camera before the shells were detonated."

ISIS, which is also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh, has also been able to kill some Yemeni officials without meeting much resistance from authorities, who are more concerned with fighting rebels who have an established presence in the country.

Yemen has been in a state of chaos since a civil war started there in March. A Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, is fighting to defeat the Houthi rebels, who support Yemen's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The coalition backs the government of Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the current president.

Right now, ISIS seems to be focusing on establishing a solid foothold in parts of southern Yemen. (The Houthi rebels are from the north.)

ISIS will "start with Aden, other parts of the south," Khoury said. "As a combination of forces, this is driving the Houthis out of these areas. They don’t have the Yemeni government and military ready to take over. So as you drive the Houthis out, you leave a relatively weak state structure … That makes it very easy for [Al Qaeda] and ISIS to take over."

ISIS has been known to pit Sunnis and Shiites against each other in other countries like Syria and Iraq, where the group has gained large swaths of territory.

And if the civil war in Yemen continues to drag on, young people might be persuaded to join jihadist groups, seeing few other viable alternatives for survival. Al-Muslimi wrote in The Guardian earlier this year that "as the poorest country in the Arab world is collapsing in front of the world's eyes, a whole generation of Yemeni youth and children are losing their future."

"The loss of hope among the younger generation is going to create more space and more opportunity for ISIS," al-Muslimi told Business Insider.

Khoury said the ISIS affiliate in Yemen seemed to be made up of "mostly locals" at this point. It's hard to determine how closely the ISIS militants in Yemen are coordinating with the group's central leadership in Iraq and Syria, but analysts told The Times there were signs the Yemeni militants were in touch with ISIS leaders abroad.

A man seen March 26 on the rubble of houses destroyed
by an airstrike near Sanaa Airport.

"They've been recruiting locally," Khoury said. "Bringing in foreign fighters from outside is very difficult these days in Yemen because of the war going on."

ISIS isn't the only Sunni extremist group with a presence in Yemen. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, remains the dominant jihadist force in the country, analysts say. But ISIS is growing in strength while AQAP remains flat.

"I think probably AQAP still has the edge for now, although that's probably changing," Khoury said. "It's kind of like a see-saw with the other side rising … AQAP is more or less stagnant."

And as Al Qaeda's leadership in Yemen has taken hits, ISIS is trying to take advantage of another potential vacuum among jihadists in the region. AQAP is reportedly "closely watching" ISIS' efforts in Yemen as ISIS tries to "peel off defectors" from the group, according to The Times.

Al-Muslimi noted that ISIS' emergence in Yemen was fairly recent.

"With the war going on and with the Houthis increasing and moving to the south, [ISIS] started slowly emerging," al-Muslimi said.

Khoury pointed out that ISIS and AQAP appeared to be staying out of each other's way in Yemen, but they still compete for recruits.

"They're fighting for the same space: Sunni radical recruitment," al-Muslimi said, adding that Al Qaeda "looks to ISIS as something taking space and, more importantly, warriors."

"The level of brutality of ISIS has recruited a lot of people that didn't find the absolute violence in Al Qaeda," al-Muslimi said.