Al-Awlaki killing seen as windfall for Yemeni president

By Ramadan Al-Fatash Sep 30, 2011, 16:54 GMT

Cairo- The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to be the spiritual leader of the al-Qaeda branch in Yemen, in an air raid on Friday is set to ease Western pressure on the country's embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, analysts say.

'The revolutionaries in Yemen are worried that al-Awlaki's death will also provide a respite to Saleh in the face of mass protests against his rule,' said Anis Mansour, a Yemeni journalist.

Millions of Yemenis have taken to the streets since February, demanding an end to Saleh's 33-year rule.

'Saleh has been for years telling the West his regime is their shield against the danger of al-Qaeda. Now he is using this card to keep power,' Mansour told broadcaster Al Jazeera.

Al-Awlaki, a US-born radical Islamist cleric, had been on the run in Yemen since 2007 and survived previous attempts on his life, according to media reports.

He was reportedly on the US Central Intelligence Agency's list of suspected terrorists targeted for death.

Yemen's Defence Ministry said Friday that al-Awlaki was killed in the eastern province of Mareb, a tribal area where the anti-Saleh uprising has attracted many supporters.

His death is a significant blow to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that emerged in early 2009, according to observers.

'It will especially impact the group's ability to recruit, inspire and raise funds as al-Awlaki's influence and ability to connect to a broad demographic of potential supporters was unprecedented,' said IntelCenter, a non-governmental US-based group that monitors jihadist militant groups.

Significantly, al-Awlaki's death was announced shortly after Saleh hinted in an interview that his stepping down would make way for al-Qaeda to take over in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.

'What we see is that we are pressurized by America and the international community to speed up the process of handing over power. And we know to where the power is going to go. It is going to al-Qaeda,' Saleh said in the interview published Thursday in the Washington Post and Time magazine.

Earlier September, Defence Minister Mohamed Nasr said that at least 230 Yemeni soldiers had been killed in three months in battles with al-Qaeda in the southern part of the country.

Most of the deaths took place during fighting to end a siege laid by Muslim militants, with suspected links to al-Qaeda, to a Yemeni army brigade in Zinjibar, the capital of the southern province of Abyan, Nasr said.

Since March, Zinjibar has reportedly been under the control of Islamists.

The Yemeni government has said that it had to recall many soldiers from Abyan and other regions to tackle the widening unrest mainly in the capital Sana'a.

Saleh's opponents, however, have claimed that the president uses the threat of al-Qaeda to quell the pro-democracy protests, and to ensure the continuing support of the West.

'The US counterterrorism strategy tends to portray Yemen as the second shelter for al-Qaeda. This is not true,' said Nabil al-Bakeeri, a Yemeni expert on Islamist groups.

'Saleh's regime has helped instil this falacy in the minds of the US policymakers by claiming that those seeking its ouster are al-Qaeda sympathizers,' he added.

According to al-Bakeeri, the threat of al-Qaeda in Yemen is largely exaggerated.

'Al-Qaeda in Yemen is a limited group of people. The regime of Saleh is the prime beneficiary from playing up the threat of this group because this regime gets its political legitimacy from being a partner to the US in fighting terrorism,' al-Bakeeri said.

Al-Awlaki, 40, was suspected of being connected to a failed airline bombing over Detriot on Christmas Day in 2009.

In December 2010, a US federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by al- Awlaki's father that sought to block President Barack Obama's administration from trying to kill him.

In January 2011, Yemen sentenced al-Awlaki in absentia to 10 years in prison for taking part in a plot to kill a French engineer.