UAE Enlists Al-Qaeda, US Mercenaries To Operate In Yemen: Report

The mercenaries were hired to carry out political assassinations across Yemen on behalf of the UAE

A BBC investigation released on 22 January reveals that the UAE hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in Yemen.

A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group.

Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC.

These militants were hired to carry out political assassinations across Yemen at the behest of Abu Dhabi, according to the investigation.

The BBC also points to a shadowy group of US mercenaries, known as Spear Operations Group, hired by the UAE to carry out assassinations.

Isaac Gilmore, a former US navy seal who later became Spear’s chief operating officer, is “one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.”

“He refused to talk about anyone who was on the ‘kill list’ provided to Spear by the UAE — other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden.”

Saudi and UAE-backed mercenary groups have run rampant across Yemen since the start of the war in the country nine years ago. Aside from assassinations, these mercenaries have also been implicated in a number of crimes, including the looting and illegal trading of Yemeni cultural heritage.

Several ancient sites and museums have been looted and stripped of valuable artifacts by UAE-backed mercenary groups in Yemen. There are also accounts of underage girls being raped by militants of such groups. [Dyncorp and folks at the state department must be jealous]

This is not the first time that UAE-backed armed groups in Yemen have been accused of working or coordinating with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

According to documents obtained by Yemen’s Al-Masirah media outlet in February last year, Takfiri militants affiliated with the UAE-backed mercenary group, the Giants Brigade, looted large amounts of oil from the reserves in the energy-rich province of Shabwah, south of the country.

“We have all the evidence of the UAE’s relationship with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen,” Saleh al-Jabwani, Saleh al-Jabwani, a minister in the former Saudi-backed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, said in 2019.

The BBC investigation comes one month after UAE-backed mercenaries came under the spotlight once again, following reports that the US was working to recruit members of these mercenary groups to “distract” Ansarallah from its military operations against Israel.

“The United States is moving to activate factions loyal to the UAE in Yemen to distract Sanaa from continuing to carry out more air and sea attacks against the Israeli entity,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 8 December.

🔗Source: The Cradle

Related: 5/19/2019 — Leaked OPCW Bombshell Report Shatters the Official Syria Narrative

To understand the situation better, one should be aware of a formerly classified DOD intelligence report written in 2012 that acknowledges the support of the opposition by western powers.

The US was supporting the opposition... identified to mainly be composed of Islamic extremists, including an Al-Qaeda offshoot, AQI.

2012 DOD Intelligence Document which predicted the rise of ISIS:

“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers[US, gulf states, Turkey] to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Assad regime, which is considered the strategic depth is Shia expansion(Iraq and Iran),"

[Related]: Israel Backed ISIS in Syria (and al qaeda ofc) unpologetically

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