SANA'A: Tribal sources in the northern Yemen province of Saada revealed to Bikyamasr.com that Salafists are gathering “Jihadists” as their fight against al-Houthis intensifies. For more than a decade, Sunni radicals, or Salafists, have been battling on and off with a group of Shia rebels who wish to return to the ancestral rule of the Imam, al-Houthis, raising fears of sectarianism in the region. President Ali Abdullah Saleh himself was dragged into the conflict when the Shia rebel fighters threatened his authority and warned that they would advance towards the capital, Sana'a, and assert their hold over Yemen. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia heavily supported Yemen's central government in its fight against al-Houthis as King Abdullah's policy towards Shia militants was quite simply to eradicate them. Despite an agreed truce with Saleh's government, al-Houthis sporadically clashed with Salafists in the region, arguing that the group was victimizing their people and looking to reignite an all-out war. The popular uprising, which led to the departure from power of Ali Abdullah Saleh after three decades in power, allowed the Shia group to bank on Yemen's instability and power-vacuum to extend its territorial hegemony to the neighboring northern provinces of al-Jawf and Hajjah, giving the rebels an undisputed foothold in a potential move against the capital. Several al-Houthis specialists, amongst whom Ahmed Al-Bahri, warned that the group was believed to have a total of 100,000-120,000 followers, including both armed fighters and unarmed loyalists. Salafists, with the help of Prince Nayyef, the Saudi Crown Prince, are now calling on Sunni Islamic fighters to join their ranks and fight back the Shia threat, determined as they are to annihilate once and for all what the Kingdom considers a threat to its national security. Tribal sources already confirmed that 100 foreign Jihadists had arrived in Saada, several admitting that they had been paid $2000 for their services. “Saudi Arabia is trying to gather an army of mercenaries and Jihadists to fight off the Shia threat. Since al-Houthis are believed to be financially supported by Iran it has become a top priority for the Kingdom. They fear that Shia fighters could use Yemen as a base to invade Sunni ground. The double threat presented by Bahrain and Yemen is making the Saudis very nervous,” said a Sunni cleric in Saada. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/yJ3Yy Tags: featured, Houthis, Sa'ada, Salafi Section: Latest News, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
