More history for the day

Robert Worth has an article in The New York Times about Yemen:

The ancient port city of Aden is now virtually surrounded by roving gangs of Islamist militia fighters, some linked to al-Qaeda, who have captured at least two towns, stormed prisons, and looted banks and military depots in southern Yemen.
Yet the Yemeni government, still busy fighting unarmed protesters farther north, has done little to stop these jihadists. Members of the military, the police, and local officials have fled their posts across much of southern Yemen. The country’s American-trained counterterrorism unit has not been deployed. It is no surprise that many Yemenis believe the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, intended it all to happen.
Asked whether the jihadists could soon attack or even overwhelm Aden, a strategic coastal city of 800,000, General Muhammad al-Somli— the one commander who has made any serious effort to fight them— said "I cannot rule anything out". The governor of neighboring Abyan Province, Saleh al-Zawari, who fled almost a month ago after militants captured the capital there, said the area would turn into “another Taliban state like Afghanistan” if something were not done soon.
Yemeni government officials blame the rising chaos on the political crisis, which has kept Mr. Saleh’s forces in Sana'a, the capital. But interviews with local people here suggest that Saleh himself— now recovering in Saudi Arabia from wounds suffered in an attack on his palace mosque— is at the root of the problem. His government, based in the north, has for years carried out brutal and discriminatory policies toward the people of south Yemen. The northern military commanders who dominate his army are widely hated and increasingly isolated here, incapable of carrying out the kind of counterinsurgency operations that could ease the crisis.
Given the long history of backdoor collusion between al-Qaeda and Yemen’s security agencies, it is impossible to know whether Mr. Saleh or his surrogates are actively encouraging the jihadists as a scare tactic, or merely tolerating them. The United States is now urging Mr. Saleh to cede power so that the current political stalemate can come to an end, but it was not clear whether that would happen anytime soon.
The attacks have grown increasingly bold. On Friday, a suicide car bomber in Aden killed three soldiers and a civilian, and wounded a dozen others. On Wednesday, at least forty prisoners, including some al-Qaeda members convicted in a plot to attack the United States Embassy in Sana'a, escaped after a daring raid by gunmen on a prison in the town of Mukalla, three hundred miles to the east, local officials said.
The militants’ expansion is a serious concern for the United States, which has twice been made a target by al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch. So far, the American military has relied on airstrikes aimed at militant leaders, with mixed success.
Thousands of refugees have streamed into Aden in recent weeks, telling shocking stories of the heavily armed jihadists who, in late May, captured the city of Zinjibar, a provincial capital less than an hour’s drive from here. The jihadists have delivered speeches calling for Islamic rule from mosque loudspeakers, the refugees say. Their members include men speaking in Saudi, Iraqi, and Sudanese accents. They carry white banners with the words Ansar al-Sharia on them, a name that al-Qaeda leaders identified this year as an alternate name for their own organization in Yemen.
Many residents of Zinjibar said they were appalled by the Yemeni military’s quick retreat from the town and other areas in Abyan Province, just north and east of here. “These al-Qaeda people, they are mostly kids, young men,” said Ali Omar al-Qurshi, 49, camped out on the cement floor of a school in Aden along with several hundred other displaced people. “Are you telling me the army can’t defeat them? It’s a very strange thing. Honestly, we feel Ali Abdullah Saleh is behind it.”
Some officials from the town said that they had no choice but to leave, and they denied that they had received orders to do so. “It was a war; they came with so many armed men,” Mr. Zawari, the governor of Abyan Province, said as he sat in an empty hotel lobby here. “They took advantage of the situation. Everything is divided now, the government, the army.”
Zinjibar is now an eerie and silent wasteland, the refugees say, its houses shattered by artillery and machine guns, its streets full of the dead. Dogs have begun to feed on the corpses. Only a few young men stayed on, guarding their family houses against theft. The same is true of some other villages in the area, and of Jaar, a town seized by Islamist militants in March.
General Somli, the army commander whose forces are in a base at the edge of Zinjibar, insisted during a telephone interview that the battle was over and that residents could return. But a number of residents who have returned to check on their houses said the town was firmly under the control of the militants. They said General Somli was effectively trapped at his base, and had done little to fight the militants beyond firing artillery shells at them, leveling many of the town’s houses in the process.
Although the refugees were all deeply upset by the violence that had forced them from their homes, most seemed more frightened by the Yemeni military than the gunmen. Several refugees said the gunmen used loudspeakers to warn residents to leave their homes, especially in areas where the military was shelling heavily. The army, they said, showed no such concern for civilians. Some residents said they had initially been frightened by the gunmen, many of whom wore their hair long like northern tribesmen. But they added that the fighters treated them more respectfully than the local security and police officials, who are widely viewed as occupiers, or worse.
“These al-Qaeda people didn’t steal our houses, they protected them,” said Ali Muhammad Hassan, a thirty-year-old government clerk. “If they saw people carrying furniture or other things, looters, they would tell them to return it.” Mr. Hassan and others also said the militants seemed highly disciplined and had put local Yemenis in charge rather than northerners or foreign jihadists, in an apparent bid for grass-roots support. “They seemed to have a clear military plan,” he said. “They moved in cells; they were highly organized.”
Zinjibar was not the first town captured by militants. Jaar, a smaller town about twelve miles away, was captured in March. The militants overran several smaller villages in the area as well, forcing out the local officials and police, according to several refugees.
This month, another group of Islamists— apparently not connected to the ones in Zinjibar— attacked and occupied part of Hawta, a town in the neighboring province of Lahj. The governor there fled, too, residents said.

Rico says all this would be funny (for the place names alone, like Zinjibar, shown below) if it weren't so pathetic...