On 30 July 2009, the Yemeni military launched an operation in Arq al-Shabwan, a village in Marib Governorate, with the intention of neutralizing a local cell of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The offensive was spurred by increasing pressure on the Yemeni government from the United States to combat the rising threat from AQAP. Coordinated by National Security Bureau deputy director Ammar Muhammad Abdullah Saleh, counterterrorism forces intended to shell an AQAP safehouse in the village containing militant Ayad al-Shabwani with heavy tank units, but ended up attacking the wrong house. This provoked the local Shabwan tribesmen, leading to fighting alongside AQAP and forcing the military to withdraw hours later. Three and five soldiers were killed and injured respectively, while five tanks and two armored vehicles were lost. AQAP militants on their way to the village looted a military cargo truck which had gone astray and captured seven soldiers, who were released shortly after they pledged not to attack AQAP again.
The engagement, a resounding failure for Yemen and a propaganda victory for AQAP, was further compounded by the government's lack of acknowledgment of the captured soldiers, which was taken advantage of by AQAP through a written statement and a video release months later describing what they referred to as the "Battle of Marib". The video in particular disproved the government's reports by showcasing the seven soldiers, and mocked the Yemeni government's lack of transparency.
Background
Marib Governorate had been an area of prominent activity for al-Qaeda in Yemen for several years. January 2009 saw the formation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a merger of the Yemeni and Saudi Arabian branches of al-Qaeda. Up until the Battle of Marib, which the exception of a string of suicide bombings on local South Korean targets in March, AQAP was relatively inactive throughout most of 2009 since the attack on the United States embassy the previous year. Instead, the group was mainly concerned with establishing infrastructure and connections in the tribal areas of Yemen, including in Marib, primarily throughout having its members marry into the local tribes.[6]
The United States grew increasingly concerned with the threat posed by AQAP, sending officials to Yemen throughout the year to address the issue. On 26 July 2009, General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, conducted a meeting with Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, focusing intently on counterterrorism. Petraeus confirmed to Saleh that US aid to Yemen would be increased, though in return he expected that the Yemeni government would intensify its campaign against AQAP. In response, Saleh ordered his nephew and deputy director of the National Security Bureau, Ammar Muhammad Abdullah Saleh, to plan an offensive against an AQAP cell in Marib and negotiate with local tribal leaders for authorization to conduct it.[6]
Battle
On 30 July 2009, Yemeni counterterrorism forces launched a raid on Arq al-Shabwan,[7] a remote village in the Abidah tribal region of Marib.[8] According to AQAP, they were units belonging to the National Security Bureau.[8] The target of the raid was Ayad al-Shabwani, a member of AQAP described by officials as "a sort of local Robin Hood figure."[9] Heavy tanks were supposed to shell an AQAP safehouse in the village where Shabwani was located, but accidentally hit a tribal compound next to it instead.[4][5] Clashes proceeded to take place between security forces and a band of eight AQAP fighters in the village led by Shabwani,[10] backed by dozens of unaffiliated men from the Shabwan clan who believed their village to be under attack.[4][5]
In the late stages of the clashes, AQAP reinforcements led by commander Qasim al-Raymi flanked the army and took up positions at nearby orange groves, where they used rocket-propelled grenades to ambush and destroy five tanks before the military withdrew, six hours after the initial attack. None of the AQAP members targeted in the raid were killed. As other jihadist reinforcements were making their way to the village, they stumbled upon a 101st Brigade[7] cargo truck carrying weapons and other equipment, which had been intending to go to the village but got lost. The militants looted the truck, captured seven soldiers guarding it, and transported them to Arq al-Shabwan. Raymi decided against executing the soldiers, instead having them each appear in recorded interviews renouncing Saleh and the Yemeni state and promising to not fight AQAP again before releasing them.[5]
The Ministry of Interior listed 18 militants in total being implicated in the battle, of whom the most wanted were Shabwani, Ali bin Said bin Jameel and Nasser Bin Douha.[11] According to a statement by AQAP, numerous Yemeni soldiers were killed and wounded in the battle, seven were captured, five tanks were destroyed and an army truck was seized.[6] A blog post by Yemeni-American Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki further clarified that three soldiers were killed and five were wounded, and an additional two armored vehicles were destroyed, all the while AQAP suffered zero casualties.[3]Agence France-Presse and Reuters corroborate the figure of three soldiers dying, although the former reported from "a local official and a tribal source" that three soldiers and four militants were wounded, and falsely wrote that Shabwani had been killed.[2][1]
Aftermath
The Yemeni government initially presented its own narrative regarding the clashes, claiming that it had been instigated by AQAP after they attacked an army truck.[8][12] This account lacked acknowledge of the seven captured soldiers,[9] deemphasized damage to civilian property, and falsely declared that Shabwani had been killed.[7] AQAP published a statement denying the government's claims and instead presenting their own list of casualties and record of events during the battle.[6] Despite AQAP's statement being mostly accurate, the government rejected it and continued to maintain its own account.[12][6]
AQAP later released an 18-minute video titled "The Battle of Marib" in September, to showcase both the integrity of their claims as well as their purported dedication to defending tribes against encroachment of their sovereignty. The video likened the operation on Arq al-Shabwan as an attack on the tribes of Marib, and condemned the tribal sheikhs who had authorized it as being subservient to the Yemeni government, and thus to the US and Saudi Arabia.[12][9] The video also included footage of the seven captured soldiers and equipment looted from the army.[13] A narrator proclaimed that AQAP had spared the men as it did not have any particular grievances towards regular soldiers of the army, "portraying them as pawns duped into obeying an un-Islamic regime," but nonetheless urged them not to fight against AQAP.[6][9] Raymi mocked the government's inability to recognize the captured soldiers, suggesting that jihadist sources were thus more credible than the government.[6][9] Analysts and commentators noted the video as being the highest-quality production released by AQAP to date.[13][9] Gabriel Koehler-Derrick of the Combating Terrorism Center wrote that "the attacks themselves and narrative that followed significantly raised the social costs of expelling Ayad al-Shabwani from the village or visibly assisting the central government, in essence pushing a community of otherwise disinterested tribesmen closer to AQAP." Yemeni forces would again target Shabwani in an air raid on Arq al-Shabwan in January 2010, but they once again failed to kill him.[7]
The numerous losses suffered by Yemeni forces, in conjunction with the disproving of the government's claims, produced a victory for AQAP, albeit for a minor event strategically.[9][3] Instead of being the start of a larger campaign against AQAP, as the US hoped it would be, by August the Yemeni government had reassigned the forces involved to instead take part in an offensive against the Houthis in Saada Governorate.[14] Regardless, the operation still proved to be useful for Yemen and the US as a means of portraying the former as being actively on the frontlines of the fight against AQAP. This would allow for all counterterrorism operations in the country to be portrayed as such in the wake of covert US military intervention later in the year.[4]
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