WATCH: Mike Armstrong reports a coup in Yemen could open a new and dangerous chapter in the story of al-Qaeda.
Yemen’s president appeared to lose his grasp on power when Houthi rebels took control of the presidential palace on Tuesday, plunging the country into further instability and possibly changing how the U.S. deals with the country’s al-Qaeda affiliate.
A top military commander claimed the Shiite Muslim Houthis were staging a coup d’état, but 33-year-old rebel leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi said it was President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi who was responsible for the chaos and storming the palace was a warning.
“The government did not respect the peace and partnership deal from September. We are trying to bring some legitimacy to the government,” CNN reported al-Houthi saying in a speech that aired on a Houthi-run television network.
READ MORE: Canadian Consulate in Yemen still operating amid chaos in the capital
Christian Leuprecht, an associate professor of political science and economics at the Royal Military College of Canada and in the Dept. of Political Studies Queen’s University’s School of Policy Studies, described Yemen as an “essentially failed state.”
“Yemen is a very complex problem,” he said. “It’s somewhat better than Somalia, but I wouldn’t say by orders of magnitude better.”
The country is “ideologically divided,” has dwindling oil resources and “has a massive challenge of drinking water and salination of the sources of drinking water it does have,” Leuprecht said. “So, there’s a whole bunch of challenges that aren’t directly related to the conflict, but obviously make the conflict worse.”
And when it comes to conflict, Yemen has its hands full with the Houthis and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)— as much a rival to the Houthis as it is to Hadi’s government.
AQAP is the strongest and most influential of the terror network’s affiliates and the group that claimed responsibility for the attack on the Paris office of satire magazine Charlie Hebdo.
READ MORE: Is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula trying to overshadow ISIS?
The U.S. government and Hadi consider each other allies in the fight against AQAP.
Democratic congressman Rep. Adam Schiff warned a power shift could lead Sunni Muslims to support AQAP if the Shiite Houthis seize control of the country.
“This has really scrambled our counterterrorism strategy there and it gives al-Qaeda a great new opportunity,” U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “The sectarian dynamic is likely to become far more problematic, and we learned in Iraq, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
The Houthis oppose the U.S. bombing campaigns, but they also benefit from the Americans taking out their adversaries.
The U.S. has ordered 100 airstrikes against it since 2011, killing at least 500 of the terror group’s operatives, according to The Long War Journal.
The strikes have also killed at least 58 civilians between 2011 and 2014, leading critics of the bombings and human rights groups to suggest the U.S. could actually be driving recruits to AQAP over resentment for the loss of life.
But, the argument that AQAP gains from U.S. drone strikes is not that “clear cut,” Leuprecht said.
He said it may be the only way to contain AQAP, given Yemen’s size and the government’s inability to send its own security forces to remote areas.
Even if revenge motivates some to join the terror network, AQAP has other ways or racking up recruits.
“Don’t think that everybody who joins, joins voluntarily,” Leuprecht said. “They also thrive on certain tribes and support from certain elements within Yemeni society, whose bidding they do and in return their sons and whatnot have to sign up with AQAP.”
The strikes, if anything, may serve as a “deterrent” to recruitment, he added. People may rethink getting involved with AQAP “because they know that they might be next on the list.”
Leuprecht sees the Houthi actions this week less as a coup attempt and more a case of “constitutional negotiations by the barrel of the gun.
“We find this consistently across the world that we find the most dangerous times are… just before there’s a new round of peace efforts because everyone wants to have a show of power and wants to show that they’re the stronger force, so they need to be taken seriously.”
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