Chaos in Yemen is changing the way kidnappers do business

CAIRO, Egypt — Sitting on the sand somewhere in Yemen, shrouded in black, a young French woman calls on French President Francois Hollande and exiled Yemeni president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi to bring her back to France.

“I’ve tried to kill myself several times because I know you will not negotiate and I totally understand,” she says, speaking directly into the camera.

Isabelle Prime, a consultant for Yemen’s Social Fund for Development, was kidnapped in Yemen in February, together with her interpreter Sherine Makkaoui (who was later released ). The short video she appeared in was authenticated by the French government on Monday. The identity of the captors is unknown.

The video’s authentication came just hours before American journalist Casey Coombs was released by Houthi forces in the country, after being detained since May 17.  

The two high-profile detentions have drawn attention to a practice that has a long history in Yemen.

Ever since the 1980s, Yemen has been notorious for kidnappings. But unlike in other parts of the Middle East where these stories rarely have a happy ending — such as Iraq and Syria — in Yemen, things had a habit of working out.

In the '80s and '90s, Yemeni tribes would frequently kidnap Westerners when they were in disputes with the government and use their captives to extract concessions — like if a tribe wanted a school or a hospital to be built in their area.  Yemen's central government has long had a somewhat tenuous hold on its provinces and relied on a complicated set of relationships with local tribes to maintain order. Usually captives were treated well, subjected to little more than compulsory hospitality and infinite cups of tea.

In 1993, US diplomat Haynes Mahoney reported that his kidnappers slaughtered a goat in his honor, invited him try the national pastime of chewing qat, a mild narcotic plant, and teach an English class in a local school. Somewhat reckless travelers would even joke that they wanted to be kidnapped.

But kidnapping in Yemen has taken a far more sinister turn since the emergence of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the 2011 uprisings that unseated dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. It's now a way to make serious money.

According to Safer Yemen, a company that provides security services to international organizations and companies, tribes are these days more likely to sell their hostages on to a group that would hold them for ransom. There is nothing to suggest that the group holding Prime has any links to Al Qaeda, or that they intend to sell them on.  

Between 2011 and 2013, AQAP made around $20 million in ransom money. In 2012, for example, Silvia Eberhardt, a Swiss teacher living in Yemen, was abducted by tribesmen and sold on to Al Qaeda. She was released more than a year later after intervention — and, some believe, ransom payment — by the Qataris.

But spectacle-like executions of hostages such as the world has seen in recent months in Iraq and Syria are thus far unknown in Yemen. The only captives killed there have died in rescue attempts or when caught in the crossfire between their abductors and other groups. Most recently American journalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie were killed during a failed rescue mission jointly carried out by the US and Yemeni security forces in December 2014.

The fog of war

A war is currently raging in Yemen between Shia Houthi forces, who launched a takeover in September, and a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states with US support.

All the groups who used to carry out the kidnappings of foreigners are involved in the fighting. While abductions of foreigners reached a peak about a year ago, according to a Sanaa-based security consultant, they have largely stopped since the Houthis took control.

In addition to holding Coombs, the American journalist, the Houthis have detained a number of other foreigners for short periods. Yemenis are also being kidnapped. Pro-Houthi forces recently detained ten local aid workers in Aden for six to 14 days, according to Human Rights Watch.

These incidents are closer to illegal detentions by an occupying force, rather than the typical abductions seen in the past. But things may be about to get more complicated, according to the security consultant.  

“Going ahead, it is possible to imagine that kidnappings will return as a threat and in a different way,” said the consultant, who asked to remain anonymous because of their work on kidnapping cases. “This conflict is having a severe impact on the social fabric in Yemen and social norms in Yemen [in the past] worked to protect foreigners. There is going to be an erosion of those social norms and fragmentation among existing groups, and more criminal groups emerging.”

One of those groups is particularly worrying. On March 20, the newly announced Yemeni branch of the Islamic State (IS), which has kidnapped and killed people in Iraq and Syria including Westerners, claimed the bombings of two Houthi-affiliated Shia mosques in Sanaa, Yemen's capital.

“Those type of incidents show another level of violence [than is usually present in Yemen],” says the security consultant. “There is a potential for the threat to escalate, for kidnappings to become more frequent. … IS has a more radical way of operating and has potential to cause more danger to victims.”