The video shows bags of bread being handed out to hungry people, before cutting to an armoured vehicle escorting a lorryload of food across a dry riverbed, and then to men scaling pylons to restore electricity supplies.
The images wouldn’t look out of place in a promotional film for a government department or an aid agency, except that the men providing the humanitarian assistance in this video are Yemen’s notorious al-Qaeda-linked militants.
The video is part of a propaganda campaign in Yemen to try to win the trust of a populace battered by decades of weak and ineffectual governance, political instability and conflict that has taken many to the edge of starvation and provided a haven for international terrorists.
Now those same militants, responsible for a series of bomb attacks on Western targets in the past decade, are trying to win hearts and minds, a step towards nation-building that is worrying the international community.
On a visit to the capital, Sanaa, this week to deliver £6 million of UK humanitarian aid to agencies in Yemen, Alan Duncan, the International Development Minister, said: “We don’t want al-Qaeda to become the Hamas of southern Yemen. The international community must earn the reputation as the better provider than al-Qaeda, and ultimately the [Yemeni] Government itself has to assume that role.”
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According to the World Food Programme this week, 45 per cent of the population do not have enough to eat, and child malnutrition rates are on a par with those of Somalia. But Yemen’s new President, instead of providing aid, has begun a fresh bombing campaign on militant strongholds in the south.
Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, sworn in last month and backed by the US and its drones, has pledged to “continue the war against al-Qaeda”. However, the militants have been heartened by recent successes against government forces, including an ambush in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan earlier this month that killed more than 150 government troops.
Now the militants believe that a beaten-down population, its traditional tribal alliances frayed by corruption fostered over three decades under Yemen’s ousted former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, is prepared to accept their rule as a feasible alternative.
As part of its publicity offensive, the militants have rebranded, adopting the name Ansar al-Sharia instead of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The new name, which means partisans of Sharia, was first used last April and, although the groups are allied, the exact degree of overlap remains unclear.
As part of its publicity offensive, the al-Qaeda-linked group has posted at least ten videos on YouTube in 24 hours this week, and has churned out copious newsletters. AQAP is no stranger to winning converts through its English-speaking media wing, but the new drive in Arabic is being aimed at Yemenis rather than foreign recruits.
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“Now they [Ansar al-Sharia] are trying to curry local favour, forge their own agenda and build a future Yemeni society as they see it,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, a specialist in Islamic groups at Brandeis University, Massachusetts. Ansar al-Sharia was trying to pitch itself as the local equivalent of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood, he added.
Samira Yahiya is one of 150,000 Yemenis displaced by fighting in the south in the past year. “As long as someone can provide water, food and maybe some electricity, God willing we will go back to our home,” she said. “We don’t care who that is, who helps us, as long as there is no more fighting.”