One of the ‘birds of heaven’ militants at a roadblock in Aden. No one knows whether the gunmen are jihadis, separatists – or both. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad for the Guardian
Jemajem is a young, dark-eyed militant leader who bears the self-important nom de guerre of "the Guevara of south Yemen". Based in the impoverished port of Aden, he belongs to the Hirak group of activists, who have been calling for south Yemen to be allowed to secede from the north for half a decade.
It's not hard to see why he thinks an independent future for the south would be better than its current situation. Sadness and poverty settled on Aden many decades ago. The streets are littered with piles of rotting fish and festering rubbish, while haggard men sit on pavements chewing qat to stave off the boredom of unemployment. Cliffs of volcanic rock are crowded with migrants' illegal shacks made of breeze blocks and corrugated iron.
But beneath this layer of grime is a tale of outside interference in Yemen that is likely to bring further conflict and exacerbate the divisions within the country. Shortly after the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was toppled last November in the Arab spring, Jemajem was approached by an intermediary working on behalf of what the man described as a "friendly country" known for its international support for revolutionary causes.
Jemajem was frustrated: although Saleh had gone, the separatists had not achieved any of their demands. But help was at hand, the man told him. Was he interested? "Of course I was," said Jemajem. "I would take money from the devil if he could help my nation. A drowning man will hang on to a straw."
His encounter with what turned out to be the Iranians is remarkable in itself, but it illuminates the much bigger tale of foreign interference in Yemen, of how the conflicts between the Gulf states and Iran, the US and al-Qaida have reduced parts of Yemen to rubble and are pushing Yeminis into the arms of the jihadis.
When the Iranians approached him, Jemajem was asked to gather a group of Hirak activists and a week later they were flown to Damascus, where they met two officials from the Iranian embassy. According to Jemajem and other activists who travelled with him, the officials told the Yemeni delegation that they would support demands for federalism within Yemen, but not the separate state that Hirak was calling for.
"I told them the people want independence," said Jemajem. "It's not me who decides; my people will condemn me if I agree to federalism."
Days later the Iranians came back and told the Yemenis they would have to go to Tehran to meet more senior officials. They arranged for the 15 Yeminis to fly to Tehran without visas on an IranAir flight. There was no one else on the plane, the activists said, and when they landed they were whisked through security without their passports being stamped.
From then on, they were treated more like detainees than negotiating partners, the Yeminis said. They were taken by bus to a hotel and only allowed to leave under escort, to go to meetings with Iranian officials.
"All the officials we met used aliases," said a female member of the delegation who did not want to be named. "They didn't tell us who they worked for but they asked us many questions." The meetings were held in ministries, but they were not told which ones, and the Iranians often spoke to them in near-perfect Arabic.
"They said Iran would invest in infrastructure projects in the south," said Jemajem. "They said they would build a hospital and pay salaries to the activists. They said they would give me – personally – a few million dollars in the beginning to start paying salaries.
"Most importantly, they said they would send us weapons and train people," he said.
Meddling
The Iranians were looking for a foothold in the peninsula, according to a senior Hirak activist who did not want to be named. Iran and Saudi Arabia have interfered in the affairs of Yemen for years, but their meddling had been exacerbated by the Arab spring.
"The Sunni monarchies, such as the Saudis and Qataris, are supporting the Sunnis in Syria and turning a blind eye to the Shia of Bahrain, and the Iranians are looking for a foothold in the region to pressure the Saudis and to be close to the straits of Bab al-Mandab in case there is war with the Americans," he said.
The narrow Bab al-Mandab strait, where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden off Yemen's south-western tip, is a conduit for all shipping going through the Suez canal, and about 30% of the world's oil passes. Yemen also shares a long and porous border with Saudi Arabia, which stretches for 1,100 miles through mountains and desert, and across which guns, qat and Islamic militants are smuggled into the Gulf kingdom, a historic enemy of Iran.
Young men were leaving quietly to train in Iran, the senior activist said. "They leave in small numbers. I don't think the Iranians are training an army there – we don't need military training. I think they are recruiting them to be future intelligence agents here. But why do you need to recruit an agent in a revolution? Help the revolution and the whole people will come and help you."
Iran is not the only country trying to place spies in the region. This week it emerged that an apparent jihadi bomber involved in a plot to attack an American jet was working with Saudi intelligence and the CIA. The double agent was also linked to a drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd al-Quso, the leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, who was behind the 2000 attack on USS Cole.
Before 1990, Yemen consisted of two separate states. When British forces left the south in 1967, Marxists took over and it became known as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. In 1990, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the north, negotiated a deal with the southern regime to unify the country under a power-sharing arrangement. The southerners soon had second thoughts, though, and in 1994 war broke out between the northern and southern armies (which had not been unified).
Saleh's forces defeated the south in a matter of weeks and then consolidated their grip over the territory. The result was increased corruption, with the northern elites picking off the best jobs and land. Southerners point to swaths of prime coastal real estate that is fenced off. They say government officials from the south were all sent home and replaced by people from the capital, Sana'a. The contractors who run the gas and oilfields are from the north.
Every night, young and old march in the streets of Aden, waving flags and calling for an end to unification. Spontaneous protests erupt as pupils leave the school gates.
One Friday we followed a procession of 15,000 people marching with the bodies of two "martyrs" who had been killed by police. When the crowds reached the cemetery and began waving their flags, soldiers positioned on high ground overlooking the funeral opened fire, injuring three youths. The furious demonstrators taunted the soldiers, telling them to go to the Abyan region, where Islamist militants had seized control and declared an emirate. Later, a group of young men danced with the old flag of South Yemen in front of the military's armoured vehicles.
Small units of gunmen known as "birds of heaven" fill the city at night. No one knows quite who they are: jihadis, separatists or both. One morning in the Mu'ala district of Aden we saw five of them: short, thin and hungry young men manning a roadblock that was carjacking government buses. We saw them again one night standing on a street corner by the qat market, waiting to attack a police convoy. Another time, a different group of gunmen with faces covered had blocked another road to demand the release of a comrade.
Hezbollah
In an old house in Aden, Jemajem gathered a dozen of his followers. His attire, like his politics, was a mix of every militant and revolutionary trend that has swept through the Middle East. The black shirt; black combat trousers and black keffiyeh wrapped around his head is a nod to the Shia fighters of Hezbollah, while his long unkempt beard and the black hair falling to his shoulder is a salute to the jihadis of south Yemen.
"The youth is agitated, militant and demands freedom," Jemajem told them, "and the only way to get freedom is by grabbing it with your hand. America won't give us freedom – we have to fight for it."
Many years before the Arab spring, he and hundreds of other activists in south Yemen started a peaceful movement demanding freedom, the end of Saleh's autocratic rule and the northern exploitation of the south. The state responded with oppression.
In less than half a decade, Jemajem was jailed six times, beaten up, tortured – including being hanged from the ceiling of his cell for days – and had his hair and beard shaved with a knife. At the end of this experience, he had been transformed from a peaceful demonstrator into a militant leader calling for armed struggle.
The peaceful demonstrators evolved into a separatist movement, Hirak, demanding the "independence" and "restoration of the state of South Yemen". But Hirak followed the trajectory of other Arab uprisings: a mass popular movement without real leaders degenerated into an array of supreme salvation councils and revolutionary committees, each claiming to be the real representative of the people while bickering over personal slights and antagonisms.
"I tell you my brothers, you have to revolt against not only the oppression of the north but also against those who claim to be our leaders," Jemajem told his followers. "The Arab world is deposing its dictators and you are bringing your own. These people are nothing but stuffed mummies."
It was frustration at the Hirak leaders' ineffectiveness that led the group to Tehran. "We went to Iran with a sense of shame," said a woman activist, "because all doors were closed in our faces and only the Iranians offered to help."
What did they say to the Iranians in the end? "We said no," said Jemajem. The Iranians attached a key condition: that the supply of guns would not be controlled by Hirak but by the Houthi rebels in the north – Shia insurgents who have been fighting the central government for almost a decade and are widely believed to be backed by Iran.
"They told us the Houthis would deliver the weapons and the money," said Jemajem. "We are trying to liberate our country from the northerners – I am not going to be under the control of another northerner.
"We realised then that the Iranians want us to be pawns," he said. "I refused to take their money."
On his return from Tehran, Jemajem turned to the jihadis. He spent a few weeks living with them in the nascent Islamic emirate based in the southern Yemeni city of Ja'ar. Although at heart a secular leftist, the "Guevara of the south" was impressed by the Islamists' strength.
"Look at our brothers the mujahideen in Ja'ar," he said to the group gathered in Aden. "They carried weapons and liberated their lands and they have created order. They created something out of nothing. Do you know how? Because the youth of al-Qaida fight for a cause while we in the Hirak haven't put our beliefs in our hearts. We have to sacrifice and die."
At this, some of the assembled young revolutionaries rolled their eyes: most are secular activists who chew qat and smoke, and have little to do with religion.
"Do you want a sharia state?" asked one. "We are fighting for a civil state here. The jihadis won't bring us that."
"I don't want an Islamic state but the jihadis are coming," said Jemajem. He drew a circle on a cushion. "Look, the jihadis are surrounding Aden, they have taken the east [Zanjibar and Ja'ar] and are now attacking checkpoints in the north. Some of their men are already inside the city."
The battle for Aden was coming soon, Jemajem said, and the separatists would be making a mistake to resist them.
"I told our leaders that when the jihadis take Aden, I won't send my men to die fighting them," he said.
"If young men lose hope in our cause they will be looking for an alternative. And our hopeless young men are joining al-Qaida."
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