ISIS is steadily gaining strength in another Middle Eastern country while everyone

ISIS is steadily gaining strength in another Middle Eastern country while everyone looks the other way
.A Houthi militant stands guard on a street where a pro-Houthi tribal gathering is being held in Yemen's capital Sanaa December 10, 2015. REUTERS/Moham...
(Thomson Reuters)
A Houthi militant standing guard on a street where a pro-Houthi tribal gathering was being held in Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
Militants affiliating themselves with the terrorist group ISIS are taking advantage of a power vacuum in Yemen to establish an increasingly strong foothold there as the government focuses on fighting other rebels, experts say.
ISIS-linked terrorists have launched deadly attacks on mosques, carried out car bombings, and exploited sectarian tensions to lure new recruits, using extreme brutality and violence to bring in new blood and distinguish themselves from the powerful Al Qaeda branch in Yemen, The New York Times reported earlier this week.
"A video released recently by the branch underscored its determination to showcase its brutality," The Times reported. "In one section, the video shows masked gunmen leading prisoners to a small boat that was set out to sea and then blown up. Another vignette showed four captives made to wear what appeared to be mortar shells, draped around their necks, then pose for the camera before the shells were detonated."
ISIS, which is also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh, has also been able to kill some Yemeni officials without meeting much resistance from authorities, who are more concerned with fighting rebels who have an established presence in the country.
Yemen has been in a state of chaos since a civil war started there in March. A Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, is fighting to defeat the Houthi rebels, who support Yemen's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The coalition backs the government of Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the current president.
The civil war has created a power vacuum in some areas of Yemen where the Saudi-led coalition has driven Houthi rebels out.
That allowed ISIS an opportunity to step in. And no one seems to be targeting ISIS with enough strength to prevent the group from expanding, since the coalition is laser-focused on fighting the Houthis.
"To some extent, Yemen was always on the radar screen of ISIS as eventually part of their caliphate, but at first they were preoccupied with Syria and Iraq and had no time to invest elsewhere," Nabeel Khoury, a former State Department official in Yemen who is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Business Insider.
"But with the power vacuum, with the chaos ... that presented both an opportunity and an incentive" for ISIS, Khoury added.
Right now, ISIS seems to be focusing on establishing a solid foothold in parts of southern Yemen. (The Houthi rebels are from the north.)
ISIS will "start with Aden, other parts of the south," Khoury said. "As a combination of forces, this is driving the Houthis out of these areas. They don’t have the Yemeni government and military ready to take over. So as you drive the Houthis out, you leave a relatively weak state structure … That makes it very easy for [Al Qaeda] and ISIS to take over."