As per the terms of Friday’s ceasefire agreement, Salafi militants (a group of Sunni ultra-orthodox radicals) agreed to vacate Dar al-Hadith, Sa’ada main Salafi religious centre, some four decades after its establishment.
Following weeks of violence clashes with their religious nemesis, the Houthis, Yemen Salafis were explicitly asked to leave Dammaj as to defuse religious tensions and return calm to Yemen northern highlands.
Since an armed struggle broke out in Dammaj, after the Houthis alleged Dar al-Hadith sought to train an army of wannabe Jihadists ahead of a regional takeover and a repression movement against Shia Islam, the drums of war have echoed across the provinces of Sa’ada, al-Jawf and Amran, threatening to engulf the entire northern region.
Only last week, Houthi militants stood but a few kilometres away from the capital, Sana’a. Should such a tribal army had been authorized to carry on its campaign against Salafis on allegations and conjecture, experts warned Yemen’s very institutional future would have been put in jeopardy, hence President Abdo Rabbo Mansour’s decisive intervention.
Determined to diffuse all tensions and eliminate sectarian sentiment from the equation altogether, President decided, to Salafis’ fury one need to add, to sacrifice Dar al-Hadith and relocate all Salafis and their students.
On Tuesday Sana’a send several military helicopters to facilitate the center’s evacuation. Salafis have been forced to move some 250 km south, in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, far away from Houthis’ territories, away from the heartland of Zaidi Islam.
Yehia Abuesbaa, Head of the presidential committee which led the negotiations confirmed on Tuesday that Yehia a-Hujuri, Dar al-Hadith’s main scholar and his aides had already been moved.
"The rest of the Salafis, and 97 foreign students studying in Dammaj, will be moved tomorrow," he added.