Khaled Fattah
Dr. Fattah is a guest lecturer at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of St. Andrews.
More than six months after the streets of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, caught the scent of the "Jasmine revolution," Yemen looks like a powder keg ready to explode. Observers of Yemen are now talking more about the risk of Yemen's descending into Somali-style anarchy than about the hope of a post-revolutionary democratic Yemen. The peaceful social intifada against the Yemeni regime has been eclipsed by widespread violent confrontations among military units, tribal forces and militants in different locations across the sole republic in Arabia. In Sanaa, roadblocks and checkpoints have been erected all over the city. Some of these checkpoints are manned by pro-government military units, others by anti-government military units or tribal militia. In the rest of the country, militant jihadists have taken control of a number of towns in the southern province of Abyan. Armed dissidents have seized control of most of Yemen's second-largest city, Taez, while the Houthi rebels in the northern province of Saada, at the border with Saudi Arabia, who have been fighting the Sanaa government since 2004, have taken full control of Saada and appointed a well-known Yemeni arms dealer as governor. In addition, violent confrontations and counterattacks between pro-government military units, anti-government protesters and armed tribes are being reported in the eastern and southern provinces.
On June 4, the chaotic situation became even more dangerous when Yemen's embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was flown to Riyadh for treatment for burns and shrapnel injuries suffered in an attack on his life. The assassination attempt brought to the surface one of the tragic features of Yemen's political arena: occupying the highest political office leads to either assassination or exile. Of the four previous presidents of North Yemen, two were exiled and two were assassinated within a nine-month span. Saleh, however, has managed to stay in the presidential hot seat for so long that almost 75 percent of Yemen's population has been born after he came to power in 1978.
The wounded president left for Riyadh leaving behind him a fractured country locked in a power struggle and on the verge of disintegration. Yemen will not go quietly, however. It is too steeped in conflict and instability to break apart without causing mayhem beyond its borders. Yemen, just south of Saudi Arabia, is strategically located between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, at the access point to the vital maritime shortcut of the Suez Canal. This geostrategic advantage is threatened by the fact that Yemen is the homeland of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most dangerous branch of al-Qaeda in the Middle East. Chaos in Yemen could trigger, therefore, an avalanche of regional and international threats both to world energy supplies and to the security of many nations.
Three decades after Saleh rose to the presidency, the people of Yemen face a daunting set of economic, security and ecological disasters. Yemen's 24 million people are spread over roughly 135,000 villages and communities, from the eastern plateau to the coastal plains, the desert region and the northern highlands. The country is the eleventh-most food-insecure in the world and has one of the highest malnutrition rates. Unemployment is staggeringly high, estimated at 40 percent; the infrastructure is decrepit; and an estimated 43 percent of its rapidly growing population live below the poverty line. On the other hand, Yemen's oil reserves, which provide over 75 percent of government revenue, are expected to run out within a decade in the absence of new discoveries. In 2003, for example, Yemen produced about 450,000 barrels per day; in 2009, however, this fell to 180,000 per day. As a result of the dominance of the oil sector in Yemen's fragile economy, the sharp decline of oil revenue and continued large energy subsidies have created a strong negative impact on public finances and the balance of payments. This has contributed to a record fiscal deficit of about 10 percent of GDP, placing the balance of payments under considerable strain.
The country is also facing depletion of its groundwater. Technical reports warn that Sanaa could be the first capital in the world to run out of water. It is estimated that each Yemeni's average share of renewable water resources is 125 cubic metres per year. This is one-tenth of the average in most Middle Eastern countries and one-fifth of the world average. As the population grows, this share is expected to shrink considerably.1 In the rural areas, where more than 70 percent of Yemen's population lives, only 45 percent have access to clean drinking water; 15 percent are on the national electric grid, and less than one-tenth of the roads are paved. Yemen is ranked 155th in the UN Human Development Index, and 146th in Transparency International's corruption index. The focus of the regime on survival and its political manipulation of almost every regional and international agenda item from the "war on terror" to the Sunni-Shiite cold war and international development aid have produced a highly corrupt state apparatus. Within such an environment, members of the regime, senior state and military personnel and their close associates have been extensively engaged in rent-seeking and personal accumulation of wealth from limited state resources.
This bleak socioeconomic picture is compounded by civil unrest in the northern, southern and eastern parts of the country. The militarized solutions adopted by the regime in dealing with Yemen's unrest have swallowed the country's limited public funds and reinforced public distrust and grievances. In light of this and the disruption in the payoffs that maintained a modicum of stability, there are well-grounded concerns that Saleh's sudden departure may lead to an overload of the complex domestic political system. In a country where there are more Kalashnikovs than people, and where the central authority is caged inside the capital and major cities, opportunity is rife for civil wars and Balkanization.
YOUTH-LED REVOLT; TRIBAL ELITE
The youth of Yemen saw themselves reflected in Tunisia and Egypt, where the young tore down the wall of fear and cracked the foundations of autocratic regimes. Yemen's social intifada followed the initial stages of the popular uprising in Tunisia. It began with demands for jobs, improvement of living conditions and the rejection of the government's proposals to modify the constitution. On February 11, after Al Jazeera broadcast live images of the euphoric celebrations that swept Cairo when Mubarak stepped down, hundreds of Yemeni students, teachers and political activists gathered in front of Sanaa University and began chanting, "Long live the Egyptian people," and "Revolution until victory." Gradually, the chants started to take a different tone: "Yesterday Tunisia, today Egypt, tomorrow Yemen," "Revolution, oh Yemen, from Sanaa to Aden," and the slogan of the Arab spring, "Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam" (the people want to bring down the regime). From the first evening of protest, the youth of Yemen adopted a peaceful approach. Unlike in Egypt, where only after Mubarak stepped down did the role of political parties become clearer, the role of Yemen's opposition parties was clear from the first weeks of the protests. As a preemptive media and symbolic measure, the regime rushed to occupy Tahrir (liberation) Square in Sanaa. Interestingly, the square was constructed by the Egyptians during the Yemeni Republican-Royalist civil war in the 1960s and was named after the Tahrir Square in Cairo. Pro-Saleh supporters, backed by battalions of thugs and security forces, transformed the square into a base camp filled with a sea of tents, pro-government banners and posters of the president.
In response, the young protesters occupied a crossroads outside Sanaa University and dubbed it Taghir Square, "the square of change." As in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the physical space around the university was transformed into a sociopolitical entity with political festivities, songs, stage plays, poems, exhibitions and dance. For the first time in decades, there was public mixed interaction between men and women. The breaking of that barrier, which prevented Yemeni women from fully participating in the public sphere, is one of the impressive sociocultural achievements of Yemen's social intifada. In Taghir Square, women were among the most energetic participants in the protests. Yemen's social intifada created a new space for women's empowerment, networks, courage and voices.
On March 18, the peaceful protest was radically transformed when 52 demonstrators were killed by rooftop snipers. In the aftermath, widespread national anger erupted, and events began to turn negative toward the Saleh regime. Mass defections by members of the ruling party, senior civilian officials, ambassadors and, more significant, army personnel were publically announced. One of the defecting officers, General Ali Muhsin, the commander of one of Yemen's four main military zones, has always been perceived as the iron fist of the regime. Following his defection, General Muhsin deployed his troops to protect the protesters at their sit-in in Sanaa. The defection of Muhsin boosted the spirit of protesters; it provided them with military protection and created the image of powerful elites abandoning Saleh's sinking ship.
In the ongoing protests, three main camps can be identified. The first is a large peaceful youth movement inspired by the Arab Spring. The majority involved are originally from the central and southern governorates, where the level of education and political awareness are much higher than in the rest of the country. The second camp is tribal, headed by the powerful al-Ahmar family. It is militarily and financially the strongest. The third camp is the weakest and is made up of formal opposition parties.
Unlike the other Arab countries in which popular protests blossomed, in Yemen there are two militaries involved. One remains loyal to the Saleh regime; the other supports the protesters. The key to understanding this division can be found in Saleh's structure of governance, based on a complex, overlapping and competitive network of families, clans and tribes. Political and economic competition among these elites is instantly reflected inside the military, which mirrors tribal coalitions and elite struggle, not state power. Complicating the situation is the fact that the military is composed mainly of tribesmen from the northern highlands. The tribal bonds of the soldiers are stronger than their military allegiance, creating a military-tribal complex of patron-client relationships.
On May 23, Saleh's republican guards tried to storm the housing compound of Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar, leader of the powerful Hashid tribal confederation and the elder brother of the billionaire Hamid al-Ahmar, whom president Saleh accuses of orchestrating and funding the months of anti-Saleh protests. In a reaction to the attack on the compound, the tribal militia of Sheikh Sadeq unleashed their powerful arsenal of heavy and medium weapons and laid siege to at least nine government ministries, including the Ministry of Interior. The district of al-Hasabah in Sanaa, where the al-Ahmar compound is located, was turned into a military zone. A week of fierce street fights left 105 people dead and 467 injured. The clashes marked the transformation of the peaceful youth-led uprising into a power struggle between rival elite factions.
RIYADH AND THE SHEIKHS
As a result of the historical absence of strong central authority and the failure of socialization of Yemenis as citizens, the state often behaves like a tribe, and the tribe behaves like a state. Although this swapping of political roles is at the heart of Yemen's chronic political dysfunction, it has been encouraged by Yemen's most powerful neighbor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Since the September 1962 republican military coup, which brought an end to 10 centuries of the Zaydi Imamate system, the Saudis are more comfortable with Yemen as a republic of powerful tribal sheikhs and religious institutions than modern technocrats and civil-society organizations.
Yemen is to Saudi Arabia what Mexico is to the United States: a source of concern. The founding father of Saudi Arabia, King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (1876-1953), is famously quoted as saying: "The good or evil for us will come from Yemen." To prevent or at least reduce the threats emerging from its backyard, the Saudi kingdom cultivated a vast network of patronage with tens of influential sheikhly families. The most prominent of these are Bayt al-Ahmar of the Humran section of the al-Usaymat tribe of the powerful Hashid confederation, Bayat Abu Ras of Dhu Muhammad, and Bayt al-Shayef of Dhu Husayn of the large Bakil tribal confederation. Geographically, Hashid and Bakil dominate the northern and eastern areas around Sanaa, encircling the capital like a bracelet around a wrist. Although their total population has been estimated at more than 500,000,2 roughly 2 percent of the total population, their weight is not demographic, but military. The northern tribes of Yemen are armed to the teeth and possess an arsenal of medium and heavy weapons.
The Saudi-sponsored patronage network controlled by sheikhs in Yemen is so well-established that it is "riyalized" on a monthly basis and covers almost all influential tribal leaders of the country. The network is a pre-emptive Saudi strategy, guided by a basic foreign-policy principle: regardless of the political orientation and ambitions of the man in Yemen's presidential chair, the kingdom should keep a hand inside Yemen's political kitchen.
The recent street battles in Sanaa between Yemen's Republican Guards, led by Saleh's son, Colonel Ahmed, and the tribal militia of Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar exposed to the outside world the significant power of traditional tribal forces. In a press interview, Sheikh Sadeq predicted the outcome of his fight with President Saleh in a statement borrowed from a medieval political dictionary: "We shall send Saleh barefooted outside Sanaa." The statement of the sheikh stands in sharp contrast to the slogan of the Yemeni youth, which they borrowed from the political dictionary of the children of globalization in Egypt and Tunisia: "The people want to overthrow the regime."
Yemen is perhaps the last bastion of tribal power in the Middle East, mainly because of the severe weakness of its state institutions. In some tribal areas, the presence of national-security forces or military units is perceived as a foreign intrusion. During Saleh's long reign, the Yemeni regime has been obsessed with creating survival strategies rather than exercising state authority. The increasing inability of state institutions to meet the basic needs of the population, and the failure of the central government to mediate important societal interests, such as security and stability, have enabled the government to isolate itself from society. Overloaded by societal demands, suffering from a legitimacy and effectiveness crisis, and lacking infrastructural power, the Yemeni state is forced to cancel itself in order to protect the survival of the regime. In this sense, the strength of the tribes and the weakness of the state is a question of the regime's political will.3 The Yemeni state is an anemic political community of law and order, unable to push its agenda in the vast tribal areas outside the capital. To compensate for its weakness, the state relies on tribal leaders as bridges between state and society. This weak and tribalized structure of governance, however, makes Saleh "highly susceptible to the informal (and extra-constitutional) power centers that compete for resources and influence with the Office of the President."4
The demographical weight of the population in the northern and eastern tribal areas of Yemen is far lighter than that of the non-tribal population in the rest of the country. For example, the number of electoral constituencies in Al-Hodeidah governorate, along the Tihama coastal plain, is 33, which is more than the combined number of constituencies in the four tribal governorates of Marib, al-Jawaf, Amran and Saada. Tribes, however, make up the central nervous system of politics, and tribal sheikhs are the most influential pressure group in the political arena. This is because, in the pursuit of regime survival, all the modernizing agents — namely state institutions, political parties and the military — have been tribalized. In this sense, Saleh's politics of survival serve Saudi interests in Yemen.
THE PENTAGON AND THE UPRISING
In Washington, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Daniel Benjamin, stated that the United States is extremely worried that the ongoing unrest in Yemen is creating a power vacuum that could fuel connections between al-Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen and al-Shabab militant jihadists in Somalia. The Yemeni coastline stretches for about 2000 km from the Red Sea town of Midi in the northwest to Hof in the southwest corner of the Bab al-Mandab (gate of tears), and from there it is only a 25 km sail across the Strait to the coast of Djibouti. The Americans are currently fixated on the possibility that al-Qaeda insurgents in Yemen are taking advantage of the turmoil in the country, operating more in the open and acquiring more territory. A number of security and strategic reports expressed concern that militant jihadists fleeing Pakistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are sheltering and reorganizing themselves in the ungoverned ‘dark spaces' in the tribal areas of Yemen. Some reports went even further, to explain that Yemen has become not only a breeding ground for insurgent movements, but also a dangerous base that links al-Qaeda's three main theatres of operation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on the other hand, reflected Washington's worries about al-Qaeda making use of the current instability in Yemen: "We consider al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is largely located in Yemen, to be perhaps the most dangerous of all the franchises of al-Qaeda right now. And so instability and diversion of attention from dealing with AQAP is certainly my primary concern about the situation." During the last weeks, Washington has deployed more drones over the Yemeni sky, an action justified by the Pentagon as the best available alternative to putting U.S. military boots on the ground. However, U.S. drone strikes at this point may further inflame antipathy for the completely discredited pro-Washington Saleh regime. The Yemeni social intifada is an uprising monitored by U.S drones.
WHAT IS NEXT?
Yemen is a deeply unstable political entity resting on a knife's edge. Unlike the situation in Tunisia and Egypt, there is no single individual, group or institution that can take over any possible post-Saleh transitional period. The Saudis will most likely extend Saleh's medical recovery into a longer political rest, as his return to power will ignite the already explosive situation. A Somalia-like Yemen in the backyard is a nightmare for Saudi national security. Influential tribal families such as the al-Ahmar are not interested in occupying Yemen's problematic presidential office. They prefer to extract maximum political concessions and economic benefits from the state without being directly involved in the management of complex state affairs. Yemen provides an excellent example of a revolution in a fragile state, where autonomists, secessionists, terrorists, insurgents and irredentists can emerge to fill a political and security vacuum. The post-revolution phase in Yemen is threatened by the absence of state institutions capable of introducing a basic framework for political transition.
Desirable norms of the international community such as predictability and stability are difficult to achieve in a country like Yemen, where state institutions waver between weakness and fragility. The degree of dysfunction in the Yemeni state, however, has not yet reached the point of complete societal breakdown. This fact provides a window of hope for breaking the cycle of violence. The infusion by Western donors of international development aid will not, however, alter the geostrategic realities. Major political changes in Yemen are closely fused with major political changes in Riyadh.
1 "Enabling Poor Rural People to Overcome Poverty in Yemen," IFAD Report 2010, http://www.ifad.org/operations/projects/regions/pn/factsheets/ye.pdf.
2 Paul Dresch, Tribes, Government and History in Yemen (Oxford University Press, 1994), 24.
3 Lisa Wedeen, "Yemen: State Fragility, Piety, and the Problems with Intervention," Norwegian Peace Building Resource Centre Report 6 (2010), http://www.peacebuilding.no/eng/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Ye….
4 Sarah Phillips, "Yemen's Postcards from the Edge: al-Qaeda, Tribes, and Nervous Neighbours," presented at Australian Political Science Association Conference, Sydney, September 2009.
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