Directly or indirectly, almost every dispatch presented so far anticipates the grand finale, a brutal Saudi-led, American-backed military assault ostensibly to defeat the Houthis and reinstate Hadi as president of Yemen. As I wrote in an op-ed for The Nation magazine two weeks into the war, peace and social justice activists around the world should be mobilizing to protest this naked aggression—but not out of sympathy for the Houthi-Salih militias who also committed atrocities against civilians and are hardly progressives. In this chapter’s entries, John Willis places the aerial bombardment in historical context. Marina de Regt calls attention to the plight of refugees fleeing to East Africa, and Jillian Schwedler and Stacey Philbrick Yadav ask Americans not to look away. I criticize the failure of the UN Security Council to call for so much as a humanitarian pause or even to mention the devastation caused by the Saudi-led intervention, and Gabriele vom Bruck explains one of several false Saudi overtures toward negotiations. Susanne Dahlgren and Amira Augustin follow up on their extensive reporting from the southern governorates, where the Houthi-Salih assault failed to pacify grassroots Popular Committees demanding southern independence. Finally, James Spencer analyzes the failure of the military campaign to achieve its stated objectives. Several caricatures by Samer Mohammed Al-Shameeri visually illustrate his view of these developments from Sana‘a.
“Legitimacy”: Saudi Arabia holding up ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi amidst the ruins of his country. (March 30, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
On the night of March 25 one hundred Saudi warplanes bombed strategic targets inside Yemen under the control of the Houthi rebels. A number of countries—the other Gulf Cooperation Council members minus Oman, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, and Morocco—joined the effort either directly or in support capacities. Although the Houthis have been in control of the Yemeni capital Sana‘a and the central government since September 2014, it was the flight of President ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to Aden and the subsequent Houthi attack on the southern city that constituted the breaking point for Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Thus began what Riyadh has dubbed Operation Decisive Storm (‘Asifat al-Hazm), a military assault that has already caused considerable destruction in Sana‘a and elsewhere, and incurred dozens of casualties both military and civilian.
Saudi ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubair described the air campaign as defending the legitimate Yemeni government led by Hadi, who replaced president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih as part of a GCC-brokered political arrangement in 2011. Hadi’s government, al-Jubair contended, “has agreed to a process that is supported by the international community, that is enshrined in several United Nations Security Council resolutions that call for all Yemeni parties to take a certain path that would lead them from where they were to a new state with a new constitution and elections and checks and balances and so forth.” He referred to the Houthis as “spoilers” of this process, who refused to “become legitimate players in Yemeni politics,” and who will not be allowed to take over the country. Al-Jubair’s remarks on the legitimacy of the government were remarkable for several reasons, not least of which was the absence of any mention of the Yemeni people.
The Houthis’ refusal to negotiate a political settlement in Riyadh has indeed disrupted the Kingdom’s attempt to revive the original and problematic GCC initiative and National Dialogue Conference that was to resolve Yemen’s deep political divisions. As Stacey Philbrick Yadav and Sheila Carapico have argued, “given the GCC monarchies’ interest in stability in the most restive quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, the agreement contained a number of provisions to undermine populist demands for a democratic transition.” It is no wonder then that the Houthis saw little possibility of addressing their concerns in a Saudi-sponsored conference that seemed to have as its goal the restoration of the political status quo.
Yet Operation Decisive Storm is not merely about Yemen’s internal politics. It is emblematic of a broader political transformation—one that both has historical parallels and is strikingly new. For many, the assault raises the specter of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, executed by a coalition of Sunni states and Iran’s Shi’i proxies. Indeed, the forces aligned against the Houthis are Sunni-majority countries. As many analysts have noted, however, the narrative of sectarianism obfuscates the political context of the Yemeni crisis rather than clarifying it. For those with longer historical memories, this military campaign suggests a previous proxy war between Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and Saudi Arabia, when both countries intervened in the Yemeni civil war (1962–67) to support the Yemeni republicans, on the one hand, and the Yemeni monarchy, on the other. In that conflict, the Saudis backed the deposed Zaydi imam while Egyptian troops fought on the side of the “free officers.” Although the republican officers prevailed, Egypt suffered a kind of defeat, and Saudi Arabia ultimately extended its hegemony over what was then North Yemen.
A closer historical analogy might be the Iranian, Jordanian and British intervention in Oman against the rebellion of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO) in the 1960s and 1970s. In that case an alliance of conservative monarchies joined forces to support the Omani sultanate against popular forces that had threatened to spread into the greater Persian Gulf. While the Houthis in no way resemble the leftist PFLO in ideology or revolutionary practice, the forces gathered against them have a great deal in common. Namely, they are all part of a counterrevolutionary front that has expanded beyond the GCC to include other authoritarian regimes. While not all these countries share the Saudi and GCC paranoia regarding Iran, they do, to varying degrees, fear the spread of ISIS or popular democratic forces. To these regimes, the Houthis represent one of many forces that threaten to undermine the regional order.
The coalition also shares a reliance on Saudi and GCC political and economic support. In Egypt, GCC member states Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE have supported the regime of ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi politically and financially since he formalized power in 2014. Collectively, they provided Egypt with an estimated $23 billion in grants, loans, petroleum products and investment in 2014 and a pledge for $12 billion more in 2015. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, met with King Salman in October 2014 as part of a general rapprochement between the two countries that led to an unspecified aid package from Saudi Arabia. Both Jordan and Morocco were briefly in discussions to enter the GCC as part of a post-Arab uprising defense strategy intended to ensure dynastic stability in the face of increasing domestic opposition. Although they were ultimately not invited to join, the two monarchies still enjoy the financial support of GCC countries and share a similar commitment to combating the influence of ISIS.
The role of Pakistan is slightly more complex. Beyond the long history of military ties between the two countries, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif owes his political life to Saudi intervention. The Kingdom gave him a comfortable exile in 2000 and again in 2007 (including financing his establishment of a steel mill in Jidda). Since Sharif’s election in 2013, the Saudis have continued their support, most recently in April 2014 with an injection of $1.5 billion in loans into the Pakistani economy to shore up its foreign reserves. In return, the Pakistani military has actively supported the Gulf monarchies: The recruitment of Pakistani mercenaries for Bahrain’s security forces during the height of opposition demonstrations in 2011 was organized by private security firms with close ties to the Pakistani military.
Members of the anti-Yemen Decisive Storm coalition standing in line for the Saudi cash machine. (March 31, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
Despite Saudi or even US assertions to the contrary, Operation Decisive Storm has nothing to do with supporting the legitimacy of a political process in Yemen. Its goal is instead to maintain the continuity of authoritarian governance in the region by actively repressing the forces that threaten to undo the status quo. That this coalition has indiscriminately lumped together ISIS, Iran and the popular democratic movements of the Arab uprisings of 2011 should indicate both its broader strategic goals and, equally, the dangers to positive political and social change it represents.
“Yemen’s conflict is getting so bad that some Yemenis are fleeing to Somalia,” read a recent headline at the Vice News website. The article mentions that 32 Yemenis, mainly women and children, made the trip to Berbera, a port town in Somaliland (and not Somalia). Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have crossed the Gulf of Aden since the outbreak of the Somali civil war in 1991. But now the tide seems to have turned. Yemen has become a war zone, as a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia bombs the country in an attempt to stop the Houthis, an insurgent movement opposed to the government, from gaining control over the entirety of Yemeni territory. But, instead of protecting the Yemeni population, these attacks have created more chaos, despair and destruction.
The situation is especially bad in Aden, Yemen’s main port, strategically located near Bab al-Mandab, the strait connecting the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. Street fighting in Aden has intensified, mainly between the city’s inhabitants, on one side, and the Houthis and army units loyal to ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih, Yemen’s former president, on the other. There is no water available any longer, electricity is intermittent and food shortages are very serious. Life in Aden is unbearable without water and electricity, as the climate is very hot and humid. People are slowly starving. Those who can are trying to escape, but many do not have the opportunity.
In other parts of the country, the situation is deteriorating, too, with civilians being the main victims of this useless war. A camp of internally displaced people near the Saudi Arabian border was mistakenly bombed, killing many people. A dairy near the port town of Hudayda was targeted, killing dozens of workers inside, and recently another factory was hit. A family of seven people in Yemen’s capital of Sana‘a was killed in an air raid. And these are just a few of the stories. Many residents have fled to their ancestral villages or sought refuge elsewhere. Shops in the capital of Sana‘a are closed, and water is running out. There are long queues at fuel stations, and diesel is no longer available. Those who have stayed behind describe the city as a ghost town.
On April 12, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) organized its first charter flight during the crisis, evacuating 141 “third-country nationals” from Sana‘a. People with certain nationalities, such as Indian and Chinese, were flown to safety with the assistance of their governments. According to the IOM, 160,000 third-country nationals remain stranded in Yemen. The organization is also helping Yemenis who were on their way to Yemen when the airstrikes started and who are stuck at airports all over the world. Thousands of Yemenis are separated from their families, anxious to go home or desperate to leave the country. And yet, it seems to be easier to evacuate foreigners than to help Yemenis in their own country. It took days before the first airplane bearing humanitarian aid was able to land.
I am thinking of all the migrants who came to Yemen fleeing oppression, violence and destitution in the Horn of Africa. Most of them hoped to find work on the Arabian Peninsula, and used Yemen as a transit country. Since 2011 an increasing number of Ethiopians have crossed the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, outnumbering Somalis as new arrivals. One of the reasons was that brokers and smugglers were exploiting the weakened border controls and rule of law in Yemen. They convinced Ethiopians to migrate via Yemen, promoting it as an easy way to reach Saudi Arabia. Many were kidnapped upon arrival in Yemen, detained in “torture camps” and only released after having paid a ransom. I can only hope that the IOM will also repatriate the thousands of undocumented Ethiopians and Somalis in Yemen, but I fear for their fate. According to a new UN report, there were still Ethiopian migrants arriving in Yemen after the start of the airstrikes.
The current situation marks a grim new phase in Yemen’s migration history. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Yemeni men migrated to the Horn of Africa, escaping the bad economic and political situation at home. They often returned to Yemen in the 1960s and 1970s, after the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. It is more than ironic that nowadays Yemenis have to flee to the Horn of Africa again.
On April 14, three weeks into the Saudi-led air campaign called Operation Decisive Storm, the UN Security Council (UNSC) approved Resolution 2216. This legally binding resolution, put forward by Jordan, Council president for April, imposed an arms embargo on the Houthi rebels and former Yemeni president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih and his son. There are also provisions freezing individual assets and banning their travel. Russia abstained. It seemed to fully endorse both the so-called Gulf Cooperation Council initiative, brokered by UN special envoy Jamal Benomar, and Operation Decisive Storm.
But then, within a day or two, Benomar resigned and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a much stronger plea for an immediate cessation of all hostilities.
As the purported legal basis for UNSC 2216, Jordan’s proposal cited “a letter from the president of Yemen,” who has fled his country for Riyadh, requesting from the GCC and the League of Arab States immediate “support, by all necessary means and measures, including military intervention, to protect Yemen and its people from the continuing aggression by the Houthis.”
The April 14 resolution reads as if Saudi Arabia is an impartial arbitrator, rather than a party to an escalating conflict, and as if the GCC offers a “peaceful, inclusive, orderly and Yemeni-led political transition process that meets the legitimate demands and aspirations of the Yemeni people, including women.” This is unmitigated nonsense. And it is contradicted by the testimony of rules-of-war monitors.
The Security Council expressed “grave alarm at the significant and rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation.” But it conspicuously neglected to demand a humanitarian ceasefire to halt the Saudi-led bombing campaign, even briefly, to allow essential medicines and food to reach Aden and other cities whose populations face death, destruction and devastation.
It is a particularly caustic omission. Only the day before, Ivan Simonovic, the UN’s deputy secretary-general for human rights, said that the majority of the 600 people killed since the start of the Saudi assault are civilians. Both the Saudis and the Houthis are to blame, he explained. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, noted rules-of-war violations by both sides. The World Health Organization recorded 736 deaths and 2,719 wounded since the onset of Decisive Storm. As Human Rights Watch put it on April 13, “The [Saudi-led] coalition and the US should investigate alleged laws-of-war violations by coalition forces and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to populations at risk.”
By contrast, UNSC 2216 implies that only the Houthis are committing war crimes. Invoking Chapter VII of the UN charter as if circuitously and ex post facto to authorize Operation Decisive Storm, it demands that “all Yemeni parties, in particular the Houthis, fully implement resolution 2201 (2015),” “refrain from further unilateral actions,” and “unconditionally…end the use of violence.” No mention of non-Yemeni parties.
Instead of condemning war crimes on both sides, or calling forcefully for a negotiated ceasefire, UNSC 2216 implicitly condones the Saudi-led, US-backed escalation. An indistinct nod toward diplomacy “welcomes” the GCC’s restatement of a March 10 invitation to convene a “conference” in Riyadh. This proposal was disingenuous then, since the Saudis would hardly be neutral arbiters between a transitional regime they installed and a group they label “terrorists.”
Praising the resolution, US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, known for her past advocacy of humanitarian intervention, declared that “a legitimate transition in Yemen can only be achieved through political negotiations and a consensus agreement among all political parties based on the GCC initiative and the outcomes of Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference.”
Meanwhile, in addition to providing intelligence and surveillance, Washington rushed advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia and Egypt to bolster the aerial offensive against Yemen.
The Jordanian-sponsored resolution gives the impression that these (unmentioned) actions support rather than defy international law. In nine separate paragraphs and clauses, UNSC 2216 lauds the GCC initiative, including its outcomes: the National Dialogue Conference and the resulting draft constitution for Yemen, also facilitated by Benomar. It reaffirms “the legitimacy of the president of Yemen, ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.” Moreover it condemns “any actions that undermine the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen.”
UNSC 2216 and Power’s remarks in mid-April follow up on a measure passed by the Security Council two months ago on February 15. Then, as the United States, other NATO powers and Gulf nations shut down their embassies in Sana‘a and evacuated their diplomats, the world body unanimously voted for Resolution 2201, calling on the Houthis to surrender their military gains and on all Yemenis to get behind the GCC initiative and the draft constitution produced with the assistance of the special envoy, Benomar, in the name of the National Dialogue Conference.
This first resolution reflected Gulf and great power anxieties about minority guerrillas capturing the capital Sana‘a, overthrowing the remnants of the central government, sowing chaos, and inadvertently leaving opportunities for Ansar al-Shar’ia (a local ally of al-Qaeda) to make even more mischief. Domestically, it appealed to some, especially in the governorates that made up independent South Yemen until unification in 1990, who prefer the interim government of Hadi to the Houthis, but who also aspire to independence rather than unity.
In February, as in April, the “international community” praised the GCC initiative and its outcomes as the only solution to Yemen’s woes, with Hadi as the rightful leader and the draft constitution as a road map for the future. Actually, all three had already failed to deliver tranquility, social justice or a way forward.
[…]
In and of itself, the ensuing National Dialogue Conference was a sound idea, grounded in Yemeni precedents. It did help to tamp down tensions in 2012 and part of 2013. Some of its committees made real progress, thanks to some young and/or female intellectuals and technocrats. There were working groups on a range of issues—ranging from economic development to the Houthi and southern questions, respectively. But in the end the Conference did not produce the desired results. Most of the 565 delegates were aging politicians, veterans of past conflicts and corruption rackets. The dissident Houthis, the Southern Movement, and advocates of genuine change were underrepresented.
The National Dialogue, moreover, became a donor-dominated “transitology” project. Delegates earned generous per diems to meet in the five-star Mövenpick Hotel in Sana‘a with foreign “experts” on subjects like federalism. This last item was not on the Conference agenda or part of its mission statement or committee structure—but nevertheless a federalism proposal was a major outcome of the Conference, and a central feature of the proposed constitution. Still, the federal map produced by the Conference was dismissed in popular responses as inadequate to address the real need for a regime change or to end the power struggle in Sana‘a. It was, moreover, the imposition of the division into six regions that prompted the Houthis to deploy so as to stop that division. The Hirak also rejected this redesign.
The draft constitution overvalued in UNSC 2216 is premised on a “federal” solution to Yemen’s problems. There’s no doubt that the majority of Yemenis prefer decentralized local governance over one-man autocracy. Nor can anyone object to the numerous platitudes including promises to respect rights to asylum, health care and more. But the draft constitution, a product of the GCC initiative and foreign consultations, was not the answer to Yemen’s problems it was made out to be. It seemed bizarrely derivative of the flawed American-backed constitution foisted on Iraq in 2005, or the similar failed arrangements introduced in Afghanistan.
The envisioned government structure is not fully federal if that term means regional autonomy and representation. The text specifies that the new House of Representatives shall consist of 260 members elected through a general, free, secret, direct and equal vote under the closed proportional list system. That is national constituency representation, whereby parliamentary representatives are elected from the whole country, not localities or provinces, as in the American or German federal systems. Yemen’s draft constitution would marginalize regional forces, notably the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah), based in the Sa‘dah governorate in the far north.
Moreover, oddly, the draft constitution stipulated that the south (the newly designated but ill-defined regions of Aden and Hadramawt) shall be represented in the House of Representatives based on “the land and population formula” at a share of 40 percent. This formula would give the south more seats than they had in the current (although legally defunct) 301-member legislature, or than they would earn based purely on population. It looked like a bid to win the support of southerners. At the same time, contrarily, the proposed national charter divided the south into two large regions in the “federal” system, a notion that is anathema to many Hirak activists, whose demands are for the restoration of independent southern sovereignty.
The draft constitution also created a new upper house of Parliament called the Federal Council, comprised of 84 members—12 from each of six newly created regions, six from the city of Sana‘a and six from the city of Aden. This apportionment is cockeyed because the ostensible equality of representation from each of the six purportedly federal regions is skewed toward the former capitals of North and South Yemen, respectively. Other large metropolitan areas, notably Ta‘iz, but also Hudayda—situated geographically, politically and metaphorically between Sana‘a and Aden—were relatively underrepresented.
UN Security Council Resolution 2216, passed April 14, 2015, blocks first aid to Yemeni victims. (April 16, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
Finally, the draft constitution specified that the president and vice president shall be elected together on a single ticket, provided that they are not from the same region. And yet the national constituency vote virtually guarantees a majority of conservative, status quo politicians from the more populous former North Yemen.
None of these provisions satisfied popular aspirations.
Under the leadership of the new Saudi king, Salman, the members of the GCC (except Oman) pulled together a war coalition including Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, backed by the United States and Great Britain. They rammed a flawed, legally questionable, unbalanced resolution through the Security Council that seemed to authorize a military operation that has closed all of Yemen’s air and sea ports, caused a nationwide power outage, killed hundreds, wounded thousands, displaced tens of thousands, incapacitated emergency and medical facilities, halted food imports and terrorized millions.
[…]
Saudi Arabia attacking Iran but whacking Yemen. (April 6, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
In discussions of the ongoing war in Yemen, Yemeni activists, aid organizations and human rights groups are struggling to push the dire humanitarian situation and Yemen’s increasing isolation to the fore. Yet most of the establishment in Washington and London continues to treat the spiraling conflict in southwest Arabia as a disembodied “thing”—a situation to be managed, a territory to be protected in a proxy war, a threat to be contained—rather than an acute crisis affecting close to 26 million people. When attention is directed toward the citizens of Yemen at all, these people are portrayed as another problem to be solved. How to address the susceptibility of Yemenis to Islamist extremism? How to quell their support for heavily armed tribes? How to limit the risk that a massive exodus from Yemen might pose to Europe and other locales, as “boatloads of desperate migrants” land on distant shores? The fact that oil prices surged after Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen underlines the broad perception that what really matters is stability within Saudi Arabia and the maintenance of a key transit route and not what happens to Yemenis. The problem must be contained.
[…]
For Washington, the current concern, as with these previous examples, is to support a key ally, Saudi Arabia, and to crush AQAP. Yemen thus remains a problem to be dealt with, particularly the threats “it” poses to other nations: the threat of spreading Iranian power; the threat of the so-called Shi’i crescent; the threat of Sunni jihadis, whether ISIS or al-Qaeda, who threaten our moral vision. Yemen is a poor country, but few care about that as such. The lack of water, education and infrastructure only make the “problem” of the people worse. Yemen has no burgeoning neo-liberal cityscape, no safe enclaves, no foreign direct investment, no Starbucks. Why? It is not safe. What makes a place unsafe? The people—backward, ignorant Yemenis. This view continues to be naturalized by Yemen’s own leadership, beholden to Saudi Arabia. It is reflected in US material, tactical and, we would argue, moral support for the war.
This framing also encourages Americans to adopt an indifference toward Yemenis that is built on moral distance. It interpolates “us” by constructing our moral opposite, and even well-intentioned efforts to draw attention to the war advance this view. The beauties of Yemen—the romantic villages perched on mountain peaks, the gorgeous Old City of Sana‘a with its gingerbread architecture, the mud-brick skyscrapers of the city of Shibam—these “historic” wonders worth saving are rendered inaccessible to us because the current-but-somehow-not-modern people, the Yemeni people, are too backward, too radical, too ignorant, for Western tourists to travel among them safely. The notion that Yemen’s most valuable assets are its historic treasures rather than its people is reproduced by the viral circulation of images of Yemeni architecture and heritage sites, or perhaps a sympathetic image of Yemeni children. It is as though there is no innocent adult civilian—let alone “rights-bearing citizen”—to visualize.
On June 8, Yemen’s (self-)exiled president, ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, conveyed his ideas about UN-sponsored talks in Geneva, due to start on June 15, and downplayed their scope. The conversations are to take place mainly between politicians handpicked by him and his Saudi hosts, on the one hand, and Ansar Allah (or the Houthi movement) and members of the formerly ruling General Party Congress (GPC) who do not support Hadi, on the other. These two sides roughly correspond to the alliances that have been fighting in Yemen since March.
On al-Arabiyya television, however, Hadi explained, “These are not talks. It is only a discussion about how to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2216 on the ground.” UNSC 2216, passed in mid-April, endorsed Hadi as the “legitimate” elected leader of Yemen and invoked past resolutions backing the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative and the National Dialogue Conference it prescribed for ending Yemen’s internal conflicts. The April resolution also imposed an arms embargo on the Houthis and their allies.
Hadi was adamant in his television appearance that the Geneva parleys are not aimed at reconciliation between the warring parties. In his keynote address at a conference sponsored by the German government in Berlin on June 11, former prime minister ‘Abd al-Karim al-Iryani said, “We cannot [afford to] fail in Geneva.” Al-Iryani thus stressed the urgency of an agreement requiring the good faith and sincerity of the negotiators. Hadi and his sponsors, however, seem intent on defining the terms of Ansar Allah’s surrender rather than achieving a political settlement that leads to equal representation of all the country’s factions in a future government.
Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, Khalid al-Yamani, announced that the government-in-exile is sending seven representatives to Geneva, with two each for the anti-Hadi portion of the GPC and the Houthis, and three for the remaining parties, such as the Yemeni Socialist Party.
Hadi’s choice of delegates offers clues as to the Saudi agenda in Yemen. At last supporting “revolutionary” change, the Saudis seem to favor two new political parties that are to be prominently represented at the meeting. Perhaps the most revealing representative is ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Humayqani, secretary-general of the salafi Rashad Union, founded in 2012 in the wake of the previous year’s nationwide uprising against former president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih. He is one of just two party leaders slated to participate in the talks. Neither man has played an important role in previous governments. The selection of al-Humayqani may indicate the Saudis’ hope that Rashad can be propped up like the Egyptian al-Nour party to compete with the Muslim Brothers (now almost eliminated in Egypt and marginal in Yemen). Doubtless the founders of Rashad were inspired by al-Nour’s stunning success in the Egyptian legislative elections in 2011–12, in which the salafi group garnered 25 percent of the vote. Al-Humayqani aspires to be a “clear Islamic voice.” At the National Dialogue Conference, Rashad was represented by five members who stressed the party’s commitment to peaceful negotiation.
King Salman distributing money to Yemeni politicians in and beyond the Hadi government. (May 4, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
With UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva involving the usual suspects and only a few new faces, it is time to raise the question of Yemen’s future as a state.
The talks involve exiled president ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Houthi movement Ansar Allah and minor figures from the long-time ruling General People’s Congress (GPC, now split into factions tied to Hadi and former president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih), the leading Sunni-identified Islamist party Islah and its ally in Hadi’s government-in-exile, the Yemeni Socialist Party.
The only representatives outside the competing would-be regimes of Hadi and the Houthis at the talks come from two recently established parties, including the salafi Rashad Union, whose popularity in Yemen remains to be seen. Hadi insists on implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which would compel the Houthis to withdraw from major cities, including the capital of Sana‘a, reinstate himself as head of state and continue the transition toward a federal state, as agreed at the GCC-brokered National Dialogue Conference last year. The Houthis oppose the six-part federal plan but agree on key transition issues decided upon at the Conference. From their perspective, Hadi’s regime has failed to execute the agreed-upon policies and, in any case, the situation became entirely different after Ansar Allah took over Sana‘a last September. In the eyes of many Yemenis, whether they support the Houthis or not, they are right: Since the conclusion of the $24 million conference, very little has been done to address the demands put forward in the rallies gathering millions of Yemenis throughout the country in 2011.
The questions one has to ask at this stage: Is the National Dialogue Conference plan still viable as a road map for Yemen’s future? And do the delegates at the talks have the authority in the first place to set the country on this path? Many factors point in another direction. Of the Geneva negotiators, only the Houthis seem to have a strong base of political support on the ground, at least in the areas where the movement hails from. Excluded from the talks are representatives of the South, who are battling Houthi aggression under the label Southern Resistance (al-muqawama al-janubiyya). As for Hadi, his term as transitional president ended in February 2014, and amid the current warfare, in the eyes of many Yemenis, he is a man who invited the Saudi-led coalition to kill civilians while kicking back in the luxury of a Riyadh palace. There is considerable reason to believe that he lacks the local support to return to power in Yemen.
Still, in the international media the war in Yemen is characterized as fighting “between forces loyal to the beleaguered president, ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and those allied to Zaidi Shi’a rebels known as Houthis, who forced Mr. Hadi to flee the capital Sanaa in February.” The expression “Hadi loyalists” misleads the world about what is happening in the shadow of the Saudi air strikes. This dubious category groups together forces as different as the eastern tribes, Popular Committees in various regions, the Southern Resistance and even al-Qaeda. Few of these forces actually engage in fighting for Hadi and his regime of failed promises. For some, Hadi’s return to power is downright undesirable; for others, it is simply irrelevant. In central Yemen, such as in Ta‘iz, the country’s third-largest city, resistance to the Houthis springs from local motivations rather than support for Hadi. While the Southern Resistance supports the air strikes and receives military aid from the Saudi-led coalition, its ideas about post-war political solutions differ from the expressed Saudi aim of restoring Hadi. Basing the Geneva talks around the reinstatement of Hadi as leader of the country simply prolongs the suffering on the ground and generates a false sense of certainty about postwar stability.
The Houthi militias, assisted by units of the Yemeni army loyal to Salih and stationed throughout the country, are facing armed confrontation in eastern and central Yemen, and in the entirety of the South. The South is the territory that, prior to Yemeni unity in 1990, formed the independent state of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. In Marib, the province east of Sana‘a, local tribes have united to stop the Houthis from taking over the oil fields, motivated by the tribal ethos of self-rule and alliance with similar-minded state leadership. Further to the southeast, the tribes in Shabwa have formed a coalition with the Southern Resistance.
As applied to the South, the expression “Hadi loyalists” stems from three misconceptions. First, the fact that Hadi is originally from the southern governorate of Abyan makes some believe he must have the fealty of his fellow southerners. The second error is to read too much into the fact that Hadi fled to Aden, of all places, in February and was initially welcomed there after the Houthis introduced their five-man Presidential Council. That body deposed him de facto, though he had already resigned. Once in Aden, Hadi withdrew his resignation.
The Southern Resistance, the militias fighting against the Houthi-Salih invasion of the South, consists of Popular Committees and groups of local vigilantes who pledge themselves to defend “the people of the South.” The Resistance is part of the pro-independence Southern Movement that has grown steadily since 2007 with the mission of reclaiming the full independence of the South. Activists in this movement consider Hadi and his regime (which includes many southerners) responsible for the years-long marginalization of the South and the erstwhile state’s violence against peaceful demonstrators there. That violence claimed hundreds of victims in the South while the world was focused on the dialogue in Sana‘a. For many, the war in the southern governorates is a replay of the 1994 civil war that ended with President Salih conquering the South and sealing Yemeni unity by force. Southerners call it “occupation.” While the Southern Resistance lacks a central command, it has unified the various territories of the South in an unprecedented way. This is a popular resistance movement that organizes locally, involves all sectors of society, men and women, and has fended off the much better equipped Yemeni army and Houthi militia for weeks. Victories in al-Dhali‘ governorate prove the steadfastness of the fighters, many of whom have no military training as a result of systematic discrimination against southerners in the army and security forces.
Saudi warplane feeding Yemen to al-Qa`ida terrorism. (June 26, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
Here is the third misconception that gives rise to the term “Hadi loyalists.” Some assume that because the Popular Committees were initially set up by Hadi’s government to take care of security in areas without an army or police presence, and remained on the state payroll, they must support Hadi’s comeback. In central Yemen, Popular Committees fight for local concerns, too, allied with tribes and other social forces. The common denominator is resistance to Houthi-Salih aggression and protection of local territories—not an affinity for Hadi.
One of the dramatic consequences of the fighting on the ground, as opposed to the Saudi-led air strikes, is the division of the country. For the Southern Resistance, it is a war between North and South. There is no money or might in the world that would bring southerners back to “unity” under a regime in Sana‘a, whether headed by the Houthis or by Hadi. Acknowledging that fact might bring the international community closer to lasting solutions to the Yemeni crisis.
The narrative of “Hadi loyalists” is propaganda aimed at lending legitimacy to the Saudis’ project in Yemen. According to this rhetoric, sadly adopted by the Saudis’ allies and the world media, the Saudis are simply “assisting” Yemenis who want to bring back the proper government. Saudi Arabia has been militarily and non-militarily involved in every single political crisis in Yemen over the past five decades, simply to ensure that a regime on its leash prevails. Yet its strategy of bombing has largely proved counterproductive as more and more civilians die and the blockade of aid convoys exacts a heavy humanitarian toll. What the Saudis could do is to sever the link between their former man in Sana‘a, ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih, and the Houthis. The war in Yemen has a lot to do with power struggles in the capital. But for Yemenis elsewhere in the country, the fighting is about protecting their neighborhoods from invasion by the troops of the Houthis and Salih and achieving a decent standard of living, something Hadi and his government were never able to deliver.
For the last 45 years, the Gulf Cooperation Council has tried to mitigate its Yemen problem through short-term tactics, rather than constructing and giving resources to a strategy for solving it. That policy has failed repeatedly. A bold and lasting transformation is needed, not the same ineffectual meddling.
Traditionally, the attitude of most GCC members toward Yemen has been fond but standoffish. The Gulf states have been fairly generous in funding projects and providing aid, but have held populous Yemen at arm’s length, for reasons both demographic and ideological, the latter being fear of Marxism and republicanism.
Saudi Arabia has always regarded Yemen as a direct threat. King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz is reputed to have warned his sons that “the good or evil for us will come from Yemen,” and so to keep it weak and divided. It is unclear exactly what the Saudi royal was wary of: Yemeni intentions of taking over the entirety of Saudi Arabia, efforts by Yemen’s Hamid al-Din dynasty to defeat their al-Saud rivals, or merely attempts by Yemen to recover the three provinces of Asir, Jizan and Najran that ‘Abd al-‘Aziz had captured from Imam Yahya in 1934. But the king’s advice was taken to heart, and has been implemented ever since. “The Saudis want a moderate government in Sanaa—on a short leash,” Michael Van Dusen, a long-time senior staffer for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in 1982, referring to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual disbursements to both the Yemeni government and Yemeni tribal leaders. Those payments now total several billion dollars per year, and go to individual officials and security men as well as the original recipients. Those on the Saudi payroll run the gamut of Yemeni politics. This policy “degrades the authority of the central government” in Sana‘a, argues a descendant of Imam Yahya, ‘Abdallah Hamid al-Din. “In what other countries do citizens receive a salary from a foreign government?” In many ways, the Saudi approach in Yemen is reminiscent of Iranian policy in Iraq, which is castigated as interference by nationalist Shi’i and Sunni Arabs in Iraq, and by the Saudis and their Western friends alike.
Saudi commander instructing fighter pilot to target civilian homes. (May 11, 2015)
By Samer Mohammed al-Shameeri
In addition, and as it has done in many Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia subsidized the export of puritanical Wahhabism into a nation that traditionally was Shafi‘i Sunni in the south, and Zaydi and Isma’ili in the north. This state-sponsored evangelism was perceived as a threatening political encroachment on Zaydi space. It also grated on many Yemenis’ national sensibilities, something the Wahhabis should have known, given the words of the Prophet: “The people of Yemen have come to you, most sensitive in their souls, softest of hearts! Belief is from Yemen, wisdom is from Yemen! Pride and arrogance are found among the camel owners; tranquility and dignity among the sheep owners.”
The 2011 uprising in Yemen brought millions of people into the streets, protesting against precisely the elite corruption and autocracy that Saudi Arabia (with Western backing) had worked to entrench. Saudi policy toward Yemen since the popular revolt is almost certainly an attempt to maintain the status quo ante. Indeed, the GCC initiative that claimed to break the political impasse has been seen as an effort to achieve an apparent transition of power while ensuring, sub rosa, that the same coterie of Saudi clients remain in place. Certainly, the Saudi-led Operation Decisive Storm is an attempt to reinstate ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to the presidency. Yet Hadi was President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih’s long-term vice president, his clique shows traits similar to the deposed Salih’s, and a terrorist-traced salafi, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Humayqani, has reportedly been appointed as Hadi’s “adviser.” Many Yemenis will see al-Humayqani as a Saudi-placed éminence grise.
Not only is this policy expensive, but it also does not work to keep Yemen docile: “The Saudis have really gotten very little for their money,” according to Barbara Bodine, a former US ambassador in Sana‘a. One reason, as the scholar Maria Eleftheriadou notes, is that many of the tribal leaders on the Saudi dole “became ‘city sheikhs’ having moved to Sanaa,” where they steadily lose “their moral authority, their power of persuasion, especially among the younger generation.” All of these problems come at a time when Saudi state incomes are falling (and likely to remain low) while domestic costs are rising (and likely to keep going up).
The “kinetic” approach of Decisive Storm is equally ineffective. The Israelis, and to a lesser extent US administrations, have adopted the tactic of “mowing the grass”—periodic military operations to keep perceived security threats manageable. Sixty-five years have shown this policy to be not only financially and morally ruinous, but also actively counterproductive: It generates ill will among the population, and encourages the salafi jihadism it aims to remove.
The GCC states could continue doing the same thing but expect a different result—Einstein’s definition of madness—or they could try a different way of achieving the desired end state of a non-threatening Yemen. The dying king ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s admonition has always been interpreted negatively. “Beware of Yemen; it is your Achilles’ heel,” as Van Dusen paraphrased it in 1982. Yet the king left equal the possibility of good coming from Yemen, too. So, how could that be achieved?
Europe spent much of the last thousand years wracked by war after bloody war, with various nations trying to subordinate, or at least weaken, neighbors and “allies,” to no good effect. Only a decision to move to a strategy of mutual benefit finally achieved a peaceful Europe, and led to the prosperity (and gridlocked democracy) of the European Union. A prosperous, truly federal Yemen would be no military threat to the GCC as a whole or to Saudi Arabia individually. Indeed, were a federal Yemen admitted to the GCC, it could again supply cheap labor, but the remittances would also increase the consumer base for GCC goods and services. The only conflict would be for contracts.
The GCC fears that the Zaydi Houthis are a fifth column for Iran, and claims they receive a copious Iranian weapons supply. In fact, the Fiver Shi’a—with their founding doctrine of resistance to an unjust ruler—are an ideological threat to the Islamic Republic’s theory of velayat-e faqih (rule of the jurisprudent), and were mostly armed by Salih. The Gulf states could regard the Zaydis as a cherished Arab ally against the Iranians, whose Safavid antecedents destroyed the first Zaydi state. Instead, GCC policy is driving Zaydis into Iranian arms.
This problem is not new or theoretical (nor are Persian hegemonic pretensions). As an Athenian politician advocated 2,500 years ago:
When a free community, held in subjection by force, rises, as is only natural…we fancy ourselves obliged to punish it severely; although the right course with freemen is not to chastise them rigorously when they do rise, but rigorously to watch them before they rise, and to prevent their ever entertaining the idea.
The GCC tactic of divide, bribe and rule is a consistent failure. A new strategy is urgently needed, one based on the European model of building mutual advantage. It’s time to change.