Marina Ottaway and Christopher Boucek
The preceding analytical essays on Yemen, written by authors with extensive field research experience in the different regions of the country, converge toward strikingly similar conclusions: Yemen today is a state at risk of failure not because it has been targeted by a single, coordinated assault on its survival, but because it faces a set of disparate threats, each resulting from an accumulation of specific grievances with different causes. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Houthi rebels, the Southern Movement, and even some tribes oppose the government and literally are up in arms against it for their own distinct political reasons. True, the unrest is taking place against a background of dire socioeconomic conditions, but each organization’s specific grievances and demands are helping that discontent coalesce into a movement.
The Southern Movement and the Houthi rebels have their own, somewhat parochial, goals. Even al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), whose narrative of government wrongdoings and proposed solutions in theory transcends local and national considerations, has been unable to build a broad-based movement. Whether AQAP has 300 or 3,000 members matters when designing an effective counterterrorism strategy, but politically it is of scant importance: Both numbers show that AQAP has limited support. The parochial concerns and differences among opposition groups that prevent a unified movement from emerging are a good thing for the Yemeni government, which probably could not withstand a coordinated attempt at destabilization from all dissatisfied groups in the country. These groups’ competing demands also make it difficult to devise a unified strategy to stabilize Yemen.
Any attempt to deal with the root causes of the political violence that threatens Yemen needs to recognize the disparate nature of the various movements and to address their specific demands. This is a complex, highly political effort that requires an intimate knowledge of each situation and of the groups and individuals driving the opposition. Devising such an approach is difficult; implementing it will be even more so. As a result, international efforts at stabilizing Yemen appear to draw more on the generic ideas about how to deal with states at risk and on the general prescriptions of counterterrorism efforts than on the specifics of each crisis that threatens Yemen’s stability. This will certainly limit the effectiveness of the efforts.
The danger of state failure in Yemen, with the resulting political and humanitarian consequences, is of grave concern to the international community and most directly to Yemen’s neighbors in the Arabian Peninsula. The Gulf states would bear the brunt of humanitarian disaster and instability across their borders, as well as face most directly the threat posed by ungoverned territories. As a result, there is broad agreement in Europe, the United States, and the Gulf that state failure in Yemen cannot be tolerated, and that the country must be stabilized. The question is whether outside intervention, particularly by Western countries whose actions in the Middle East are always controversial, can help the country stabilize without creating a backlash that could bring disparate organizations closer together.
Intervening in Fragile or Failing States: The General Approach
Bilateral donors and multilateral agencies have developed prescriptions for avoiding state failure. Support and assistance from Western countries, and to an extent from neighboring Arab countries, conforms closely with these plans and with counterterrorism approaches as the global community works to prevent failure in Yemen.
Interventions to stabilize states at risk have become relatively common since the end of the Cold War. As a result, international organizations and bilateral aid agencies have made serious attempts to codify their approaches to stabilization and to harmonize with those of other concerned actors. The United Nations, the World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) all have produced documents outlining an approach to what are variously called failing, failed and fragile states, or states at risk, and so have aid agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other major OECD countries. The prescriptions set forth in such documents represent a distillation of lessons learned from past interventions; this is a positive development. On the negative side, however, codified approaches are general by definition and do not address the specific problems of each situation. In fact, while most agencies acknowledge that interventions in failing states require an analysis of the political situation, the analysis is often shortchanged; programs are designed to address basic development issues rather than political grievances. For Yemen, where the danger of collapse stems from the convergence of a number of problems, each with a different dynamic, addressing the common denominator of poverty and poor governance might not be enough.
Prescriptions for dealing with failing states share several basic, common assumptions.1 First, the goal of intervention is not to restore the security and the stability of the state per se, but to restore stability so that the state can provide for the security of its citizens. The ultimate goal is human security, not state security—although in practice state security is seen as a precondition for human security. Interventions, as a result, always aim at restoring the capacity of existing states. The authors are not aware of any case where the international community accepted, let alone recommended, the dissolution of a state in the name of human security. For example, the only part of Somalia that has provided a minimum of security to its population in the past twenty years, Somaliland, has not received recognition, while considerable effort has been devoted to the Sisyphean task of restoring the Somali state to its old borders. There are sound political reasons for this preference for restoring the security of existing states, although the preference is not always beneficial to human security.
Second, while in some cases restoring stability requires military intervention or, as in Yemen, assistance to the country’s security forces, such interventions are seen just as a first step—necessary but not sufficient. Unless the government becomes more willing and capable of addressing the social and economic problems that affect the everyday lives of citizens, people will remain disaffected and open to supporting even violent opposition groups.
Third, addressing social and economic problems requires both fundamental reforms and the implementation of fast disbursing projects that can quickly and tangibly improve citizens’ lives by creating employment, increasing food and water availability, promoting women, putting children in schools, and addressing at least basic health issues.
Fourth, it is crucial that countries and agencies seeking to stabilize fragile and failing states coordinate and harmonize their policies so different actors will not work at cross purposes. This is a completely non-problematic prescription in theory, but it chronically falls short in implementation.
These ideas—a quick summary of the documents on fragile and failing states from international organizations and bilateral agencies—are very similar to the prescriptions of counterterrorism experts. They agree that the fight against extremist groups can never be won simply by military means, so all programs to fight terrorism should include a development component. The idea that counterterrorism encompasses more than security measures is hardly new, but it has received renewed attention recently as part of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The early 2010 operation by U.S. and Afghan troops in Marjah and the surrounding region in southern Afghanistan is a good example of the application of this approach: The military advance is expected to be followed by a massive effort to bring governance to a long-neglected region. In theory, this should restore the population’s confidence in the central government and make it less inclined to support or tolerate the Taliban’s presence and its control.
The broad consensus on what needs to be done to stabilize failing states should not lead to complacency. There is no doubt that everybody is on the same page, but is it the right page? Do interventions to stabilize failing states work? Is there a better approach?
Irrespective of whether the approach can be improved, or that a different approach would simply trade one set of problems for another, it has become clear from the experience of many interventions that stabilization efforts have many shortcomings, some of which appear particularly relevant in the case of Yemen. Programs to address socioeconomic problems in countries at risk of failure are inevitably inadequate. The problems are immense, state capacity is by definition minimal, and funding never is sufficient. The usual answer—that responses should focus on the most strategic interventions, those with the greatest multiplier effect—is obvious in theory. However, in practice it never is obvious which measures have the greatest strategic value in a particular situation. As a result, all too often socioeconomic interventions end up as a hodgepodge of separate projects.
Similarly challenging is the lack of state capacity to implement policies. The more fragile the state is, and thus the lesser its implementing capacity, the greater the probability that international NGOs will be in charge of implementing socioeconomic assistance projects. This outside intervention in turn undermines the government’s own capacity. This is a problem that occurs regularly in failing states and for which there is no simple solution.
Another serious problem that always emerges is the disparity between the immediacy of the crisis and the long-term character of most socioeconomic interventions considered crucial to stabilization. Addressing economic problems takes time. Improving services takes time. Again, the theoretical answer is simple: Agencies intervening in failing states should focus initially on reforms that will have an immediate impact—so-called zero-generation reforms—and on quick-disbursing projects. In practice, there are very few such reforms, and the only truly quick-disbursing projects are humanitarian interventions.
The conclusion is not that socioeconomic reforms and projects should not be undertaken in failing states. These efforts are badly needed, and the sooner that work starts the better it will be for the country—assuming that international attention can be maintained for the long run. But it is not enough. In addition to the security measures needed in most cases to stabilize failing states, and the long-term socioeconomic interventions necessary to address the fundamental problems afflicting all failing states, there is another layer of steps that need to be undertaken: addressing the political grievances that are the most immediate, proximate cause of the development of radical, destabilizing movements. In Yemen, the division between North and South is not going to be bridged by security measures and economic programs alone; it must also be bridged by political measures including negotiations. Political interventions are the most difficult task for the political community; they are prone to back-firing, and the temptation to neglect them is always considerable. Socioeconomic assistance appears much safer.
Theory Meets Reality: The Emerging Approach in Yemen
Many of the typical problems afflicting interventions to stabilize failing states are becoming quite evident in the case of Yemen. Despite an attempt to bring together all donors in a concerted effort to address security and development simultaneously, considerable problems are beginning to surface. Coordination is lagging, and different countries’ programs appear to depend on national choices rather than an overall plan. The United States is focusing almost exclusively on security in the narrow terms. The United Kingdom is more focused on economic issues; it has the largest program among Western donors, but this program has insufficient funds to make a fundamental difference. Saudi Arabia, by far the largest aid provider in Yemen, does not appear to have a clear plan other than keeping the country afloat. International agencies preach economic reform with marginal success. And nobody is really addressing political grievances, least of all the government, whose task it really should be.
There remains a considerable gap in Yemen between the theory of what intervention in fragile states should accomplish and the reality of what is happening. The major challenges for the international community in Yemen are to recalibrate the balance between security and socioeconomic assistance and to convince the Yemeni government to start addressing the most fundamental grievances that give armed movements a following.
None of this is going to be easy. First of all, terrorism and security fears are the reason why the United States, European countries, and regional states are currently involved in Yemen. Indeed, the level of interest in Yemen and the sense of urgency in addressing the country’s problems tend to wax and wane depending on the current threat perception. The attempt on Christmas Day 2009 by a young Nigerian trained in Yemen to set off a bomb on an airliner as it was landing in Detroit heightened U.S. interest in Yemen for a while, but the sense of urgency has already decreased. Second, the problems that make Yemen a state on the brink are not easily addressed. As all the chapters in this volume show, the ultimate threat to the Saleh regime’s ability to effectively govern and exercise control over Yemen is not a few hundred or even thousand armed men in different parts of the country. Rather, Yemen’s stability is most threatened by systemic issues: governance that is insufficient in quantity and quality, corruption, resource depletion, and lack of development. The challenges posed by AQAP, the war in Saada, the Southern Movement, and increasingly restive tribes are not the cause of Yemen’s fragility, but the result of a potent combination of both declining state capacity and legitimacy and the regime’s decreasing responsiveness to the population. Third, donors’ efforts are both limited and poorly coordinated. As much as the international donor community needs better coordination, the Yemeni government must learn to better manage the international donor process.
In the immediate aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day bombing, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called an international meeting to address Yemen’s growing problems and their impact on global security. The British government was well-placed to call the meeting: Yemen has been a priority in its assistance program for years, and Britain just emerged from a yearlong policy review. At the January meeting, the British argued the need to improve the Yemeni state’s capacity to maintain domestic security while taking on pressing political and economic reforms. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed this sentiment by urging the international community to view Yemen not only through a “counterterrorism prism” but also as a social and economic challenge. At least on paper, participants in the meeting heeded the call for a broad approach and for coordination. The twenty countries participating set up a “Friends of Yemen” group designed to bolster international support and streamline foreign assistance. They also created two working groups: one, spearheaded by the Germans and Emiratis, focused on economic and governance issues; the other, under Dutch and Jordanian leadership, on justice and rule of law issues. This approach was heralded as a means to improve international coordination, but the process has yet to deliver results.
The January meeting was purposefully designed not to be a donors’ conference, but rather to be a forum for facilitating the coordination and delivery of international assistance, which previously had been unsatisfactory. A donors’ conference in 2006, for example, raised just over $5 billion in pledges, but more than 80 percent was never disbursed because of a range of concerns, including how the funds would be used. In addition to seeking to improve coordination, the January conference also sought to broaden the circle of concerned countries. A major development in this respect was the decision of the Gulf Cooperation Council to participate in the Friends of Yemen process. Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries have been by far the largest financial supporters of Yemen. Their continuing involvement, and better coordination between them and other countries, is essential to the success of stabilization efforts.
The January summit was followed in late February by a technical coordination meeting of the Friends of Yemen in Riyadh. Intended to focus on technical issues, the meeting highlighted real problems in the relationship between the Yemeni government and the donors. For Yemeni officials, the main concern was to increase the flow of assistance and to make sure that countries would deliver on their pledges. They pressed for direct budgetary assistance and were anxious to know how the Friends of Yemen would deliver funds. Yemenis also pressed the Gulf countries to admit more Yemeni workers in order to ease the pressure of unemployment. But donors, while recognizing that Yemen needed help, worried about its government’s capacity to manage the funds and deliver on the technical requirements. In general, the Riyadh meeting showed the need for much improvement in the communications between the Yemeni government, which must understand the donors’ need to know that funds will be well and honestly managed, and the donors, who must accept that Yemen needs help now and that they cannot wait until the country develops greater management capacity.
The meetings have resulted in a substantial increase in the pledged assistance as well as involvement in the reform process. Multilateral organizations, such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and European Union are increasingly active in pushing the government to enact immediate economic reforms. Among Western donors, the United Kingdom remains the largest, spending £27.5 million in FY 2009–2010. Germany has also boosted funding, concentrating on humanitarian relief for internally displaced persons in the areas affected by fighting in Saada.
Western countries and international organizations have been the most vocal in these meetings, particularly in their advocacy of reform, but the Gulf countries are keeping Yemen afloat. The United Arab Emirates, driven by fears that rising instability in Yemen would have a dire domestic impact, announced a funding package in excess of $600 million, with a focus on projects related to education, infrastructure, and water issues. The crucial country, however, is Saudi Arabia, by far Yemen’s largest funder.
Although it is extremely difficult to accurately assess the total of the gifts and grants, formal and informal, comprising Saudi assistance to Yemen, rough estimates put it between $1.75 billion and $2 billion per year. No other country comes even close to this level of financial commitment or has similarly extensive ties to Yemen. Because of the deep linkages between the two countries—their history, culture, economic exchanges, and labor migration—Yemen policy in the Kingdom is very much a domestic rather than foreign policy issue. Indeed, Yemen policy in Saudi Arabia is not controlled by the Foreign Ministry but is the personal portfolio of Crown Prince Sultan. Saudi Arabia’s deep involvement in Yemen earns it a pivotal role in any evolving strategy to stabilize Yemen. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia does not appear to have a single, well-articulated policy toward Yemen. Rather, many actors within the Kingdom have financial and patronage ties to a range of Yemeni organizations, individuals, and groups. The absence of a well-delineated Saudi policy, with clear lines of control and leadership, complicates any international or regional approach to stabilizing Yemen. Maintaining alignment between Western and Saudi interests and goals in Yemen will require extensive coordination and a deeper understanding of what Riyadh ultimately wants to see in Yemen.
U.S. assistance to Yemen deserves a separate discussion, because the United States has overwhelmingly focused on military and security assistance. Publicly available figures suggest that U.S. economic and humanitarian assistance will increase with the next budget from $20 million to $50 million, and military and security assistance will rise from $60 million to $150 million. (All these figures are approximate.) This represents a dramatic increase following the 1990 Gulf War when aid to Yemen was cut to almost zero. This approach, however, risks “securitizing” the situation in Yemen. As Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Sanaa, points out, the military and security services are not the strongest institutions in Yemen, and we should be careful not to elevate such organizations too much.
The American policy priority vis-à-vis Yemen is counterterrorism narrowly defined, as shown by the three-to-one ratio of military aid to economic aid. The priority also is reflected in the fact that several months on from the Christmas Day attack, the United States has not put any pressure on Yemen to address seriously the systemic problems of governance, corruption, lack of economic development, or resource depletion that threaten the future of Yemen. Nor has the United States pressured Yemen to address the political grievances that fuel the armed opposition. As all essays in this collection highlight, these are the most severe challenges facing the Yemeni government. If left unaddressed, they will be the issues that likely will lead to state collapse.
The international effort to prevent Yemen from going over the brink has many shortcomings: the United States’ choice to deal with Yemen almost exclusively as a security issue; the lack of clarity in the Saudi policy; the disparity between the country’s need for reform and investment in all sectors and the limited financial and human resources; and the eternal problem of insufficient donor coordination. But it is also important to consider that donors cannot stabilize Yemen without the cooperation of its government, and that many of the reforms that Yemen needs to implement are seen by many in the Yemeni governing elite as direct challenges to the current system and their personal positions. This poses a true dilemma for donors, who have chosen to include the Saleh government as a partner in improving the security and stability of the country. Indeed, the international community should not be working against the Yemeni government. But measures that are in the long-term interest of the country are not necessarily in the short-term interest of incumbents. Without strong pressure to address the systemic challenges facing the country, it is extremely doubtful that the Yemeni government will make any serious efforts to curb corruption, improve governance, or address political grievances, which are directed against the government itself. As long as donors remain divided, there can be no such pressure on the government of Yemen.
Note
1. Among the many documents, see World Bank, Engaging with Fragile States (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Independent Evaluation Group, 2006). The report also contains the Principles for International Engagement in Fragile States published by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. U.S. Agency for International Development, Fragile States Strategy, 2005. UK Department for International Development, Why We Need to Work More Effectively in Fragile States, 2005. See also Louise Andersen et al., eds., Fragile States and Insecure People?: Violence, Security and Statehood in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).