November 2009 may well be remembered as a tipping point in Yemen’s grinding five-year campaign against a loose coalition of several-thousand poorly-equipped rebels in the northwest Saada governorate. What began in June 2004 with anti-government demonstrations in Saada and Sana’a, organized by members of the Houthi clan as a response to the erosion of Zaydi dominance in the sect’s traditional heartland, has now taken on a more ominous character. This sectarian-tribal uprising, which at first seemed much like previous conflicts between tribes and the central government, now threatens the fundamental ruling formula of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime.
Since his rise to the presidency of Northern Yemen in 1978, Saleh has governed through the manipulation of tribal politics and the careful management of patronage networks. For Saleh, as for his predecessors, informal bargaining is used to balance competing interests. Access to Saleh’s patronage, his support for local actors, and the provision of public services are all benefits to be extended or withdrawn in exchange for compliance, loyalty, or simple acquiescence to the regime. Relations between Sana’a and the provinces have been managed largely through quiet negotiations between rural tribal elders and Saleh’s representatives. When these break down, the result is typically a short, contained burst of violence: force is a tribal bargaining tactic more than a fundamental challenge to Saleh’s authority.
For many years, this formula served Saleh well, including in the Zaydi-dominated province of Saada. During the 1990s, Saleh’s regime permitted new space for Zaydi political mobilization, and made new overtures to the Zaydi leadership. He permitted the formation of a Zaydi-led political party, al-Haq, which secured the election of Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi to Yemen’s Parliament. In 1997 a militant faction of al-Haq that included Houthi leaders established a youth movement, al-Shabab al-Mumineen, which reportedly sent several hundred members to Iran in the mid-1990s for religious instruction and then on to Lebanon for training in guerrilla tactics by Hezbollah. Such activities would have been difficult to arrange without at least tacit consent from the Saleh regime.
At the same time, however, Saleh also tolerated, and perhaps supported - the growing power of the Sunni Islah Party in the northwest during the 1980s and 1990s, including the efforts of Salafist militants linked to Islah who actively mobilized anti-Zaydi sentiment among Sunni tribes. Throughout the 1990s, Islah-Zaydi competition intensified in and around Saada, with Saleh continuing to relay on his usual ruling strategy to preserve an increasingly frayed local balance of power.
By the early 2000s, the old ruling formula was no longer sufficient. In 2004, tribal-sectarian tensions spilled into an open confrontation between Zaydi militants led by members of the Houthi family and the central government. Even as the conflict escalated, however, the regime has been painfully slow to adapt either its political strategy or its military tactics. It has been unable, either through bargaining or intense coercion, to bring the conflict to a close. The government’s sixth offensive campaign, “Operation Scorched Earth,” was launched in August 2009 but has been no more successful than the five campaigns that preceded it.
Instead, the conflict has exposed deep divisions within Yemen’s ruling elite, in particular its military and political leadership. It has revealed the limits of Yemen’s military capacity and of the army’s dependence on tribal alliances in its operations against the Houthi. It has turned Saleh’s future into a subject of active discussion in qat chews across Sana’a. And last month, with the escalation of Saudi and Iranian engagement in the conflict, Yemen’s internal affairs have acquired a dangerous regional dimension, spilling over into the broader rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. No less serious, the conflict has caused a massive humanitarian crisis, forcing tens of thousands of Yemenis, perhaps as many as 200,000, to flee areas affected by the fighting. Thousands of internally displaced have crowded in Saada city, dependent on the International Red Cross and Red Crescent for food and shelter.
What does all of this mean for the U.S.? In Washington, the escalation of the conflict is a troubling indicator that President Saleh’s future can no longer be taken for granted. Since 2001, the U.S. has cultivated Saleh as an ally in the war on terror, looking to him to suppress local supporters of al-Qaeda, with uneven results. Anti-terrorism remains Washington’s central preoccupation but the reality of just how precarious Saleh’s position could become is quickly taking hold. With Saleh facing serious challenges to his authority not only in the north but among resurgent secessionist movements in the south, with Saudi Arabia and Iran both more actively engaged in the Houthi insurgency, and with signs of growing internal frictions, there is growing uncertainty about how best to secure U.S. interests in Yemen.
Thus far, with its attention focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with prospects fading for positive U.S. engagement with Iran, the Obama Administration is betting on Saleh. It has increased its military assistance to Yemen, and in September 2009 President Obama directly expressed U.S. support for the Saleh regime. This approach is likely to continue, and is certainly the path favored by Saudi Arabia. Yet like Saleh’s Arab allies and his local supporters, the possibility that his regime has hit a tipping point at which it could begin to unravel is very much in the minds of U.S. policy makers.
Vice President of the US Institute of Peace and a visiting Professor at Georgetown University in Washington
