After the failed Detroit bomb plot last Christmas, Yemen is no longer headline news in Western capitals, but the poorest Arab country is still boiling with social and political turmoil, and armed rebellions. While the war in Afghanistan, the floods in Pakistan, or the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq absorb the world’s attention, the Yemen summer, particularly in June and July, has been exceptionally hot and bloody. Even nature has conspired against the poorest Arab country where heavy rain and flooding have caused the death of 53 people and acres of farmlands have been ruined.
A hot summer indeed
A truce since February in the north between Houthi rebels on the one hand, and rival tribes and government forces on the other, collapsed and fighting intensified in July, leaving up to 70 people dead. The Houthis took over two strategic military posts and reportedly captured 200 soldiers and injured a prominent pro-government tribal chief who is a member of Yemen’s parliament. This constitutes another hard blow to the authority and credibility of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime.
Despite a concerted campaign by the Yemeni authorities and the US military to dismantle the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), beginning in June this Al-Qaeda branch has carried out several strategic attacks on security facilities in the south and killed more than 50 people and injured many others. Displaying operational boldness and sophistication, AQAP launched simultaneous, coordinated raids on a mukhabarat (Yemeni intelligence) headquarters in Aden, freeing prisoners and killing 11 people, as well as on two police stations in Zinjibar that killed three officers.
Al-Qaeda is on the offensive. Marking a shift in its tactics, AQAP has declared all-out war against what it called the “tyrant” Saleh government and its soldiers “who terrorize Muslims, support the crusade against our country, and are the first line of American defense in Yemen.” In an audio message in August, AQAP also threatened to overthrow the Saudi monarchy “for its participation in the US-led crusade against Islam,” and called on Saudi armed forces to attack Israel.
What is alarming about the growing brazenness and activism of this Al-Qaeda branch is its linkage to Yemen’s deepening social and political crises, cleavages and stagnant state institutions. For example, AQAP is manipulating and leveraging its tribal connections in the south to gain a foothold in the rising separatist movement there. This strategy comes at a critical time. A secessionist movement in the south has gained momentum, with a sizable segment of southern public opinion demanding a divorce from the forced union imposed by the north in the early 1990s.
What the Al-Qaeda branch has tried to do is to submerge and embed itself in these raging local conflicts, particularly in the south, mainly in the Shabwa and adjacent Abyan provinces, and to position itself as the spearhead of opposition and armed resistance to the central government in Sana’a. For example, just a few days ago, government forces battled the opposition and Al-Qaeda elements to regain control over the city of Loudar in Abyan province, leaving dozens dead from both camps and forcing thousands of people from their homes.
The socio-economic roots of Yemen’s instability
In addition to Yemen’s staggering political and armed rebellions, little progress has been achieved on the social and economic fronts. Less than 10 percent of pledged aid by regional and international donors has been delivered to Yemen due to the country’s weak absorption capacity and donor fatigue, and thus the socioeconomic conditions of the majority of the Yemeni population continue to deteriorate.
A convincing argument can be made that a great measure of the political and armed upheaval is driven by economic grievances, massive unemployment, abject poverty, declining oil revenues, pervasive corruption, unsustainable water consumption and failing state institutions. In particular, Al-Qaeda has found a fertile ground in the south because it is filled with angry and unemployed young men.
Statistics do not covey the extent of social and economic misery in Yemen. Almost 40 percent of the country’s 23 million people are unemployed. More than a third of the population is undernourished, and almost 50 percent live in absolute poverty. Yemen, the poorest Arab country, has one of the highest fertility rates in the region—upwards of 3.7 percent. The country’s huge youth explosion means that today 60 percent of the population is under the age of 20.
A problem in this regard is that, while the population has increased at a very high pace, resources have declined at an even faster rate. In the next few years, Yemen’s oil—its major source of hard currency—will only meet the country’s domestic consumption needs.
What this means is that the Saleh government can no longer deliver social goods and patronage, historically solid underpinnings of his rule. After more than three decades in power, President Saleh’s ability to co-opt adversaries and maintain friends has shrunk considerably, plunging Yemen into an uncertain future.
A weak state, but no Somalia either
This unpromising scenario, however, does not mean that the Saleh regime is either on the verge of collapse or Yemen is disintegrating like Somalia. Far from it, and despite the country’s staggering problems, a frequent visitor to Yemen recognizes that the state deeply and widely penetrates into ordinary peoples’ daily lives, either in the form of jobs, subsistence, health, education or patronage. The security services, bedrock of the survival of the Saleh regime, provide employment and status, though with meager salaries, to many tribes, a shadow government, and thicken and deepen the state’s penetration of society.
Nevertheless, the Yemen government faces multiple structural challenges, while its institutions have frayed and weakened. The convergence of dismal socioeconomic conditions with deepening political and tribal fault lines tax the capacity of the Yemeni state; it diminishes its ability to prevent centrifugal groups from threatening its integrity and sovereignty, a recipe for perpetual instability at home and beyond.
Given Yemen’s structural challenges, the status quo is unsustainable. The secessionist movement in the south poses a grave threat to the country’s future and unless the legitimate grievances of southerners are addressed, such as the need for local government, the south will try to go its separate way. If this happens, it will most likely trigger a north-south civil war.
In the north, a restive ceasefire holds between the government and the Houthis, while Qatar hosts another round of negotiations with both camps. Qatari officials said that the goal is to consolidate the truce and secure the peace. In the meantime, both appear to be preparing for another round of fighting that has been raging off and on since 2004, a conflict that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Six years after, the Yemeni state has failed to subdue the Houthi rebels who complain of political, social and religious marginalization. The Saleh government denies Houthis’ claims and accuses them of trying to subvert the republic and revive the Imamate—a theocracy based on Zaydi beliefs and practices, a form of Shi’ite Islam—which was overthrown in the 1960s. Moreover, Yemeni officials have sought to portray the Houthi rebellion as an extension of Shi’ite Iran’s efforts to spread its influence in the heart of Sunni-based Arab states.
Obviously, there is no military solution to the Houthi rebellion, and the Saleh regime has acknowledged this fact by exercising military restraint and inviting at least three senior Houthi representatives to participate in a national dialogue involving Yemen’s governing coalition and a group of opposition parties. That is a good start to ending the bloodshed and pain in the north.
Although AQAP is dangerous, it poses one of the weakest challenges to Yemen. It is a parasite that feeds on social and political chaos and upheaval. Time and again, Al-Qaeda has shown to be its own worst enemy, with a tendency to self-destruction. AQAP currently numbers between 100 and 300 core operatives, though most are rookies and unskilled with little combat experience, unlike the previous Afghanistan generation.
The structure and composition of the Yemen branch appears to have changed because of the merger with militant elements from Saudi Arabia last January, forming AQAP and revitalizing the Yemen branch. Some fighters who had returned from war zones in Iraq and Pakistan have supplied military training and ideological motivation and leadership.
In particular, Anwar Al-Awlaki—the Yemeni-American cleric the Obama administration designated in April as a legitimate target for assassination—provides AQAP members with theological, ideological and operational guidance.
The big question is: Will the Saleh regime have the political will to open up the political process and fully integrate the opposition in the north and the south? And will it hold genuine elections in which all parties participate on an equal footing? Or will it insist on maintaining a political monopoly and excluding others from decision-making?
Yemen’s structural crises cannot be addressed except by a concerted effort over many years by a national unity government, a transparent and representative government that puts an end to pervasive corruption, waste and over-securitization.
Yemen’s Gulf neighbors, along with the international community, have a vested interest in helping the country overcome its multiple challenges and transform Yemen from a potential source of regional instability to a strategic asset. The first building block of putting the Yemeni house in order is to rebuild the country’s frayed institutions of political and economic governance and to expand the country’s knowledge base.
Fawaz A. Gerges - Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London University. He has done extensive field research in Yemen. Gerges’ forthcoming book is “The Making of the Arab World: From Nasser to Nasrallah.”
