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http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/14/can_yemen_be_a_nation_uni
ted> Can Yemen be a nation united?
Posted By Stephen W. Day Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 9:25 AM
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This March is a critical month in Yemen's political transition since 2011,
when millions of peaceful street protesters ended 33 years of rule by former
President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In the coming week, the country's transitional
leader, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, is scheduled to inaugurate the
National Dialogue Conference (NDC). Beginning on March 18, the NDC is
expected to hold a series of meetings with more than 500 representatives,
who will attempt to find solutions to several pressing problems for Yemen.
What hangs in the balance is nothing less than Yemeni national unity. The
conference was supposed to start last year after Hadi was elevated to the
post of president by public referendum in February 2012. For the sake of a
successful national dialogue, it was recognized the NDC had to take place
under a large tent encompassing all the major political parties and social
factions. Building this tent has proven difficult. The process was postponed
more than once because some parties refused to accept a predetermined number
of seats, while others refused to participate under any circumstances.
Until recently, many observers doubted Hadi would ever be able to start the
NDC. If the first meeting indeed takes place, it will be a noteworthy
accomplishment. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to interpret this meeting
as a sign that Yemen has "turned the corner," finally overcoming its
troubles. For one thing, Yemen has a long history of organizing conferences
like the NDC, in which weighty national problems are discussed at length.
Yet there are examples of national conferences from the past that ended with
signed agreements and friendly handshakes, only to serve as a backdrop for
fighting. This happened most recently in 1994 after Yemen's "Document of
Pledge and Accord" (DPA) was signed in Amman, Jordan. The DPA was negotiated
by Yemenis living inside the country, much as the current NDC. It was signed
on February 20, 1994, and then followed two months later by full-scale civil
war. The fighting in 1994 took place between north and south Yemeni leaders
who, a mere four years earlier, had agreed to unite under the new banner of
the Republic of Yemen.
Regardless of what happens after March 18, even if peace prevails, there are
a number of reasons why Yemen's troubles will remain. Some of these relate
to the NDC itself because its framework and agenda have been shaped by
conflicting foreign and domestic interests. The role of external actors in
Yemen has swelled during the past few years. There has been much recent
speculation that the Iranian government is stirring up trouble. But there
has been no more troubling foreign presence in Yemen than that of the U.S.
and Saudi governments. Saudi Arabia has long interfered in Yemen, providing
funds to conservative tribal and religious leaders who usually work at
cross-purposes with Yemen's government. For more than a year, the United
States has operated a little "Green Zone" in the capital Sanaa, while the
U.S. military operates lethal predator drones in the country's airspace. As
a result, the United States has sown more suspicion and local opposition
than any other country. Meanwhile, the United States serves as one of the
primary sponsors of Yemen's political transition, along with Saudi Arabia.
By shaping this transition to serve outside interests, foreign actors have
fueled tension among domestic actors.
There are three main internal sources of trouble in Yemen. First, the vast
majority of Yemenis have experienced severe economic hardship. Since the
middle 2000s, the economy has gone from bad to worse in a brutal downward
spiral. By 2011, poverty and unemployment had reached catastrophic levels,
affecting as much as 50 to 60 percent of the population. It was largely for
this reason that the government became dependent on external actors, namely
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, as well as the
United States, Britain, and other western member states comprising the
"Friends of Yemen" (FOY). It is important to bear in mind that, unlike other
countries caught in the wave of "Arab Spring" revolutions in 2011, Yemen was
already looking at total collapse one full year earlier. As early as 2009,
observers not only speculated that Yemen's president could be overthrown,
but many thought the country was on the verge of becoming a "failed state."
It was largely for this reason that the FOY was formed in late 2009, holding
its first meeting in January 2010 in London, where participants pledged
billions of U.S. dollars in emergency aid. In short, the historic events of
2011 may have surprised leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and
Syria, but this was decidedly not the case in Yemen.
Second, during the past decade, Yemen became increasingly divided along
regional lines. Indeed, these divisions were the source of major internal
rebellions beginning in the middle 2000s, which more recently complicated
the national dialogue process and delayed Hadi's opening of the NDC. The
greatest regional divisions are located north and south of the capital
Sanaa. Northward in Saada province along the border with Saudi Arabia, a
fierce armed rebellion against the old regime started in 2004. It took the
name of the rebellion's leader, Hussayn al-Houthi, son of a traditional
Zaidi religious cleric who called for a revival of Zaidi rule, not seen
since the end of the North Yemeni Zaidi Imamate in 1962. Once the son was
martyred in a battle with government troops in September 2004, his tribal
supporters gained increasing control of lands in Saada and neighboring
provinces until 2011 when they replaced central government authority across
wide swaths of territory. South and east of Sanaa, a separate rebellion,
called al-Hirak or "the movement," began in 2007 with peaceful forms of
resistance. The old regime tried to suppress al-Hirak, first using a
campaign of arrests and then armed force. This caused many of the movement's
supporters to adopt militant calls for secession in early 2009, intending to
revive the old independent southern state. Today calls for secession are
even stronger, and al-Hirak's supporters are the greatest opponents to
dialogue in the NDC.
Third, since the creation of a transitional government in early 2012,
powerful players associated with the old regime have continued to exercise
influence in political, military, and economic fields. Indeed, one of the
problems with the GCC-brokered agreement to remove Saleh from office was its
granting of generous amnesty terms to Saleh, his family, and key associates,
thus protecting them from prosecution for human rights violations. There was
virtually no one held accountable for horrific violence during and before
2011. As a result, Saleh, along with his sons and nephews (who held top
command posts in Yemen's armed forces) have been able to hang around the
capital, interfering in various affairs. In 2012, Hadi gradually
restructured Yemen's military and security forces, ordering some of Saleh's
nephews to resign their posts and merging branches previously under the
control of Saleh's oldest son, Ahmad. Yet as recently as February 2, Ahmad
has led meetings of senior military officers in Sanaa, speaking as commander
of the Republican Guard in open defiance of Hadi. Meanwhile, Saleh, who
always had the reputation of a wily fox, denied that his resignation as
president applied to his position as head of the ruling General People's
Congress (GPC) party. Thus, in bizarre circumstances, Saleh still directs a
party that holds half of the transitional government's cabinet posts and the
lion's share of seats in the upcoming NDC.
In the final analysis, Yemen's NDC is likely to fail because of these
incongruities between the country's domestic and international arenas. While
the United States and Saudi Arabia seek to shepherd the country through its
political transition, they have also ensured the amnesty enjoyed by Saleh
and his family, allowing the latter to continue shaping events. Saleh has
long served Saudi and U.S. interests. The United States built much of its
post-2001 military strategy with Saleh's assistance. Saleh approved the
United States' first drone warfare assault in 2002, and U.S.-trained and
funded counter-terrorism units were commanded by Saleh's oldest son and
nephews. Given U.S. and Saudi desires to battle al Qaeda on Yemeni soil,
neither state has any interest in losing control of these counter-terrorism
units. Members of the Saleh family have too much knowledge and experience to
be cast aside. The same applies to Saleh's fellow tribesman and former
regime enforcer, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who abandoned Saleh in support of the
2011 revolution. If any one of these individuals were barred from the
country, they would look for ways to undermine internal security through
proxy tribal and military forces. And as long as they remain inside the
country, there will be no genuine change.
Beyond problems in the military and security field, there are fundamental
conflicts about the best solutions to Yemen's economic problems and regional
divisions. Foreign economic aid enters Yemen through central government
offices, thus outside actors and politicians in Sanaa will want to maintain
this centralized system because it offers them greater control. However, the
proposed solution for mending Yemen's regional divisions involves
decentralizing the functions of government, perhaps reforming Yemen's
constitution along federal lines as recently suggested by Hadi in a visit to
the former southern capital Aden. The issue of federalism may be the
ultimate stumbling block in the NDC, just as it was in Yemen's 1994 DPA. In
1994, Saleh, al-Ahmar, and other tribal, military, and religious leaders in
Sanaa accused southern proponents of federalism of committing treason, and
it was on this basis that the former fought a costly civil war. There is a
great likelihood that tribal and military actors in Sanaa will reject a
federal solution to Yemen's regional divisions, especially if it is seen as
being imposed by foreign actors. Yet without a federal solution, it is
difficult to envision how the supporters of al-Hirak in the south and
al-Houthi in the north will ever support Yemen's political transition. The
reality on the ground in Yemen today is a country divided among different
regional authorities, both formal and informal.
The greatest source of Yemen's continuing problems is the poor foundation of
its 1990 national union. The political culture of this early union
unfortunately showed an intolerance of differences among people from
multiple regions. Yemeni society was always more diverse than indicated by
the old north-south border. Intolerance of political and social differences
existed on both sides of this border. But it was especially bad in the north
among Sanaa's elites, most who preferred to define the national interest in
exclusivist terms. Through much of the 1990s and 2000s, these elites refused
to admit a prominent newspaper publisher from Aden, the late Hisham
Bashraheel, had as much right to define the national interest as anyone in
Sanaa. Bashraheel and his family were constantly harassed by Saleh's regime,
which raided the Bashraheel home in 2010 and closed down their newspaper,
al-Ayyam, the oldest in the country. Many other Yemenis, like factory
workers in Tihama, business entrepreneurs in al-Mukalla, and devout Zaidi
followers in Saada, have also been denied opportunities to define the
national interest in their own terms. Until all Yemenis find a way to create
a system of government tolerant of differences, the country will be burdened
with division, conflict, poverty, and a lack of development. Indeed, the
tolerance of differences is the only way for Yemen's national union to
continue.
Stephen W. Day is an assistant professor of political science at Stetson
University in Florida and Author of "Regionalism and Rebellion in Yemen: A
Troubled National Union" (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
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Received on Thu Mar 14 2013 - 18:23:13 EDT
