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Last year, American officials, including President Barack Obama, cited Yemen as an example of a nation that was successfully fighting terrorism. However, 2015 has not been kind to the Arab world’s poorest country. Last month, Shi’ite Houthi rebels kidnapped the Yemeni President’s chief of staff and seized the presidential palace. This led to the resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has now been placed under house arrest. The nation’s parliament has also been dissolved and the United Nations warns of that a civil war could be looming because the Houthis are a minority that cannot command allegiance from other areas of the country. Anti-terrorism experts warn that the country’s Sunni majority may swear allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in an attempt to overthrow the Houthis. This could complicate American efforts to suppress AQAP, which has targeted Western airliners in recent years and trained one of the attackers of Charlie Hebdo.
This topic brief will provide some background on Yemen’s troubled history and those involved in the current political crisis, explain recent events that have transpired in the country, and then provide some scenarios of how continued instability could affect Western anti-terrorism efforts and regional stability.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
The Roots of the Current Conflict
Before talking about a country, it is best for extempers to learn about its history. History is something very few extempers use, yet it can be a great tool in understanding the roots of modern conflicts. Yemen is no different in this regard. The country, located south of Saudi Arabia, was formerly controlled by the British and Ottoman Empires, with the British overseeing the port city of Aden, located in Southwest Yemen, and its adjacent areas from 1839-1967. The British used Aden to help sea traffic to India, which was the “crown jewel” of the British imperial system. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed following the First World War, a royal monarchy ruled North Yemen. This was called the Kingdom of North Yemen and it lasted from 1918-1962 when it was toppled by Egyptian-trained military officers that were devotees of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s brand of Arab nationalism. A civil war soon engulfed the country, with Egypt backing the military officers who led the coup and Saudi Arabia supporting those who wished to retain the monarchy. As this conflict persisted, indigenous forces that were sympathetic to socialism agitated for independence in South Yemen against the British. The so-called Aden Emergency broke out in December 1963 when several British officers were attacked with a grenade. The unrest in South Yemen persisted into 1967, when British forces agreed to leave. South Yemen then became independent and became a communist state called the People’s Republic of South Yemen.
North and South Yemen continued to exist as independent entities until 1989. From the time the British departed to that point, both territories had armed clashes with the other. Both were also divided along tribal and sectarian lines, with Shi’ites residing in North Yemen and Sunnis residing in South Yemen. On the whole, according to a brief one-minute video about the Yemeni conflict produced by Al-Jazeera on February 8, Sunnis are 65% of the Yemeni population. In 1989, a unity deal was struck that created the Republic of Yemen. The leader of the unified Yemen was Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was previously the President of North Yemen.
Unfortunately, this deal for national unity did not last as Vice President Ali Salem al-Beidh, who had been the former communist dictator of South Yemen, renounced the agreement in 1993 and proclaimed the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Yemen in the southern part of the country. The Brookings Institution writes on February 8 that Saudi Arabia backed al-Beidh in the conflict, providing him with MiG-29s. The Saudis supported al-Beidh because they hated Saleh for supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. al-Beidh went on to lose the war in quick fashion, though, as Aden fell to Saleh’s forces in July 1994 and al-Beidh fled to Oman. He currently resides in Beirut. Saleh would go on to rule Yemen until 2012, when protests stemming from the so-called “Arab Spring” – referred to as the “Arab uprisings” by some academics – caused him to step down under a Saudi-brokered peace deal.
After Saleh left office, he was replaced by Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Hadi was Saleh’s vice president and under the terms of the unity deal he was supposed to create a new constitution that would allow for more power sharing among the country’s regions. However, as The Christian Science Monitor writes on February 8, the proposed constitution was unacceptable to the Shi’ite Houthi movement, located in the Northwest Yemen, because they believed its proposed division of the country into six federal states would lead to the South controlling too much economic wealth. The Houthi movement is one of the three major political forces in Yemen, along with Hadi’s General People’s Congress and the Mushtarak movement, which unites seven Sunni parties that do not like the General People’s Congress. The Houthi movement, according to The Christian Science Monitor, was founded in the early 1990s by Hussein al-Houthi, an Islamic cleric and tribal leader. The Houthi movement began as a religious revival movement, but soon became political. It desires greater autonomy for North Yemen and a greater voice for Shi’ites in the national government. The movement is currently led by Houthi’s brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, because Houthi was killed by government forces in the capital city of Saada in 2004. The movement receives backing from the Iranian government as well, which has sought to back Shi’ite forces throughout the Middle East since 1979. The Associated Press reports on February 7 that the Houthis launched a rebellion in 2004 to topple Saleh’s government since it was pro-West, but they failed. They also rejected the peace deal that led to Saleh stepping down in 2012.
And where does the United States factor into all of this? Well, Yemen’s government has been an American ally for counter-terrorism operations in the Arabian Peninsula. After the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, Saleh promised to work with the United States to hunt down those that were responsible. Over the last fifteen years, though, al-Qaeda has established a beachhead in Southern Yemen. As The Christian Science Monitor article previously cited explains, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has arguably been the biggest threat to American security in recent years. The group sent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underwear bomber,” on a mission to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009. Abdulmutallab failed, but the group then tried to blow up two cargo planes headed from Yemen to the United States in 2010, a plot that was also discovered and thwarted. As stated in the introduction to this brief, the group also trained one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers. Due to the threat level posed by AQAP, the United States has sent military forces to the country to train the Yemeni military and has carried out more than one hundred attacks, largely with drones, against suspected militants since 2008. These attacks, according to U.S. News and World Report on February 11, have killed at least 450 AQAP members, but also fifty-eight civilians. American drone strikes also led to the death of an American national, Anwar al-Awlaki, in 2011, which created a congressional debate over the ability of the President to launch a lethal drone strike against an American citizen. The United States would prefer for a friendly, stable government to exist in Yemen to help facilitate strikes against AQAP.
The Current Political Crisis
The current political crisis began in September when Houthis moved out of Northern Yemen and took control of Sanaa on September 21. This produced the resignation of Prime Minister Mohammed Basindawa and the Houthis then entered into a power-sharing agreement with President Hadi. However, tensions and violence continued in the capital and the General People’s Congress removed Hadi as head of the party after the United Nations accused former President Saleh and Houthi commanders of undermining the peace process. The Christian Science Monitor reports on February 11 that Saleh’s resignation in 2012 made him immune from prosecution and allowed him to stay in the country. Many Yemenis believe that he still has influence with military commanders and is a significant political power broker in the country. Some analysts wonder whether Saleh is stirring up the current insurgency by the Houthis in an effort to return to the presidency. This theory makes sense, as Saleh occupied a role similar to the late Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor explains that when he was president Saleh used a discretionary fund known as al-i’timad to finance groups to distract his political opponents. This enabled him to play rival groups off of each other and make any particular group too weak to challenge him.
Although the unity government was supposed to be sworn in on November 9, the Houthis and General People’s Congress refused to take part in it, thereby creating a stalemate. This was broken on January 18 when the Houthis kidnapped Hadi’s chief of staff, Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak, and then went on to surround and attack the prime minister and presidential residences over the next two days. The Houthis realize that they are part of a national minority, so they may have simply wished to force Hadi to agree to significant constitutional changes. However, Hadi and his cabinet resigned on January 22, thereby forcing the Houthis to take a leadership role. Although the United States has yet to label the Houthi uprising as a coup, other groups in Yemen, especially Sunnis in the oil-rich Eastern Yemeni province of Marib have dubbed it as such. Sunni powers in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia have also called Hadi’s resignation and subsequent house arrest a coup.
The Associated Press article previously cited explains that Hadi’s resignation has caused the Houthis to empower a Revolutionary Committee that is led by a cousin of Houthi leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi to lead the country. The Revolutionary Committee is looking at the formation of a transitional government that will lead the country for at least the next two years. It will also be tasked with forming a 551-member parliament to replace the old one, which was dissolved after the political unrest last year. The most pressing problem that a Houthi-led transitional government faces is legitimacy. The Christian Science Monitor article previously cited from February 8 explains that Sunnis in Aden have raised the flag of South Yemen and local tribal leaders elsewhere in the country are refusing to take orders from the central government. It is also unclear how the Houthis intend to govern a country where two-thirds of the population does not share their religious convictions, which is something that matters significantly in Middle Eastern politics. According to Newsweek on February 11, thousands of Sunni Yemenis took to the streets of Sanaa and Taiz last Wednesday, protesting the deposition of Hadi’s government. In response, Houthi militants fired their rifles in the air and reportedly thrust daggers at the protesters. The protests might cause the Houthis to launch a violent crackdown to preserve their rule and if that takes place, a civil war might be the logical outcome. This, in turn, could empower AQAP because extempers should remember that al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim group. AQAP could cast themselves as the protectors of Sunni interests, much as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) did in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003. This would make anti-terrorism operations by the West much more difficult. It is already apparent that AQAP is benefitting from the current unrest as The New York Times writes on February 12 that AQAP militants recently took over a military base in South Yemen, killing twelve soldiers, and Al-Jazeera adds on February 12 that AQAP’s seized twenty-five tanks, dozens of armored vehicles and trucks, and anti-aircraft rockets as a result of the operation.
Due to the unrest in Yemen, Western governments are withdrawing their embassy personnel. This is the logical response to what governments typically do when conditions begin unraveling in a given country, and the Obama administration’s decision to do so makes sense in light of what happened to the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in 2012. According to CNN on February 11, U.S. embassy personnel were evacuated with commercial aircraft last week, and in a separate article on February 11 it notes that U.S. Marines that guarded the embassy were also removed, with those marines disabling their weapons and handing them over to Yemeni security forces. The Huffington Post reports on February 12 that Great Britain and France have also closed their embassies due to security concerns. Some believe that the closure of the embassies is more symbolic, trying to put pressure on the Houthis to reach a power-sharing arrangement with other Yemeni political forces. It is true that the Houthis did not want Western ambassadors to leave and have said that they will protect embassy installations until American, British, and French personnel decide to return. Nevertheless, an evacuation of U.S. embassy personnel from Yemen illustrates how American foreign policy is reeling in the region, as Newsweek explains that Yemen is now the fourth country in the Middle East without an American embassy (Syria, Libya, and Iran are the others).
Continued Instability?
In a best-case scenario, the United Nations is able to bring all of the conflicting sides to the negotiating table and form a unity government that can preside over the drafting process of a new constitution. This would then pave the way for new elections. Time reports on February 12 that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is sounding warnings about Yemen’s collapse and has urged the United Nations Security Council to get all sides to the negotiating table. The Global Post reveals on February 9 that Yemen’s various political factions and tribal leaders have to weigh whether they are better off as part of a unified Yemen or whether they should try to go their own way. This process is made more complicated by foreign meddling. Iran has significant ties with Houthi rebels, seeing them as a way to expand their influence in the Middle East among Shi’ite followers, while Saudi Arabia and Sunni monarchies in the region largely back South Yemeni leaders. There is also the question of what role political power brokers such as Saleh will play in negotiations, since Saleh’s 2012 resignation deal did not prohibit him from seeking elected office in the future. Furthermore, the Houthis have refused to step down, which could aggravate UN attempts to produce a negotiated solution. The UN’s task is made harder due to Yemen’s history, where a united country is still a relatively new idea. Extempers can draw a parallel to the U.S. government during the War of 1812, when Northeastern states flirted with the idea of breaking away and forming their own country at the end of 1814. At that time the United States was still a young nation, having only existed under its present constitution for less than thirty years. For Yemen, unity has only existed since 1989, so people in various regions have not yet accepted the idea that they are part of a larger nation-state. The Global Post explains that Southern Yemenis believe they should retain more of their oil wealth instead of sending it to Sanaa. They also look down upon Northern Yemenis, who are riven with tribal infighting. Overcoming these historical and cultural antagonisms will make negotiations difficult, yet extempers should continue to check each day about the status of the UN’s attempts at reaching a negotiated solution to the present unrest.
A worst-case scenario would see Yemen devolve into civil war, with the country becoming the site of a proxy conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes on February 10 that the Saudis are worried about instability in Yemen because they already face instability on their northern border with Iraq. Since 2011, the Saudis have been constructing the world’s largest border fence, which stretches 1,100 miles from the Red Sea to Oman. The Saudis, according to the Jerusalem Post on February 8, tried to intervene in Yemen and attack the Houthis in 2009, but that operation produced a disaster, leaving 100 Saudi troops dead and ruining the political career of Prince Khaled bin Sultan. The Brookings Institution predicts that the Saudis would prefer to finance and arm Sunni militants in Yemen instead of intervening directly, thereby taking the same approach as Iran. The Saudis could also try to use the Gulf Cooperation Council, an interregional organization composed of them themselves, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, to fund efforts by the people of South Yemen to declare independence. Therefore, Yemeni instability may prompt a return to 1994 when North and South Yemen went to war. One of the problems of this strategy, though, as Brookings explains, is that an independent South Yemen would see a clash of Saudi and AQAP interests. AQAP would not want their base of operations to be usurped by a South Yemen that was not favorable to them. AQAP also has hostility toward the Saudi monarchy, which has clamped down on al-Qaeda’s operations over the last decade.
Extempers should not forget that there is a humanitarian dimension to the Yemeni political crisis as well. As the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen receives a sizable dose of international aid and a civil war could disrupt services to a large portion of its population. The New York Times explains on February 11 that the World Bank provides more than $1.1 billion in annual assistance to the country, but funds are already drying up as the Saudis – the biggest unilateral donors to the country – have withdrawn their $4 billion in aid due to the Houthi takeover. The United States also provides more than $500 million of annual aid, but that could be placed in jeopardy depending upon the progress of political talks and if the Houthis grow extremely hostile to American interests. The Guardian writes on February 12 that aid agencies are already warning of a humanitarian disaster, with 61% of the Yemeni population requiring assistance. The Guardian notes that ten million Yemenis need food assistance, with the country having 840,000 malnourished children. Thirteen million additional Yemenis lack access to safe water and sanitation, while eight million lack access to healthcare. United Nations efforts to spend $748.1 million on aid this year are held up by a lack of funding, as its projects last year were only 57% funded. I would highly advise extempers to bring this human dimension into their speeches to show the costs of a potential civil war if political negotiations break down. This evidence is also crucial for illustrating how Yemen is in danger of becoming a failed state.
And what of American counterterror efforts? Thus far, the Houthis have yet to interfere in American operations against AQAP militants. It is worth noting that the Houthis are opponents of AQAP, largely due to their sectarian interests colliding. CNN noted on February 11 that U.S.-led training missions for the Yemeni Army will continue, as will counter-terrorism operations. However, political instability may make cooperation between the Yemeni government and the American military more difficult, especially if it becomes muddled over who governs the country. President Obama is already under fire on the domestic front due to Yemen’s collapse, which as The Business Insider explains on February 12, caught the American intelligence community off-guard. According to The Hill on February 11, Republicans such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham have seized on Yemen’s instability to criticize the President’s foreign policy. Republicans have already criticized the embassy evacuation, noting that it is giving American allies the impression that the U.S. is retreating from the Middle East. President Obama’s comments last year that Yemen was a sign of a successful theater in the war against al-Qaeda may come back to cost the Democratic Party, especially if someone with significant ties to the President’s foreign policy such as Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic presidential nominee for 2016.
In many ways, Yemen is a smaller version of what Iraq was like ten years ago. There are sectarian divisions in the country, but unlike Iraq, some of the loyalties of the population split along tribal lines more than they do religious affiliation. Nevertheless, the country does have a sizable al-Qaeda presence and if instability continues, Western governments may find their attempts to root out al-Qaeda inhibited as the Houthis choose their survival over cooperation with the West.