Following the
removal of Husni Mubarak from power in Egypt, the inevitable
question was “who’s next?”
As events of the last week have shown, there are
plenty of candidates in this extraordinary season of
rotating power in Arab countries. King Hamad ibn Isa and the
Khalifa family of Bahrain are feeling pressure from
protestors in the streets, as is Muammar Ghadafi of Libya.
Yet no one may be more ripe for ousting than Ali Abdallah
Salih of Yemen, or AAS, as he is known in some circles.
Salih
has ruled from his military–enforced presidential palace
in the Yemeni capital Sanaa since 1978. This makes him
the third longest serving leader in the Arab world today,
behind only Ghadafi and the Sultan of Oman. Prior to
Mubarak’s fall, President Salih was frequently on the
telephone to Cairo lending moral support to a man who had
spent less time as a dictator than himself. When
Mubarak sought to placate street protestors by pledging not
to campaign as president in the next election, Salih did the
same by promising not to run for reelection in 2013. But
like the people of Egypt, the people of Yemen were not
listening. They have heard empty promises like this in
the past. The day Mubarak was forced to step down,
protestors in the streets of Sanaa chanted: “A Yemeni
revolution after the Egyptian revolution.”
One
of the main factors contributing to this remarkable moment,
besides the obvious bravery of citizens willing to confront
fierce state violence, is this fact: old sclerotic regimes
are proving incapable of holding power. Based on this
criteria alone, there is no doubt that President Salih is
likely to be the next to fall.
In
the center of Sanaa is a square called Tahrir, named
for the north Yemeni revolution in 1962 (itself inspired by
Egypt’s 1952 revolution), which removed the last Zaydi
imam from power. During the last week, President Salih
has been careful to pack Maidan al–Tahrir with his
own supporters, many of them tribesmen of Hashid and Bakil,
who were supplied with mounds of qat to chew beneath
large tents erected by the state.The opposition was forced
to rally on the new campus of Sanaa University, where the
spirit of the times is actually more likely to spread among
the country’s youth.
When
contemplating the near future in Yemen, it is important to
consider the similarities and differences of conditions
compared to Egypt and Tunisia. Only then can one seek
the keys to a possible change of government in Yemen. First,
the similarities. Like Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen is a
country with a proud tradition as an Arab nationalist
republic. Like Egypt and Tunisia, this tradition has
turned hollow in recent decades because of empty
pronouncements by a leadership compromised by a too close
security alliance with the USA and other states in “the
West.”
Like
the former leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, Salih has
maintained power by holding rigged elections that regularly
result in 70–90% landslide victories by his ruling General
People’s Congress (GPC). The opposition parties of
Yemen frequently boycott the voting because of
irregularities at all stages of the process –– from
voter registration to vote counting. This was the case
in 2009 when a united opposition, known as the Joint
Meetings Party (JMP), forced Salih to postpone the
country’s planned fourth parliamentary election. Whenever
national and local elections are held in Yemen, they are
accompanied by violence with many killed and injured.
In
economic terms, most Yemenis, similar to majorities of
Egyptians and Tunisians, live in crisis conditions,
including extremely high unemployment and poverty (above
40%), and inflation, despite reasonably good GDP growth over
the last two decades. The type of poverty in Yemen is
harsher than Egypt and Tunisia, since this is the poorest
country in the Arab world. Per capita income is less
than US $70 per month. The cause of GDP growth is
primarily due to higher government revenues from petroleum
resources, first discovered in the northern half of the
country in 1984. Once north and south Yemen united in
1990, the country’s oil production rose to moderate levels
above 350,000 bpd, with most of the oil drawn from the
eastern province Hadramaut and along the old jagged
borderline.
Yemen’s
oil production is nothing compared to less populous states
on the Arab peninsula, and it is already beginning to
decline. Among the peninsular states, Yemen has the
largest population, now more than 25 million, the majority
of whom were born after unification. Yemen’s central
economic problem is the failure of the regime to utilize its
financial resources for effective development and jobs
creation, in order to fairly redistribute the nation’s
wealth. The corruption of the regime has resulted in
the enrichment of a few crony capitalists from the
president’s family, and among his friends and
military/tribal allies.
President
Salih used the country’s oil wealth to buy off his rivals,
and spends extravagantly on the military/security, palaces,
villas, mosques (the enormous white mosque, bearing his name
in Sanaa, cost hundreds of millions of US dollars), and
expensive luxury land cruiser vehicles. For decades, he
has handed out massive shipments of these vehicles each
year, given as bribes to anyone who agrees to “play by the
regime’s rules.” Corruption rots away the core of
the state. Salih likes to flaunt the fact that he
governs by immoral means, posing with corrupt associates and
daring anyone to hold him accountable. Wikileaks
released US diplomatic reports after 2007 that depict the
Yemeni president inviting arms smugglers and gun runners to
attend inter–government meetings in Sanaa, where he teased
American officials about their inability to detain the men
due to cutbacks at Guantanamo Bay.
Finally,
Yemen is similar to Tunisia and Egypt because of its street
protest movement, extending over the last few years. In
fact, Yemen’s protests are arguably stronger and better
organized than any moment in Tunisia, or Egypt, prior to the
last two months. Moreover, there are strong indications
that Yemen’s street protests are rapidly growing, and they
will continue to grow until the regime’s power is ended or
greatly reduced.
In
contrast to these similarities, there are a number of
significant differences. First, and perhaps most
importantly, the Yemeni state lacks well organized,
professional institutions, especially in the fields of
military and security affairs. The structure of
Egypt’s military forces, and the eventual restraint of its
top commanders, helped the process of removing Mubarak from
the presidential palace, once non–violent protesters
occupied Tahrir square, and successfully defended
their positions against an onslaught by the baltagiya. As
in Egypt, regime supporters in Yemen have paid baltagiya
to clash with protestors, using stones, knives, sticks, and
occasional gunfire. The difference in Yemen is that the
regime’s military and security forces are commanded by
Salih’s closest relatives who all come from the Sanhan
region, southeast of Sanaa.
The
president’s son, Ahmad, commands the republican guard. Ahmad’s
cousin, Yahya, the president’s nephew, commands the
central security forces, as well as an elite US–trained
counter–terrorism force. Brothers of the president
and other kinsmen command the air force as well as tank and
artillery brigades in the army. Removing the president
would not have the same impact as Mubarak’s removal in
Egypt because there is no military command in Yemen separate
from the president’s family. Rivalries certainly
exist between Ahmad and relatives of his father from the
older generation, such as regime strongman General Ali
Muhsin. But the family ties binding the Yemeni regime
create a different dynamic than the former Egyptian regime. Husni
Mubarak’s son, Gamal, fled Cairo before his father because
it was clear that the president’s family had lost its
standing in Egypt. This is unlikely to happen in Yemen,
which more closely resembles Saudi Arabia where King
Abdallah’s military and security forces are commanded by
his closest family members. Salih and family are likely
to survive or fall together because they command the
military as a group.
Second,
Yemeni social organizations are comparatively weak next to
those in Egypt and Tunisia. Most social organizations
depend on government funding. This is even true of
political parties, although the GPC takes a far larger piece
of the pie compared to the dozen or more opposition parties. It
is part of the government’s long standing national pact
that all parties, organizations, and unions receive a share
of the annual budget. Those actors who operate
independent of the government typically rely on contributors
from beyond Yemen’s borders. In history, this meant
Americans and Brits, Russians and Chinese, but mainly Saudis
who wanted to buy influence across their southern border. Throughout
the last six decades, Egyptians, Iraqis, Syrians, and
Libyans also bought influence in Yemen. As a result,
Yemeni politics has always reflected political divisions in
the wider Arab and Muslim world.
Third,
for nearly ninety years of the 20th century, Yemen was a
divided nation state, north and south. Although it
united in 1990, this national unification was a highly
troubled process. After four years, the unconsolidated
armed forces of north and south Yemen fought a three month
civil war in 1994. Once the northern armed forces
overran the south, first strangling and then sacking its
capital Aden, regional divisions remained. In the late
1990s, many southerners complained of living under a
northern occupation. The southern half had its own
political divisions prior to unification with the north. And
the same was true in the northern half, where Zaydis
historically lived in the mountain highlands around Sanaa
and north to the border with Saudi Arabia, while Shafi`is
lived in the midlands toward Aden and along the Red Sea
coast. On the southern side of the border, political
divisions among its largely Shafi`i population surfaced
during intra–regime power struggles in 1969, 1978, and
then most violently, 1986.
After
complaining of northern military occupation for more than a
decade, the people of Yemen’s southern provinces initiated
“tolerance and forgiveness” meetings to overcome their
pre–unity divisions, and unite in opposition against the
regime in Sanaa. By 2007, this led to widespread peace
rallies and sit–ins, demanding “equality of
citizenship” and restoration of jobs and pensions taken
from citizens in Aden, Lahej, Abyan, and Hadramaut. This
became known as the “Southern Movement” (harakat
al–junub) or the “Peace Movement” (al–haraka
al–salmiyya). In 2008, President Salih ordered
that al–Harak be crushed by military means, and his
army and security forces killed dozens, injured hundreds,
and arrested thousands. This radicalized al–Harak. In
2009, more of its followers began using violence against the
government, while demanding secession from the north, just
as the old southern socialist leadership did briefly in
1994.
Two
years before al–Harak started, there was a separate
rebellion in a northern area of the country, inside the
province of Sa`da along Yemen’s northwest border with
Saudi Arabia. This was a rebellion by the religious
followers of a traditional Zaydi cleric and his son, who
organized a youth movement called “the Believing Youth”
(al–shabab al–mumineen). The cleric’s son,
Husayn ibn Badr al–Din al–Huthi, first rallied his
followers to oppose Salih’s alliance with President George
W. Bush at the time of America’s invasion of Iraq. Immediately
after 9/11, the Yemeni president embraced Bush’s “war on
terrorism.” When US troops entered Kabul in November
2001, and Baghdad in April 2003, he stood loyally
shoulder–to–shoulder with the American president. Then
in 2004, he was Bush’s specially invited Arab guest at a
G–8 summit in the US, where Salih was photographed wearing
traditional Yemeni tribal clothing (the “good Arab
Muslim”). This error cost him considerable standing
at home. After 2004, when the younger al–Huthi was
martyred in a battle with government armed forces, the
regime’s conflict with Zaydi tribal militias turned
horribly violent. Thus, during the late 2000s, the
regime faced separate, unrelated rebellions north and south
of Sanaa.
Fourth,
the regional divisions in Yemen (a rugged land with towering
mountains, deep canyons, and broad deserts that historically
separated its people in ways quite unlike the unifying
effect of the Nile River in Egypt), combined with the deadly
violence of the last six years (estimates of the numbers
killed run above ten thousand, mainly in mountains north of
Sanaa; the numbers killed in the south are likely under one
thousand), are intersected by the jihad waged by al–Qaeda
on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is now considered
the most active regional branch of Osama Bin Laden’s
terrorist organization. AQAP was first announced in
January 2009, merging the organization’s Yemeni and Saudi
wings. Members of AQAP claimed responsibility for
several headline grabbing attacks, such as the coordinated
truck assault on the US embassy in Sanaa in September 2008;
the August 2009 assassination attempt of Saudi Arabia’s
counterterrorism chief, Prince Muhammad bin Nayif; the April
2010 assassination attempt of the British ambassador; and
two failed attempts to strike US bound aircraft on Christmas
Day 2009 and October 2010.
Compared
to Egypt and Tunisia, conditions in Yemen are different
because of AQAP’s activities, for two important reasons. AQAP’s
presence in Yemen heightens the concern of outside powers,
namely the US, about the consequences of removing Salih from
power. For more than three years, there has been a
growing chorus of counterterrorism experts warning about
“state failure” in Yemen, and advocating reliance on
Salih to anchor US policy. Yet there are plenty of
signs that the Yemeni regime, and its political opposition,
use AQAP to advance their own agendas. AQAP’s
entanglement in Yemeni politics creates problems that did
not exist in Egypt and Tunisia. Simply put, some
elements of AQAP are linked to radical members of al–Harak
who seek secession from the north, while elements in the
regime also rely on AQAP associates to repress al–Huthi
rebels north of Sanaa. Salih’s regime and Islamists
of AQAP both propagandize against the Zaydi rebels, just as
they did against southern Marxists between 1990 and 1994.
What
emerges from this complex picture of Yemen? It is
difficult to imagine pulling off a Tunisia, or Egypt, by
removing Salih from office through a peaceful uprising of
people on the streets. But in the new environment of
the Arab world, there are apparently no barriers to success. Two
months ago, most analysts said it could not be done in
Tunisia and Egypt. So Yemenis should dream big, and
imagine the possible. There are millions of youth
dreamers in Yemen who have arrived at a stage of mature
political awareness, and they are eager to lift their
country from the abyss in which it now exists.
There
are several keys to a successful change in government in
Yemen. The demonstration effects of Tunisia and Egypt
must be used as models to make the regime fear the peaceful
assembly of citizens more than citizens fear the regime’s
military/security forces. They should also be used to
unplug the militant rhetoric of AQAP, so al–Qaeda realizes
that it has no place in a future Yemen, just as President
Salih, his sons and nephews, and General Ali Muhsin realize
