Yemen’s Precarious Ceasefire

by Patrick Seale

Released: 15 Feb 2010

Hardly had the ceasefire in northwest Yemen come into force at midnight last Thursday than the government accused the Huthi rebels of breaking it, and of attempting to assassinate a senior officer. Whether the truce has truly broken down is not yet clear. The latest flare up may be only the last spasm of a civil war which has raged, on and off, since 1994. Yemen desperately needs a durable settlement.

The latest round of fighting -- the last of five such rounds -- has lasted six months. But unlike the others, it has this time drawn in Yemen’s powerful northern neighbour, Saudi Arabia. When Huthi fighters crossed the porous border into Saudi Arabia and attacked frontier guards, Riyadh sent in its air force last November to pound Huthi positions, as well as ground troops to drive the rebels out of the frontier region.

The war between the government in Sanaa and the Huthis has caused heavy military casualties on both sides. Thousands of civilians have died and an estimated 200,000 displaced from their villages around the northern Yemeni city of Sa‘ada, where the population -- like the Huthis -- is largely Zaidi, an offshoot of Shi‘ism. Saudi Arabia has lost some 150 troops.

If the ceasefire holds, many refugees will now be heading back to retrieve what they can from the rubble of their homes. A massive international aid program will be needed to feed and house them and reconstruct the war-ravaged areas.

The truce -- announced in a decree by President Ali Abdallah Saleh -- provides for a total end to hostilities, the reopening of roads blocked by the rebels, and the release of captured Yemeni and Saudi civilian and military personnel. The rebels have pledged to abide by Yemen’s Constitution, and to abstain from any hostile act against Saudi Arabia.

Yemen has known little peace since a coup in 1962 proclaimed a republic, overthrowing the Zaidi Imam, Muhammad al-Badr -- and putting an end to a thousand years of Imamate rule. The royalists, backed by Saudi Arabia, attempted a counter-revolution. Egypt sent an expeditionary force in support of the republic. The civil war raged on until Egypt, following its defeat by Israel in the 1967 war, withdrew its forces. The Zaidi capital of Sa‘ada held out until 1970, when it became republican by reconciliation rather than conquest.

Two imperialist ventures -- one by the United States, the other by Britain -- have deeply disturbed Yemen’s political life. When the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan in 1980, the United States, with help from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, recruited, armed and trained tens of thousands of Muslim youths to fight them. Many of these mujahiddin came from Yemen where, on their return, they were treated like heroes. They enjoyed social prestige, were integrated into society, and were given jobs in the army and civil service. An internal balance was created in which the authorities downplayed the potential threat from the jihadis.

But America’s military expeditions -- first to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1991, and then, after Al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks, its wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 -- changed the climate inside Yemen. The former heroes became more outspoken in their hostility to American policy. The greater the repression, the more radical they became. They were now considered terrorists. That some were tortured in Guantánamo did not help. These developments destroyed the internal balance and brought an end to the dialogue between the militants and the state.

When Yemen was rash enough to declare its support for Saddam Hussein in 1991, Saudi Arabia promptly expelled a million Yemeni workers, and the Gulf States tens of thousands more -- a paralysing economic blow from which Yemen has yet to recover.

Historically, Britain must also bear some blame for Yemen’s instability. Anxious to protect the route to India, Britain in 1832 seized the port of Aden, in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, extending its control over the shaikhs and emirs of Aden’s hinterland. But when Britain was driven out of Aden by a left-wing nationalist movement in 1967, the rickety South Arabian Federation it had set up collapsed, and was replaced by a socialist, and eventually a Communist, People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

The PDRY merged with the northern Republic of Yemen in 1990, only to attempt to break away in 1994. But it was defeated in a brief war, when Aden was occupied by northern troops, assisted by Islamic militias. A precarious unity was restored, but is today again under threat as a southern secessionist movement has gained ground. The south has complained of neglect, of rampant unemployment, of the sacking of some 60,000 officials and soldiers without compensation, of the seizure of land by northerners.

Al-Qaida’s attempt to find a safe haven in Yemen must be seen against this tormented background. Yemen is a lively, vigorous society with a tradition of tolerance. But it is also very poor, facing serious problems of water shortage and declining oil revenues. Its population of 23 million suffers from 40 per cent unemployment. Not the least of its problems is a refugee population from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Horn of Africa estimated at between 100,000 and one million.

Yemen urgently needs a massive injection of development funds from its rich neighbours in the Gulf.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2010 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 February 2010
Word Count: 877
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