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 the same thing. Finally, the demonstration effects of Egypt and Tunisia must be used to surmount Yemen’s lingering regional divisions.
Recent protests in Yemen have been strongest in Taiz, the center of the “Free Yemeni” movement in the 1950s, as well as Aden and areas north of the port city, especially Radfan and al-Dali, where the revolt against British colonial rule started in 1963. In recent days, Salih’s regime lost charge of police stations and other bases of control in Aden and its surroundings. Strong forces of opposition also exist in Abyan, Shabwa, and Hadramaut to the east. The risk in Yemen is that national unity will come to an end, and this would be a political step backward. Since the 1994 civil war, the regime has constantly used fear of fitna, “sedition,” to frighten away the public from showing any support for the political opposition. President Salih wraps himself in the flag, as the champion of unity.
Both Egypt and Tunisia inspire memories of days in the 1950s and 1960s when the voice of Arab national unity was strong. The 1990 unification of Yemen was also supposed to revive the spirit of Arab unity. During the 1950s, when Gamal Abdul Nasser and Egypt led the Arab world, all Yemenis aspired to unite their country. Egypt’s 1952 revolution inspired popular unionist movements in Yemen, and when its twin revolutions began in 1962 and 1963, Egyptians provided assistance. There are many reasons to think that Egyptians will once again inspire Yemenis to overcome the mess that Salih’s family has made of their national unification. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Yemeni president exploited regional and tribal divisions in the country, in order to strengthen his hold on power by keeping his rivals weak and off guard. “Divide and rule” has long been the chosen means of keeping power in Sanaa. This has been true since the days of the Zaydi imams.
Critically important for a successful popular uprising in Yemen will be the political opposition’s ability to maintain peaceful tactics, and reclaim a proud sense of national self-determination. Yemen is a traditional tribal society. Under Marxist rule in the 1970s, the southern regime detribalized society in order to strengthen state law. By contrast, President Salih always preferred tribal custom. Once his northern army overran the south in 1994, Salih restored the power and property of many southern tribal shaykhs who fought against the former socialist government. This assisted his “divide and rule” strategy, but it divided the country. Many Yemenis, and western romanticists of Yemen, have long theorized about the democratic benefits of tribalism. But there are many reasons to think that united democratic self-determination for Yemen depends on reducing the role that tribalism plays in the lives of the people. Salih will use his closest tribal allies to crush the protests, potentially creating a split between Sanaa and its surrounding highlands on the one hand, and Taiz, Aden and eastern provinces, on the other hand.
The political habit of rulers in Sanaa, during most of its republican era, has been to allow the shaykhs of the powerful Hashid tribe to hold power, in alliance with a few mountain highland tribes of the larger Bakil grouping. But the proof of national self-determination in Yemen will be the day when a non-tribal, non-highland figure from Aden or Taiz, al-Hudayda or Hadramaut, can serve as president in a peaceful rotation of power. Those who want to find the same success as Egypt and Tunisia would be wise to empower a new political leadership from one of these more populous regions closer to Yemen’s coasts. The leading shaykhs of Hashid and Bakil should recognize that this serves their own interests because the rising tide of a more socially responsible and productive economy is more likely to lift all boats.
One of the most vocal proponents of ending the Salih family’s rule is Hamid bin Abdallah al-Ahmar, a young wealthy businessman, influential player in the main Islamic opposition party (Islah), and brother of the top shaykh of Hashid, the president’s own tribal group. This is significant because it signals a split within the regime’s tribal base. But Hamid al-Ahmar’s position at the forefront of demands to unseat Salih, and not allow Salih’s son Ahmad to inherit power, creates problems. Hamid should focus on inspiring other young patriotic Yemenis, young women as well as men, beyond his own tribal loyalties and religious sentiments, to lead the country forward. Last week, the president took measures to preempt the youth movement by arranging loyal GPC youth groups in Aden and other cities. So the opposition needs to move quickly.
The next generation clearly needs to be at the forefront of political change in Yemen. Women leaders like Tawakul Karman, and thousands of professional women in the south who had their voices silenced after 1994, can play important roles. Karman has passionately led protest rallies during the last two weeks, despite past arrests and a recent kidnapping attempt. A powerful video of a Feb. 3 rally in Taiz, showing her surrounded by youth holding photos of former leader Ibrahim al-Hamdi and Che Guevara, has repeatedly been removed from Youtube. When change comes to Yemen, it must not be defined in narrow tribal or religious sectarian terms. It should not pit Islahi against Zaydi, Hashid and Bakil against Yafi` or Fadli or Hadrami. The movement for change should be national democratic, respecting civil liberties and political freedoms, as demanded by protesters in Egypt. One of the most pressing projects in Yemen will be to restructure its military and security commands, so they meet nationalist criteria, not family or tribal criteria.
In conclusion, it is necessary for Yemen to draw financial assistance from the outside because the majority of its people live on the edge of starvation, and the country’s scarce valuable resources are dwindling. This means that wealthy Arab states, and the US and western governments, must be prepared to provide much needed economic aid, once a legitimate and responsible government is in place. At the same time, it means creating conditions where members of successful Yemeni emigrant communities around the world, from the US and Britain to Singapore and Indonesia, will want to return home and invest in a better life for all Yemeni citizens. This will not happen if the Salih family is replaced by yet another tribal military figure from Hashid. For this primary reason, it would be a betrayal of the spirit of the times, if AAS is replaced by a younger clone.