Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, once described ruling his fractious country as being “like dancing on the heads of snakes”.
Saleh was toppled in Yemen’s episode of the Arab Spring and replaced by Washington’s choice, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi who has, himself, now been usurped by Al Houthi rebels who placed him under house arrest in September 2014 and took control of the capital, Sana’a. Earlier this month, Al Houthis officially claimed power, with plans for an interim assembly and five-member presidential council. Al Houthis are a minority Shiite group from northern Yemen and it is highly unlikely that the Sunni majority will accept their rule.
The West’s intervention to broker a ‘peaceful transfer of power’ during the Yemeni revolution ushered in a weak regime incapable of maintaining power. Saleh, appearing to accept the situation, managed to stay in his own country ... unlike his counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya who were (respectively) exiled, imprisoned and murdered. Saleh currently lives in Sana’a where he has worked to undermine his enemies, avenge his fall and regain his former influence. He has made no secret of his desire that his son, General Ahmad Ali Saleh, former head of the Republican Guard, should replace Hadi who resigned — along with his entire cabinet — last month.
Saleh is enjoying renewed popularity, as is his General People’s Congress Party; he has established close ties with the Al Houthi militiamen (on the basis that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’) and enjoys the support of Republican Guard officers who failed to protect Hadi when Al Houthi rebels advanced. Now Saleh is a free man while his usurper is a prisoner.
Meanwhile, Yemen is falling apart. As well as the struggle for power in Sana’a, there is an armed separatist movement in the South and Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) with close-ties to Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). All-out civil war along sectarian lines, pitting the Iran-backed Al Houthis against the Sunni tribes and AQAP, appears imminent, threatening the security of the entire Arabian peninsula.
The West has reason to be concerned. Although Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world and has no oil to squabble over, its geographical location on the Bab Al Mandeb Strait — through which much of the region’s oil is exported — ensures the interest of the West as well as regional competitors, Iran and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom would like their access to the crucial waterway compromised.
Yemen is also a key partner in the “War on Terror”; the US has been training Yemeni soldiers to fight the terrorists and its drones have been bombarding AQAP, with the Yemeni authorities’ blessing, for the past five years. AQAP, however, seems to be extending its reach and represents a threat to the West as well as to the Arabian Peninsula. It claims to have master-minded last month’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and launched several attacks over the frontier with Saudi Arabia last year, the most serious being in July, which claimed the lives of five Saudi border guards.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have been watching events in Yemen with mounting alarm. Last Saturday, an emergency GCC ministerial meeting in Riyadh called on the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution to take “forceful action” under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which allows for military intervention. Instead — perhaps fearing a veto from Moscow, which feels it was tricked into supporting a similar resolution on Libya — the council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding that Al Houthi rebels withdraw “immediately and unconditionally”. While warning UN member states against “external interference”, the UN Security Council statement said it was ready to “take further steps” if Al Houthis did not comply. The resolution begs two questions.
First, if Al Houthis agree to hand over power, to whom will they hand it? There is no central government in place and only the Al Houthis have proposed one. The regular army has evaporated, but even before the current crisis, the Presidential Guard was the only military unit still willing to support Hadi. As for the police, PRC leader, Hussain Al Wuhayshi said they were openly cooperating with Al Houthis during recent clashes in Aden.
Second, who will enforce this resolution? America is already committed in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq and has little appetite (or budget) for further conflict. The US Navy has two warships off the Yemeni coast — not to land troops on the ground, but to evacuate its nationals if the situation deteriorates. While GCC foreign ministers, in last Saturday’s joint statement, said that they will “take measures that will enable them to maintain their vital interests in the security and stability of Yemen” it is unlikely that any are willing to commit their own ground troops to such a dangerous mission. We have already witnessed this reluctance in Syria.
The sectarian aspect of the current violence mirrors other conflicts throughout the region and the proxy nature of many of these wars. Meanwhile, the Gulf states and the West are pitting themselves against Al Houthis via the Sunni tribes, but the problem here is that AQAP is in the same trench.
There is no magic solution to the current crisis in Yemen. Last Sunday, some regional leaders formed a group opposing the ‘Al Houthi coup’ and reaffirming support for the plan agreed at last year’s National Dialogue Conference for a Yemen devolved into a six-region confederation. With so many conflicting plans and players, it seems more likely that the country will be engulfed by civil war, threatening the stability of the entire Arabian Peninsula and offering another window of opportunity to Daesh, which has already crept into Libya.
The only potential winners here are Saleh and son who are waiting in the wings while the snakes devour each other.
Abdel Bari Atwan is the editor-in-chief of digital newspaper Rai al-Youm. His book Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate will be published in May by Saqi books. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@abdelbariatwan.
