Sana’a: An advance into Yemen’s Sunni heartland by Al Houthi fighters has galvanised support for Al Qaida among some Sunnis, deepening the religious hue of the country’s many conflicts, with potential consequences well beyond its borders.
Yemen’s tribal, regional and political divisions were widened by the rapid fall of the capital Sana’a to Houthi fighters on Sept. 21 after weeks of protests against the government and its decision to cut fuel subsidies.
“Al Houthi expansion has created a sectarian problem,” said Bassam Al Barq, a resident of the religiously mixed Sana’a, attending a protest by local activists held every week to demand Al Houthis quit the capital.
“It has created sympathy with Al Qaida, as we see in Ibb and Al Baydah,” Barq said, referring to two provinces in central Yemen where some local tribes have allied themselves with Al Qaida’s local wing, Ansar Al Sharia.
Ahmad Al Kalaz, a former Yemeni diplomat who comes from Al Baydah, agreed: “The expansion of Al Houthis to Al Baydah has created a suitable environment for Al Qaida.” Yemen now looks to be edging closer to civil war, something that could destabilise its neighbours, including Saudi Arabia.
But while the Yemen crisis bears some hallmarks of a proxy war between the Gulf’s two main powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, its causes are rooted in local problems.
The country is still struggling to adapt after former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted in 2012 under a UN-backed Gulf initiative aimed at preventing ‘Arab Spring’ protests against him descending into civil war.
Washington suspects the 72-year-old Saleh, who still has supporters in the armed forces, is himself one of the main obstacles to a peaceful transition of power.
“Yemen is seeing a kind of unravelling and violent struggles in a way that is unprecedented,” said Abdul Bari Taher, a Yemeni historian and political commentator.
“This is due to the volatility of the state, the loss of authority and the splits in the army which made the armed militia stronger than the state.” At stake is not only a Yemeni tradition of religious harmony, but also the fight against Al Qaida, an entrenched force in Yemen with sympathisers in other Gulf Arab states.
A further concern is that the strife could cause Yemen to unravel as a state. The inability of state forces to check Al Houthis’ ascent or dampen sectarianism has galvanised separatist groups who spot an opportunity to push their own agendas.
“When struggles intensify, national identity starts to unravel and everyone returns to his tribe or the group he belongs to,” one government official said. “Then it becomes very difficult to reconstitute this issue. Look how long it took Lebanon to restore the Lebanese national identity.” Sectarianism is visible in Radda, a district of Al Baydah province 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Sana’a.
Sunni tribesmen who fought Al Qaida two years ago are now allied to it out of communal solidarity.
Al Baydah, in Yemen’s Sunni heartland, has seen heavy fighting between powerful Sunni tribesmen allied with Al Qaida and Al Houthis who advanced there in mid-October, after a suicide bomber killed 47 people, most of them Al Houthis, in Sana’a.
National reconciliation talks organised by Saleh’s successor, President Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi, were an attempt to find a way out of the crisis, Taher said.
“But there was a failure to properly restructure the armed forces and reform the political and economic conditions,” he said. “The result is traditional powers are jostling for their share in the future government and are ignoring the (sectarian) struggle that is tearing civil society apart.” Al Houthis portray their capture of Sana’a as an uprising against a central government paralysed by corruption. They point to its failure, three years after Saleh was ousted, to improve living conditions for ordinary Yemenis.
But the fact that the city of 2 million fell with little resistance from government troops has raised speculation that Al Houthis received tacit support from Saleh who still has loyalists inside the security establishment.
Some diplomats say Saleh struck a tactical alliance with Al Houthis to derail the transition and hurt political rivals.
The United States has asked the UN Security Council for targeted sanctions against Saleh, accusing the former president of supporting Al Houthis and being behind previous attempts to cause chaos across Yemen, a charge he denies.
Sectarianism is not the only rising threat to Yemen. The fall of Sana’a has raised separatist demands in the south, where some leaders aim to resurrect the socialist state that existed before a merger with the northern half of the country in 1990.
There are similar demands in the western coastal region of Tihama, home to the country’s second biggest port, Hodeida.
