Obama calls it a "model" for fighting terror. So why didn't anyone notice
last month's coup?
By CHARLES SCHMITZ
October 16, 2014
Nobody saw it coming. On Sept. 20, Yemen's Huthi movement executed a
political coup so stealthy that the world hardly noticed, and so momentous
that local commentators are dividing modern Yemeni history into before and
after the Huthi assent to power. The Huthis, a Shiite-led rebel group with a
power base in Yemen's far north, have been waiting for this moment since the
early 2000s, when their civil rights campaign was forced to take up arms in
self-defense.
The Huthi coup is not only reshuffling the Yemen political deck, but also
regional political calculations, particularly in the Arab Gulf, because the
Huthi maintain good ties with Iran. And it poses problems for President
Obama's war against Yemen's al Qaeda affiliate.
Over the last six months, Huthi militias extended their control over regions
adjacent to the Huthi stronghold in Saada, 230 kilometers north of the
Yemeni capital Sanaa. They wrested leadership of the powerful Hashid tribal
confederation, destroyed military units allied with the Muslim
Brotherhood-linked Islah Party, and ousted their Salafi opponents from the
Dammaj Valley, a few miles southeast of Saada. Finally, the Huthi descended
upon Sanaa, destroyed the last remaining military units loyal to Gen. Ali
Muhsin al-Ahmar, the once-powerful commander of the 1st Armored Division,
and his allies in the Islah Party, and took control of the Yemeni government
without much resistance - and surprisingly little international coverage.
Jamal Bin Omar, the U.N.'s special representative to Yemen, negotiated
between President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and the Huthi leadership to set
the parameters of a new interim government and thus gave international
recognition to the Huthi ascent. The resulting document, hailed by the
president as a peace agreement, is now looking more like a surrender.
The Huthi's stunning rise to power is mainly the result of four factors: the
incompetence of the interim government installed in 2011, former president
Ali Abdullah Saleh's desire for revenge against those who ousted him in
2011, Saudi Arabia and the UAE's sharp turn against the Muslim Brotherhood
and the astute political leadership of the Huthi movement itself.
The Huthi movement began in the 1990s as civil rights movement for Yemen's
Zaydis. Zaydism is a form of Shiism adhered to by Yemen's rulers for 1,000
years until 1962, when Yemen became a Republic. The Zaydis believed that the
descendants of the Prophet Mohamed's family through Fatima, one of his
daughters, and Ali, her husband, were the only people qualified to lead the
Muslim community, and thus people claiming such descent formed a religious
aristocracy in northern Yemen.
The Republican leadership saw in the Zaydi aristocracy a threat from the old
regime and repressed the Zaydis. Republican leaders, with Saudi support,
fostered hardline Sunni Wahhabi and Salafi currents to counter Zaydi
influence. The Islah Party was the main channel for the anti-Zaydi,
pro-Saudi currents in Yemen. Its pillars are the Muslim Brotherhood, a
portion of the Yemeni military under Gen. Ali Muhsin and the leadership of
the Hashid tribal confederation under the leadership of the wealthy al-Ahmar
family.
In Yemen's liberal renaissance in the early 1990s, various Zaydi currents
tried to reintegrate into modern Republican society. Some formed a political
party, while others worked to spread knowledge of Zaydism among the youth
who had lost the religion of their parents. Republican animosity did not
abate, and in the early 2000s the Huthi movement emerged as an armed
insurgency fighting against the Saleh regime. Six wars ensued between 2004
and 2010, and the Huthi emerged victorious, successfully defending
themselves against a dual onslaught by the Yemeni and Saudi militaries in
2010. Fighting the Huthis weakened Saleh's regime and brought wide support
for the Huthi movement, not because of its Shiite faith, but because the
Huthi provided a credible alternative leadership.
Saleh's regime fell in the Arab Spring amid mass protests against his rule.
Islah, his former close allies, led the formal opposition, along with the
Huthi movement and the southern movement, a civil disobedience campaign in
the portions of southern Yemen defeated in the civil war of 1994. After
Saleh stepped down, the transitional government aimed to restore peace among
Yemen's elite rather than replace them; it consisted mostly of old faces of
the Saleh regime. So although Yemen held a "national dialogue" to chart the
country's political future, the transitional government failed to address
the grievances of those left outside looking in.
The Huthis, after watching the interim government sputter along, decided to
impose a more fundamental political change of their own. Saudi Arabia's turn
against the Muslim Brotherhood helped. Though the Saudis said they still
supported Islah, the Saudis put Yemen's Muslim Brotherhood, one of Islah's
main pillars, on their list of terrorist organizations, as they did for the
Egyptian Brotherhood. Meanwhile, the Ahmar family struggled to contain the
Huthi revolt in the north.
Former President Saleh also may have quietly aided the Huthi-motivated by
the prospect of wreaking vengeance on those who helped oust him in 2011.
When the Huthi entered Sanaa, the Yemeni military did not resist, with the
exception of those units allied with Gen. Ali Muhsin and Islah's militias.
The Huthi quickly routed Muhsin's forces and were then given the keys to the
city. Did Saleh and his relatives convince the military to stand down? Is he
planning a comeback?
Just who is playing whom in this complicated game of Yemeni politics is not
clear. The Huthi themselves may have neutralized much of the military though
astute leadership and by gaining the loyalty of key military leaders. The
Saudis and the Saleh clan were happy to see their former allies in Islah
destroyed, even if by an adversary with close ties to Iran.
The new document signed by Yemen's main political players, including Islah,
calls for a new, technocratic government headed by President Hadi that will
appoint a committee of economic experts to make binding recommendations. All
militias are to leave Sanaa, and all military equipment is to return to the
state.
One reason the Huthi coup didn't spark more of an outcry is that all
factions in Yemen, along with Riyadh and Washington, welcomed the outlines
of the agreement. But the Huthis' behavior has left many questioning whether
it's worth the paper it's printed on. Huthi militias still control the
streets of Sanaa, and Huthi militias are moving toward key oil facilities
and ports. The Huthis appear to be consolidating their coup rather than
setting the stage for national reconciliation and rebuilding.
Twenty-three days after the Huthis took Sanaa, President Hadi finally
appointed a new prime minister, a technocrat from the southern governorate
of Hadramawt. On the same day, Abd Malik al-Huthi called for exiled southern
leaders to return to the country to rebuild the south. While pressing ahead
with their military advantage, the Huthis have now entered the political
game as well.
The United States has said little, except to note human rights violations by
the Huthi militias in Sanaa. The Huthi movement's extreme hostility toward
al Qaeda may buy it some support in Washington: Al Qaeda killed 47 Huthi
followers in a suicide attack last week, and the two groups appear to be
moving toward open confrontation.
For their part, the Arab Gulf states are more concerned about the Huthis'
relations with Iran, seeing the Huthi coup as more alarming evidence of
Iranian meddling across the region. On Monday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince
Saud al-Faisal demanded that Iran withdraw its "occupying" forces from
Syria, Iraq and Yemen. But the Huthi are a homegrown Yemeni phenomenon-not
an Iranian proxy force. If they succeed or fail, it will be because they
built a stable Yemeni state-or helped destroy it.
Charles Schmitz is professor of geography at Towson University in Baltimore.
Received on Thu Oct 16 2014 - 18:28:18 EDT