Yemen's Violent Political Culture

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
In the states of the Middle East, four types of regimes are on offer:

Theocracies such as Iran, which is governed by Shia clerics; rule by a strongman -- the Assads in Syria are an example; kings with a modicum of legitimacy, such as Abdullah II in Jordan; finally, fragile and – if history is any guide – short- lived democratic regimes, as in today’s Tunisia.

Should any of them collapse, the most likely outcome is a descent into anarchy and violence – witness today’s Yemen.

The fragmentation of this very poor country on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula has highlighted the challenges facing the internationally recognized central government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi as he has tried to reunify this impoverished country.

Actually, as a functioning polity, it has all but ceased to exist, a United Nations panel wrote earlier this year. “Instead of a single State there are warring statelets, and no one side has either the political support or the military strength to reunite the country or achieve victory on the battlefield.”

Hadi has spent most of the four-year conflict exiled in Saudi Arabia after his government was ousted by the rebel group known as the Houthis.

His forces have been unable to dislodge the rebels or even decisively assert his authority in the areas his government nominally controls.

A Sunni Arab military coalition, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has been fighting the Iranian-backed Shia rebels on Hadi’s ­behalf since 2015.

It has pulverized large parts of he country, causing immense damage and human casualties, but has been unable to gain a victory. 

Civilians have borne the brunt of the conflict, which has killed over 10,000 people and sparked a cholera epidemic.

The old Yemen “will never come back,” contends Badr Baslmah, a former Yemeni transport minister who lives in Mukalla, the capital of Hadramawt, Yemen’s largest province.

Mukalla was itself captured by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in 2015, but was retaken by Yemeni forces trained and led by the UAE a year later.

But even now, Yemen’s government is still absent. The local provincial governor, Faraj al-Bahsani, relies on local revenue rather than state contributions for his budget.

He courts international investors to fix the region’s crumbling infrastructure. His main security partner is a foreign government, the United Arab Emirates, that pays salaries to a portion of the most powerful local military force.

The UAE has built several military bases in the province.

This situation is not atypical. Most of the country, from cities to rural villages, has to fend for itself.

In a report issued on Aug. 28, a UN-backed group of “eminent experts” investigating human rights violations in Yemen cited numerous violations by Yemeni government forces and their Saudi and UAE allies.

It said the Houthis rebels were also responsible for the same abuses.

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, warned the Security Council on Sept. 21 that the fight against famine is being lost in Yemen, which is already facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

With 75 per cent of its 29 million people in need of assistance, Lowcock called Yemen’s situation “bleak.”

The UN Human Rights Council a week later voted to extend the international probe of alleged war crimes committed in Yemen by both the Saudi-led coalition and the Shiite Houthi rebels.

A joint statement by the Riyadh-backed Yemen government and its allies denounced it as “biased.”

In October, the UAE resumed an all-out offensive aimed at capturing Yemen's most vital port, Hodeida, on the Red Sea.

Civilian deaths have increased by 164 per cent in the four months since the Hodeida offensive started.