Page 1 of 2 Yemen: A slogan and six wars
By Khaled Fattah
Yemen, the weakest, least developed and most tribal Middle Eastern state is
battling for the sixth time a Shi'ite Zaydi rebellion in the mountainous north
bordering Saudi Arabia.
The violent rebellion is drawing the attention of regional and international
actors to the formidable set of threats confronting the sole republic in the
Arabian Peninsula. In addition to the Zaydi rebels in the north, Yemen's
central government is struggling with secessionists in the south, al-Qaeda
militants in the east, and Somali pirates off the coast.
A large number of media reports on the northern rebellion have caused a
political and security storm by highlighting the possibility that the Zaydi
revolt is a proxy ideological war between
the Saudi monarchy and the Iranian regime. The Yemeni government has deployed
all its resources of coercion to quell the insurgency, and has launched an
intensive campaign of accusations against Iran, Hezbollah of Lebanon and the
Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr claiming that they are funneling money,
weapons and moral support to the rebels.
On August 31, Yemen's Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr al-Qirbi summoned the Iranian
envoy in Sana'a to submit a formal protest against the alleged Iranian support
for the rebels. As a result, the impression developing outside Yemen is that
Sana'a is under an attack from a so called "Shi'ite axis" in the Middle East.
An alternative reading of the rebellion
A closer examination of the current crisis in Yemen suggests that the northern
Zaydi rebellion, which has been on and off since June 2004, is neither a proxy
ideological war between Riyadh and Tehran nor a sectarian war between the Sunni
and Shi'ite strains of Islam.
The increasingly isolated regime in Tehran is currently not in a position to
open more frontiers of confrontation, and mingling in Yemen's political affairs
carries more risks than opportunities. From a military perspective, for
instance, the strong armed presence of the United States and other Western
powers in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean - and the tribal context of Yemen -
make it very risky for the Iranian regime to make use of the rebellion as a
step towards any ambitious plan of achieving control over the Red Sea shipping
lanes.
On August 21, the Yemeni government announced that it had discovered six
weapons caches in Sa'dah and Amran provinces containing some Iranian-made
missiles, explosives and machine guns. These findings have been considered by
some media outlets as evidence of Tehran's direct support for the Zaydi rebels.
However, observers of Yemen are well aware of the fact that due to state
weakness, civil wars, topography and strong tribal culture, Yemen is one of the
most heavily armed countries in the world, with an extensive underground arms
market where heavy machine guns and rocket launchers are sold.
Iran's accusations of intervention by Saudi Arabia in the conflict are also out
of context. The extensive, multi-dimensional support of Riyadh to successive
Yemen political administrations and tribal leaders was a well-known fact long
before the birth of the Zaydi rebellion. Since the 1962 revolution in Yemen,
which brought an end to the 10-century-old stagnant theocratic imamate (office
of an imam) system, the Saudis have always been very influential players in
Yemen's domestic socio-political arena due to vital geopolitical and national
security interests. Riyadh has always acted, and will continue to act, against
any serious threat emerging from Yemen.
The current military confrontations are taking place along the largely
unpopulated and poorly defined Yemen-Saudi border. It is normal business,
therefore, for the two countries to co-operate to prevent the infiltration of
al-Qaeda militants, and the smuggling of arms into the kingdom. The recent
attempt to assassinate the top Saudi anti-terrorist official, Prince Muhammad
bin Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, was carried out by a wanted Saudi militant who had
previously resided in a Yemeni town close to the Saudi border. The incident
made it clear that following the vigorous Saudi counter-terrorism campaign, the
al-Qaeda network is exploiting worsening instability in Yemen to pose a threat
to the Saudi national security.
It is also important to remember that President Ali Abdullah Saleh himself is a
Shi'ite Zaydi, and Zaydis - who make up more than one-third of the population -
are very well represented at all levels across state institutions, including
the security apparatus and the military. Furthermore, a number of Shi'ite Zaydi
tribes and clans are fighting alongside government forces against the radical
northern rebels. In short, the Iranian-Saudi rivalry cannot be played out in
Yemen as it did in Lebanon.
In light of the sparse evidence of a direct Iranian intervention in the
conflict, and the clearly false accusation of state-sponsored suppression of
Shi'ite's community in Yemen, the current escalating violence can be better
understood not through the prisms of sectarian or regional power struggle, but
rather through the broader prism of the turbulent political and security
climate that was created by the US-led "war on terror".
In many parts of the Arab Middle East, particularly in countries with
pro-Washington regimes, the consequences of the "war on terror" resulted in
further de-legitimization of the ruling elites, further radicalization of
opposition groups, and the surfacing of decades-old accumulated feelings of
frustration and anger. These feelings are biproducts of political
disempowerment, socio-cultural alienation, economic marginalization and a
deeply-seated collective sense of subordination and humiliation at the hands of
the Western world.
The slogan that energizes the Zaydi northern rebels of Yemen: "God is the
Greatest ... Death to America and Israel ... Victory for Islam and Muslims" is
illustrative of how the ramifications of the US and Israeli actions in Iraq,
Lebanon and Gaza can be extremely wide-ranging. If slogans are effective tools
of persuasion that appeal to particular needs, why do these rebels use an
anti-US slogan to express their concerns about local problems and concerns such
as, for instance, the growing influence of Salafism in Sa'dah province?
How can a mountainous revolt in a remote tribal area in the northern part of
Yemen gain much of its appeal from anti-US sloganeering? What is the link
between the rebellion in Sa'dah and the consequences of the "war on terror"? To
suggest some answers, here is a retrospective view of the international setting
that generated the Zaydi rebellion and sustained the mobilization of the rebels
during the last five years.
The rebellion's collective action phase
The current northern Zaydi rebellion has its ideological roots in the
activities of a Zaydi group that called itself al-Shabab al-Mum'en (the
Believing or Faithful Youth). The establishment and organization of the group
passed through two evolutionary phases: collective action and militant
response. The collective action phase started in 1990, as an outcome of party
pluralism and the lifting of restrictions on association and expression, which
were the cornerstones of Yemen's north-south unification project.
The choice of the province of Sa'dah, 240 kilometers north of the capital
Sana'a, as the power base of the group is obvious. Sa'dah is the ancient
learning and political seat of the Zaydi school of thought. Zaydism is one of
Yemen's three main branches of Shi'ism, together with Twelver Shi'ism and the
Isma'ili branch. It is distinguished from the other two branches by being
confined to Yemen and closer to Sunni Islam than other strands of Shi'ism.
Zaydism is so close to the Sunni strand that some Shi'ite groups refer to it as
the fifth school of Sunni jurisprudence. It shares, however, one of the
important aspects of the Shi'ite belief: an imamate vested in descendants of
the Prophet Muhammad.
During the collective action phase, activities of the group were concentrated
inside summer centers, where religious lectures, debates, theater performances,
and sport events were held on a daily basis. In the absence of job
opportunities and a lack of government facilities for the youth during the
summer holidays, these centers became popular destinations for students not
only from Sa'dah but also from other governorates and towns that are
historically known to have a traditional sense of Zaydi belonging, for example,
Hajah and Amran.
Within a few years, 24 of these centers were established in Sa'dah and 43 in
nine other governorates. According to a number of reports, these centers
co-opted between 15,000 to 18,000 students in Sa'dah province alone. The
centers were administered by a board of management, comprised of six members.
The success of al-Shabab al-Mum'en in the collective action phase is attributed
to the zealous reaction of Zaydi youth to the ideological and identity
challenge posed by the Salafist movement in Sa'dah - the heart and mind of
Zaydism. Such a challenge was crystallized since the establishment of the
so-called Dammaj center for conventional Salafis.
The Salafi center was under the management of Sheikh Moqbil Hadi Al-Wade'i, the
founder of Salafism in Yemen. The late sheikh, who died in 2002, was a very
strong critic of all shades of Shi'ite doctrine. In his sermons, books and
cassettes, he often accused the Shi'ites of being heretics who propagate
non-Islamic superstitious beliefs and practices.
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