Building a New Yemen

Recovery, Transition and the International Community

Amat Al Alim Alsoswa, Noel Brehony, Amat Al Alim Alsoswa, Noel Brehony

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755640287
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica mediorientale

Yemen has faced continuing crises since 2010. The fighting and divisions have destroyed much of Yemen's physical, political and social infrastructure, undermining its tribal traditions and religious tolerance, and impoverishing the country. The outbreak of war in 2015 caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis. In this book, Yemeni and international experts assess what political arrangements are required to overcome fragmentation and discord in Yemen. They look to understand how people from all parts of the county can work together to build a new Yemen, one that will give a voice to its young population and provide a full role for women. The contributors argue that Yemen's major resource is its population, but that Yemenis need to be motivated and trained to give them the skills to rebuild the economy and to prepare for long-term challenges such as water shortages and climate change. The volume also discusses how the international community will need to absorb the lessons of the past to find better ways of creating the institutions, mechanisms and transparency with Yemenis that will enable the flow of vital assistance to where it is most needed. The book provides an up-to-date analysis to help governments and international agencies who will have to work with Yemen and its neighbours in the post conflict situation.

Chapter 1

Yemen and the International Community

Fragmented Approaches

Laurent Bonnefoy

Contemporary Yemen holds a paradoxical place in the imagination and policies of the international community. While often being depicted as a strategic country located at the crossroads of continents and commercial routes, or as a source of quasi-existential threat when contemporary jihadi groups are mentioned, its habitants remain marginalized. The strategies of the world’s great or regional powers focusing on Yemen have thus generally lacked coherence, continuity, and relevance. Dominant interest for Yemen among foreign decision makers and experts has for long appeared to be structured around a set of selective obsessions (Bonnefoy, 2018). These rarely had much to do with Yemen itself and more often than not let its inhabitants appear as pawns of wider dynamics. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the conflict which began in the wake of the “Yemeni Spring” of 2011 often remained poorly framed by international actors, when it was not bluntly ignored (Lackner, 2017).

Historically, one could state that concern for the political future of the country was constructed around issues that, to a large extent, alienated Yemenis. From the nineteenth century onward, its geographic position had made it a prey for colonial empires (Willis, 2012). Between the 1960s and 1990s, with Yemen divided, this territory was a playground for conflicting regional and global powers in the context of the Cold War (Brehony, 2011; al-Madhhagi, 1994; al-Uqab, 1998). Only in the early 1990s did interest in Yemen appear to be somewhat linked to internal dynamics, then concerned with its unification and democratization processes. However, the parenthesis was short-lived, first due to the failure of these processes, and then because of the “global war on terror” (Carapico, 2013). Counterterrorism became the matrix through which Yemen was invited to interact with the world during the first years of the new millennium (Burgat, 2006). Internal dynamics were thus neglected, amongst which were the Zaydi revivalist issue (Brandt, 2017) and the Southern question (Augustin, 2018; Day, 2012). The “Yemeni Spring” of 2011 rapidly became a golden parenthesis full of promises (Bonnefoy and Poirier, 2012). However, even then, counter-terrorism loomed high on the agenda of the international community (Longley Alley, 2013 ; al-Salahi (ed.), 2012). From 2015 onward and ever since the current war, new narratives emerged and blurred much of the way Yemen was perceived by the international community at large, meaning world leaders, but also international organizations, NGOs, and the international press. Fragmentation and division became the dominant features of the way the various incarnations of the international community engaged with the conflict.

Rather than depicting Yemen’s interdependent relationship with the international community as a collection of rational interactions and perceptions, this chapter intends to develop an opposite stance, showing how policies on Yemen by the so-called international community highlight a fragmentation, and a number of inconsistencies. More than ever, perceptions of Yemen at war by international actors have become structured around competing narratives and visions. This holds true even within the same entities. For that matter, states are not necessarily to be seen as unitary actors which share a common understanding of Yemeni affairs. Ministries may well act differently from one another and agencies of the United Nations do not all frame issues and solutions in the same way, in part due to specific institutional subcultures.

Such diversity, in turn, generates diverging or even incoherent policies and interventions that explain much of the current chaos, as well as the inability of foreign actors to actually solve the crisis in Yemen. Fragmentation is only more profound as Yemeni institutions themselves are divided and the object of fierce competition at all levels, economic (al-Muslimi, 2019; al-Akhali, 2016), political, tribal (al-Dawsari, 2012), and military (al-Shargabi, 2018). These conflicting narratives and interactions will likely need to start converging and to take into consideration the livelihoods and aspirations of Yemenis if peace and reconstruction are to be achieved. The future of Yemen very much depends on it.

The World Competing to Make Sense of the War

Early on, the way the war in Yemen was framed and depicted became an object of controversy at the international level (Clausen, 2015). To put it in overly simplistic terms, it was either seen as a conflict between local elites that developed a regional dimension, or as one based on a foreign aggression. For example, determining the date of its very beginning sparked disputes, not only between Yemeni actors themselves, but also among external ones. Many outside the country, in particular in the media, considered that the armed conflict began on March 26, 2015, when the Arab coalition, led by the Saudi military, dropped its first bombs on the capital city. Others, who generally opposed Huthi rule, stated that the war had in reality started when the rebels took military control of the capital on September 21, 2014, put pressure on the legitimate government, held President Abdo Rabbuh Mansur Hadi under house arrest, expanded their control toward the south of the country with alleged Iranian benevolence and support, and used military planes to bomb positions of their adversaries in Aden. Without any proper declaration of war, the situation was left open to interpretation. No doubt, historians will end up determining what chronology is the most relevant.

By all standards, this dispute is far from neutral. It questions the root causes of the conflict and, as such, the legitimacy of foreign meddling. These perceptions are meaningful since they all advocate different forms of intervention by the international community and regional actors. From the onset, numerous players competed to impose their narratives, generating another layer of complexity and blurring the perceptions of the general public. With no clear dominant narrative, the confli ct remained hidden to many or was simply ignored. The near absence of foreign journalists on the ground in Yemen also contributed to a lack of knowledge of what was happening. Coverage and interest at the international level changed over the course of the third year of war with growing concern over the deterioration of the humanitarian situation. However, such diplomatic and public concern later receded, with Yemen almost disappearing from the radar as it entered a new crisis: confronting the Covid-19 pandemic in a tremendously fragile state.

Beyond the belligerents, who all had their own media arms (in particular al-Masira on the one side, al-Arabiyya and Suhayl TV, on the other) and were trying hard to gather the support of the wider public outside of Yemen, international NGOs, foreign journalists, diplomats, think tanks and researchers had a say in pushing one particular narrative over the others. The polarization of the expert and academic fields in the West did not reach the depth witnessed during the Syrian war. However, debates on the Yemeni conflict were harsh and many (in particular, supporters of the Southern movement) believed that a biased “pro-Huthi” perspective had become dominant in the international public sphere. Others often put the blame on the Arab coalition, generating some frustration, in particular among segments of the Yemeni diaspora who felt marginalized and incapable of imposing a frame that would stick with their own political views or that would add nuance to them (Aboueldahab, 2019). Initiatives like DeepRoot Consulting as well as the Sana´a Center for Strategic Studies and the Yemen Policy Center, however, contributed by gathering significant data and fostering fascinating analysis that would, for instance, emphasize the role of the economy in peace building.

Nevertheless, three competing narratives have to a large extent continued to structure the understanding of the war within the international community at large. Describing these narratives must consequently be at the core of any analysis of the way international actors have been dealing with the conflict in Yemen and of how they will position themselves once the fighting is over.

The dominant approach taken by international institutions and Western powers focused on the issue of constitutional legitimacy and its restoration. This “institutional narrative” was the one that structured the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) different statements and resolutions. It framed the conflict mainly as a confrontation between competing political groups within Yemen and depicted the Arab coalition’s military intervention in March 2015 as a legitimate response to a call by the Yemeni president.

The adoption of international sanctions before that date and the focus on the preservation of the legitimate and constitutional political process showed how concern for Yemen had not, per se, been triggered by the Arab coalition’s intervention. Additions to resolution 2140 (initially adopted in February 2014 to establish targeted sanctions against specific individuals who were accused of compromising the political transition after the fall of Ali Abdullah Saleh) were made, including new names of spoilers. Resolution 2201 adopted in January 2015 also showed how the rationale of the international community was to a large extent focused on the defence of the legal framework. Efforts by then UN Special Envoy Jamal Benomar to build a consensus between conflicting parties thus exemplified the significance of this approach even before bombs started falling on the country. The aim of the international community in Yemen was mostly, prior to the war, to preserve the constitutional legitimacy of the government and preserve the political transition.

After the launch of operation “Decisive Storm” (Asifat al-hazm) by the Saudi-led coalition, Resolution 2216 of the UNSC, voted on April 14, 2015, reasserted the depiction of the war as a matter of legitimacy. The vast majority of countries closed down their diplomatic representation in Sana´a, with the exception of a few Arab states and Russia. The founding rationale for intervention was thus to restore President Hadi to power. However, the legal framing appeared shaky according to different legal analysts (Ruys and Ferro, 2016): President Hadi’s two-year term which began in February 2012, and its one-year extension by the National Dialogue Conference, had ended before the launch of the war. The Yemeni state’s institutions could then be understood as evolving in a constitutional vacuum. Over the years, the UNSC’s maintained assertion that Hadi remained the legitimate ruler of Yemen (unless he resigned, would die, or new elections would be organized) would become a handicap for many. Various members of the UNSC pushed in 2018 to have a new resolution that would open the way for alternatives, but all international actors were bound by the legal fiction of aiming to restore Hadi to power, something that in reality not many wished, or even considered any longer feasible after the years of war and his exile in Riyadh.

This narrative, built on international legality, is thus one that gradually lost political and practical relevance, but nevertheless still remained central in determining the way significant players of the international community officially interacted with Yemen. Allies of Hadi consequently projected themselves as able to defend their legitimacy as the sole representatives of the Yemeni government and of the state. Such a situation generated much complexity as the Yemeni state was in reality fragmented. The Central Bank, whose independence while being in Sana´a and refusal to side with Hadi became in late 2016 unacceptable to Hadi and his allies, became the ironic symbol of the emphasis put on formal legitimacy over political and economic efficiency. Indeed, the complex transfer of the Central Bank from Sana´a to Aden left many civil servants without salary for months and further disorganized the economy and the currency, the Yemeni riyal.

The second international narrative (often made compatible with the previous one) has described the conflict in Yemen as a proxy war between regional powers, namely Iran and Saudi Arabia. It has been central in particular among belligerents within Yemen but also among Saudi decision makers who have persistently constructed the war as one against Iranian encroachment in the Arabian Peninsula. In justifying Saudi involvement in Yemen, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman would go as far as to compare Iranian expansion to the Nazi one: “He [i.e., Ayatollah Khamenei] wants to create his own project in the Middle East very much like Hitler who wanted to expand at the time.”¹ On May 16, 2019, his brother, Khalid bin Salman, Saudi vice-minister of defence, claimed on his Twitter account that the drone strikes carried out by the Yemeni rebel group on Saudi territory were “terrorist attacks ordered by the regime in Tehran and carried out by the Huthis.” Such a way of framing the conflict in Yemen would never be challenged by the Western powers and even be increasingly supported by the American administration. In January 2021, the “eleventh hour” attempt by the Donald Trump administration to classify the Huthis as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization”—a move that was criticized by many, including the incoming Joe Biden administration, since it put humanitarian efforts in jeopardy—exemplified the remnants of a principled approach that lacked nuance, and saw Yemeni political actors as pawns in a wider game.

While at times more implicit (and then concealed by the legitimacy-based narrative), the portrayal of the Huthis as agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and as a group alien to Yemeni culture, gave the conflict ideological and sectarian dimensions. Segments of the Saudi media would be particularly active in pushing...