Yemen’s revolution in 2011 was, in many respects, the forgotten uprising of the Arab Spring. Apart from the perceived threat from terrorism on which US policy towards the country is largely grounded, the country attracted little interest from the outside world. From a European perspective, Yemen — closer geographically to Ethiopia and Djibouti than it is to Egypt – required the construction of a whole new category of states within which its relations with the European Union might be conducted. Far from the Mediterranean and the structures of European Neighbourhood policy, Yemen was deemed to be “East of Jordan” sharing company with unloved Iran and conflict-ridden Iraq.
However, in the past three weeks, Yemen has returned to international attention. The takeover of the capital, Sanaa by Houthi fighters who forced Yemeni president Hadi to resign (a move he later retracted), followed by their advance on the southern port city of Aden, has not only undone a fragile political settlement put in place when the 2011 protest movement brought the rule of Ali Abdallah Saleh to an end after 21 years of autocratic rule, it also prompted a response from Yemen’s most powerful and influential neighbour.
On March 25th, under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and with the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia began airstrikes in Yemen with three ostensible objectives – halting the advance of the Houthis, restoring to power Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who became president when Saleh was forced to resign, and restarting a national dialogue process on creating a government of national unity.
To date, none of these objectives have been secured. Hundreds of people have been killed, including many civilians and the country faces a humanitarian catastrophe. Already the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen imports 90 per cent of its food and is challenged by rapidly declining water stocks. The destruction of the country’s airports and the continuation of conflict place severe barriers in the way of the delivery of vital aid.
However, Saudi actions have to do with much more than regional policing or the restoration of the government led by Hadi.
The rapid spread of the Houthi movement in Yemen since last autumn is read by many in Riyadh as another aspect of the Iranian challenge to Saudi hegemony in the Middle East – another battle-line in the purported conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims. This is because the Houthis constitute a Shia Zaydi movement, with its origins in the north of Yemen, which emerged in the late 1990s and, by 2004 was engaged in the first of six wars with the Saleh regime. But, Zaydi Shiism is a tiny subset of the global Shia population and Zaydism is closer doctrinally to the Sunni Islam than it is to the version practiced by Shias in Iran and elsewhere. Indeed, it is not uncommon in Yemen for Sunnis and Shias to worship in the same mosques.
The Houthi movement, named after the family of one of its early leaders who was killed in 2004, initially expressed local grievance at neglect of Saada, a province in the north. However, in the past four years, it has accrued support more broadly as a critic of the settlement imposed on Yemen in 2011, by the Gulf Cooperation Council and the international community, which many in the country see as a betrayal of the revolutionary aims of the youth protesters who were at the forefront of the 2011 uprising, and little more than an elite bargain in which the old ruling party of Saleh shared power with opposition parties, to the benefit of few except themselves.
Undoubtedly, the Houthis have received some arms and support from Iran. However, the Houthis are no Iranian proxies and operate within the context of Yemeni political dynamics.
Evidence that events in Yemen are more complex than the simplicities of a Sunni-Shia chasm or a regional conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran can be seen in the support that the Houthis have received in the most recent phase of their expansion from their stronghold in the north to Sanaa and subsequently in the advance on Aden in the south. This has been made possible partly through a split in the security forces between those loyal to Hadi and those still loyal to Saleh, who, while in office, was a staunch ally of the Saudis.
The attack which led to Houthi control of Aden airport in March was led by Saleh loyalists. The speed of the Houthi advance also confirms Hadi’s weak position in the country. As former vice-president under Saleh, and a southerner, Hadi had no established power base when he became the agreed candidate of all of Yemen’s major political parties in the presidential elections of February 2012 stipulated by the GCC. Indeed, it was the absence of a power base that made him an attractive successor to Saleh for Yemen’s elites. However, his decision not to resist the Houthi takeover of Sanaa last September now looks like a grave miscalculation.
The key question now is whether the Saudi-led assault was also a miscalculation. As the airstrikes fail to achieve the specified objectives of ‘Operation Decisive Storm’, there is growing speculation that ground troops may become involved. Here the options for the Saudis are limited. They do not possess the capacity to pursue a ground war successfully. The most effective forces that might do so are Jordanian and Egyptian. However, the Jordanians see little reward in such an adventure. For the Egyptians, matters may be different. The regime of Abdelfatteh Sisi is reliant on Saudi finance and may be persuadable. However, an earlier, and costly, Egyptian involvement in Yemen in the 1960s is seen by many in the region as Egypt’s Vietnam and a repeat of this would not at all be popular.
What a ground war would certainly achieve is a marked increase in the level of violence and an almost certain exacerbation of sectarian tensions – something of which modern Yemen has almost entirely been free, unlike many of its neighbours. The chaos that would ensue would provide fertile ground for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The best hope for Yemen in all of this is that the Saudis pull back from all-out war, while the Houthis recognise the extent to which they have overreached in moving from their traditional stronghold in the north.
Before the conflict broke out Yemenis were close to agreement on a revised set of political arrangements for the country’s governance. A UN-sponsored ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations among Yemenis are vital if Yemen is to avoid descent into the nightmarish violence that has gripped so many of its neighbours in the region.
Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations in University College Dublin. He is co-author of Politics and Governance in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming)