Yemen: Allegation of Saudi military involvement in al-Huthi rebellion - full text
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It was reported on Oct. 22 that Shia Muslim al-Huthi rebels in the north-western province of Sa'adah had posted statements on the internet claiming that they had clashed with Saudi Arabian troops at the site of building work for a fence along the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The statement on the rebels' website said there had been a number of deaths and injuries on both sides. There was no immediate response from the Saudi Arabian government.
Immediate context
The Shia al-Huthi rebels (named after Husain Badr al-Din al-Huthi) first took up arms against the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2004. The Zaidi Shia community were a minority in Yemen but made up the majority in the north of the country. The rebels pressed for greater autonomy and a more prominent role for their version of Shia Islam. They also complained that their community was discriminated against. A peace agreement was eventually struck, with mediation from Qatar, in June 2007. By this stage, the concerns of the Saleh government had shifted away from the restive province of Sa'adah to wider Yemen and the threat from extremist Sunnis operating under the al-Qaida brand. By early 2009 it was widely accepted that Yemen had become the base for radical Islamist activities for the entire Arabian peninsula and some analysts were predicting that the country could easily become the world's next failed state.
Within this context, the Saleh government launched a fresh offensive in August 2009 which precipitated a new wave of intense fighting. Aid agencies claimed that tens of thousands of people were displaced in the fighting, which was ongoing as of late October. Ominously, the conflict had recently taken on a regional dimension. Government officials accused the Huthist rebels of wanting to re-establish Shia clerical rule, and of receiving support from Iran. For their part, the rebels accused Saudi Arabia of supporting the Yemeni government. They condemned the building of the barrier on the Saudi border and in their internet statement of Oct. 22 said: "Residents of the area reject any fence which would have a negative economic impact on them and cut them off from their brethren on the other side".
The roots of the al-Huthi conflict, in which the government was attempting to put down a localised but potent rebellion, lay in the Cold War regional politics of the 1960s. Then, the Egyptian-backed military ended Yemen's 1,000-year Shia Imamate and established the modern Yemeni republic. Republican troops seized control of the country's capital, Sana'a, in 1962, while the imam fled to the northern mountains, where he mounted a counter-offensive from Sa'adah. Then, as now, a well-equipped army in Sana'a deployed air power and superior military hardware against the rebels in Sa'adah but for five years republican forces failed to defeat the mountain guerrillas. Then, as now, regional dynamics inflamed local tensions inside Yemen, with Saudi Arabia and Jordan backing Yemen's imam against thousands of Egyptian troops based in Sana'a.
Although Yemen is a Sunni majority country, President Saleh was of Zaidi Shia heritage. Crucially, however, he was not a sayyid - a descendant of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hussein and Hassan. Yemen's ruling imams historically derived their legitimacy partly from their sayyid status. The Huthi clan were sayyid, although they denied allegations that they intended to reinstate the imam's rule. While there remains a sectarian element to the conflict, it rests in the delicate local religious balance between Zaidi Shia and Sunni Salafi teaching institutes in the Sa'adah region. According to leading analysts, the rebels accused President Saleh of playing divide-and-rule politics by promoting Sunni Salafi institutes while restricting the activities of a Zaidi Shia revivalist movement, known as the Believing Youth.
Reaction and outlook
Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Sunni Islam, has expressed its deep concern over the Shia Huthist uprising on its southern borders with Yemen. Iran, the dominant Shia regional power emboldened by its domination of Iraq, has been accused of supporting the Huthist rebels, despite the fact that Yemen's Zaidi Shias - who take their name from the fifth imam, Zaid Ibn Ali - were doctrinally distinct from Iran's Twelver Shias. The Huthists had also been accused of accepting support from the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement and (the militant Sunni) al-Qaida, as well as Yemen's local Jewish minority.
Notwithstanding the growing regional dimension to the conflict, underlying grievances remain unresolved and resentments continue to escalate during each cycle of conflict, drawing local tribes into the fight. The Economist of Sept. 12 also noted that friction was mounting owing to "pervasive corruption" that favoured President Saleh's own clan. A recent report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) also noted that the "conflict has become self-perpetuating, giving rise to a war economy".
In addition to the conflict war in Sa'adah, the government also faces growing southern separatist sentiments and resurgent terrorist networks. Increasing numbers of Somali refugees and a rapidly growing domestic population have placed escalating strain on the country's fragile resources. The very real concern that Yemen could eventually fragment preoccupies Saudi Arabia and other Middle eastern states, as well as the Saleh regime's Western allies. A report published by the BBC on Sept. 17 concluded that the scenario of state collapse in Yemen would create even greater potential for external interference in the strategic Arabian peninsula state.
Historical Context
The first historical civilisation in Yemen was the kingdom of Ma'in which flourished on the trade in frankincense and spices with Egypt from the 14th century BC. To the south-east was the kingdom of Sana' (biblical Sheba, discovered by French author adventurer Andr Malraux in 1934). By the 1st century BC maritime trade had taken over from the overland routes and the highly sophisticated irrigation system at Marib had fallen into disrepair. As Sabean influence waned, the Himyais, orininally subject to Qataban in present day southern Yemen, moved their capital to Sana'a and extended their control over southern Arabia. During their rule Jews and Christians settled in Yemen. In AD 525 the last Himyarite king, a Jew, was defeated by the Christian Ethiopian kingdom. Persian Sassanids took control in 575 and were converted to Islam in the 7th century. At the end of the 9th century the Shia Imam al-Hadi founded the Alid Zaid dynasty, which was to have a hand in government until 1962. In 1517 Yemen was conquered by the Ottomans, but they were expelled by the Zaidi Imams in 1636. The Ottomans recaptured Sana'a in 1872 but Yemen secured its independence in 1918, under the rule of Yahya Muhammad Hamidaddin, the Imam Yahya.
Britain had occupied the port of Aden (in current south Yemen) in 1839, to provide a guaranteed chandling station on the route to India. Prior to 1937, Aden was governed as part of British India (originally as the Aden Settlement under the Bombay Presidency, and then as a Chief Commissioner's province). Under the Government of India Act 1935 the territory was detached from British India, and was established as a separate Crown Colony of the UK from April 1937 the interior became a Protectorate, where tribal leaders retained nominal authority. Aden was amalgamated with the Protectorate in 1963 to form the Federation of South Arabia. This was opposed by many Aden citizens and rioting followed. In 1964, a constitutional conference agreed that the Federation would accede to independence in 1968, but the violence continued. The last British troops were pulled out of Aden in 1967 and South Yemen, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), was formed, comprising Aden and the former Protectorate of South Arabia.
Under the Zaidi Imams, who ruled as absolute monarchs, North Yemen was politically and economically isolated. Mohammed el Badr succeeded after the death of his father, Imam Ahmad, in September 1962, but after a week he was overthrown by the military led by Col Abdullah Sallal who proclaim the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) . A civil war ensued: the UK and Saudi Arabia supporting the royalists while the Egyptians fought alongside the republicans. By 1970 the republicans had emerged victorious and diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia were restored. A new constitution was promulgated in December 1970 providing for a consultative council with elections in March 1971.
Fighting broke out between North and South Yemen in September 1972, but a peace agreement providing for the eventual unification of the two countries was agreed. Eventually, in May 1990, North and South Yemen are unified as the Republic of Yemen, effectively led by Lt-Gen. Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had served as president of North Yemen since 1978. In May 1991 a new constitution for unified Yemen is approved by referendum and in April 1993 a general election effectively completes the Yemeni unification process.
However, increasing tension between the ruling elites in northern and southern Yemen exploded into full-scale civil war in May 1994. The South formally seceded as the Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY), thereby bringing to an end the troubled four-year-old merger of the two Yemens. After a short but brutal war, the northern forces of President Saleh inflict a crushing military defeat on the southern "separatist" DRY. In March 1998, five leaders of the failed southern secession are sentenced to death, in absentia.
In October 2000 the US warship USS Cole was damaged in a suicide attack off Aden which was subsequently blamed on al-Qaida. Seventeen US naval personnel were killed in the attack. In the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 (9/11) al-Qaida attacks on the USA, President Saleh travels to Washington DC and tells President George W. Bush that Yemen is "a partner" in the fight against terrorism.
In June 2004 the armed forces launched a major security operation against supporters of the Shia Muslim cleric Husain Badr al-Din al-Huthi in the north-western province of Sa'adah. After three months the army announced that it had killed al-Huthi in Sa'adah, but the rebellion continued. Eventually, in June 2007, the government and al-Huthi leaders signed a ceasefire agreement following diplomatic intervention by the government of Qatar. However, the authorities were also facing a new, and potentially greater, security threat in the guise of Islamist Sunni extremists operating under the al-Qaida banner. In July 2007, a suicide car bomber attacked a group of Spanish tourists in the north-eastern governorate of Marib, killing seven Spanish of them. Renewed clashes broke out in Sa'adah province between the army and al-Huthi rebels in late 2007, but a restive peace was imposed. However, in August 2009 fresh, and heavy, fighting erupted in Sa'adah and, for the first time, regional powers (Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia) were implicated in the unrest.
