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YEMEN
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®
ASHER ORKABY
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
“What Everyone Needs to Know” is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Orkaby, Asher, author.
Title: Yemen : what everyone needs to know / Asher Orkaby. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Series: What everyone needs to know | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020029569 (print) | LCCN 2020029570 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190932268 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190932275 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190932299 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Yemen (Republic)—History. | Yemen (Republic)—Politics and government. | Classification: LCC DS247.Y48 O74 2021 (print) | LCC DS247.Y48 (ebook) | DDC 953.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029569
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029570
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by LSC Communications, United States of America
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
To my mother, for teaching me how to tell—and retell—a story.
Imperial Yemen—Ottoman and British Empires
LIST OF MAPS
Map 1. Yemen Regional Map
Map 2. Saudi-Yemen Border Regions 96
Map 3. Yemen Oil and Airport Map 100
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It seems, at times, that Yemen exists in two different realities. The Yemen I grew up with is defined by its long history, linguistic heritage, culinary delights, unique architecture, and industrious and creative population. The Yemen of contemporary media is portrayed as a perpetual war zone, a humanitarian crisis, a sectarian tragedy, and a battlefield for the Saudi-Iranian rivalry. How does one reconcile these two realities in a book that ambitiously proposes to share what everyone needs to know about Yemen? It starts with first determining who “everyone” is and what questions they have about Yemen. Then one sits down with fellow Yemenis and other experts in the field to answer those questions in a fashion that combines these two seemingly opposing visions of Yemen in a coherent narrative that can serve as a foundation for future informal discussions of what else everyone needs to know about Yemen.
This multitude of perspectives was gleaned not only from my own research both in Yemen and in archives around the world, but also from conversations over dinner, non-Yemeni coffee, and social media. While the anonymous voices of hundreds of Yemenis can be found in the pages of this book, I would like to thank a few individuals in particular for reading portions of it and for consulting with me on a number of contentious Yemen topics: Khlood al-Hagar, Afrah Nasser, Safa Karman, Abdo al-Bahesh, Bernard Haykel, Adam Baron, Tawakol Karman, Maysaa Shujaa, Elisabeth Kendall, Ahmed bin Mubarak, James L. Gelvin, Gregory Johnsen, Charles Dunbar, Les Campbell, Leonard Wood, Alsoswa Amat, Thanos Petouris,
Christopher Ward, H. Arnold Sherman, Golzar Sepehri, Farhad Dokhani, and Tarek Abu Hussein.
Obtaining permission to reproduce a few lines of beautiful Yemeni poetry was no easy task. A particular thanks to Daniel Varisco, Samuel Liebhaber, and Salem Baafi. Thank you as well to David McBride, Holly Mitchell, Liz Davey, and the rest of the extended Oxford University Press editorial staff.
Productive writing cannot be done from just anywhere. A special thanks to Princeton University’s Transregional Institute, Harvard University’s Davis Center, and the Wilson Center for providing a conducive intellectual environment in which I was able to research, write, and edit this manuscript.
Words cannot describe the debt of gratitude that I have for my loving wife Ariela who, even while running a COVID unit in the hospital, managed to help me carve out the hours needed to complete this book, and even found the time to read over every chapter and make sure that I was still using proper English grammar after weeks immersed in Yemeni Arabic sources. And to my delightful children for at least pretending that they were interested in my tales from Yemen and for agreeing to replace bedtime stories with soporific Ancient History narratives.
INTRODUCTION
My country is handed over from one tyrant to the next, a worse tyrant; from one prison to another, from one exile to another. It is colonized by the observed invader and the hidden one; handed over by one beast to two, like an emaciated camel.
In the caverns of its death my country neither dies nor recovers. It digs in the muted graves looking for its pure origins, for its springtime promise that slept behind its eyes for the dream that will come, for the phantom that hid It moves from one overwhelming night to a darker night.
My country grieves in its own boundaries and in other people’s land and even on its own soil suffers the alienation of exile.
Abdullah al-Baradouni (1929–1999), “From Exile to Exile”
On March 21, 1942, a son was born to a poor family in the village of Beit al-Ahmar near Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a. His father, who had worked as the village blacksmith, died at an early age leaving the orphaned boy to be raised by his mother. Every dry season, the family moved from village to village in search of grazing land for their small flock of sheep. The task of tending these sheep was given to the young boy. Local educators discovered him to be a precocious student with a talent for memorizing religious texts and writing. At the age of 12, he left home to go visit his older brother in the army barracks south of their village. So enamored was he by the comradeship of the army that he lied about his age and enlisted. Driven by
personal ambition and love for his Yemeni homeland, he dedicated his life to the army and was selected to join the officer’s school in 1960, paving the way to military and political leadership. The character in this story of rags to riches, who was able to rise above deep personal tragedy, was none other than the notorious Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former president and the individual who had the most profound impact on the modern state of Yemen.
Over the course of his 33-year presidency, Saleh crafted the modern Yemeni state, which was built on precarious foundations of tribal agreements, temporary truces, negotiated boundaries, political nepotism and patronage, and widespread corruption. Only Saleh understood the intricacies of his own creation and, as the country discovered, after he stepped down from the presidency in 2012, only Saleh could control all its moving elements. His alliance with the Houthi rebels in 2014 was the ultimate betrayal for the last remnants of Yemeni society that still revered him as a revolutionary leader. As president, he was a mirror of Yemeni society, exuding optimism in the early 1990s and marking the first stages of the country’s gradual decline a decade later, a consequence of Saleh’s mismanagement and exploitation of Yemeni resources for his own personal gain. The story of modern Yemen is, in part, the biography of its longest serving president, but it is also the story of a historic people with a rich culture, religious tradition, language, and heritage. Even before Saleh’s death in December 2017, the Yemeni people and their remaining leadership have struggled to redefine their country whose borders, politics, and tensions were so closely tied to the presidency of one man. This book will trace the country’s history, society, economy, and politics, to present a comprehensive picture of what everyone needs to know about Yemen.
Summarizing the centuries
Bab al-Mandeb, the waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, has been both a blessing and a curse for the southwest corner of South Arabia known as Yemen. Centuries of history have demonstrated that under the right leadership, Yemen could transform into a regional power and an epicenter for global trade as it did during the ancient Sabean Kingdom when the world looked to
Yemen for its supply of frankincense. History has also shown that without central leadership, South Arabia will be overrun by regional powers looking to control this vital waterway and secure an important asset for global trade.
The country, however, is not merely a bystander of global commerce and regional power dynamics. As one of the oldest centers of civilizations in the Near East, Yemen has archeological riches and architecturally distinctive mudbrick buildings that have been labeled World Heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The capital city of Sana’a, in particular, one of the oldest continuously settled cities in the world, features an old city that transports visitors to 14th-century Arabia with authentic spice markets, Arabic dialects whose speakers take pride in their linguistic authenticity, and a rich oral tradition of poetry and song. Two religious sects dominate the social landscape: Zaydi Islam, a small sect of Shi’i Islam found in the northern highlands, and the Sunni Islam sect of Shafi’i Islam on the western coast and southern regions. Other Islamic groups, in addition to small communities of Christians, Jews, and Bahais, can be found across the country, each maintaining their own unique history.
Yemen’s topography is as diverse as its history, featuring a flat coastal plain in the west, mountains across the north and center, a vast desert to the east, and an archipelago off the southern coast famous for its biodiversity. In an Arabian Peninsula known for its deserts and oil, Yemen stands out as the regional breadbasket, the birthplace of coffee, and the world’s capital of qat, a narcotic leaf chewed by most of the population. Agricultural produce was once exported by land over Arabian camel caravans and by sea through the southern port city of Aden, one of the world’s largest natural harbors. It was Aden that often repeatedly attracted the attention of modern colonial powers, from the 16th-century Portuguese Empire to multiple Ottoman imperial forays into South Arabia, and finally the 19th-century British seizure of Aden.
Throughout the centuries, dating back to at least the 14th century, Sana’a and the northern highlands were controlled by an imam, a central religious authority who oversaw the local dynamics of tribal federations and alliances. The Yemeni imamate lasted until 1962 when a modern republic was founded in North Yemen. The new republic overthrew a centuries-old social hierarchy based on Zaydi
religious principles and the sayyid families, or those who could trace their genealogy to the prophet Muhammad. Replacing the imam were a succession of presidents, most of whom were military figures, supported by a cadre of Yemenis who were educated abroad and returned to Yemen to lead their country into the modern era. Presidential succession culminated with the rise of Ali Abdullah Saleh in 1979, setting the stage for three decades of power consolidation, corruption, and neglected development.
The southern half of Yemen gained independence from the British Empire in 1967 and formed the first and only Arab communist state. The Soviet Union and China became proprietors of South Yemen’s People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which simultaneously remained an outcast in intra-Arab politics and a haven for international terrorist organizations and revolutionary movements. Political tensions between different southern factions impeded economic development and often caused friction with the Yemen Arab Republic to the north. This socialist haven in Arabia, a beacon of education, gender equality, and communist ideology, was, however, reliant upon external financing and was driven to bankruptcy when the Soviet Union pulled out of the developing world.
Following the end of the Cold War, North and South Yemen unified in 1990, forming the Republic of Yemen, which constitute the contemporary borders and governing institutions of the modern state of Yemen. Tensions between the newly unified countries erupted in a 1994 civil war, a manifestation of southern resentment of northern domination. Southern grievances continue to fester nearly three decades later as the call for South Yemen independence has grown. The foundation of the al-Hirak southern movement in 2007 and the Southern Transitional Council in 2017 have given political form to public protest and calls for independence.
Similar grievances exist between the republican capital of Sana’a and the northern tribes formerly affiliated with the pre-1962 ruling imam and today known by the common name of the Houthi movement. Post-revolutionary Yemen during the 1970s–1990s sought to transform the former imamate into a modern republic by diminishing the role of the country’s northern tribes and scaling back the influence of Zaydi ideology in Yemen. These national policies, along with Saudi religious proselytization in northern Yemen, has flamed the anti-Sana’a sentiments. A series of six inconclusive wars between
the Yemeni government and the Houthis (2004–2010) culminated in the 2014 Houthi capture of Sana’a and the onset of the current crisis.
The arrival of the Arab Spring protests in Yemen in 2011 precipitated the downfall of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been Yemen’s president for 33 years and whose administration was most responsible for the declining state of Yemen’s economy, politics, and social infrastructure. Mansur Hadi replaced Saleh in 2012, overseeing the National Dialogue Conference that convened a crosssection of Yemeni society to craft a new constitution and form a new post-Saleh national government. The optimism of post–Arab Spring Yemen quickly faded as the revolution was hijacked by Sana’a political elites who were blind to continued Houthi military expansion. By the time Sana’a was captured in 2014, it was too late to save the new government, the members of which were forced to flee to Riyadh and seek the assistance of Saudi Arabia in defeating the Houthi rebellion.
True to its historical form, Yemen has since been overrun by regional power rivalries: Iran has emerged as a supporter of the Houthi movement while Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s neighbor to the north, has organized an extensive military operation and blockade to defend the country’s deposed republican government. The ongoing war has placed Yemen’s 28 million residents in the crosshairs of a man-made humanitarian crisis. International peace efforts have been ineffectual, and the country has entered a debilitating stalemate with all sides entrenched in their positions and no single political entity capable of keeping the country together.
Deconstructing generalizations
Yemen is often referred to by the media as a “failed state,” with experts citing the absence of a central governing authority and the prevalence of regional competition for power among local tribal figures, complicated by the presence of international groups using the amorphous title of al-Qaeda. There are some countries, like Egypt, that cannot exist without either the state, or an equivalent central national organization that unites disparate groups. Yemen, on the other hand, does not need to exist as a centralized state as nearly every aspect of economic, political, religious, and social life has, and continues to be, dominated by local tribal identities and codes of
conduct. For centuries, foreign powers and kingdoms did not occupy or control territory in Yemen but rather arrived at temporary mutually beneficial understandings with local tribal sheikhs, overseen by a weak and decentralized governing structure. Referring to Yemen as a “failed state” is an inherently flawed perception that imposes Western notions of state structure in a region dominated by tribal, territorial, and familial forms of government that predate the emergence of the European modern state.
Western media have similarly dismissed Yemen as another battleground in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry or the doctrinal split between Sunni and Shi’i branches of Islam. There is no long-standing history of sectarian conflict in Yemen, although it is a deeply religious country without strict boundaries between politics, religion, and tribal dynamics. There is, however, a long history of Saudi-Yemeni tension related to border security and three disputed territories. Iran, on the other hand, had little interaction with this southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula prior to 2015. The current civil war in Yemen is not a conflict between two opposing regional hegemons; rather, it is a culmination of 70 years of political and social tensions and gradual transformations within tribal and social hierarchies.
The majority of political opinion has wrongly depicted the Houthi movement as an Iranian terrorist proxy that has invaded and conquered Yemen. The Houthis constitute an alliance of northern tribes united by adherence to a shared religious identity and disdain for the government in Sana’a. The movement is a struggle for religious freedom, political rights, and social equality by a minority of the population that has been living in the northern highlands for over a thousand years. Rather than a contemporary band of foreign interlopers, the Houthi movement is the culmination of a decadeslong struggle between a marginalized population and the Yemeni government. Recent external influence on the Houthi movement does not emanate from Tehran directly, but has been outsourced to Hezbollah in Lebanon where the Houthi media and propaganda strategy are based. Iran’s greatest impact on the Houthi movement has been indoctrinating its leadership with extremist religious ideology and training their civil service in guerilla warfare and propaganda, featuring the infamous slogan: “Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse upon the Jews and Victory for Islam!”
The recent discussion of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, a country that most Westerners can scarcely find on a map, has fostered a misperception that Yemen has always been impoverished, is mostly desert, and is in a remote area inconsequential to world events. In fact, Yemen is one of the oldest settled regions in the world. Its territory abuts the strait of Bab al Mandeb, one of the world’s most important waterways, that has placed Yemen at the crossroads of both major historic trade routes and millennia of regional struggle to control the strategic and lucrative territory. Yemen is unique among the countries of the Arabian Peninsula because of its fertile agricultural land and picturesque terraced gardens that once made South Arabia fabulously wealthy. Recent stories of conflict and terrorism have far overshadowed Yemen’s vibrant, educated, and active civil society.
The modern Yemeni state was founded in 1962 by a group of foreign-educated Yemenis who returned home to replace the country’s thousand-year theocracy with a modern republic. This educated elite constituted the core of Yemen’s civil service, public education, and university leadership until the 2000s when nepotism, corruption, and economic recession dissuaded a new generation of expatriates from returning home and taking up the mantle of the post-revolutionary generation. Although Yemeni civil society organizations continue to play an important role in promoting women’s rights, child welfare laws, anti-corruption, poverty reduction, and animal rights, areas such as freedom for women concerning clothing, socializing, marriage, and other rights are tightly controlled by a powerful religious elite. Nevertheless, a small number of Yemeni women have risen to prominence despite living in a restrictive and religiously conservative society.
As the Arab Spring protests captivated audiences across the world, many, including Yemen’s burgeoning and disaffected youth, assumed that the country was on the path to true democracy. Street protests eventually led to the ousting of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, followed by a great deal of optimism surrounding the transitional government. However, as was the case across most of the Middle East, the Arab Spring brought neither democracy nor freedom. Rather, the fall of a dictator opened the gates to a multitude of militant groups, previously on the radical fringe of mainstream politics, and led to the beginning of Yemen’s current civil war.
The war in Yemen is not a struggle between regional powers or religious sects but a domestic conflict between political, social, tribal, and religious factions over the future of the Yemeni state. The Yemeni republic founded in 1962 has disintegrated since 2011 as the unifying fabric of society came apart at the seams. The country stands at a historical crossroads to determine the underlying question of what it currently means to be a citizen of Yemen.
