Deadly Edge: Yemen could easily become another Pakistan.

The Yemeni situation resembles the two intractable and difficult crisis situations, Somalia and Pakistan. Like Somalia, the clans and radical Islamists play an important role in the ongoing crisis, but like Pakistan (or unlike Somalia) the Islamists had some links and broader influence on the military and security establishment. As much as President Salih’s style of leadership was responsible for containing Islamist groups, his approaches were also fueling their survival therby ensuring their continued rise.

Yemen has been in a political crisis for months but the tide against President Ali Abdulla Salih appears to have turned after plainclothes snipers loyal to the president fired into an anti-government crowd, killing 52 people on March 17. That led to defections including military commanders, ambassadors, lawmakers, provincial governors and tribal leaders, some from his own tribe. Up to now president Salih was holding Yemen together using tribal power base and support from the US and Saudi Arabia, and everything is being threatened and eroded by the uprising. So what is at stake is not regime change but civil war, anarchy, strong Islamist militancy, separation or split of the country into two, weakening of the Global War on terror, and destabilization of the region at large.

Yemen is in a deepening crisis and could easily become a source of continuous instability to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. This is because of the following reasons:
•    The spread of extremist militancy have been fast in recent years in Yemen. Transnational and global terrorist groups have long started to use Yemen as a base. While it is in President Salih’s interest to play up the separatist and jihadist threats as a way of showing international and internal parties how important he is and why he should remain in power, these threats are indeed legitimate.
•    The radical groups have closer relations and natural ideological, geographic and logistical links to Jihadists in the Sub-region, particularly Somalia.
•    Because of the nature of the state and society there has always been fear that Yemen could easily descend to anarchy and fragmentation anytime soon.
•    This is compounded by weak state and decentralized rule in Yemen itself. Yemen is a weak and divided state; tribal affiliations runs high that help extremist groups to survive and flourish (take note of tribal areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan).
•     Meanwhile, the only functioning institutions in Yemen, the military and security services, have a history of closer relations with radical religious groups.
•    A regional rivalry in which Iranian influence is at stake(similar to the case of Bahrain)
•    All the problems were contained by President Salih’s rule which is made up of tribal alliances and agreements, tribal power base, a deal with Islamist-military nexus(similar to Pakistan) and support from the US and Saudi Arabia. The blow back effect of using radical Islamist groups for tactical political reasons is enormous.
•    And all this is seriously threatened by the uprisings in recent months, leading to fear and a real possibility that the revolt will not lead to change of a regime but to a totally new state of anarchy within Yemen and beyond.

Tribes and Islamists

The crisis in Yemen is building on around the two most important elements of President Salih’s power base: Tribes and radical Islamists.  The Yemeni situation resembles the two intractable and difficult crisis situations, Somalia and Pakistan. Like Somalia, the clans and radical Islamists play an important role in the ongoing crisis, but like Pakistan (or unlike Somalia) the Islamists had some links and broader influence on the military and security establishment. Now the country is deeply split over its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and this profound divide has also extended to the most powerful institutions in the country — the military and the tribes — with some factions calling for Salih to relinquish power and others supporting him.

Yemeni society is divided in general terms into two main religious groups and two confederations of Tribes. These, like the clan system in Somalia, are unbelievably critical to Yemen. The tribes in Yemen enjoy near-total autonomy in their own fiefdoms. President Salih had been able to use a system of patronage and payoffs to help secure the support of the country’s powerful tribes, but this recently has become more difficult with Saudi influence with the tribes eclipsing that of Salih. Salih remained in power by a mix of persuasion, sparing use of force, and the appointment to key posts of a tight circle of loyalists, many of them members of his family, clan, or tribe. He insured himself by stacking the security apparatus with members of his family and Sanhan tribal village. A network of his sons, nephew’s and half brothers command the Republican Guard ,Yemeni special operations forces, the  Central Security Forces and counterterrorism unit, the Presidential Guard and the National Security Bureau. Even the commander of the Eastern Military Zone in Hadramawt, is a Hashid tribesman from Sanhan, Salih’s tribe.

It is always difficult to bring order and central rule in to Yemen. Even in the best of times, there are large portions of Yemen that are under tenuous government control, and the current crisis has enlarged this power vacuum. Nobody managed to subdue the country. The Ottoman Turks and the British, for instance, mounted a series of efforts to subdue the country, beginning in the 16th century. It was not only foreign invaders who faced a rough time controlling and ruling Yemen. Against this fact probably Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Salih deserves some appreciation. He managed, against all odds, to somehow keep the country together. But his cards were not always safe and reliable.

As much as Salih’s style of leadership was responsible for containing Islamist groups, his approaches were also fueling their survival and ensuring their continued rise. Appeasing radical elements and aligning with them at a tactical operational level provided him with relative clam, but the dangers of this strategy have become increasingly more evident. Similar to the Pakistani military and intelligence services, notably the SSI President Salih tolerated, and somehow, encouraged Islamist forces for tactical reasons, the implications of which will continue to haunt Yemen and the wider region. The difference with Pakistan is only one of scope and intensity. Unlike Pakistan which used radical elements in the service of foreign policy against neighboring countries, India and Pakistan, Salih’s Yemen used them against domestic rivals and for the ultimate consolidation of political power. In the 1980s the Yemeni President, apparently with the blessing of Washington, encouraged radical Muslim youth to join the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. After 1989 many of these fighters, pretty much like other Afghan Arabs, headed home, keen to pursue jihad in their own backyard.  Their role in the civil war in the country was glaringly evident.

As the northern army marched to the South in the mid 1990’s it unleashed ex- Mujahedeen, along with graduates of the new Islamist madrassas. Salih has effectively used the conservative tribes and jihadists to help him in his battles against secessionists in both the north and the south. No wonder, transnational and global terrorist groups have started to use Yemen as a base. The 1994 war provided another opportunity for the pro-Islaimst camp military officers and commanders. It is no secret that General Ali Muhsin al-ahmar, a cousin of Salih’s and long his shadowy second in command, had been cultivating links with Sunni Islamist radicals.

Yemen has reached a point where a major crisis is unavoidable. The only chance to avert this scenario, although very unlikely, is a negotiated exit of President Salih. A deal between both figures in which Saudi Arabia, the US, Al-Islah party, the confederation of tribes, Iran are variable factors. Several options are being worked out but not yet conclusive.  The likelihood is that the Yemeni state may easily be taken over by radical Islamist power base, even through peaceful means. The possible ouster of President Salih or his survival in a weaker position will hasten the demise of the already feeble Yemeni State, boost the moral and freedom of terrorist groups, and deepen tribal divisions and societal fragmentation, provide a leeway to Islamist-Military figures play hide and seek politics and exploit anti-terrorism efforts to their parochial interests, facilitate links and support to other extremist elements in the Red Sea and the Horn. So the situation in Yemen could not be a replica of the crisis in Egypt, which was not so much a revolution as it was a very carefully managed succession by the country’s armed forces.

In Egypt, the armed forces maintained their independence from the unpopular Mubarak regime, thereby providing the armed forces with the unity in command and effort in using the street demonstrations to quietly oust Mubarak. Yemen doesn’t have institutions to guide such a process and avert the slide to civil war. Worse, the practice of relying on the conservative tribes and jihadists will definitely have blown back on the Yemeni regime and, as in Pakistan; there are jihadist sympathizers within the Yemeni security apparatus and we have not seen the beginning of the game.  One major reason why the Islamists in Somalia failed to win the war is because there is no country to play the role of a Pakistan in the Horn of Africa. Somalia didn't become Afghanistan becouse there was no Pakistan around. The tragedy is that, both all out civil war and a somehow managed political transition will significantly increase the influence of the Islamists. In the past Yemeni radicals proved eager to fight the secular Marxists in the south and the Zaydi Shiite al-Houthi in the north; now they want to fight for their own political power.  And the niche that Salih helped them create will help them to achieve this. How many remember Pakistan now?