Yemen by Clark

Ref: Victoria Clark (2010). Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes. Yale Publishing.

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Summary­

  • A combination of bad luck and bad management has left Yemen dependent on foreign aid and oil for more than three quarters of its revenue.

  • Yemeni President Saleh had only two unsatisfactory levers of power; either he can dance on the heads of snakes and run the risk of not ruling at all, or he can emulate his old friend, Saddam Hussein, by relying on brute force and terror.

  • The six GCC states - Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman - feel about as keen to include Yemen in their economic zone as many Europeans feel about welcoming Turkey into the European Union. They foresee their labour markets being inundated by Yemenis who earn an average of $900 a year to their $35,000, by people who - according to the crude popular stereotype -live for qat and guns and jihad. Only Saudi Arabia, increasingly alarmed by the specter of Yemen collapsing into chaos, is said to be torn between wanting to keep Yemen cordoned off behind the latest thing in electronic border barriers and well away from the GCC, and recognizing that the best way to defuse the Yemeni ticking time-bomb would be to open its borders and labour market to allow young Yemenis a means of earning a living.

  • The imams, the Ottomans, the British, the Egyptians and the PDRY’s Soviet backers all had to recognize that what Yemeni tribesmen cared about most was money and land, not peace or religion or any ideology.

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Economics

  • Yemen’s modest oil reserves accounted for 90% of its exports and >75% of its revenues, but production was declining at the rate of 10% a year and was scheduled to end by 2017 at around the same time as Sanaa’s water supply has been forecast to run out.

  • Qat: Accounts for 20% of Yemen’s annual water consumption, > 1/3 of Yemen’s fertile land is used for qat cultivation, and 1 in 7 Yemenis is involved in the cultivation, distribution and sale of qat.

  • Honey: The Doan variety of honey is famed for its medicinal and aphrodisiac powers and particularly loved in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States where a kilo of the product of the apis mellifera yemenitica can fetch $150.

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Radical Islam

  • If Yemen is fast breeding jihadists, it is not because radical Islam has a special appeal for Yemenis, or because violence and intolerance are in their blood, but in large part because jihadist groups can afford to pay adherents who have no other means of earning a living. It was the fact that many of them were inconstant in their affiliation, indifferent to any ideology, pragmatic and flexible, eager to prolong hostilities indefinitely, happy to receive guns and supplies from anywhere and to continue fighting for whichever side would pay them the most.

  • Like the Yemeni man-in-the-street, President Saleh ranked the jihadist threat to his country a distant third to the independence movement in the south and the al-Houthi rebellion in the north.

  • al-Qaeda (aQ)

    • The majority of aQ members are Yemenis.

    • It has been suggested that aQ earliest attacks, those conducted in the mid- to late 1990s, in Yemen and E. Africa and Saudi Arabia, all originated from the mountainous border region of SW Saudi Arabia and NW Yemen. The rubber dinghy used to attack the USS Cole was imported from the border area; the plot for the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings was probably hatched there; the attacks in Saudi Arabia were executed with weapons smuggled over that border. But it was 9/11 and the investigation into the hijackers’ backgrounds that first attracted real attention to the region.

  • Afghanistan

    • Most Yemini Jihadists found that the road to adventure, religious righteousness and a steady income in Afghanistan was an easy one to take, especially when it carried with it two important blessings.

      • First, they had been stirred into a fever of aggressive piety by some of their clergy who preached the puritanical Saudi Wahhabism that President al-Hamdi had begun encouraging in the mid-1970s as a means of combating the Marxism emanating from the PDRY, and of eliminating Zaydi elitism and securing Saudi funds for social welfare.

      • Second, they had the support and encouragement of a powerful man, President Salih’s distant cousin, Tariq al-Fadhil’s future brother-in-law, Brigadier-General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, who was actively assisting Osama bin Laden’s recruitment drive by funneling jihad-minded youths his way.

    • It was only natural, only right and proper, that a portion of its unemployable youth would prefer to take themselves off to Afghanistan to cover themselves with glory doing what they did best, rather than slaving for the Saudis as domestic servants or laborer’s.

  • Iraq

    • ~2,000 Yemenis made up the 3rd largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq - after the Saudis and Libyans.

  • In reality, we are fighting something which is more dangerous than imperialism.’ The spread of Wahhabism to Yemen would not matter so much if not for the fact that - put very simply - global jihadism of the al-Qaeda kind is Saudi Wahhabism reinforced and made more intolerant by Salafism and finally rationalized into violence by fury at the West’s unjust handling of the Palestine question and disgust at the hypocritical manner in which the Kingdom’s Wahhabi religious establishment has tolerated the impious excesses of the royal family and the trampling of Islam’s Holy Places by infidel army boots since the first Gulf War.

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Misc Quotes

  • “Ignorance combined with arrogance is the end of the world.”

  • The Cold War-era West had created the ’terrorist problem’ for itself back in the 1980s by choosing to fund and arm Afghan mujahideen in the belief that their radical Islam was a lesser evil than Soviet Communism.

  • ‘We did not bother to study the local, Arab and international implications or the political and military questions involved. After years of experience, we realized that it was a war between tribes and that we entered it without knowing the nature of their land, their traditions and their ideas.’-Egypt on the Egypt-Yemen War.

  • One side would be unwilling to compromise in a dispute without first testing the other side’s willingness to give way on a second issue. The other side would then demand assurances of compromise on a third issue, and so on. This meant that disputes, instead of being tackled one at a time, became compounded and ever more intractable, until eventually the decision-making process became paralyzed.-On Yemen’s Unification.

  • “With God’s will you shall find those who will make the shout with you in other places. Make this shout with me: Death to America and Israel.”-Hussein Badraddin al-Houthi (2003).

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People

  • Sayyid Qutb: Today famous as the father of Islamic Radicalism, the Egyptian intellectual who first argued that rebellion against one’s temporal ruler might be justified. Extremely popular among young Saudis outraged by the perceived hypocrisy of their worldly princes and Wahhabi clergy.

  • Hussein Badraddin al-Houthi: The charismatic sayyid preacher leader, one of Yemen’s first MPs and son of a prominent Zaydi theologian, who led the al-Houthi movement in Yemen.

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Terminology

  • Gate of Tears (aka Bab El-Mandeb): The Strait at the lower end of the Red Sea, the closest point between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.

  • Tribal Custom Law (urf- Arabic): Governs the lives of a sizeable and well-armed sector of Yemen’s population.

  • Zaydi: Ethnic group comprised of Northern Yemeni highlanders.

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Chronology

  • Dec, 2017: Assassination of Yemeni Ex- President Saleh after denouncing the Houthi's.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 2014- Present: Yemen Civil War; the Houthi’s supported by ex- President Saleh and backed by Iran, fight a Hadi-Saudi-UAE led coalition.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 2014-2016: Yemen Coup; The Houthi’s (who feel marginalized after the Hadi government lifts fuel subsidies), supported by Saleh, consolidate power in Sana’a.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 2014: Resignation of Yemeni President Saleh after being critically injured in a coup attempt. Saleh hands over power to his VP, Hadi, who holds a “democratic” election in which he is the only name on the ballet. Hadi creates the Federal State of Yemen.-Yemen by Clark.

  • May, 2009: Yemen delegates meet in a 2-day meeting convened by the JMP and chaired by Hamid al-Ahmar, to confront the country’s multiple crises: revived secessionism in the south, the prospect of a sixth Saada war, a lively new al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, economic meltdown, electricity cuts, the rocketing price of flour, and so on.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 2005: Yemen Civil war (aka the Second Saada War), the 2nd in a series of continuous rebellions.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 2004: Yemen Civil War (aka the First Saada War) begins after the al-Houthi rebellion in the Saada governorate led by Hussein Badruddin al-Houthi. There was a widespread belief that the al-Houthis were protesting against their region having been marginalized and starved of funds for supporting Imam Badr’s Royalist cause in the 1960s. Others thought the conflict was due to the demarcation of the nearby border with Saudi Arabia since 2000; people who used to make lucrative livings by smuggling goods and weapons to and fro across the frontier were simply kicking against new state controls. Still more thought it might be a self-contained sectarian struggle between a minority of Yemeni Shiites and a majority of Yemeni Sunnis or a proxy war between Shiite Iran & Sunni Saudi Arabia.-Yemen by Clark.

    • 10 Sep, 2004: Death of Yemeni Houthi leader Hussein al-Houthi.

  • 12 Oct, 2000: Bombing of the USS COLE; while refueling in Aden harbor; a motorboat loaded with 500lb of explosives blasts a 32’x36’ hole in its side, killing 17 American sailors.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 3 Jan, 2000: Yemeni members of aQ conduct a failed attack on the USS SULLIVANS while refueling in Aden because HE sunk the fiberglass boat they were being transported on.-Yemen by Clark. 

  • 1993: Yemen Civil War; ~7K die after a southern led secessionist movement out of Aden leads to Civil War.-Yemen by Clark. 

  • 2 Aug, 1990: Kuwait is invaded by Iraq under Saddam Hussein.-Yemen by Clark.  

  • May, 1990- Spring, 1991: Yemen is struck by rapid inflation (4x increase in food costs) and unemployment (35%).-Yemen by Clark.

  • 22 May, 1990: Unification of N. & S. Yemen under President Saleh, after Oil is discovered along both borders. Before unity, 20% of the income of both Yemen’s came from remittances earned by Migrant workers in the Gulf States. After unity, the main, almost only, source of income was oil. The USG favored unification to avoid destabilizing the region and disrupting the flow of ~3M barrels of oil a day through the BAM. Most countries followed and no others, not Saudi Arabia nor any of the GCC states, dared to recognize the breakaway Yemeni state that al-Bidh declared.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1989: Newly formed al-Qaeda under Bin-laden and his Egyptian physician ally, Ayman al-Zawahiri, move to Saudi Arabia to convince Saudi Intel service lead Prince Turk al-Saudi, that the Kingdom allow aQ to rid the region of its single Marxist regime, the PDRY.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1980-1990: Iran-Iraq War; Yemen backs Iraq and loses, so Saudi Arabia expels 600K Yemenis.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1979-1988: Afghan-Soviet War;

    • May, 1988: The Soviets begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. Afghan War veterans like al-Fadhil and bin Laden rejoiced in this sure proof that Allah was on their side.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1978: Saleh (the snake dancer) assumes the presidency of Yemen.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 30 Nov, 1970: Birth of the People’s Republic of South Yemen.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1970s: Sunni Wahhabi Islam spreads from Saudi Arabia into Yemen.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1962-1967: Egypt-Yemen War.

    • May, 1967: Egypt under Nasser employs chemical weapons against Yemen, killing >300 in attacks on 5 different villages. The Red Cross & the UN condemn Egypt in response.-Yemen by Clark.

    • Jan, 1967: Egypt under Nasser employs chemical weapons against Yemen, killing 200 in <50min in the village of al-Kitaf.-Yemen by Clark.

    • 1962: Egypt invades Yemen.

  • 26 Sep, 1962: Yemen Military Coup; Imam Badr, and the centuries-old imamate with him, are overthrown; replaced by Abdullah al-Salla as the President of the new Yemen Arab Rep (YAR).-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1958-1961: The United Arab States is formed by Yemen, Egypt, and Syria.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1930: Osama bin Laden’s father migrates to Saudi Arabia to ride the wave of the oil boom.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1839: The British seize Aden, Yemen to use as a coaling station between Egypt and India.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1636: Mocha (Yemen), growing rich by its coffee trade, becomes home to both the British and Dutch East India Companies.-Yemen by Clark.

  • 1616: Coffee spreads to Europe after Pieter van der Broeck, a Dutch visitor to Mocha, returns to the Netherlands with coffee seedlings, planting them in a greenhouse.-Yemen by Clark.

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