Analysis: Beleagured civilians await their fate as the West ponders its response to Yemen

(c) Jialiang Gao

When  23 year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt to blow up a plane headed for Detroit on Christmas Day, claims that he obtained his explosives from a contact in Yemen turned world attention onto a hitherto very underreported country.  Western embassies briefly closed and Yemen looks to be the new focus of Western anti-terrorism policy. The country of Osama bin Laden’s father, Yemen is now the base of Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula: the product of a merger between Al Qaeda in Yemen and Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. A Yemeni – American cleric, linked with the shootings at the Ford Hood Army Base in Texas last year, is alleged to have had been in contact with the Detroit bomber.

Fears abound that Yemen will become a ‘failed state’ and a haven for terrorists, with potentially serious regional and global implications. Panic in the West is overdue, arguably Yemen has been teetering on the brink for a long time. This latest attack was the culmination of a decade of sporadic violence inside the country, beginning with the Al Qaeda attack on the US Navy Destroyer USS Cole in 2000 and continuing with fatal strikes against foreign tourists and the US embassy.

Implementing a Western response demands the consideration of many serious challenges. Internal stability is threatened by ongoing protests by a southern secessionist movement, fuelled by perceived exclusion of southerners, and the Houthi rebel movement in the northern Saada region, which has produced thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in its five year history. The Shiite Houthis say they experience economic marginalisation at the hands of the predominantly Sunni state, thus giving the conflict a sectarian aspect. Shia Iran has been accused of supporting the rebels and thus of propagating another regional proxy war against Saudi Arabia, a US and Yemeni ally which opposes the rebellion on its border. August 2009 saw a renewal of hostilities, prompting calls from aid agencies for help for refugees  reported to be suffering conditions worse than in Gaza or Darfur.

Yemen’s military spending represents 6.6% of GDP , only six countries in the world spend more, worrying given that declining oil reserves are contributing to an increasing economic crisis. Currently accounting for 70% of government revenue, oil is expected to run dry in as little as 17 years. Unsurprisingly, Yemen does not attract much foreign investment and it is also heavily dependent on food imports, resulting in high sensitivity to hikes in food prices.  The economy is growing at only a slightly faster rate than the population, (currently almost 24 million) which is set to double in the next 20-25 years.

Economic diversification is essential therefore in this already highly impoverished and underdeveloped country.   Infant mortality is high, nearly half of Yemeni children are malnourished and less than one third of households in Yemen have access to electricity from the national power grid. Perhaps the greatest challenge is that Yemen could be the first country in the world to run out of water, a crisis exacerbated by the widespread growing of the stimulant khat, which requires much irrigation. Khat sustains the rural economy and is culturally embedded, it is chewed by 90% of men and a quarter of women. Suggesting that its consumption be reduced or eliminated would probably be tantamount to trying to remove alcohol in the UK.

Awash with guns, Yemen is increasingly becoming one of the world’s most corrupt developing countries; patronage networks protect the ruling elite at the expense of education, literacy, economic growth, employment opportunities and healthcare. Reporters without Borders recently ranked Yemen’s press freedom at 167 out of 175 countries: seven newspapers were banned last year for covering protests in the south and last week an editor and his son were arrested. Amnesty International claims torture is widespread and generally committed with impunity, women in particular face compromised human rights and freedom of expression and recently increasing hostility towards Yemen’s Jews has caused most of them to leave. The Yemeni government’s power is highly centralised: outside the capital Sana’a heavily armed tribes control large areas, sometimes giving shelter to militants and resentment towards the government is widespread.

Yemen is to an extent a victim of geography and the country’s success or failure could have several geostrategic implications. The state is only hundreds of miles from Mecca, the centre of Islam, while piracy in the Gulf of Aden may disrupt essential liquefied natural gas shipping and inhibit offshore oil exploration. If it does become a ‘failed state’, Yemen’s proximity to Somalia will result in the creation of a large lawless area. Somali rebel group Al-Shabaab have already said they will send reinforcements to Yemen to aid Al-Qaeda militants and Yemen’s limited resources are supporting 2.5 m Somali refugees.

The United States has quietly been supplying support to Yemeni forces for several years and the Pentagon’s counter-terrorism assistance program for the country has been raised from $4.6m in 2006 to $67m. But Western military presence will not be well received in Yemen; as in Afghanistan and Pakistan troops and drones are very likely to inspire hostility and increase anti-Western sentiment, especially if civilians continue to be killed in government military operations as has reportedly happened recently. Hopefully President Obama means it when he says he has ‘no intention’ of sending troops to Yemen.

Providing development aid intended to raise standards of living might be better received and could reduce the poverty and resentment which make for fertile recruitment grounds for militants, as seen in cities like Karachi in Pakistan. International donors have pledged billions of dollars for development projects, but these are difficult to implement successfully at the best of times and here must overcome the  hurdle of a corrupt government which lacks popular support. Development will not be without side-effects: plans for a liquefied national gas plant have met with concerns that multinationals and the government will be the main beneficiaries and that the impact on local fisherman and the marine ecosystem will be overly negative.  Some in Yemen do not credit any kind of cooperation by the West with President Saleh’s regime with legitimacy, feeling that the state lacks the capacity, and perhaps even the will, to deal with Yemen’s many problems constructively and that the West should not be propping them up.  

Yemen’s problems cannot be separated from each other and they continue in a self-sustaining and negative symbiotic relationship, impacting on everyday quality of life. It is  likely that ordinary Yemeni citizens will not have much of a say regarding Western intervention and certain that they will suffer the most if it goes wrong. The challenges that this exotic and beautiful country pose to Western policy makers echo those of other Muslim countries that the US military has become involved with in recent years, with questionable or indeed no success and always stoking anti – Western resentment.  Yemen may have potential for Somalia’s government incapacity, Iraq’s sectarianism, Afghanistan’s protection of Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s vulnerability to militant recruitment due to serious underdevelopment and inadequate state infrastructure. It is a fragile place and we must hope that this time the West will tread carefully.

Further Reading:
Chatham House , Yemen Times , CIA Factbook , International Crisis Group , The Guardian, TIME , Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, New York Times