Yemen as exemplar - Re-published 7 June 2018

"Yemeni Shi'ite Muslim Houthi fighters backed by government forces drove the local wing of al Qaeda from one of its last strongholds in central Yemen on Friday in intense fighting that killed at least 35 people, tribal sources said.

The Houthis' Ansarullah movement has become the main political force in Western-allied Yemen since capturing Sanaa in September and then pushing south and west into the Sunni Muslim heartland of al-Bayda province, where Ansar al-Sharia has allied itself with local tribes. 

Yemen has been in turmoil since 2011, to the dismay of neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and of the Western powers who want to prevent instability in the Arabian peninsula threatening their crude supplies or giving al Qaeda a base for overseas attacks. 

Tribal sources said the Houthis had met stiff resistance as they pushed towards the village of Khobza district using Katuysha rockets and heavy artillery. 

They said at least 25 Houthis and 10 Ansar al-Sharia and tribal fighters had died in the fighting, which began on Thursday afternoon. Ansar al-Sharia and its allies withdrew to Yakla district, on the border with Maarib province."  Reuters

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Full disclosure - I was once DEFATT in Yemen at Sanaa.

 A primer on some aspects of Yemen:

- Zeidi (fiver) Shia  Muslims are so conservative (restrained) religiously that they are sometimes thought of as a fifth Sunni mathab.  Their theology and general view of the religious sciences follow the mu'tazilite tradition.  They are quite distinct from and have little allegiance to the 12er Shia in Iran, Lebanon and other scattered places.

- From a few miles south of Sanaa to the northern reaches of the country where it "borders" Saudi Arabia the country is almost altogether Zeidi Shia in population.  Those people are tough little mountaineers, who are extremely tribal in their lives and who are generally aligned in two major tribal confederations, the Baqil and the Hashid.  These tribal confederations are the real power in Yemen north of Sanaa.  they possess a lot of military equipment that was mainly stolen from the government when officers who are members of these confederations defected back to their true allegiance taking their gear and often soldiers with them.

- The former president, Ali Abdullah Salih, was a Zeidi tribesman of the Sanhan minor tribe of the Hashid confederation.

 - From Sanaa south, Yemen is primarily inhabited by much less tribal villagers who are Sunni and usually of the shafa'i mathab.  These folks are the recruiting ground for AQAP, Ansar al-Sharia and similar Sunni salafi jihadi groups for whom the Zaidi tribesmen of the north are just another kind of murtadoon (heretics) to be fought to the death.

- Further complicating the mozaic of groups that is Yemen is the lingering effect of British possession of the Aden crown colony for many years.  In the course of that period a lot of Yemenis from Aden attended such schools as the London School of Economics where they became  both atheistical  and left wing politically.  Such people are still on the scene in the cities and continue to be active in the government of a united Yemen.

- The Houthis are a Zeidi Shia reformist movement that draws solely on the Zeidi population of the north.  It does not have and cannot have any friendly relations with the Sunni jihadi groups of the south.  The movement started in the al-houthi clan and has since spread to the two major confederations of Zeidi tribesmen.  The Houthis as a cult prefer not to fight if it can be avoided and captured the capital, Sanaa, with very little violence.  Salih, a Zeidi tribesman understandably sides with the Houthis as opposed to the Sunni, left oriented people now running the government of the United Yemen.

- A government of national unity has been formed among; the Houthis and their army, the national army and the nationalist/left dominated functionaries now in office in Sanaa.  This coalition is actively and successfully fighting the Sunni jihadis.

The US government response to all this is to denounce the Houthis and Salih as interfering with stability and the integrity of the Yemeni state.  This reflects the ignorant, obsessive, insistence of the American foreign policy establishment that "one size fits all" in terms of the norms of governance across the world with the implication that the US embassies in such countries as Yemen are actually pro-consular outposts from which the ambassador/governor guides and controls the province/country in which he/she is located.  When this attitude, derived from notions of "exceptionalism," is accompanied by the IR/Poly Sci paradigm of foreign relations now so evident in the US government, the result is the noxious self-defeating  environment in which US decisions are now made.  pl  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/14/us-yemen-security-idUSKCN0IY1Q120141114

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Sharia_(Yemen)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthis

 

Translation of the Houthi logo:

"God is Great

Death to America

Death to Israel

Rejection by God of the Jews

Victory for Islam."

 

You should not take the words in this too seriously.  This is standard populist cant in the Muslim World.  pl

 

Comments

[confusedponderer]

MJ,
re "The small problem being that they're close to Iran and their neighbours don't like that one bit."

=> They are quite distinct from and have little allegiance to the 12er Shia in Iran, Lebanon and other scattered places.

There is closeness by degree, some sorts of closeness being lesser than others. I recall AQ being linked to Iraq, because one operative was hiding out in Kurdish controlled north (out of Saddam's reach and certainly without his consent, much less cooperation) - thus the two being 'linked'. So let us unduly generous and say that they were linked (if only by virtue of having put into one sentence), but close?

Point is, when the Houthis are surrounded by enemies to whom they are murthadoon. They can't be picky about their allies. So when they take Iranian aid that may be just because there is nobody else to help them. That doesn't mean they are an 'Iranian proxy'.

It's a little as with Nicaragua back in the day. They wanted to buy CAS aircraft to fight the Contras and went to iirc Italy because they wanted to buy aircraft (iirc the MB325). Point is, the US pressured Italy, and any other western governments, not to sell to the Nicaraguans, which they then didn't. So the Nicaraguans went to the Russians. To the US proof that they were dealing with Commies all the time.

Given that the US are AQ's far and preferred enemy, the US should be happy about the Houthis taking on AQ.

To the US, Iran is probably the only country with whom they have actual mutual interests as far as fighting Islamist terrorism is concerned. The US allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE) - Oman and Jordan being the probable exceptions - support Islamist head chopper types. The Saudis in particular think they can keep them as pets, and of late, so does Turkey.

After all, AQ is just who the US have been drone striking for what by now must be a decade or so.

If the US chose to end their hostility towards Iran, they would have snubbed the Saudis and the UAE, not to mention the Israelis, but then - who is it again that these countries have been funding for decades? And why again is Iran a problem for Israel?

Why should the US be all that interested in who the Saudis and the other Gulfies choose, to good extent motivated by tribal and religious bias, to be inferior and to be an enemy? I mean, by Wahhabi standards, who isn't? Why should the US be interested whom Israel targets as an obstacle in the way of their project of territorial expansion and to become the military hegemon in the Middle East?

I think that the US in the Middle East is on a fools errand for as long as they allow themselves to be instrumentalised to fight other people's wars for other people's animosities and ends (and I again explicitly include in that list, Israel).

[confusedponderer]

It sets off my alarm bells by

(a) citing Walid Shoebat,
(b) as reporting "Obama sent a letter of appeasement to Iran’s Ayatollah"
(c) the floating headlines, particularly "the New Congress will not kill a bad nuke deal with Iran",
(d) the assertion that Iran wants
(d)(1) to annex Iraq,
(d)(2) collaborates with Turkey on removing Assad

I'd be taking every word in that article with great caution.

[The beaver]

@ Haralambos

Is you friend the author of the article or is he just referring this article to you?
Shoebat is like Daniel Pipes or Pam Geller and I doubt their views or opinions. They don't do due diligence when they "report" since they have a religious agenda.

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks P.L.

[Aka]

dear Colonel,
I would like to pose a question out of sheer curiosity, what came to your mind when you found out that the supposed "progressive" was marrying a 12 year old girl?

[Aka]

Haralambos,
So Iran wants ISIS to topple Assad, weaken Iraq so they (Iranians) can annex Iraq and then fight ISIS in Iraq?

[turcopolier]

AKA

I had long before stopped believing what people said about themselves (emic information). So, I was not surprised. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

EU is also in a fool's fool's errand in the Middle East.

[confusedponderer]

Ah, in the Austrian museum of military history they showed the trophy stick with the aerial victories of WW-II ace Gordon Gollob. The inscription was, roughly: "This belonged to the Austrian pilot Gordon Gollob who served in the German Air Force during WW-II".

Probably by accident. Just like Hitler was a German who happened to be born and grown up in Austria. The country just happened to be around Germany at the time of World War II. A most peculiar coincidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gollob