Yemen, situated at the southernmost end of the Arabia peninsula, has a long history of derailing the goals of global powers. When discussing the Egyptian military’s long term attempt to influence Yemeni politics during the North Yemen Civil War in the 1960s, historian and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren wrote that “the imminent Vietnam War could have easily been dubbed America’s Yemen.” Yemen has remained a difficult country to influence, and as recent news demonstrates, its internal politics have once again showed a knack for foiling the objectives of major nations.
The Houthi rebel group thrust Yemen back into the international spotlight with their seizure of power earlier this year. The group is composed primarily of Zaidi Shia, who dominated North Yemen until 1962. Conflict has defined the recent history of the Shia organization, and they have fought multiple wars against the central government over the past decade, as well as against the Saudi military in 2009. The Houthis, furthermore, have not yet described a central platform and are equally seen as a reaction against dysfunctional governance and as a religiously inspired militant group.
The recent crisis escalated after Houthi supporters clashed with the national army while demanding economic policies more beneficial to Yemen’s poor, sparking armed clashes around the capital of Sana’a. Fighting quickly escalated, and the Houthis swept into the capital. Early in February, the rebel group dissolved parliament and announced that they would take over direct governance of the country, finalizing their seizure of power. The startling collapse of Yemen’s official government and the rise of the Houthi movement has prompted worries across the region of further instability and conflict in the coming months. With uncertainty clouding the foreseeable future, the United States needs to take action swiftly to help stabilize the nation and pull it back from the abyss of open civil war.
The American Angle
The United States has had an active role in Yemen as part of the War on Terror. The most dangerous branch of the Al-Qaeda franchise, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is based in Yemen and has attempted multiple attacks on the West, most recently claiming credit for the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris. AQAP is both an international terrorist group and an insurgent movement against the Yemeni government. American and Yemeni forces have worked closely in trying to target the group. Yemen has been one of the main sites of the American drone campaign against terror organization, and the United States has been granted permission to operate against AQAP using armed drones and other measures by the nation’s government.
Both this close cooperation and the gains against AQAP are threatened by the rise of the Houthis. Despite being locked in a struggle of their own with AQAP, the Houthis are suspicious of U.S. drone strikes. Due to their relationship with Iran and nationalistic appeal, they are also significantly less likely to be as supportive of the counter-terror relationship as Yemen’s former president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, was. While the United States has restarted strikes after a pause in November 2014, it is very possible that a continuation of the targeted campaign will need to be carried out unilaterally by the United States, without support from or coordination with Yemeni forces on the ground.
The political crisis has also significantly decreased the threat to AQAP, which has used the opportunity to regain strength. AQAP, like other extremist Sunni Islamist movements, such as the Al-Qaeda core and ISIS, is deeply anti-Shia, and the sudden rise of the Shia Houthi movement has helped the group recruit from Sunnis concerned about the growth of Shia influence. The fighting between the Houthis and the forces of the central government has also taken military pressure off AQAP, allowing it to regroup, having weathered multiple assaults from the Yemeni army while also planning and conducting terror plots outside of the country. If the political crisis perpetuates a power vacuum and diverts military attention, AQAP could exponentially increase its strength.
Cold War Turned Hot
The conflict in Yemen needs to also be seen through the lens of the broader regional struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for dominance of the Middle East. This conflict is playing itself out in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, and now Yemen.
The Houthis are an offshoot of mainstream Shi’ism, making them a natural religious and ideological ally of the Iranian government. While the extent of Iranian influence within the Houthi movement is unclear—and it is unlikely that it is as great as its dominance in the Iraqi or Syrian governments—Iran is supplying material support to the movement. Iranian officials have spoken in support of the Houthi movement and have even gone so far as to say that Sana’a is the fourth Arab capital, after Beirut, Baghdad, and Damascus, to be controlled by Iran.
Saudi troops before a skirmish with Houthi insurgents.
The rise of the Houthis and the corresponding probability of increased Iranian influence have not sat well with Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom views Iran’s increased influence in the Arabian Peninsula with concern and is especially worried about the empowerment of the Houthis, who are the same sect as the Kingdom’s restive Shia population. Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in 2009 against the Houthis but was unable to substantially degrade the group’s capabilities. Recently, the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council issued a formal statement demanding that the United Nations intervene to restore order to the nation, and that without UN action, the GCC would be prepared to act themselves. Clearly demonstrating Saudi Arabia’s concern over Yemen, the Saudi Ambassador moved the seat of the Saudi mission from Sana’a to the southern city of Aden, where former president Hadi has also moved.
The Policymaker’s Puzzle
With the competing interests and influences in Yemen and the potential impact it could have on broader American policy in the Middle East, the United States is weighing several factors. The dangers of direct intervention in Yemen, by the United States or regional states like Saudi Arabia, are only too clear from previous experiences, such as Egypt’s involvement in the country. Egypt deployed 100 commandos in 1962, only for their commitment to balloon to 15,000 soldiers by the end of the year. Eventually 13 infantry brigades, a tank brigade, and most of Egypt’s special operations forces were engaged in the war. Despite this major commitment, Egypt was unable to achieve victory over royalist insurgents and withdrew in 1967 after the Israeli triumph in the Six Day War.
Egypt’s deployment, which eventually involved over 50,000 troops and, through deployment cycles, the entire Egyptian Army at one point or another, is a strong caution against direct intervention. The same geographical factors—a mountainous interior and desert to the north—as well as a lack of strong potential military partners within the country, have continuously frustrated any intervening power. Furthermore, the likelihood that the United States or Saudi Arabia would initiate as a large military commitment as Egypt did is low. The inability of the Egyptians to quash insurgents further suggests that neither the Houthis nor AQAP can be completely defeated without a massive deployment of conventional ground troops. Nevertheless, while the Egyptian model is clearly not a strategically feasible policy, it offers some key insights to help guide the United States going forward.
Yemen’s primary importance to American interests is in the field of counterterrorism. AQAP remains deadly, but the United States could maintain pressure on the group with or without Houthi support. The drone campaign in Yemen, while not without serious flaws, has claimed notable successes in targeting major militant leaders. Drone strikes can also be effective in pressuring militants to restrict their ground operations. If the program is reformed to more strictly target identified militants, it will continue to be an effective tool in the American anti-terror arsenal in Yemen.
However, a broader American strategy beyond counterterrorism is also becoming increasingly important, playing on American economic, rather than military, strength. Yemen remains one of the poorest countries in the world—it ranks very low on most international development indices. Economic stagnation only fostered the rise of both the Houthis and AQAP. The Houthis were able to parlay a decision by the central government to end a popular fuel subsidy, while AQAP actively recruits from impoverished and unemployed Sunnis.
As such, economic development may bring a greater semblance of stability to the country. The United States could incentivize the Houthis and their opponents to return to the bargaining table through the promise of a new and expanded aid package. The United States has supplied Yemen with approximately $600 million in aid since 2011, but this is significantly less than the $1.5 billion provided to Egypt on a yearly basis and the $7.5 billion to Pakistan between fiscal years 2010 and 2014. Both nations, like Yemen, are considered vital partners in the War on Terror. Considering the major threat of AQAP, the United States should consider increasing its aid to Yemen on the condition that the parties return to negotiations and create a more inclusive political arrangement, marginalizing extremists such as AQAP while preserving the balance of international interests in the nation.
Revitalizing Dialogue
At the moment, returning to the caretaker government of President Hadi presents the most viable path to successful negotiations, while representatives of the Houthis and the country’s other political parties convene at the National Dialogue Conference. The NDC was formed after the country’s revolution in 2011, and despite great skepticism about its potential to iron out the differences between the groups, it still offers the best chance to shift political debate back to the conference table and away from the battlefield. While the NDC hammers out a new arrangement for the country, taking into account the concerns and frustrations of the Houthis as well as those of the other major national groups, President Hadi would continue to serve until new elections could be called after the final power structure of the country was determined.
The key danger to the NDC formula is that it has already failed once and therefore may be discredited in the eyes of many Yemenis. Avoiding another NDC breakdown may require an arbiter, such as the United States or another nation acceptable to all the parties, to facilitate discussion. A third party mediator has proven decisive in negotiations over issues such as Israeli-Egyptian peace and ending the Bosnian War, and in this case could help maintain productive discussion amongst the various parties without the historical, tribal, or religious overtones that often cloud direct negotiations.
The other key challenge would be convincing the Houthis to surrender some of their newly won dominance in order to revitalize dialogue. But while some accommodation of the military balance, which now favors the Houthis, took place on the ground following the coup, the group has not moved to unilaterally consolidate power. Rather, it first issued an ultimatum for the competing parties in Yemen to work out a political solution and then formed a transitional government to manage the state for two years. This suggests Houthi interest in creating a durable political compromise, and not simply in strengthening their own position at the expense of the other factions. It implies that they would be amenable to more productive negotiations aimed at establishing a fair political compromise in the country.
Unlike major security issues such as ISIS or the Taliban, the American response to the crisis in Yemen will need to incorporate a much greater emphasis on a diplomatic, rather than a primarily military approach. American foreign assistance has the potential to be a major inducement for the parties to return to negotiations, while American air power targets combatant groups like AQAP. As the only major power capable of providing the assistance necessary to prevent Yemen’s further disintegration, it has fallen to the United States to take an active leadership role in bringing the crisis to a diplomatic conclusion. Failure to do so could see a strengthening of radical anti-American elements, among them both the Houthis and AQAP, and a further dangerous increase in tensions in the Gulf.
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