Understanding the Crisis in Yemen

Posted March 27, 2015

Understanding the Crisis in Yemen

March 27, 2015

With Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi facing a Houthi offensive against his refuge in Aden earlier this week, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Sunni-majority nations launched a military intervention to push back the Houthis’ gains and restore Hadi’s government to Sanaa. Though the United States is not responsible for Yemen’s recent decline, it has for too long emphasized counterterrorism at the expense of political and economic concerns. Going forward, it should look to deescalate the conflict and restart the country’s political transition – the best way to bring Yemen the stability it needs to confront its many challenges. There are ways the United States can do that within the Saudi-led coalition, to which the United States is providing intelligence and logistical support. Several U.S. politicians have praised the intervention and much has been made of Iran’s connection to the Shia revivalist Houthi movement, but experts say the Houthis’ ties to Tehran are overstated and worry that the Saudi intervention could further destabilize not only Yemen, but the broader Gulf. Yemen is now poised at what threatens to be the start of a long and bloody civil war. The fighting will divide the country into many factions forging alliances of convenience, including the Houthis, Iran, ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Hadi, and the Gulf nations – all taking pressure off al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and giving it greater freedom to operate.

U.S. policy in Yemen has focused on counterterrorism at the expense of addressing the political grievances destabilizing the country. “If you look at U.S. policy towards Yemen,” Brian Katulis, Chair of NSN’s Board of Directors, said this morning, “it’s been a series of efforts that have not succeeded in its goal. It succeeded in containing al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP, the al-Qaeda affiliate) in preventing an attack on the U.S. homeland, but it has not succeeded in helping back and stand up the Yemeni government…The key question is, will this response actually produce any long-term stability, because the record of aerial bombing campaigns in defeating terrorist networks and establishing security is not strong.” As Amb. Barbara Bodine, who was the U.S. representative in Sanaa from 1997 to 2001, told NPR after the Houthis seized Sanaa in January, “We have been using the wrong tools by and large…If you don’t get at the economic drivers and you just go after the extremists’ symptoms, you’re never going to get ahead of the game.” [Brian Katulis, 3/27/15. Barbara Bodine via NPR, 1/22/15]

The Saudis have reason for concern in Yemen, but their concerns about Iran are exaggerated.

The Houthis are first and foremost a Yemeni organization, and their ties to Iran are tenuous at best. There is little evidence to justify the claims made by some people that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy. Iran has been a vocal supporter of the Houthis, partially on the basis of their shared Shia identity, but its direct support – which is rumored to include shipments of weapons and bags of money – has been difficult to verify. At its core, the Houthis are a distinctly Yemeni movement, rooted in the country’s religious and political history – their relationship with Iran is more a matter of convenience than affinity. After being marginalized for years, the Houthis’ recent success has much less to do with Iran or their sectarian identity than it does with their ability to capitalize on grievances felt by a broad swath of the Yemeni public. The Houthis “have gained support among various tribes over the past couple of years,” Laura Kasinof, a journalist who reported from Yemen for the New York Times, said yesterday. “They consolidated power and took over territory more so than before and part of the population in Sanaa supported them before these strikes.” [Laura Kasinof, 3/27/15]

But the Saudi intervention is likely to increase, not decrease, Iran’s involvement. The Houthis swept to power in Sanaa without any clear capacity to govern and the conflict between them and the government they forced out of the capital has further enfeebled the state and its ability to project power within its territory. Saudi Arabia should be more concerned about getting Yemen on a sound political footing so it can better focus on the political and economic grievances that continue to make Yemen’s undergoverned hinterlands a haven for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. But Riyadh seems much more concerned by Iran’s influence on the Houthis. That misses the point, writes Kenneth Pollack, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, who notes that “the Iranian role has been greatly exaggerated in what is first and foremost a Yemeni civil war.” Ironically, though, the Saudi intervention could make the Houthis more reliant on Iran and draw Iran further into Yemen’s war. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif responded to the Saudi intervention yesterday by saying that Iran will “make all efforts to control the crisis in Yemen.” [Kenneth Pollack, 3/26/15. Javad Zarif, 3/26/15]

The United States should be supporting opportunities to deescalate the conflict in Yemen and negotiate a new political transition. As the intervention inches Yemen toward what could become a long and complicated civil war, the United States should be supporting ways to bring the conflict to a swift diplomatic resolution. Oman is uniquely poised to broker an agreement: It is on cordial terms with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, and is the only GCC country to refrain from participating in the Saudi-led intervention. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini has reached out to Oman’s Foreign Minister to discuss “the way forward,” according to a press report. Though there are many challenges, the crisis in Yemen presents an opportunity to restart the country’s stalled constitutional reform and political transition process and could allow the country and the international community to rectify some of the mistakes made in the 2011 GCC agreement. The United States should be working with European diplomats and encouraging Oman to work towards a diplomatic process that addresses the domestic causes of this conflict.

The United States should be urging Saudi Arabia to exercise restraint, not encouraging them to escalate. Escalating the U.S. role would likely draw the United States deeper into a quagmire that not only could make the situation in Yemen worse, but poses threats to the entire Gulf. “The big question is what is the coalition going to achieve by military action?” Yemeni political analyst Abdel-Ghani Iryani said yesterday. “If they want to flex their muscles, a few days is enough. If they want to destroy the Houthi movement, they will fail.” Iryani and others warn that the Saudi strikes run the risk of rallying Yemeni support back to the Houthis’ cause. Pollack writes that “the only good reason for the United States to support the Saudi/GCC/Arab intervention in Yemen is to gain situational awareness into their operations and leverage to prevent them from getting more deeply involved. This is one of those situations where the United States needs to restrain its allies for their own good. The long and well-examined history of civil wars offers a clear warning that greater Saudi intervention in Yemen is unlikely to improve the situation and could easily undermine the Kingdom’s own security and stability over the medium to longer term.” [Abdel-Ghani Iryani, 3/27/15. Kenneth Pollack, 3/26/15]