Chaos in Yemen : Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism [1 ed.] 9780203847428, 9780415780773

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Chaos in Yemen

Chaos in Yemen challenges recent interpretations of Yemen’s complex social, political and economic transformations since 1990. It offers a new perspective to the violence afflicting the region, and explains why the ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ regime has become the principal beneficiary of this violence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the author not only finds the current regime to be the primary instigator of violence in the larger region, but also puts Yemen into a larger geo-strategic context which involves the US’s ‘war on terrorism’ campaign in the Horn of Africa and the constant struggle in Saudi Arabia to maintain stability. As a result, this critique of how past scholarship has situated the Ṣāliḥ regime and Yemen in the middle of a ‘global struggle against Islamists’, and more recently Iran, leads to new approaches to the issues policy-makers are facing in the larger Middle East. It introduces alternative perspectives to domestic Yemeni affairs, including a challenge to the overemphasis on the tribe and sectarianism, thereby offering a new approach that highlights the importance of integrating the region’s history as a foundation to analysing current events. Presenting alternative methods of studying Muslim societies in the modern world, this timely contribution to studies of the Middle East will be of great relevance to students and scholars of Middle East studies, Islamic studies and international relations. Isa Blumi is Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Department and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Arabian Gulf and Yemen, as well as issues of Muslim identity in the context of modernity. A former Fulbright-Hayes, Woodrow Wilson, SSRC, ACLS, and AIYS fellow, among his publications are the books, Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire (2003) and Foundations of Modernity (forthcoming with Routledge), and articles appearing in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

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Chaos in Yemen

Societal collapse and the new authoritarianism

Isa Blumi

First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Isa Blumi The right of Isa Blumi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Blumi, Isa, 1969– Chaos in Yemen : societal collapse and the new authoritarianism / Isa Blumi. p. cm. — (Routledge advances in Middle East and Islamic studies ; 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0-415–78077–3 (hardback) — ISBN 978–0-203–84742–8 (e-book) 1. Yemen (Republic)—Politics and government. 2. Yemen (Republic)—Social conditions. 3. Authoritarianism—Yemen (Republic) I. Title. JQ1842.A58B58 2010 953.305—dc22 2010002179 ISBN 0-203-84742-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-78077-3 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-203-84742-8 (ebk)

To the brave and profoundly dignified people of the Red Sea region who still have the guts to stand up to bullies . . . You deserve better than this

Contents

List of maps Preface and acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction

Rationale for new analytical approach  4 Outline of chapters  9

1 Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream A reorientation of scholarly focus  15 The failings of media speak  17 The ontology of tribal Yemen  19 Limits to imperialism: the emergence of the local  34 Conclusion  39

ix x xv 1

13

2 The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities 41 The foundations of change  46 Reinterpreting political Islām in Ṣāliḥ’s Yemen  50 The Red Sea prior to the First World War  53 Muḥammad Idrīsī’s challenge to Imām Yaḥyā  62 Conclusion  64

3 The contingent state: the dynamics of administrating Yemen

An imperial legacy and lessons learned  69 Internal alliance building: the case of Ṣāliḥ’s flirtation with political Islām  81 Internal alliance building: the case of the confederacy during the First World War  84 Conclusion  89

67

viii  Contents

4 The frontier as a measure of modern state power The border as object of state control  92 Object of state becomes subject in history  94 Territorializing southern Yemen  97 The modern Saudi–Yemen border  104 Conclusion  113

91

5 Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push

117

Conclusion

147

Yemeni paradoxes  119 Conditions of unification  124 Elections and their consequences  133 Post-war Yemen  136 The anatomy of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarianism  139 The shaping of new political boundaries  142 Conclusion  144 Agents of history  151 Yemen’s geopolitical trajectory  155

Notes Bibliography Index

159 179 195

List of maps

1 .1  General map of Yemen and neighbouring countries 1.2  North Yemen’s area of conflict

xvi xvi

Preface and acknowledgements

I first experienced Yemen in 1993. After spending two months travelling from Sudan through Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti to Somaliland, I could not help remarking that, although there were so many clear cultural and economic linkages between Arabia and the Horn of Africa, Yemenis seemed to be going in an entirely different direction from their neighbours sharing the Red Sea. Unlike in the Horn, where I had to navigate military and paramilitary roadblocks, security zones and endless queues at police stations to obtain travel permits, I was able to travel from Aden to the far reaches of the country in Ghaydah in Eastern Ḥaḍramawt without hassle. I travelled from Mukallā inland along tracks that led northwards through Shabwah towards Ma’rib. I could freely join the occasional jeepload of travellers to brave the arbitrary roadblocks the communities along the Wādī Jawf set up, demanding modest fees for their ‘services’. Up to Ṣa‘dah and its surrounding mountain villages, I stayed for four fascinating nights. Through Ḥajjah down the winding, unpaved tracks to the Tihāmah and the sweltering summer heat of the Red Sea coast, I experienced this newly forged country with the utmost care given me by my self-appointed hosts. Yes, the AK-47s were everywhere, as were the village roadblocks with locals brandishing grenade launchers and even the occasional anti-aircraft cannon. But I never felt threatened in Yemen. The roads were at times horrible, but the crops seemed to grow, village markets bustled and the water flowed as it had for centuries. I could travel the entire breadth of newly unified Yemen without the slightest hint of limitations, be it because of my safety or lack of provisions. Today Yemen gives me the impression of a country in free fall. For a traveller, the geography of the country today is clearly shrinking. Quite literally, the country is collapsing onto itself as large parts of the country are closed off to travellers. Access roads, once open thoroughfares connecting the country are now obstructed by army roadblocks that restrict access to the entire north, the Ḥajjah, Ma’rib and much of the southern provinces only to those cleared by the Ministry of the Interior. Huge numbers of internally displaced people from formerly rich highland communities have flooded Aden and Ṣan‘ā’ creating vast slums that highlight the growing inequalities shaping the country’s political economy. The once elaborately cultivated valleys in Ta‘izz, Ibb and Ḥajjah are now sucked dry

Preface  xi by a short-sighted frenzy to profit from the region’s growing addiction to the mild stimulant qāt. Cheap imports of grains and industrial food have, as in much of the world, denied farmers an alternative source of income. Instead of strong village communities, rural Yemen is experiencing displacement and abject poverty that contrasts with the growing displays of privilege in the capital. Yemen is becoming a generic failed society. Sadly, conversations today at the many teahouses, juice bars and fish restaurants in Ṣan‘ā’ are increasingly taking on the tone of resignation. Cynicism, always a part of the national discourse, is taking on a new level of intensity; my interlocutors in the capital today display an utter lack of hope that the country’s many problems can be resolved under the current order of things. In this environment, I often ask myself if Yemen will have the ability to tap into its once formidable will power to resist the clear strategic objectives that I believe animate the regime in power today. In my humble attempt to contribute to this struggle for Yemen’s future, the issues I address in Chaos in Yemen are the analytical failures of those who are responsible for shaping the larger world’s strategic thinking about Yemen’s unfortunate slide towards collapse. In many ways, colleagues who have made their careers out of studying Yemen have done this magnificent cluster of communities a disservice over the years. No doubt, the generation of scholars who, like me, flocked to Yemen in the 1990s either first ‘got hooked’ on Yemen in a brief period of extraordinary potential prior to the Civil War or were feeding off the still hopeful fumes of it being brought back at some point in the near future. Unfortunately, as outlined throughout, with the cynical use of war by the country’s leaders to secure greater power, the country just never retraced its tracks to that moment of glory. As a result of far too many of us failing to take a stand when it was needed, Yemen has become a country more closely resembling Somalia or Eritrea and Ethiopia across the Red Sea than a country with ‘lots of upside’. In fact, I think the best way to look at the country today is compare just how open and vast it seemed in 1993 with how restricted, stunted and injured it is today. What has happened to all of us who studied Arabic in Yemen over the past twenty years, drank the tea along the side of the road to Ta‘izz and attended those qāt sessions thanks to our incredibly generous hosts? Have we all become State Department bureaucrats, overly ambitious junior professors of anthropology, history or political science, or, worse still, ‘consultants’ to the parasitic corporate interests of the world that feed off chaos in places such as Yemen? It is our responsibility to give back to Yemen, not exploit the opportunities of the country’s demise as it slips into the conceptual vortex of the ‘war on terror’. This is especially the case when confronted with the garbage that is getting passed as ‘news’ and ‘expert’ analysis in the mainstream media recently. It is the responsibility of everyone who has grown to love Yemen and its peoples to do something to arrest the distortions presented as fact in the larger discourse on the ‘Islamic world’. One of the misconceptions dominating scholarship currently that I believe we have a responsibility to attack is that regimes such as the one in Yemen today play a vital role in the fight against ‘Islamic terror’. It is clear that these regimes are

xii  Preface being propped up in policy-making circles as serving the larger, often inarticulate interests of the ‘west’. There are, however, numerous examples of why such thinking is misconstrued and ultimately dangerous to those ambiguous ‘western’ interests. First, the misapprehension of policy-makers in the United States about the value of supporting the current regime in Yemen starts with the abuse of analytical tropes long ago identified as tools of imperialism. As highlighted throughout Chaos in Yemen, the stereotypes of the Middle East more generally, and Yemen particularly, often characterized as ‘orientalism’ are not simply directed at a distorted reading of ‘Islām’. They prove far more pervasive, infusing the seemingly less ideological discourse of development, globalism and international values as well. This book thus challenges one of the foundations of western intellectual hegemony: a world-view that is presumed self-evident and thus empowers experts to utter what is believed to be a priori objective truth about a Middle Eastern nature rather than offering a more nuanced appreciation for a variety of factors at play. A second agenda with this book is to convince policy-makers and the scholars who write the reports that inform them to reconsider their priorities. Rather than depending on a regime that has exploited its role as guardian of western economic and strategic interests, a new understanding of what actually causes local rebellions such as those in the northern province of Ṣa‘dah and throughout the former South Yemen will lead to a more responsible and, for the long term, a more effective, efficient and equitable administration of southern Arabia. In the process of advocating for a serious reorientation of priorities regarding Yemen (and the larger world), Chaos in Yemen places the ontology mobilized by policy-makers, journalists and the regime of ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ in a larger historical context. Highlighting the parallels and disjunctures with southern Arabia’s recent past may help centre this critique in ways that assist in advocating for a shift in future policies towards the region. To repeat, I write Chaos in Yemen out of frustration. The Yemen I had come to love after regularly visiting it since 1993 seems to be sliding into a new kind of abyss not seen since the Civil War of 1994. Although Yemen has never been an easy place to love, the depth of the friendships I have made across seemingly intractable cultural, class and educational boundaries tells me there is a real quality to this diverse country that is almost impossible to destroy. Almost. As I have watched with sadness what I know and love about Yemen fading into the backdrop as greed, systemic violence and a strengthening of distrust rise to the surface, I can only conclude that I will never be able to share Yemen with my children, wife and loved ones. This has thus been a book written in despair and a weak gesture of solidarity with those so many dignified, brave and decent human beings whose world is falling apart around them. As a work of scholarship, I have many to acknowledge for contributing to the completion of Chaos in Yemen. The first is more than simple acknowledgement, but an expression of love to my wife, whose own experiences in our cruel world should help her appreciate this book. Without Daki, my countless short trips to Yemen would have consumed me beyond my capacities to remain objective and

Preface  xiii sane. She has centred me when there have been many moments when I felt I wanted to let go. Te dua zemer. A similar acknowledgement of such fundamental value goes to my mother, who has been left blissfully unaware of what I have been doing all these years, just so she can rest somewhat easier. In this regard, much love and thanks goes to all those who have shared their homes, time and patience with me over the years, in Yemen and throughout the world. There is something heartening about the fact so many human beings who hail from Yemen can keep their sense of honour, dignity and almost oppressive hospitality in face of all the disruptions that being Yemeni brings. Although established in entirely different conditions, a similar acknowledgement of friendship and gratitude should go to the colleagues and friends I have made over the years at the New School for Social Research, New York University, Ṣan‘ā’ University and Istanbul’s many centres of intellectual exchange. This goes especially to Aḥmad, Ṭāriq, Nora Gashi, Aldo-Lauria Santiago, Stefan Weber, Thomas Kühn, Sabri Ateș, Sasha and Greg, John Curry, Nichole van Os, Ebru Sönmez, Sinan Kuneralp, Josef and Edith Haslinger, Stacy McGoldrick, Steven Hyland and Zachary Lockman. Many thanks go to my colleagues at the American University of Sharjah, from where I commuted to Yemen frequently. The support I received in particular from Nada Mourtada-Sabah, Neema Noori, David Lea, Thomas DeGeorges and Richard Gassan went beyond simple collegiality. A warm thanks needs to also go out to Stephen Keck, who facilitated my all-too-short return to AUS, a particularly interesting time in the larger context of regional and global affairs. It is from my hub in the UAE that I also met some amazing students. Without them, my appreciation for my Muslim heritage, the necessity for family and the joys of learning would have been far less intense. At Georgia State University in Atlanta, I can only offer my most humble appreciation for the support the College of Arts and Sciences has given me over the years as well as the invaluable guidance the History Department’s Chair and Vice Chair, Hugh Hudson and Michelle Bratton, have lent me. I also wish to highlight the contributions my friends/‘students’ have made towards an often rewarding experience in Atlanta: Mindy Clegg, Casey Cater, David Agnetti, Michelle Lacoss, Cliff Stratton, Stacy Fahrenthold, Alex Manavi, Bryan Boyette and Müsemma Sabancioğlu. I reserve special appreciation for Michael Castellini, Claude Misukiewicz and Jon Schmitt’s very detailed and time-consuming comments, which have clearly made this book sharper and more communicable. The collegiality at GSU’s History Department and the continued support I receive from my colleagues is also appreciated. I thank in particular those who attended my ‘brown bag’ presentation of this work’s earlier formulation organized by Jacob Selwood. I wish to also thank the continued support from the Middle East Institute, especially its director, Michael Herb, and the irreplaceable Alta Schwartz. To Joe/Joyce and Puss and the gang at Social Restaurant, Atlanta would be unbearable without you. In respect to putting this book together, I wish to thank Joe Whiting, acquisitions

xiv  Preface editor at Routledge, for first recognizing the potential of my work on contemporary Yemen, and Dona Stewart for introducing us. I am most grateful for the superb assistance and professionalism offered by Suzanne Richardson as editorial assistant on this project. Comments from the anonymous readers also proved extremely helpful. I must thank Visar Arifaj for his masterful work on the maps. Also, I have to thank the organizers and participants at the round table entitled Authoritarian Regimes and their Perpetuation in the Middle East, directed by Janine A. Clark and Bassel F. Salloukh, held at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in Florence. It is out of this round table that Chapter 5 first appeared and it is through that project that I decided to explore this angle of Yemen’s authoritarian slide. Lastly, I wish to thank the staffs at the Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, British Library, Public Records Office at Kew Gardens, Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri and Başbakanlık Arşivi in Istanbul. Their professionalism has always been the secret to my success. I also need to acknowledge the generous support I have received while conducting some of this research from the Social Science Research Council through their Near and Middle Eastern Dissertation Research Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the long-standing encouragement from the Council of American Overseas Research Centres and its director, the incomparable Mary Ellen Lane.

Note on transliteration Arabic terms have been transliterated following the guidelines provided by the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) in terms of long vowels and the diacritics indicating emphatic consonants. There are numerous words that have become part of the larger popular culture in France, Germany and the English-speaking world. The problem is they do not share orthographic patterns and are often inconsistent. Since the word shaykh, for instance, can be rendered as sheikh, and Muḥammad as Mohammed, I will stick to a strict transliteration policy even with these standard, often westernized terms. A similar problem is with place names and the names of prominent individuals as they appear in great variety in the media today. As there has been no standardization of Ḥūthī, Houthi (I have even seen it rendered Hawthi), I again will stick to IJMES transliteration guidelines. The ‘ta marbuta’ will appear as a final h in this work.

List of abbreviations

AMAE ASMAE ASMAI BBA BBC BEO DH.ID DH.MUI EIC FO GCC GPC HR.SYS HRW I.DH IJMES IMF KSA MAE MSF MV PRO SPA UNDP UNHCR UPI USDS Y.MTV Y.PRK.UM YA.HUS YA.RES YEE YSP

Archives Diplomatiques de Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affairi Esteri, Serie Affari Politici, Rome Italian African Bureau Başbakanlı Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul British Broadcasting Corporation Bab-i Ali Evrak Odasi Dahiliye Nezâreti Idare Kismi Dahiliye Nezâreti Muhâberat-ı Umumiye East India Company Foreign Office of British Government Gulf Cooperation Council General People’s Congress Haricye Nezareti Siyası Human Rights Watch Irade-i Dahiliye International Journal of Middle East Studies International Monetary Fund Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministero Affairi e Estare Médecins Sans Frontières Meclis-i Vükelâ Mazbatakları Public Records Office at Kew Gardens, London Saudi Press Agency United Nations Development Programme United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Press International United States Department of State Yıldız Tasnifi: Mütenevvi Mâruzât Evrakı Yıldız Perakende Evrakı, Umum Vilayetler Tahriratı Yıldız Tasnifi: Sadâret Hususî Mâruzât Evrakı Sadâret Resmi Mâruzât Evrakı Yildiz Esas Evrakı Yemen Socialist Party

Map 1.1  General map of Yemen and neighbouring countries.

Map 1.2  North Yemen’s area of conflict.

Introduction

To most objective observers, Yemen today is on the verge of collapse. According to various social development indicators, for example, the country is the poorest in the Middle East region with at least 58 per cent of children undernourished.1 Studies also suggest that Yemen’s 3.2 per cent annual population growth rate is overwhelming the country’s limited human, state and natural resources. Exasperating the strain on the country’s meagre social services and poor infrastructure is that Yemen is a major destination for the Horn of Africa’s migrants who seek access to the labour markets of oil-rich countries to the north.2 Adding to the catastrophe, this impoverished country of 23 million also suffers from serious environmental issues, especially the rapid depletion of water supplies, a condition that hinders efforts to expand Yemen’s considerable agricultural potential. Social scientists often see a direct correlation between such terrible socioeconomic and environmental indicators and an ineffective government. Incapable of addressing the needs of so many disparate groups of people who have yet to eliminate their supposedly pre-modern patterns of socialization, the relatively ‘weak’ Yemeni state faces any number of challenges that continue to threaten to sink the entire region into chaos. To some, it is precisely because of the persistence in Yemen of non-state associations (problematically reduced to forms of regionalism, tribalism and sectarianism) that the country falls under the analytical rubric of ‘weak states’ in the larger literature (Ayubi 1996). In Yemen’s south, for example, the number of regional movements surfacing since 2007 constitutes one of the major challenges to the long-term stability of the region.3 As seen from the outside, the underlying problem with the frequent deadly clashes between protestors and government troops regards who has the right to claim sovereignty in southern Arabia. The Yemeni state, in other words, does not command the kind of leverage conventional models require of the state/society dyad. As a consequence, lingering societal issues, unresolved since Yemen was created out of two separate states in 1990,4 put the young country at risk of another conflict in the south that would surpass the destruction experienced in the short-lived 1994 Civil War (HRW 2008a, 2009). Fears over a rejuvenated southern separatist movement have recently been overshadowed by the expanding conflict in the northwest of the country. Since at

2  Chaos in Yemen least 2000, a bloody confrontation has raged on and off between competing local groups in the northern provinces of Ṣa‘dah, ‘Amrān and Ḥajjah and the central state. By 2004, this disparate group of belligerents with often quite different agendas seemed to have coalesced around an expanding spiritual, moral, commercial and political movement known most commonly today as al-Ḥūthī.5 Named after a charismatic former parliamentarian, the Ḥūthī movement has become the principal representative for this long-rebellious region.6 Over time, al-Ḥūthī and his sons have mobilized a heterogeneous group of people to conduct an increasingly bloody insurgency against the Yemeni state and its allies that now commands the attention of the United States and regional powers.7 Not only has the conflict in Ṣa‘dah disrupted regional life but the fighting has spread into neighbouring Saudi Arabia.8 As Saudi air and land forces and their Yemeni counterparts conduct daily bombing raids in a vain attempt to defeat this growing insurgency, the frequent stories of innocent civilians and large numbers of Yemeni military personnel killed by the fighting only intensify the impression that Yemen is in a state of chaos (UN News Service 2009b).9 As if this were not enough to sink Yemen into deeper poverty and structural failure, there is also the issue with ‘radical Islam’. The country as a whole has long been accused of providing a safe haven to various puritanical groups that purportedly attract like-minded individuals from around the world to attend their schools (Burke 2004: 141, 147, 185, 215, 231; Byman 2007: 206, 208, 216–17). According to a number of sources, these seminaries (pl. madāris) are not only accommodating pupils eager to learn idiosyncratic interpretations of Islamic law (fiqh) but also providing cover to radical groups that conspire to attack various enemy assets around the world. Such associations of ‘al-Qā‘idah’ and its interconnections with two different insurrections had by December 2009 started to attract the attention of the US media. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, actually sent a reporter to Yemen; the result was this classic summation of the country’s problems: ‘In Sana’s [sic] snug alleys, men speak of war, secession and Al Qaeda [sic], which is busy scouring schoolyards and mosques for new recruits while much of the population spends hours each day getting a mellow buzz from chewing khat [qāt] leaves’ (Fleishman 2009). So persistent are these images of a perpetually inebriated, backward and violent Yemen unequivocally linked to the larger story of ‘militant Islam’ that the country has become one of those ‘frontline states’ in America’s ‘war on terror’.10 Indeed, the outbreak of violence in the summer of 2009 has proven serious enough to justify a visit by a US congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain, who has supported the Obama administration’s call for an increase in direct military aid to the country’s government (Miami Herald 2009). More recently, after a purported attempt by a Nigerian passenger to destroy an airliner over Detroit with his exploding underwear, the cries for ‘preemptively’ attacking Yemen (and the introduction of very expensive full-body screening devises at all airports) have multiplied throughout the United States and parts of Europe. Once accused by the US of neglecting its ‘international obligations’ in respect to dealing with these putative radical groups, the regime of ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ (in

Introduction  3 power since 1978) has recently positioned itself successfully as Washington’s key ally against various manifestations of ‘radical Islam’ (United States Department of State 2009). As a result of its increased cooperation with the US, the regime has secured greater direct support from a growing list of foreign allies.11 Unfortunately, such support has been accompanied by a new willingness to resort to violence on the part of the regime as its overseas allies continuously look the other way. As a result, many regions of the country have witnessed since the spring of 2009 a dramatic rise in attacks on ‘Islamic terrorist’ safe-havens or ‘traitorous’ separatist enclaves with questionable results.12 What proves troubling is that these actions often take the form of extra-judicial assassinations carried out by professional hit men or, more notoriously, unmanned drones that attack from the air, often with considerable civilian casualties.13 These measures represent a shift in the entire nature of Yemen’s political environment. Among other things, the rather dubious shoot-to-kill policy, often based on easily corrupted ‘intelligence’, has predictably become a source of tension in the country.14 Many locals have warned that worsening chaos in Yemen may be the longterm consequence of the regime’s strategic shift to facilitate the United States’ highly dubious strategy. This book argues that this slide towards greater state violence at the expense of pursuing traditional strategies of conflict resolution will only result in a dramatic increase in regional instability. The consequences of an internal collapse in Yemen, quite possible considering the growing risk of two simultaneous but separate regional insurgencies, would have immediate and long-term consequences that no one can either fully predict or offer policy suggestions to control.15 Tragically, it seems the same mistakes contributing to the chaos in the Horn of Africa since the 1970s are being repeated in southern Arabia, an historic parallel no one currently draws in the scholarship. One way of avoiding the continued downslide of Yemen is to utilize the region’s past and a particularly sensitive method of analysis that refrains from crude reductionisms all too often found in the media today. What this book offers is the presentation of an intersection of historic events drawn mostly from Yemen’s late imperial past (1860–1934) to demonstrate how carefully placed questions and a heavy emphasis on context could expose various hitherto unknown forces of change in the region. By interweaving these observations of a completely forgotten imperial history with events today (while using the same kind of context-specific methods of analysis), I believe this book will offer the reader an entirely different set of explanations for what is happening in Yemen. Armed with such insight into, for instance, why numerous different communities are in open revolt in the province of Ṣa‘dah and the south, it is possible to reconstitute our strategic calculations about ‘what to do’ with Yemen and, as a result, contribute to an entirely different approach to studying the larger world in the context of America’s ‘war on terror’. As an alternative, this study offers a new set of tools to explain what is happening to this strategically important country. Central to this task is asking questions about the various motivations of those living in Ṣa‘dah, Ma’rib and the south who confront the Yemeni state today. Sadly, what seems like an obvious set of

4  Chaos in Yemen questions regarding the principal actors in Yemen’s numerous crises has eluded many studying the region after 9/11. A major element of the problem stems from the heavy reliance on terminology often used to describe the Middle East, or indeed the larger ‘Third World’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992). Long dismissed in some circles as a product of a bygone colonialist era, the preponderance of orientalist terminology in the media and scholarship today suggests it still shapes the way the region is studied (Said 1981). Too often the reference to Yemen’s social pathologies, in particular, is linked to ‘tribalism’ and ‘sectarian rivalries’ and then used to explain group motivations and processes of change. The reduction of everything to such pathologies hinders the analyst from actually accounting for the many political and economic associations people in Yemen make to adjust to their constantly shifting conditions.16 Chaos in Yemen therefore recommends that a conscious disaggregation of the generic Yemeni subject from decontextualized ‘tribal’, ‘sectarian’ and regional constituencies purportedly dominant in the region will go a long way to shed light on the specific reasons for the violence in different parts of the country.

Rationale for new analytical approach Most experts who evoke an essentialist nature to Yemen’s conflicts, and encourage the Ṣāliḥ regime to play along, seem to have failed to realize that the use of colonial-era terminology makes any accurate reading of what is happening in Yemen difficult at best. This constitutes a tragic and potentially disastrous strategic mistake that, as has happened in the Horn of Africa and is currently happening in Iraq, Central Africa and Afghanistan, could sink the entire region into chaos for decades. Chaos in Yemen therefore argues that the diagnostic methods and enforcement strategies adopted by several US administrations and the European Union to justify propping up the Ṣāliḥ regime cannot, in the end, serve as the foundation to a long-term strategy. Rather, it behoves external actors (whose support the Ṣāliḥ regime thus needs to survive) to learn to ‘read’ Yemen’s crisis using other analytical tools than those volunteered by stakeholders who may have an interest in perpetuating conflict.17 The adoption of a more critical analytical position vis-à-vis the stakeholders involved in Yemen’s conflicts will help political scientists and policy-makers better understand the dynamics behind the violence as well as adopt a more sophisticated, less crudely ‘orientalist’ approach to analysing Yemen, which will produce long-term results in the form of a more representative, stable and adaptive future generation of leaders. This last benefit is especially important to consider for policy-makers as Ṣāliḥ’s regime may not last another twenty years. There are rumours circulating in Yemen, for instance, that Ṣāliḥ is in poor health. Other rumours suggest that powerful elements within the military (including Major-General ‘Alī Muḥsin al-Aḥmar, who is commander of the Ṣa‘dah campaign and Ṣāliḥ’s brother-inlaw) are liable to overthrow the regime if domestic support drops any further. In other words, talk on the Yemeni street indicates that the authoritarian shift of the Ṣāliḥ regime since unification in 1990 may have paradoxically destroyed Ṣan‘ā’s

Introduction  5 ability to keep Yemen intact. In this regard, one need not look any further than the regime’s failure to either suppress the Ṣa‘dah insurgency or quell violence in the south to understand that tactics to stifle dissent can be counter-productive (Day 2008). That is, of course, if stability is the actual goal. As argued throughout, there could be another way of interpreting events in Yemen today that explains why the situation has degenerated into perpetual violence: the slide into chaos could actually be part of the Ṣāliḥ regime’s larger strategy of survival in the context of a rapidly changing world. Considering such a possibility would require us to contemplate the possibility that the current regime in Yemen has gravitated towards a policy of instigating violence as a new strategy to consolidate authority over various constituent groups.18 It is quite possible that the Ṣāliḥ regime has used its hard-won support from the outside world to depart from earlier policies of accommodation within Yemeni society, and this constitutes a tragic reminder of how crucial it is for policy-makers and academics to maintain a sophisticated methodological approach to the ‘Global South’ and to be guided by the ethical principles I will outline below.19 As mentioned above, one of the conclusions I have drawn from studying the events of Yemen today through the filter of a close reading of its past is that the country’s government has progressively shifted its policies towards instigating societal collapse. A personal fear is that there are very few among the prominent voices talking about Yemen today who seem to really appreciate that this is happening. To add insult to injury, not only are the reasons why chaos in Yemen is taking place largely misunderstood, but the consequences of this potential collapse are also misinterpreted today by the very analysts who aspire to influence US and European policies (Hamilton et al. 2007; Scheuer 2007; Pillar 2004). In this respect, the Yemeni regime’s outside patrons (whose leverage over Yemen’s government has never been so great) clearly do not fully appreciate the incumbent dangers with Ṣāliḥ’s shift towards violent confrontation rather than negotiation. As argued throughout, part of the problem appears to reside in the fact that many decisions are based on a misplaced faith in a body of knowledge that is mainly predicated on some disturbing false assumptions. These assumptions are largely based on an analytical approach still largely taught in introductory courses on the Middle East around the world. That is, students are encouraged to identify phenomena as complex and multi-faceted as the Middle East and the ‘Islamic world’ as monoliths that can be analysed collectively in order to help explain what is happening in the larger world in general terms (Salvatore 1997). It has long been a complaint from within the Middle East studies discipline that adopting the generic terms usually found in market-orientated studies of the Middle East, terms such as ‘tribalism’, ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, ‘sectarianism’ and ‘ancient hatreds’, oversimplifies the constantly modifying cultural expressions of diverse peoples living in diverse socio-economic and political settings. As suggested below, these generic terms of the trade also distort the strategic calculations of government policy-makers as well. Such distortions, for example, have clearly influenced policy towards Yemen. Another set of goals for this book, therefore, is to present an argument for

6  Chaos in Yemen a serious reconsideration of how Yemen is positioned in the priorities of those foreign powers that are enabling the regime’s precipitous slide towards what I will argue is a new kind of authoritarianism. This can only be done, however, if the analytical categories used by scholars, policy-makers and journalists are handled with considerably more sensitivity to the complexity of south Arabia’s culturally, politically and socio-economically diverse societies, in the plural. Put differently, Chaos in Yemen contributes to developing an epistemological challenge to scholars and diplomats who claim a totalizing knowledge of the Middle East that is supposedly objective but in fact operates within the confines of a rigid Eurocentric perspective.20 Today, what western governments (and companies that invest in the region) get in return for their conditional support of the Ṣāliḥ regime based on strict strategic logic is an innovative, adaptive but vulnerable political order whose principal beneficiaries, the increasingly shrinking group of Ṣāliḥ loyalists, may actually be fomenting conflict with potential rivals in order to consolidate their control over Yemen’s economic assets.21 Although the country is purported to be not well endowed with oil and gas reserves, Yemen’s economic rewards are nevertheless large to those who rule.22 Securing these spoils entails considerable risk taking, however. Ṣāliḥ is no puppet of the United States. He forged temporary political alliances in the late 1980s with the Marxist rulers of South Yemen;23 openly supported a ‘diplomatic solution’ to the Iraq/Kuwait crisis of 1990 in defiance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the first Bush administration’s rush to war; and throughout the 1990s forged a coalition with a new party that conjoined various religious leaders (Iṣlāḥ party) who, since unification, reportedly advocated social policies that were looked upon with hostility in the west (Detalle 1993, 1998; Burgat 2006). There is evidence, in other words, that Ṣāliḥ has taken the risks he believes are necessary to remain in power. Ṣāliḥ’s slide towards an even more adventurous strategy today, one that aims to secure economic hegemony in a fragmented Yemen rather than share the wealth in a unified, perhaps federated system, is actually designed to induce conflict with rivals, not avoid it. By unleashing the limited coercive powers of the state to instigate conflict with communities in the northwest and central highland regions and throughout the former South Yemen, Ṣāliḥ is opening a multitude of Pandora’s boxes. In many ways, the resulting dynamics in Yemen are entirely predictable. No longer slave to a ‘deliberative’ social and political order in Yemen that had long demanded a system of mutual recognition and respect, the regime’s provocations have, and will likely continue to, instigate violent responses from its former political partners.24 Paradoxical to conventional thinking about the modern state, which assumes that stability and a monopoly of violence are the ambitions of modern regimes, is the possibility entertained here, that the chaos in Yemen is actually what the Ṣāliḥ regime wants. In the context of today’s ‘war on terror’ Ṣāliḥ is successfully making the claim that his regime is the sole reliable intermediary between outside ‘market forces’, their concomitant financial interests and Yemen’s natural (human or other) resources. Ṣāliḥ’s constantly shifting circle of domestic allies, in other

Introduction  7 words, are the only ones who can provide the kind of reliable intermediary roles necessary to properly realize Yemen’s strategic and economic value to the outside world. But is this necessarily what outside powers want from their regional partner? Influential policy-makers in Europe and the US must realize by now that, as with earlier support of Ṣaddām Ḥusayn and the Shah of Iran, or Israel and Ḥusnī Mubārak today, the unequivocal assistance given to brutal regimes creates regional bullies whose strategies towards vulnerable civilians and political opponents may prove to be impossible to reign in before disaster strikes. The question of why these processes that link external interests (often happily invoking long-debunked stereotypes) with local actors eager to consolidate power is of any importance to the larger world leads to four interlinking concerns that this book argues are essential to consider. The first is the possibility that a combination of misinformed policy, conveniently lingering racist logic tied to old colonial-era assumptions about the Middle East, and a short-term, perhaps even corrupted, strategic horizon, has imposed a policy of engagement that only functions in the atmosphere of violence. The source of this violence, albeit originating from a proactive state with a long list of dubious connections to private financial interests, has a way of expanding beyond the capacity of these manipulative forces to control it. In this regard, what past apologists of regional authoritarian regimes and the present patrons of the Ṣāliḥ government continuously fail to appreciate is the resilience of peoples they largely dismiss in their policy briefings, media reports, and think-tank papers. As discussed throughout this study, Ṣāliḥ’s ambitions are paradoxically creating entirely new sets of socio-economic conditions out of which a broad spectrum of political actors are constantly recalibrating their ambitions. As a result, hitherto unknown political alliances have become possible and in some cases, as with the insurgencies in both the north and south and the resistance of so-called allies of ‘al-Qā‘idah’ suggest, these local reactions to state tyranny have trans-regional consequences (McGregor 2004; UPI 2009; Bakier 2009). In other words, outside observers who use tired cultural explanations fail to note that, in the context of this intensely fluid period of political manoeuvring, new sets of constituencies are constantly emerging. This reveals that the apparent decision to prop up the Ṣāliḥ regime and support its use of violence is short-sighted and potentially counter-productive.25 What this all amounts to is a set of political, economic and social issues that are dramatically more complex than the language used to explain the Yemeni crisis today permits us to appreciate. Rather than reducing the violence taking place in different parts of Yemen to terms amenable to the Ṣāliḥ regime’s attempt to consolidate power, this book offers to policy-makers and social scientists another set of criteria to judge what is happening. As a result of this focus on context predicated on acknowledging social dynamism, Chaos in Yemen also suggests a possible resolution. Although the following study cannot account for all the distinct conflicts that are happening in the larger context of Yemen, it does offer a methodological correction to how we characterize these conflicts.

8  Chaos in Yemen By demonstrating that conflicts in Yemen are products of many, often contradicting, factors that have little to do with those broadly framed primordial ‘tribal’ or ‘sectarian’ identities often invoked by scholars, it may be possible to develop a new set of criteria to judge the utility of the Ṣāliḥ regime to outside powers. Developing a more sensitive appreciation for a disaggregated, complex set of issues in regions such as southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, we can also begin the much needed shift to an ethical engagement with others. Therefore, the second reason why this chaos in Yemen and the entire region is of concern to us is an ethical imperative to empathize with victims of such violence. As the second area of concern in the book, the moral imperative to challenge the implicit universalism shaping policy in the world today proves vital to analysing Yemen in a new way. In order to avoid the conceptual and discursive as much as the physical subjugation of those constituted as the ontological ‘other’ by exclusionary elite interests (in Yemen that can consist of obstinate local communities demanding greater access to the revenues produced from the exportation of the country’s oil and gas or so-called Salafists and Ḥūthī rebels) we need to adopt an ‘ethical sensibility’ that highlights the inherent complexity of the world and its plethora of social, economic and political possibilities. The numerous dynamic and persistently adaptive peoples of south Arabia deserve better than to be reduced to being the by-products of Yemen’s ‘chaotic nature’, which can only ever be addressed by ‘pre-emptive’ air strikes. Providing the space for that possibility requires the principals involved to adopt a politics of pluralism. This entails engaging the world by accommodating the constantly emerging crystallizations of individual and collective responses to the contingencies of life in Yemen, not as rigidly defined threats to preconceived ‘orders’, but as reflections of deliberations that can be more efficiently accommodated through politics than eradicated with tanks and fighter jets.26 A third reason why the events in Yemen should animate a response from readers is the one most often invoked: 3.5 million barrels of oil pass through the Bāb al-Mandab (the strait separating Djibouti from Yemen) every day. In strictly realpolitik terms, the potential for the chaos in Yemen to spill into the larger region threatens the strategic interests of far too many foreign powers. It is no exaggeration to argue that what happens in various districts of Yemen can affect the larger world. Events in seemingly isolated corners of Yemen have historically affected larger regional crises and current trends could easily drag Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and competing global powers into a regional conflagration that is much bigger than anything found in Ṣa‘dah just in December of 2009. This is especially the case with Yemen’s neighbours to the north. Any conflict involving politically fragile Saudi Arabia is begging for trouble in the oil giant itself.27 The often unreported violence inside Saudi Arabia over the past decade and power struggles within the various factions of the ruling elite mean that the dynasty in Riyāḍ (Riyadh) is never really secure (Abukhalil 2004). It thus behoves the self-appointed masters of global politics to realize that conflict in Yemen, a by-product of Ṣāliḥ’s strategic adjustments and numerous local disputes, could destabilize the region and threaten the very lucrative political order

Introduction  9 that assures that petrol dollars and diplomatic leverage continue to flow toward the United States.28 The final reason this critical reading of events in Yemen should be of interest is a general concern with the lazy thinking on display in some of the literature on Yemen. All too often, the generalization used to analyse events in the Middle East and the larger ‘Global South’ not only distort the ability of policy-makers to ‘get it right’ but, more importantly, it also constantly weakens our ability to critically engage the actions of the powerful who exploit local conflicts to expand their power. Conceding the narrative of events to the conventional rendering of the ontological Middle East and the ‘nature’ of Yemeni politics may already be leading to an inability to discern propaganda from reality. More importantly, such pervasive manipulation and passive reception of reductionist tropes can leave policy makers in the US and elsewhere vulnerable to being duped, a reality we have witnessed all too often in the Cold War and more recent ‘war on terror’.29 It is not too hard, for instance, to find examples of politicians and careerists in diplomatic and intelligence agencies who fall for the temptation to simply place the blame on the generic Islamic terrorist and thus render Muslims an undifferentiated group. In the face of recent shootings in Fort Hood, Texas, for instance, the 9/11 events and other tragedies that have ‘the markings of Islamic terrorism’, all too often the propaganda and incipient anti-Semitic racism fuse to distort reality. By constantly reading events as complex processes that resist reduction, we as conscientious scholars and political advisors can begin a regenerative process of ‘pushing back’ against the sloppy and opportunistic generalizations that have historically put a strain on pluralistic societies who try to resist fearmongering. One only need to remember Europe in the 1930s to realize that opportunism and careerism using exclusionary tools of analysis to both explain the world and contain it can quickly spiral out of even the most vigorous democratic society’s control. Chaos in Yemen therefore, will follow the dictum: there can be no monocausal historical or sociological explanation for events in Yemen. Such a guiding principle thus demands we take a more complicated, nuanced and historically transcendent approach to studying recent Yemen’s recent history.

Outline of chapters As already suggested above, one way to make possible a revisionist analysis of the region’s troubles is to adapt a new set of tools to reading (and thus talking about) Yemen. Chapter 1 argues that the uncritical evocation of Yemen’s ‘tribal’ or sectarian heritage, although often used by Yemenis themselves when communicating their political ambitions and limitations to others, proves counter-productive. Evoking tribalism, in particular, to explain Yemeni politics in fact distorts the manner in which outside observers interpret the deeds of various actors in Yemen. This concern with the use of outdated analytical tools that often reduce peoples’ behaviour to assumed loyalties and seemingly never-changing cultural, socioeconomic and ideological affiliations, leads me to highlight in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 the need to adopt new methods that involve historicizing social interactions.30

10  Chaos in Yemen In these chapters, I suggest that looking historically at a similarly conflicted period in Yemen’s past – the period between 1870 and the First World War that pitted external powers such as the Ottomans, Britain, Italy and France against each other for influence in the Arabian Peninsula – may offer a methodological guidepost to the analysis of the principal issues animating Yemen today. Events in and around the ‘Asīr district (which includes the present-day Yemeni provinces of Ṣa‘dah, Ḥajjah and ‘Amrān), for instance, prove analogous in many interesting ways to what is happening today. Not only were events in ‘Asīr before the First World War indirectly connected to events in the larger region, but the nature of the violence and external machinations constantly shifted, and so leaves us with a much more complex set of distinct local stories than the one portrayed in history books. In other words, we can make a similar observation about the complexity of the factors at play in Yemen today and the past once we are armed with the right kinds of analytical tools. Far from being an issue of simple external rivals – Ottomans versus the French versus the British then, or Iran and Saudi Arabia today – local agents of history have their own calculations, forge their own temporary alliances with others and thereby set the conditions in which external and domestic interests could operate in Yemen. This focus on the particularities of regional history during the period prior to the First World War offers some important contrastive opportunities to further highlight the dangers of Ṣāliḥ’s new kind of authoritarianism. There is therefore also a set of analogies one can usefully draw between the early twentieth-century ‘Asīr/Ṣa‘dah region and the chaos in Yemen today. Much of that which will sharpen our study of the current regime is derived from the events developing around the figure of Muḥammad al-Idrīsī (1876–1923). Much as Ṣāliḥ’s regime is entrenched in the formalities of state power today, in the early twentieth century, the Zaydī Imām Yaḥyā of the Mutawakkil dynasty, claimant to authority on the basis of local traditions, similarly faced a new set of socio-economic and political dynamics. Instead of the Ḥūthī, however, it was the ‘Asīri-based Idrīsī who ultimately compelled both the Yaḥyā regime and the Ottoman state to completely reorient their respective administrative, fiscal and strategic goals. As studied in detail in Chapters 2–4, Idrīsī emerged from the Jizān and Abhā areas of the ‘Asīr province at a time when much of the larger region was in economic, social and political flux. Local communities increasingly felt compelled by the turn of the century to abandon older commercial and political affiliations, especially with the Zaydī Imām, on account of considerable pressures caused by regional droughts and shifts in commercial markets involving the trans-Red Sea trade as well as the rise of new patrons, including the French, Italian and Ottoman imperial administrations. Idrīsī was able to fill an important spiritual, ideological, commercial, and ultimately, political gap in the region that undermined the sovereign control of the Zaydī Imām, whose seat was in dispute with the internal election of a successor to the recently deceased al-Manṣūr Muḥammad Ḥamīd al-Dīn in 1904. What we gain by looking backwards to this Idrīsī case is the ability to extricate ourselves from the analytical categories (tribes and doctrine) that dominate our thinking about events in Yemen today. This in itself is a departure

Introduction  11 from most studies of Yemen’s pre-First World War imperial past, on which I focus considerable attention to help frame chaos in Yemen today in a more dynamic methodological light. By using these largely ignored examples in Yemen’s Ottoman past, it will become clear that local contingencies are far more likely to shape the political strategies of large states than has been acknowledged in nation-state historiographies written in the twentieth century. Importantly, the current regime is taking a decidedly different approach from Imām Yaḥyā, who in 1911, 1918 and on several other occasions until his death in 1948 would adapt through the reorientation of his ideological, geographic and socio-economic horizons, including signing peace treaties (and thus surrendering sovereign claims) with the Ottomans, British, Ibn Sa‘ūd and others. Instead of forging meaningful relations with local as well as external actors, Ṣāliḥ’s regime has fundamentally changed the role of the Yemeni state in its relationship with its supposed constituency. Therefore, although I will weave back and forth throughout this study with these at times analogous cases in Yemen’s modern history, there are also important differences that need to remain central. What does not change from before the First World War to the present, however, is the importance of the local. Sensitivity to local dynamics will prove crucial to reinterpreting the Ṣāliḥ regime and its evolving relationship with various constituent groups from the mid-1980s onwards. Armed with the results of comparing and contrasting how various polities in Yemen’s modern history handled contingencies presented to them, Chapter 5 concludes the book by suggesting that the violence in Yemen since unification was a product of competing interests who failed to share power, and that this was largely avoidable. In addition to identifying the local origins of Yemen’s current crisis with Ḥūthī rebels in the north and disgruntled southerners (thereby disaggregating external interests from those of local opponents of the regime), it is further argued that much of what is happening and will continue to happen in Yemen is a by-product of a concerted effort by the Ṣāliḥ regime to abandon previous policies of collaboration with others. In order to develop further a working methodology that may prove useful to rethinking Yemen with these possibilities in mind, Chapter 5 initiates a revisionist study of the unification process by first challenging the utility of asserting that a single set of historical and sociological forces are at play. In turn, questioning the viability of a unified Yemen may help me make the larger suggestion that the regime of ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ today constitutes a new form of authoritarianism that may be harmful to US and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) policy-makers. The regime, in other words, not only is using the blank cheque it has received from external allies to deal with opponents more harshly than necessary, but for strategic reasons may have actually exacerbated these local disputes to the point that there was no recourse for locals but to form hitherto unknown alliances and then openly rebel against the central state. In the end, this book argues that Ṣāliḥ’s regime has adopted a policy that purposefully instigates conflict as manifested in state belligerence towards nonaffiliated constituent groups. The hostile tactics have taken the form of state

12  Chaos in Yemen harassment of political opponents (arrests of community leaders, shutting down party newspapers) and the failure to expand state development projects to certain regions while siphoning off revenues that these regions produce from mining, gas or oil. The regime has also granted governorships to allies in strategically important areas such as Ṣa‘dah in the north, Ma’rib in the northeast and Mukallā, Aden, Abyan and Laḥj in the south, which has resulted in tense relations between locals and the state. After considering the consequences of these heavy-handed policies, which include the type of cronyism in Ṣa‘dah that ultimately threatened the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, one may conclude that the tensions in the region are most likely the product of state policy rather than natural proclivities of constantly shifting communities living in the region. As we examine the Yemeni crisis, therefore, we should consider whether initiating conflict and antagonizing opponents to the point of violence is but one of many tactics employed by the Ṣāliḥ regime. The Ṣa‘dah and southern conflicts are in fact empowering the Ṣāliḥ state, both internally and in terms of support from the United States and Saudi Arabia. As it pins the blame for its authoritarian shift on the ‘war on terrorism’ and its struggle against ‘Iranian influence’, the Ṣāliḥ regime is being rewarded by the oil, gas and military industries via their US/GCC allies. Sensitivity to this possibility may ultimately help us reinterpret the role that neighbouring states, in particular Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, may have played (and continue to play) in the post-unification period of Yemen’s history. In these two countries directly transformed by the end of the Cold War and 9/11, a growing alliance with the US has Riyāḍ and Addis Ababa serving as coercive partners who ‘police’ the region in direct ways. As strategically important allies to the US, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Ethiopia are emboldened to pursue older strategic agendas that often constitute the consolidation of power for certain entrenched interest groups at the expense of moving towards greater accommodation of others in their respective societies. It may be the case, therefore, that the willingness of outside powers to ‘look the other way’ has resulted in the unintentional animation of the political imaginations of key constituent groups who see influence in Yemen’s conflicts as a strategic opportunity, just as in Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan. Coupled with a healthy appreciation for non-state players and their ability to articulate and act upon their own interests within various local contexts in southern Arabia, the study of Yemen becomes a challenge that at once demands a revisionist approach and calls for caution among policy-makers in western countries; their efforts to maintain their full-spectrum domination over the region may lead to a redrawing of regional maps that can open up an entirely new set of tensions that no one has the ability to control.

1 Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream

Scholars have long observed that terminology meant to ascribe to the ‘Islamic world’ a specific cultural essence that is uniquely ‘different’ from the ‘modern world’ originates from the exploitative relationship established between certain European commercial powers and the rest of the world (Asad 1993). The underlying importance of these ‘taxonomies of imperialist knowledge’ is that they have served capitalist interests in harnessing indigenous social and political practices to efficiently manage overseas properties and their inhabitants. Among the methods adopted by the colonial-era ‘experts’ hired to facilitate the exploitation of overseas commercial assets was to reorientate the way ‘indigenous’ cultures mediated the daily contingencies of life in a world purportedly dominated by European capitalists. It could be argued that the so-called local characteristics deemed ‘pre-modern’, ‘traditional’, and ‘antithetical to western values’ in mainstream discussions about Yemen or the larger ‘Islamic world today’ are the products of specific ways of ‘reading’ local practices and not local essences as often assumed in the literature indebted to a deeply rooted conception of epistemology (Dirks 1992; Deringil 1997). Because these characteristics serve as the medium through which readers and television audiences are encouraged to understand the Islamic story, the fact that they are a product of a very distinct historical moment by default renders them problematic, if not outright useless, for faithfully analysing the various complexities of what is happening, for instance, in Yemen today. As the overall goal of this study is to provide an alternative set of explanations for what is happening in Yemen, such an aim is at a very basic level served by first questioning the categories used to analyse events. In this way, journalists and scholars who invoke through ‘media speak’ and academic convention terms and concepts that are demonstrated below to be archaic colonial-era categories no longer trusted in the field of Middle Eastern studies end up losing their ability to accurately analyse the dialectal relationship between post-colonial structures of power and actual events. Often, terrible injustices result from reducing a group of ‘Muslims’ in Yemen to ‘al-Qā‘idah’. As an alternative, we must remember that these people so often labelled as ‘terrorists’ or ‘tribesmen harbouring terrorists’ are exposed, because of these loosely applied associations, to various forms of violence that results in the murder of thousands of

14  Chaos in Yemen innocent people. That is to say, whereas in the short term ‘another victory against al-Qā‘idah’ can be claimed when a cruise missile incinerates seventy people in south Yemen’s Abyan province, these assaults on innocents and ‘suspects’ alike only create a more intense local enmity that ultimately prolongs the social strife that these interventions are putatively intended to reduce. The goal here is to free us from the deductive trap that actually leads to crude simplifications which are used to justify the arbitrary, counter-productive use of violence under the false pretext of ‘disciplining’ incorrigible tribal peoples ‘who only know the language of violence’. The best way to avoid repeating the logic that abuses stereotypes to blindly pursue often ill-informed and exploitative (hence illegal) ‘policy objectives’ is to highlight how they actually cause more problems than solve. The reduction of complex ‘lifeworlds’ that these terms effect ultimately blinds outside observers and those so inclined inside Yemen to the constantly shifting social, political and economic conditions in people’s lives. The origins of this reductionism are the essentially imperialist epistemologies that still permeate media and scholarly lexicons. Paradoxically, the lingering presence of such discursive tools of abstraction results in the perpetuation of a rigid and limiting pattern of analysis of events in Yemen that is ultimately counter-productive. Ironically, the subsequent refraction through the prism of this language of domination leaves those who are often mindful of the problems with using their tools of abstraction nevertheless prone to operate from a discursive point of departure that assumes there are essential qualities to Yemen. In other words, in the hands of many sympathetic scholars and journalists today, no matter how obvious the injustices and how blatant the exploitative dynamics are (and no matter how much we do not like it), Yemen’s underlying social, cultural, economic and political ‘nature’ makes it impossible to reformulate the analysis of the current situation. This is the paradox of the Euro-American liberal sensibility: otherwise wellmeaning people will often themselves tap into the well of ‘white mythologies’ when dealing with their ontological other, be they ‘starving Africans’, ‘third world women’, ‘native peoples’, or Yemeni peasants.1 Over time, the longacknowledged distortions of imperial-era orientalism have led even sophisticated and sympathetic outside observers studying relationships of domination through these recalcitrant systems of knowledge to uncritically and reflexively accept as indispensable the tools of analysis so prevalent in contemporary media and scholarly engagement with Yemen. The end result is that any engagement through scholarship or the media with the issues of Yemen today is mediated by powerful underlying sets of assumptions that have enabled the Ṣāliḥ regime, when evoking ‘tribal backwardness’ and ‘Shī‘ī terrorism’, to pursue its post-9/11 authoritarianism with the support of the outside world, be they neo-conservatives entrenched within the military–industrial complex or, less directly, academics and journalists. As is explained in greater detail below, although they are heavily theorized, the reasons for this are actually few: the terminology used to analyse events in Yemen is assumed to reflect the litany of historical and cultural (if not biological) roots of indigenous social pathologies largely beyond the capacity of self-appointed

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  15 ‘western’ representatives to really understand and thus address with anything more than fascination or fear. In seemingly contradictory ways, in other words, the Middle East and Yemen more specifically are at once mysteries and diagnosed as incorrigibly ‘Islamic’, ‘tribal’ and ‘traditional’, terms which do have some assumed self-explanatory weight (Tapper 1983; Trablousi 1991). It is for this reason that the underlying conclusion among many analysts is that violent suppression is the only meaningful way to cure Yemen’s, or the broader ‘Islamic world’s’, problems (Watkins 1996). Sadly, this calculus embedded in certain circles of international relations practice perfectly suites a number of regimes currently in power throughout the world. Issues of poverty, social injustice, exploitation, structural adjustments and their impact on contemporary social orders are, as a consequence, all beyond the capacity of the current world political order to address without the cooperation of the state. For the Middle East, with all its particular social pathologies enumerated in ethnographies and political histories published over the last two centuries, state violence is thus the only means of containing the incumbent threats that go along with the manifestations of the Middle East/Islamic illness. To address the underlying dangers of allowing these patterns of association to persist, the next section deconstructs the analytical paradigms accompanying more straightforward geopolitical and journalistic engagements with Yemen today. While acknowledging that such an exercise does little to confront the many possible ‘deep politics’ dynamics at play in Yemen and its links to the interests of a global financial elite, it is nevertheless necessary to stress the possibility of beginning to undermine the rigid formulas of analysis that is used to articulate and thus justify obvious and not so obvious policy mistakes and injustices that are perpetuated in Yemen.

A reorientation of scholarly focus The imperial-era assertion that there is an ontological difference between something called the West and the Muslim world has dangerously reformulated today in the hands of policy-makers and apologists for the neo-liberal political order. As the critic of conventional international relations theory David Campbell explains, such transactions between various stakeholders today are analysed through the prism of an assumed moral hierarchy that is informed by a lingering racist epistemology inherited from the colonial era. This epistemology has devastating effects on the formulation of policy because it reduces the complexities of the world to assumed truths that had once helped formulate metropolitan identities at the expense of permitting the pluralities of the world to share a role in history (Campbell 1992). The professed ‘international order’ that guides such attitudes today and assumes ‘rationalism’ and ‘politics’ thus reflects a largely accepted set of criteria in ways that distort how the application of American and corporate power is actually projected. Those observing the complexity of Yemen through this prism of assumed Western hegemony try to subjugate the particularity of the identified ‘other’, in this case Yemen’s ‘tribesmen’, ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ and ‘Southern

16  Chaos in Yemen separatists’, to a particular (essential) code that must always relate back to the larger world order dominated by Euro-American ‘principles’ or ‘values’. The problem with the way this transaction continuously unfolds between unequal actors in the context of chaos in Yemen is that the means by which journalists, policy-makers and scholars who inform them still read the world is mediated by an ever-present orientalism that has long ago been proven incapable of reflecting the complexity of indigenous realities. A long-established counter-narrative trope about so-called western reductionism introduced by Edward Said (1978) has proven useful to certain stakeholders wishing to express their resentment and fear towards retrograde colonial-era tactics recycled today in the name of a ‘war on terror’. Unfortunately, what is often misunderstood during this interaction between the ‘tools of empire’ and an assertive ‘anti-colonial’ resistance within a scholarly (theoretical) framework is that the ‘radical’ critic of power often fails to attribute certain agency to the assumed ‘victims’ of western hegemony. Far from being passive victims of modern state power, those in Yemen targeted by orientalist epistemologies will prove throughout this study fully capable of adapting to temporary contingencies. In fact, in somewhat paradoxical fashion, these misappointed victims will actually use the very same orientalist reductions of indigenous life to secure the institutional patronage that occasionally comes to those ‘tribesmen’ or ‘ethnic minorities’ willing to collaborate. Here then, is a critique of not only the obvious purveyors of racist tropes, but the actual appropriation of the tools of domination by the Saudi dynasty, the Ṣāliḥ regime and even regional claimants to power such as the leaders of southern separatist movements to further temporary and long-term ambitions. This reorientation of where and how power is applied thus requires of critics of ‘western epistemologies’ to also be aware that power is mediated at various times in specific social and economic contexts that need to be studied. As argued at length by those observers with some sensitivity to the implications of reducing peoples’ actions to a generic, ahistorical, decontextualized ‘Muslim’, be they subordinate to ‘western’ power or living in quite distinct post-colonial contexts, the arena of debate within so-called Muslim society in places such as Yemen is complex and ever changing (al-Azmeh 2007: 208–15). Implicit in these changes are actual debates about individual and group associations and the larger context of on-again off-again violence between various stakeholders at the local, regional and national level (Bonnefoy 2008a,b). Yemen’s ‘Muslim’ community, therefore, must be understood in the plural and with special appreciation for local context. Despite the frequent invocation of sectarian distinctions in the literature – Shī‘a versus Sunni versus Salafī versus Jew – these overly broad categories do not help us appreciate the diversity within Yemeni religious life; as highlighted by innovative scholarship in recent years, these social, religious and economic constituencies cannot be simply presented to readers as cohesive, monolithic groups pursuing mutually exclusive religiopolitical goals (Knysh 2001; Hollander 2004). Unfortunately, even when there is some differentiation made in the scholarship, it too has the tendency of reducing these more numerous variances into

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  17 all-encompassing categories of analysis in their own right. One of the religiopolitical ‘groups’ more regularly invoked as deviating from the normative arena of ‘Muslim societies’ are the self-declared salafīyun. At times incorrectly labelled ‘Wahhābī’ or ‘fundamentalists’ by their local opponents and misinformed authors, the salafīyun actually constitute a complicated web of intersecting interests that are determined by variables such as the relationship they have within communities in villages, towns and regions in Yemen and the kind of financial patronage each group has with the outside world (Dresch and Haykel 1995; Weir 1997). In other words, a number of factors contribute to the political and cultural footprint that many of these temporary communities loosely linked to ‘al-Qā‘idah’ leave both locally and nationally. This reality is difficult to gauge when utilizing general terms to explain recent events. Local context, therefore, and not the use of generic terminology found in all forms of media today, is what journalists, scholars and policy advisors should be seeking to chart in their explorations of Yemen.

The failings of media speak By all accounts, the war raging in the north of Yemen has now dragged Saudi Arabia, the United States and other regional powers into the fray (al-Habtoor 2009). The seriousness of the events would thus seem to warrant greater attention considering the strategic value these outside powers have vested in influencing Yemen’s future. Instead, only brief snippets have appeared in the mainstream print media and, with the exception of Middle East-based twenty-four-hour news programmes such as al-Jazeera and al-‘Arabīyah (which have adopted a hostile tone towards the so-called Ḥūthī rebels’ cause), virtually nothing has been said about Yemen’s numerous crises in western broadcast media that does not include the dominant tropes inherited from the colonial era. For readers of the major news sources, in other words, the reporting that has relied on ‘expert’ analysis from security specialists in Dubai or US-based scholars has left them with the impression that Yemen’s conflicts are pregnant with sectarian and tribal significance.2 In a way, this oversimplification of the protagonists’ objectives has been encouraged by the Ṣāliḥ regime. Sadly, as much as the clumsy official attempts to shape how the Arabic-speaking audience views the events – with staged military exercises recorded by Yemeni official news agencies showing soldiers poorly acting out a ‘battle’ with ‘enemies’ – fools nobody, the equally crude attempts at reaching an English-speaking audience by linking the regime’s opponents with Iran and/or ‘al-Qā‘idah’, is proving to have some traction.3 For those bothering to read the pro-regime sources produced in Yemen, it is quite clear that the generic enemy is offered little or no chance of communicating its rationale for engaging the state. Revealingly, what is often discovered by reading these sources is that the colonial-era tropes so often criticized as racist and unrepresentative are readily invoked by Saudi and Yemeni state propagandists. Yet analysts based outside the country are studying the region’s conflicts indirectly through these official sources. Even taking a cursory look at the media shows that the same biased and often illogical sets of explanations are used to

18  Chaos in Yemen explicate to readers who the main stakeholders in this conflict are, and what constitutes their motivations. Far too often the official websites of the Yemeni and Saudi governments (or their various semi-independent media outlets) have thus shaped the parameters of the discussion in the mainstream western media. In other words, well-respected newspapers and their journalists in the global mainstream media are reflecting a profound bias by either not considering the diversity of perspectives of those called rebels or resorting to generalizations about the country’s poverty, lawless nature or even notions of a mysterious suprahistorical ‘East’ to explain their motivations found in official media. Excerpts from Robert F. Worth’s recent New York Times article on the conflict in the north, one of the better ones on the situation in fact, offers numerous examples of both a professional’s careful reporting and the unfortunate slide towards cliché when answers to the question ‘why’ are needed: The conflict has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, fueling a humanitarian crisis and worsening the chaos that has already made Yemen a new haven for Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Yet this mysterious war seems to have more to do with the crumbling authority of the Yemeni state than with any single cause. The Houthi rebels, after all, are a small group who have never issued any clear set of demands. They have been fighting the government on and off since 2004, and it is not clear why President Ali Abdullah Saleh decided in August to force an all-out war [. . .] ‘Saleh started this war mainly because he wants his son to succeed him, and many in the military and government do not accept this,’ said one high-ranking Yemeni official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, echoing an analysis that is often heard here. ‘With a war, people rally around him, even the United States, because they fear chaos in Yemen if he falls.’ [. . .] The fighting in Saada has also provoked tribal and sectarian animosities that threaten to further destabilize the region. The Houthis formed in part to fight back against the influence of hard-line Sunni Islamists, who received support from neighboring Saudi Arabia. The Yemeni government has often used these extremists (usually known as Salafists) as proxy warriors against the Houthis. (Worth 2009) Worth’s piece refers to tribal and sectarian factors (with no subsequent explanation of what the reader is supposed to do with this information) and an incoherent rebel movement which initially, seemed to be fighting for no real cause and only later – and then only partially – to organize its men in an effort to ‘fight back against the influence of hard-line Sunni Islamists’. Part of Worth’s problem, therefore, is a reliance on the reductive concepts used to present an accessible framework to his audience intended to help them ‘understand Yemen’ as expeditiously as possible. Contrary to the impression often left when reading such pieces in the mainstream media, the persistence of so-called western tropes still ubiquitous today in the New York Times or the Saudi Press Agency does not give us the right to

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  19 play along and believe that some people lack the capacities to think, politically organize and economically thrive. The polemic adopted here is thus especially directed at journalists, social scientists and ‘local’ governments who resort to this kind of thinking when they filter information from the field and relay an impression to their quite different audiences. At a more abstract, theoretical level, what is in operation with the analysis of events in Yemen and the larger ‘Islamic world’ is a systemic rigidity dictated as much by market forces as by the cultural proclivities western observers claim to know so much about (Lyotard 1984). Indeed, many of the stubborn orientalist motifs that persistently reanimate narrow angles of interpreting Yemen hinge on a power dynamic as articulated by Michel Foucault (1972) decades ago. To study Yemen accurately, we must abandon these generic categories of tribe, sectarianism and the use of ‘al-Qā‘idah’ or ‘Salafist’ to characterize the ambitions of the many groups confronting the Yemeni state today. The application of these analytical terms obfuscates local dynamics and thus denies us access to the micro-politics that shape the manner in which people in various parts of Yemen calculate their respective interests, concerns and ambitions vis-à-vis each other and the larger region. This especially applies to the relationship with the current regime in power, in itself a complicated set of constantly shifting alliances often animated by local factors. We can really accomplish a new method of reading Yemen, however, only by first deconstructing the units of analysis most frequently evoked in the scholarship and then demonstrating through a revisionist history of recent events how we may apply this more sensitive approach to produce a more nuanced and comprehensive story about the region. The next section attempts this by first offering an explanation for the origins of the orientalist tropes that shape much of the analysis on Yemen today.

The ontology of tribal Yemen From at least the early nineteenth century, Bombay-based East India Company officials trying to secure profitable commercial relationships with the larger world attempted to coopt local politics to help more cheaply manage such places as the strategic port of Aden and its hinterland. The use of treaties between selected individuals in South Yemen (and throughout the world) was mediated by a set of organizing principles established with the help of colonial-era ethnographers who formulated a subfield known as social anthropology (Cohn 1987, 1996). Under the guise of ‘social science’, these imperial agents began to lay out a universally applicable scheme of social organization in so-called primitive societies, of which rural ‘tribal’ Arabia was considered one. The subsequent social hierarchies ‘observed’ by social scientists such as Evans-Pritchard and his students translated into strategies of rule in which territories were catalogued with the intention of empowering locals – shuyūkh, sulṭān, ulamā’ – with administrative autonomy in return for assuring the continuity of order as seen fit by British administrators. These altogether contrived social and political units helped with the consolidation

20  Chaos in Yemen of power networks through which future imperial state authorities (and later indigenous centralizing states) could engage subject populations in a more ‘rational’ way. Such reorientations of ‘deliberative practices’ deemed necessary to ‘efficiently’ rule over what Ernest Gellner (1981) called ‘Muslim Society’ include coopting local methods of conflict resolution. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the development of a close relationship between capitalist-era colonial power and the local intermediaries empowered to serve as corporate proxy agents, be they the putative ‘tribal chiefs’, ‘judges’, ‘commercial agents’, or ‘local sovereigns’ of indigenous society, was intended to help streamline an efficient, minimalist imperial administration in regions such as southern Arabia. As well established among critics of western cultural hegemony, the emergence of colonial-era social organization categories such as the tribe, tribal chief or shaykh (pl. shuyūkh), amīr, ‘ulamā’ and sulṭān were instituted to use locals as objects of expert knowledge that would be used to assist ruling over vast territories of the so-called Third World (Asad 1986; Zubaida 1995). Perhaps the most readily used means of regulating these local surrogates and justifying the relations they had with their imperial overlords was the mobilization of certain narrow interpretations of ‘the law’ to justify the way British, Ottoman, French and later American administrators ruled over the Middle East (Messick 1993).4 Unfortunately, it is rarely appreciated today that, when these subjects of close study in the colonial period are evoked as a permanent fixture in the political, cultural and socio-economic realities of, say, Yemen, the historical context of their actual origins is lost. As a result, the histories of these ‘tribes’, ‘judges’, and ‘chiefs’ being a product of the colonial era are ignored and a more dubious presumption that these categories are somehow primordial and existed prior to modern imperialism distorts an important aspect of life in the region. Again, this is perhaps best noted in respect to how British, Ottoman and French administrators’ reorientation of ‘Islamic’ law led to the purposeful targeting of certain categories of newly designated subjects, including women, so-called ethnic minorities and legal ‘anomalies’, who were legally marginalized in these modern imperial times but had previously enjoyed considerable influence in local life (Ahmed 1992; Abu-Lughod 1998). In other words, life under ‘western’ legal, commercial and administrative hegemony actually created social pathologies that are today assumed to be ubiquitous throughout ‘Islamic’ history. As already mentioned, part of the problem with researching the Arabian Peninsula today is the disciplinary foundations upon which one must rely. It has been noted, for instance, that the establishment of the ‘tribe’ as a medium through which imperial policies can be introduced to Yemen was predicated on creating social spaces in which sulṭāns, tribal chiefs and emirs could begin to help administer south Arabia (Willis 2004: 124–5). Problematically, the utilitarian use of the kind of cultural essentialism regularly critiqued by those working outside Yemen has been eagerly adopted by social anthropologists who flocked to the region after the 1970s with little concern for the awkward assumptions inherent in the use of such epistemological frameworks (Adra 1982; Meissner 1987). Therefore,

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  21 without adequate training and subsequent sensitivity, the predominate themes of the literature established by those previously mentioned colonial-era ‘specialists’, those that emphasize primordial social organization patterns over diversity, pluralism and contingency, inevitably distort any subsequent analysis of social, political and economic interaction in the region. The first task in correcting these distortions is to identify which are the most abused categories of abstraction that are used inappropriately to explain people’s motivations without having to consider the context in which people are acting. As most often done in exercises like this, the categories are first put in an historical context themselves. Historians of Africa, in particular, demand sensitivity to the debilitating, residual influence that imperial-era categories have on the study of vastly different cultures, contexts and settings found in the continent. To Frederick Cooper (2005), for example, these cultural and social categories were reified within a system of colonial state patronage that created an indigenous social hierarchy that helped efficiently enforce Euro-American hegemony. These ‘tools of empire’, however, rarely reflected actual social relations on the ground. Indeed, the ubiquitous tribes, chiefs and other generic categories proved useful only ‘for home consumption’. Considering this, after carefully contextualizing the actions of people objectified in social science terminology as tribesman, ‘ulamā’, qāḍī or shuyūkh, it is possible to recognize that they persistently undermined the logic of these universally prescribed terms.5 As a result, the structures used to mediate relations of power between the temporary rulers and local populations they strive to subordinate are rarely effective and therefore often openly challenged. There is no better example of this than the frustrations experienced by British, Ottoman, Italian or French imperial agents in south Arabia, like those of American administrators in Iraq or Afghanistan today, when ‘natives’ did not play along within the neat social hierarchies laid out in government manuals and newspaper articles. Revealing such frustrated administrative agendas, it is possible to argue for the need to study current events in their specific socio-economic, political and locally determined strategic context. Interestingly, the Ottomans, Italians, French and British in Yemen proved at times quite adept at adjusting to these problems by retaining a strong appreciation for the contingencies in local life. As the Ottomans and their rivals clearly understood, the presumed influence certain quintessentially ‘indigenous’ cultural practices, social hierarchies and political institutions have over ‘society’ proved to constantly fail in the face of mediating factors that shape diverse peoples’ everyday lives. In other words, the so-called tribal shaykh, sulṭān or qāḍī who play such a prominent role in almost all studies of contemporary Yemen are not immune from the contingencies of micro-politics reflecting daily life in market towns, hillside farming communities or migrant communities. That is to say, the numerous ‘subsections’ of ‘Muslim society’, the supposed subordinates to idealized seats of traditional authority coopted by empire and often codified by ‘law’ or social science models are actually constantly adjusting their place in the world. In turn, these adjustments may or may not subscribe to the authoritative expectations

22  Chaos in Yemen of modern states invested in the idealized categories of the ‘Islamic world’ to help rule over Yemen’s many distinct polities. Tragically, these micro-dynamics of life are brushed over today with the use of all-encompassing categories of analysis in arenas such as academia and mainstream media. As a result, despite efforts by some to inculcate new methods of analysis more in line with studies of modern Africa, Asia and the Americas (Caton 1987; Munson 1993), the influential work of Ernest Gellner (1981) probably still best personifies the disciplinary tendencies that asserted ‘expertise’ and henceforth shaped how Islām, Muslims and the larger world were understood in the neoimperial metropolis.6 Gellner preferred to think of the ‘Muslim World’ as a closed entity, fixed structurally to a definable pattern that consisted of ‘bricks’ which included Islām (as the monolithic faith) and communal segmentation predicated on neatly defined hierarchies as the social structure. To Gellner, these ‘bricks’ constituted ‘neat, crisp models’ that helped inform the scholar on how to read this alien world (Davis 1991: 71). Unfortunately, such analytical logic has long been in use in the Arabian Peninsula. As colonial officers cum social scientists foresaw, Gellner’s functionalist approach to the history and contemporary politics of the region relied in particular on constructing a ‘tribal’ superstructure over an otherwise complex, constantly shifting cluster of communities outside the cities (Lancaster and Lancaster 1992).7 To a large extent, this work has failed to reflect on the historiography which remained blind to how the social complexities of these highly contested areas were reduced at the bureaucratic level by various states over the last century to anticipate and create temporary political constituencies that were more or less assumed to be geographically fixed. For instance, historians and social scientists today fail to see how through the cooperative engagement with some established political (but largely temporary) hierarchy often possible only after state patronage, commonly associated with tribal ‘chiefs’, emirs or sulṭāns, the named community or ‘tribe’ would then become bureaucratically fixed and charted on maps or delineated by treaty. These local intermediaries were then expected to build on temporarily established patronage networks by funnelling generous supplies of modern guns and access to trade routes controlled by European commercial powers in order to gain leverage over others in the immediate area who had consistently challenged state power. These contentious processes of community-building, seen through a careful and critical reading of the past, prove extremely unpredictable. Despite this often observed fact of daily existence by many of the same ethnographers who evoke the crudest form of reductionism in respect of Yemeni political and social life, it is widely assumed that any constituent group bureaucratically documented becomes the ubiquitous ‘tribe’, which retroactively takes on primordial significance in respect to long-held assumptions about patrimony and social loyalty. These homogenizing generalizations throughout the modern era have reduced the complexity of the constantly changing internal dynamics of these communities to a set of cognitive categories for analysis devoid of local context and contingency (Weir 2007: 2–6).

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  23 For many studying Yemen in particular, Gellner’s representation of the ‘Muslim Society’ thus became the convenient social model of the segmented ‘tribe’ that was meant to explain the origins of violence in the world (Gellner 1981: 117). These purportedly apolitical and disorganized communities constituted, in a seemingly contradictory way, the superstructure of identities that constitute the ‘bricks’ of southern Arabia’s political, economic and social order, which is often translated on the ground by an illogical ‘enmity between men from different tribes’ who would otherwise profit from cooperation (Dresch 1989: 336–7). In other words, for social scientists these ‘tribes’ constituted both the source of social instability in the larger Yemeni context and an explanation for the bureaucratic strategies of the modern state. The unifying goal for anthropologists flocking to study this kind of interaction has been thus to create a usable lexicon of terms and manners upon which future (and comparable) studies of tribal communities could rely. In addition to studying contemporary societies, most scholars believed these models of analysis could be equally useful to studying Yemen’s past in the sense that they explain how states (as opposed to disorganized tribes) tried to subjugate otherwise unruly tribesmen (Gingrich 1993). To most anthropologists and political scientists working on the area, therefore, current and past communities conform neatly to the archetypes of Yemeni culture and match, remarkably enough, the analytical models adopted by Gellner working in Morocco or Evans-Pritchard in Libya and Sudan. In other words, tribal pathologies in, say, Dhū Muhammad or Hūth in North Yemen can readily be compared to those elsewhere in the Muslim world, hence the tribe becomes the catch-all term for journalists and scholars to use to help explain what is happening in Yemen and larger Middle East today: it is by their very nature that northern tribesmen resist the Yemeni state (and by default, the new world order).8 Critics within the field of anthropology have questioned such methods of ethnographic inquiry, suggesting the need for a more contextual and historical examination of the subject (Stocking 1991). This wider concern for the tendency to objectify social processes is particularly relevant for the Arabian Peninsula as it is there that the reification of categories such as tribe, and sectarian and confessional group allegiances (i.e. Zaydī and Shāfī‘ī), animate an often fruitless search for ultimate causality (Caton 1987). One particularly problematic consequence of using such categories for these purposes is that they distort the manner in which rural peoples throughout a diverse ‘Muslim’ world are expected to function in relation to the state and, as is evident with the expansion of America’s ‘war on terror’ into Yemen, how people are expected to interact with the outside world. One way this is done is by decontextualizing a very flexible Arabic language term by way of a translation into European languages that connotes a far more fixed meaning with an entire history of its own. The term ‘tribe’ itself, for example, is embedded in a conventional rendering of various terms in the larger Arabic-speaking world and Yemen in particular – qabīlah – which refer to political, economic and social groups who interact within certain territories. But those generally acknowledged as people who are settled in the mountainous areas of Yemen, the qabīlah (pl. qabā’il) in a Yemeni context, actually constitute social

24  Chaos in Yemen and political units within a given territory that do not neatly fit within a presumed social hierarchy mediated by local laws (‘urf) and loyalty claims that completely ignore numerous local contingencies. In fact, these temporary alliances between loosely constituted communities, as I call them, often fragment as members often ‘switch’ their affiliations. This will be discussed later by using historical cases. Although those anthropologists who note these ‘defections’ appreciate that communities are constantly negotiated, they still tend to resort to studying Yemen’s rural politics in decidedly retrograde translations of colonial-era terms (Weir 2007: 114–15). As an alternative, much as in the thinking of Mundy (1995), who argued highland cultivators could be more usefully identified as farmers rather than tribesmen, I too suggest replacing the term ‘tribe’ but with the more fluid concept of a community – political, economic and social – whose composition by individuals is contingent to constantly shifting conditions in the immediate area where people live. These peoples, in other words, temporarily fixed in qabīlah (but not ‘tribe’) form but fleeting alliances to successfully protect individual and, by default, shared interests. The composition of these qabā’il are mediated by issues of daily importance, not primordial and everlasting associational duties predicated on tradition or loyalty to a patriarch. But, at the same time, these constantly shifting constituent groups are not programmed to necessarily resist efforts to organize them as largely suggested in the segmentary model given special attention in this chapter. Anthropologists working in Yemen have noted with great frequency the perils of using homogenising terms such as tribes. Many recognize that the dispersed centres of power in any tribe has, more often than not, resulted not in tribal bodies enacting collective political actions but, on the contrary, in ‘no privileged level of organization’ (Dresch 1989: 78–9), ‘no fixed moral focus’ (Dresch 1989: 106) and, certainly within the gradations of tribal politics, no set patterns of allocating power.9 The problem is that the same anthropologists who acknowledge these contingent elements distort any neat communal structure often fail to make the necessary conceptual adjustments I consider essential to properly analysing the region’s recent events. By narrowly characterizing the dynamics of community building and alliance making in rural Yemen, the specifics of each manifested set of communal alliances shaped by the constantly changing local and regional context are lost to the generic category of tribe that is both timeless and beyond politics. The crucial inter-relational dynamics that constitute ‘western’ liberal democracies are therefore absent, even unimaginable, in strategically framed ‘patriarchal societies’ ostensibly ruled by men with long beards, swords, robes and turbans. These putative ‘shuyūkh, emirs and sulṭāns’, in other words, are conveniently immune from democratic pressures; thus oil company representatives, social anthropologists and imperial officials can feel confident that, with enough weapons, coin and logistical support, these ‘intermediaries’ with whom they sign treaties can usefully speak on behalf of entire regions and their inhabitants. The simple mental exercise of analysing the actions of constituent groups in

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  25 Yemen as if they were communities in Europe or the United States may help demonstrate how the seemingly exotic locale of the community in question often gets the better of our judgement. Although sociological clichés still reside in some of the analysis of western societies, especially when it pertains to ‘ethnic minorities’, we are far less likely to reduce the motivations of complicated political and economic exchanges to ‘tradition’ and primordial loyalties, to tribe or religious sect, if we make no mental distinction between a Yemeni community and their counterpart in Peoria, Illinois. By linking the Middle Eastern or Muslim subject in general to tribal, sectarian or regional associations, and thus treating the dynamics of local and regional life as somehow less contentious and negotiated than, say, the way political patronage operates in the United States or Europe today through commercial associations, unions, clubs and NGOs, the underlying forces of change at work in Yemen are lost. Again, the tendency is to reduce large complicated sections of communities living in regions within Yemen to single structures, often overseen by individuals (the shaykh, Imām, or qādī) who command a hierarchical superstructure legitimized by the way we study ‘traditions’. This methodological paradigm, so prevalent in studies on Islām, terrorism and the Middle East as a whole, actually proves highly ineffective as an analytical tool. The internal dynamics of extended communities whose geographic parameters and actual composition are shifting all the time actually require careful attention rather than simply deferring to ‘tribal confederations’, ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ or the ‘traditional legal canon’ (‘urf) to explain events. All these factors subsumed under social hierarchies assumed to empower shuyūkh or sulṭāns with unquestioned authority are actually shaped by any number of factors often uniquely important to certain groups, and at certain times. In Yemen, assumed second-tier shuyūkh in the hierarchical schema laid out by anthropologists actually interact at levels of shifting contingencies that are immediate and thus must constantly be renegotiated both locally and regionally. As demonstrated throughout, such immediate adjustments within a matrix of temporary alliances which make up what are considered ‘tribal confederations’ such as Ḥāshid and Bakīl in Yemen have always distorted any simple hierarchy assumed by British ethnographers working for empire (Dresch 1989: 22–4). Social rank, hierarchy and order within larger confederations and within putative ‘tribes’ that made up such abstract superstructures are constantly distorted by actual events. As a consequence, authority is unendingly negotiated and remains a reflection of the constant recalibration of local power through temporary political and commercial alliances. This in fact remains the central frustration of the Yemeni state and US military in Iraq or Afghanistan who try to buy off the generic tribal shaykh: local conditions are always changing, thereby undermining an assumed chain of command that is vertical. The presumed order of society along tribal lines, in other words, is not determined by any sense of formal loyalty to any one chain of command. As in presumably more ‘complex’ western polities, party loyalties or voting blocks are always negotiated because of shifting local conditions that are rarely violent but

26  Chaos in Yemen nevertheless contentious and constantly threatening established patterns of association. As much as ‘western’ voters change their party loyalties (or are deemed free to do so) so too are highly mobile farmers and day-labourers in rural Yemen adaptive to the diurnal ebb and flow of their ‘lifeworld’. Often, the internal debates as manifested to the outside world in the form of violence can easily be misinterpreted to reinforce the viability of socio-cultural analytical models created by social anthropologists years ago. On the surface, there are indeed manifestations, often articulated in the same way as by New York Times journalists, of rigid expressions of sectarianism, tribalism and tradition that are mediated by loyalty to specific groups and, more importantly, leaders whose names are constantly mentioned in newspapers and security reports. The problem is that there are most likely a large number of reasons why individuals elect to engage in violent confrontations with temporary rivals that are extraneous to presumed loyalties to tradition or personalities. Of course, one of the factors that contributes to individual or group decisions to support or join in the resistance to state authority (or fight on behalf of the state in the current Ṣa‘dah catastrophe) are mediated by any number of authoritative voices that can at times influence peoples’ decision. To scholars, this charismatic voice is crucial in drawing abstract patterns of social interaction and group formation. One of the ways ‘Muslims’ can be persuaded, therefore, is the use of their faith and more specifically the manner in which the law is interpreted, enforced and used to regulate people’s daily actions. Unfortunately, the law and its various doctrines are as much the product of methodological constructs originating in the colonial era as any tribal identity. Like tribal identities and the purported natural hostility to the state, by not permitting a diversity of individual and collective interpretations to reflect specific, temporary political, social and economic contexts, the dynamics of life in the region are lost when the scholar resorts to studying sermons or legal rulings recorded in books as ‘a cognitive framework’ (Asad 2001: 216). It is certain that many in Yemen today object to the activity of such movements and aid the state in suppressing the insurrections in both the south and the north. The transaction of support may be in the form of direct payment to those willing to take up arms, or threats of persecution or actual rhetorical persuasion that attempts to rationalize with people that their immediate and long-term interests are threatened by, say, Ḥūthī insurrection. Indeed, it seems much of the public relations effort within Yemen today is geared to mobilize stereotypes about the Ḥūthī that follow social mobilization patterns in Euro-American contexts. What is missing when such an array of voices are cited by outside analysts who wish to explain the sharp divides within Yemen is that prejudices against the Ḥūthī insurrection are informed by some very specific issues that are rarely adequately understood when framed in more generic tribal or sectarian terms. At the formal level, for instance, it is in fact widespread in the Middle East that any kind of resistance against the ruling elite is frowned upon. State-funded clerics often initiate formal rulings (fatāwā, sing. fatwā) that declare certain forms of confrontation to be illegal and contradictory to the teachings of the Qur’ān. This form of condemnation

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  27 often evoked in news reports on the Ḥūthī rebellion cannot, however, be taken out of the context from which it emanates. The frequent interpretation among outside observers of official clerics issuing ‘religious rulings’ as constituting an unproblematic expression of social order fails to treat this manifestation of ‘Islām’ as anything but a monolithic entity. The failure to step outside the discursive framework that implicitly declares Islām to be a set of practices that are universally shared within the categories long established in the scholarship leads to serious misinterpretations of local political and socio-economic issues. This especially applies to some of the institutional foundations to Islamic political activity, often the most hotly contested spaces in local and regional life. As with the terms Islām and Muslims in general, the practice and enforcement of legal principles has not been immune from the categorical rigidities of Euro-American colonial knowledge. In regard to the law in particular, the anthropologist Brinkley Messick highlighted how something akin to ‘colonial sharī‘a’ had become a mechanism of imperial rule in South Yemen and, by default, a corrupting ahistorical unit of analysis in western scholarship. As Messick demonstrates, once indigenous legal practices were considered invaluable to assisting in administrating imperial possessions such as the various emirates in South Yemen, reappraisals of the status of the sharī‘a by European scholars (invariably working, even indirectly, for these far flung colonial enterprises), colonial officials and even Muslims themselves were inevitable. What Messick so usefully demonstrated was the particular ways in which British understandings of a ‘rational’ use of codified law became a medium through which to compare (and contrast) a rather ahistorical understanding of legal practice in bourgeois societies of the era and the assumed primitive, backward and/or retrograde traditionalism of Yemen. Not entirely convinced that establishing a uniformly enforced ‘native’ legal code for the entire ‘Muslim world’ would do the trick of sedating subject peoples, an important intellectual subdivision of Euro-American orientalism emerged in which local variations of sharī‘a interpretations were studied. While the simple antonymic, point-by-point opposition between the sharī‘a and Western law was a perspective characteristic of mainstream Orientalist fare designed primarily for home consumption, it coexisted with a specialist literature in which scholars debated scientific issues and addressed the practical problems of colonial administration. (Messick 1993: 59) For our purposes here, the mobilization of these particular forms of scholarship, linked to the mechanics of imperial rule or the use of religion by contemporary regimes in the region to claim legitimacy, helped to establish and sustain a genre of ‘specialist knowledge’ that operated at different levels depending on the audience.10 Often obscured by the heavy emphasis on legal tradition, ‘popular religion’ or the ‘Islamic Revival’ is increasingly attracting the attention of ethnographers. Perhaps a reflection of the growing perception in the media that ‘popular Islam’

28  Chaos in Yemen and ‘mass’ politics are fusing with radical sensibilities that conduct ‘terrorist’ acts against a hitherto innocent western society, there is a growing interest in how Islām (again, generally formulated as a monolithic entity) is experienced by everyday Muslims (Deeb 2006). For the most part, the image most prevalent is the animated arena in which Islām is experienced by Muslims, usually through Friday sermons in mosques or the television. The exaggerated weight given to some of the possessors of a putative religious authority, especially those who issue clerical declarations (fatwā), is especially important to the prevailing discourse on Yemen. Fortunately, to counter the exploitative dynamics of ‘the study of Islamic Fundamentalism’, a few ethnographers are trying to redirect our focus away from the traditional methods of generalizing life in the so-called Islamic world. To those sensitive to the subtleties of daily experience, these formulaic investigations into the impact of the personality on the masses regularly fail to account for how people interpret their world through their faith, both within the controlled parameters of Islamic institutions and in their larger community. In response to exactly this point, Hirschkind has studied the cassette sermon phenomenon and posited that there are complex intervening factors that contribute to an individual’s interaction with the acoustic architecture of a distinct moral vision, animating and sustaining the ethical sensibilities that enable ordinary Muslims to live in accord with what they [emphasis mine] consider to be God’s will. (Hirschkind 2006: 8) As Hirschkind rightly warns, by resorting to a textual legalism so prominent among traditionally trained scholars of the Middle East (those who study the region through their legal texts, often written hundreds of years ago), local context and individual agency are necessarily ignored. In other words, the heavy focus on content by the media on the official decrees from well-known religious personalities often assumes collective action without any serious consideration for the context in which individuals are expected to make decisions to act. This unfortunately reductive strategy obscures a large number of mitigating factors that explain individual and group behaviour. As Hirschkind argues, the personality whom many may consult by cassette or attendance during a Friday sermon does not necessarily command his/her audience’s undivided loyalty. This is often the case when tribal shuyūkh are cited by scholars to be the formal representative agents of larger constituencies; they are expected to represent a larger community and thus their political orientations, often very much dictated by the immediate context, are frequently assumed to reflect the ambitions, needs and capacities of thousands of people ‘under’ them as well (Miller 2007). It is clear that historians have understood historical events in the Middle East in such personalized terms, often naming complex large-scale events after a charismatic leader such as Nāṣir, Khomeni or Ḥūthī. The result of personalizing events and eras in this way is that all the prevailing domestic politics mediated in the home, village and city neighbourhood are potentially lost to the personality cult of which

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  29 ‘Muslims’ and ‘tribesmen’ are expected to be members. As demonstrated throughout, these assumed religious and tribal communities are not so easily contained within social and political hierarchies implied by scholarly categories or affiliation to personalities. One of the crucial means to dilute the utility of sweeping generalizations is to demonstrate how the idealized community leader does not present a clear picture of how authority is projected in numerous communities. Again, the assumption is that power and legitimacy can be enforced using traditional institutions and that presumed subordinates are subservient to the whim of ‘tribal shuyūkh’ or state-authorized clerics issuing fatwā. As a result, there has been expressed fear in much of the media that the ‘Muslim public’ which seems so easily swayed in the Middle East by seemingly irrational emotions stimulated by fiery sermons disseminated by various media – television, internet, newspapers and cassette – is devoid of complex thought. Implicit is a certain kind of group identity formed by collectively engaging the cleric or political leader through sermons and rallies. The image is often reinforced, since at least Nāṣir’s times, of tens of thousands of enraged Muslims flooding city streets, fist in the air, chanting angry denunciations of the west while egged on by the adored patriarch standing above them. But does the very act of listening to such sermons on cassette, over the radio or attending a street really, let alone temporarily affiliating with a political party or community (qabīlah), constitute a reliable resource to anticipate long-term community or individual affiliations and subsequent actions? Is one guilty by association? Are those who join the Taliban, the numerous resistance groups in Iraq and the Ḥūthī today animated by the same calculations? Is it possible they may have other reasons for joining a group resisting an occupying foreign force than simple Islamic fanaticism or blind traditional loyalties? The value of asking such questions is made apparent in respect to analysing the evolution of the most recent set of rebellions in North Yemen. As explained throughout this study, the war began as a quasi-police operation to arrest a former parliament member, Ḥusayn al-Ḥūthī, who boldly championed the interests of a diverse group of communities living in the wider area in the provinces of Ṣa‘dah, Ḥajjah and ‘Amrān. What became known as the Ḥūthī movement’s resistance to the Ṣāliḥ’s regime and its regional allies in 2004 is therefore predicated on a complicated set of local considerations rarely discussed today. To many in Ṣa‘dah, ‘Amrān and Ḥajjah (and those areas on the Saudi side of the border), the confrontation between Ṣāliḥ and al-Ḥūthī was an extension of specific frustrations many locals have in the context of demographic shifts taking place as a result of emigration into the area by large numbers of pro-regime, ‘Sunni’ communities. As a consequence, control over the region’s trade, often lucrative because of the smuggling into Saudi Arabia of qāt, weapons and African workers, is increasingly targeted for direct control by the state’s allies migrating into these borderland communities. As a local politician with strong links with merchants in the area who abandoned a corrupted party political system in Ṣan‘ā’ – Ḥusayn al-Ḥūthī was once a member of the Ṣa‘dah-based al-Ḥaqq party – al-Ḥūthī represented often unregistered local

30  Chaos in Yemen frustrations. Indeed, as reflected in the rise of the Ḥūthī movement as the main articulation of local frustrations after 2004, his advocacy clearly shaped the way grievances were expressed as the central state shifted from a policy of negotiation to open confrontation. In a matter of months, what had once been small, shortlived civic actions by individual villages and their leaders demanding greater recourse from Ṣan‘ā’ (see Chapter 4) evolved by the middle of 2004 into a violent conflict that linked competing interests to a larger regional struggle for recognition (Overton 2005). Such a coalition included regional actors who, much as in the civil war in 1994 discussed in Chapter 5, saw an opportunity in confrontation with the state.11 In time, this geographically concentrated struggle expanded to engulf areas to the east in Ma’rib and all the way down to the outskirts of Ṣan‘ā’ as the Ṣāliḥ regime adopted as early as 2000 a new policy of violent suppression rather than negotiation.12 For the purposes of this study, highlighting how local considerations often shaped the nature of each phase of these and other conflicts, and the fact that the range of concerned actors grew over time, emphasizes the point that we must abandon the simplistic explanations used to analyse the region’s many troubles. Unfortunately, many influential observers today can only explain the Ṣa‘dah conflict in limited cultural terms that have remained popular in mainstream media despite being largely debunked outside conventional academic circles. For example, the influential International Crisis Group (ICG) explains in its executive summary of a recent report on the Ṣa‘dah crisis the progression of the Ḥūthī/Ṣāliḥ struggle thus: The war expanded because it became a microcosm of a series of latent religious, social, political and economic tensions. It can be traced to the decline of the social stratum led by Hashemites, who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad, and legitimised by Zaydism; lack of investment in Zaydi strongholds like Saada; failed management of religious pluralism; permeability to external influences and the emergence of new political and religious actors, particularly Salafis. It has variously and at times simultaneously taken the shape of a sectarian, political or tribal conflict, rooted in historical grievances and endemic underdevelopment. It also has been shaped by the regional confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. (ICG 2009: i) Again, the focus on categories that are supposed to represent large constituent groups and offer a general understanding of each group’s motivations and ideological proclivities ends up reducing people’s motivations to social loyalties that history shows exist only temporarily. ‘Zaydī tribal values’ do not help us appreciate how and why certain temporary alliances of actors emerged over the last five years in Ṣa‘dah and to what extent new factors constantly being introduced to the equation changes their ambitions. Indeed, as the ICG recognizes in its own report, the Ṣa‘dah conflict developed a logic of its own over time, serving a variety of interests not always involved in the fighting. But the fact that the authors of the

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  31 report insist on limiting the significance of these groups to tribes and government, the conclusion they draw – that the benefits of war exceeded its drawbacks – suggests utility in disaggregating the actors involved from the reductionist logic of tribalism and sectarianism. The dynamics both domestically and internationally surrounding Yemen’s Ṣa‘dah conflict are often framed in terms of the combatants’ sectarian identity and presumed association to a ‘spiritual’ leader, in this case a member of the extended Ḥūthī family. Although it may certainly be the case that the Ḥūthī have mobilized loyalists with their rhetoric or long-established family links, there are also other factors that are explained only by considering the larger context of a struggle for power in southern Arabia. To many, it may not be Shī‘īsm or Ḥūthīsm that is at the centre of the problem but rather a complex of class, the politics of genealogy and counter-claims of legitimacy. Note that in the ICG report quoted above, and in many more reports on the Ṣa‘dah conflict over the past few years, the reference to Hāshimī rights predominates. What is threatening to some Yemenis and thus animating their support to the Ṣāliḥ regime in this specific conflict is possibly a long animosity towards a particular kind of social group identified as ‘foreign’ to Yemen since the 1960s. This in itself is significantly different from a sectarian rivalry between Sunni and Shī‘a, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the context of an especially brutal period of struggle for power, the Mutawakkil dynasty has been vilified in Republican Yemeni historiography. In other words, whereas a disproportionate amount of the political elite in Yemen today are Zaydī from the northern highlands, in the end it may not be their shared or different sectarian interests that are at play. Rather, the animating factor behind the sometimes quite visceral hatred for the Ḥūthī within various Yemeni media and intellectual circles is the perception that the Ḥūthī movement is actually advocating a return to prominence of a segment of their society treated with particular prejudice since the creation of the republic in 1962. The Ḥūthīs are often quoted in local Arabic-language media (rarely in English versions of these websites), in other words, as advocating the return of the dignitaries who claim descent from the Prophet, sādah (sing. sayyid), to power. The ideological foundations of the Ḥūthī are thus often characterized as one that aims to reorientate Yemeni society to prop up a social class that has been for the last forty years vilified for its assumed pretensions of superiority and alleged past abuses. To many the issue is whether or not Republican Yemen, having defeated the corrupt and brutal Imāmate in 1962, will ever allow descent-based authority claims (an assertion of legitimacy resting with the descendents of the Prophet Muḥammad through ‘Alī and Fāṭimah) to return to Yemen. The anthropologist Gabriele vom Bruck (2005) has most usefully shed light on this dynamic of Yemeni and larger Arabian Peninsula politics, which rarely surfaces in any meaningful way in the literature. Her ethnography of social class reorientation since the end of the Imāmate in 1962 clearly raises the question whether or not the slurs that are directed at the Ḥūthī and largely framed in either sectarian or tribal terms actually may be obscuring deeper tensions among some Yemenis that are both economic and social in nature. In respect to the class dynamic, it is especially

32  Chaos in Yemen important to historicize the relationships that non-sādah have developed with the past and perceived new social hierarchy in a post-Imāmate world. Yemenis raised since 1962, for example, have been indoctrinated to despise the sādah in a fashion somewhat akin to the French Republican aversion for royalty (vom Bruck 2005: 200–1). What is especially significant here in the – at times sharply expressed – concern that the Ḥūthī are actually fighting for the reassertion of sayyid rights is that it has broader importance to Saudi Arabia as well. In many corners of the world still today, the ahl-al-bayt (members of the household of Muḥammad) are held in high regard, be they in Southeast Asia, India or Morocco and Jordan, where the rulers themselves claim Hāshimī affiliation. This dynamic has contentious possibilities in the context of Saudi domestic politics because the ruling family of al-Sa‘ūd has far less political and cultural capital in parts of the Kingdom where the indigenous communities proclaim loyalties to old families (the Hāshimī) and local traditions that counter the regime’s claims to legitimacy. As sometimes intimated by dissident voices in the Kingdom, the internal politics in Saudi Arabia are still largely shaped today by questions of the ruling family’s legitimacy within any number of subsections of Saudi society (al-Qaḥṭānī 1988). It needs to be recalled that the ruling family has neither the ideological foundations to authority over the two holy cities – Makkah and Madīnah – nor the traditional claim to loyalty in a country that was put together by conquest in the first half of the twentieth century. Saudi authority, in many ways, must constantly be reinforced today by generous stipends to potential rivals with strong regional roots in the Ḥijāz, ‘Asīr, Jizān, Najrān, Ḥasā’ or the former Rashīdī emirate, and the constant manipulation of religious institutions to sanction their legitimacy claims (al-Rasheed 2002: 188–203). In respect to dealing with incipient regionalisms that are manifested within dissident groups located both inside the Kingdom and in exile, some argue that the state has invested in any number of technologies of cultural hegemony to systematically erase evidence of Ḥijāzī and thus Hāshimī heritage, even within Makkah and Madīnah itself (Yamani 2004; Howden 2006). What is pertinent for this discussion is that any regional uprising articulating a reordering of social, economic and spiritual hierarchies in southwest Arabia based on a return to Hāshimī authority could easily lead to greater instability in Saudi Arabia. In many circles, including within the Saudi government, the Ḥūthī rebellion may very well be interpreted not as a Shī‘ī phenomenon alone but as a broader Ḥijāzī one, which could reopen the ever-present issue of Ḥijāzī resentment and long-standing sentiments in many parts of Arabia that the house of Sa‘ūd and the Najdī/Wahhābī alliance has run its course. This demands serious focus and concern for outside observers not wishing to be manipulated by Saudi or Yemeni factions and thus to exonerate actions that inflict terrible violence on other human beings. In other words, the ethical responsibility to consider factors other than those presented in a highly subjective or biased historical and social context can help us reinterpret the origins of conflict and perhaps offer a more equitable solution. In the larger methodological sense, events in Ṣa‘dah are too complicated to reduce to one all-encompassing explanation predicated on some

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  33 assumed historically intractable social hierarchy, primordial hatreds between tribal groups or sects, or the socio-economic nature of the population. In recognizing this, we may reinterpret policies adapted by the regimes involved in a more realistic light. Revealingly, Saudi authorities are adopting a policy to forcibly ‘relocate’ hundreds of villages along the Saudi/Yemen border. In interviews conducted in the region, many have argued that the conflict with the ‘Ḥūthī’ is being used as a pretext to finalize a long-term strategy to eliminate a dangerous element within the Kingdom. Because such displacements are accompanied by the expulsion of thousands that the authorities are claiming entered the Kingdom illegally, as well as the creation of a 10-km buffer zone within Yemeni territory, many from the region believe the Kingdom has ulterior motives in this conflict. More details about the dynamics of this borderland crisis are provided in Chapter 4. It should be noted that the Saudi Shī‘a are very active in exile, including the recent establishment of Khalāṣ (al-Ḥasan 1993; International Crisis Group 2005; Matthiesen 2009). In this volatile environment where state violence can result in the complete annihilation of a village, any number of local adaptations must be considered possible. As may be observed in the local media, for example, political actors in Yemen often themselves reduce the nature of their conflict to simplistic sectarian and tribal polarities that resonate so well when ‘translated’ for western audiences. For instance, the putative ‘Wahhābī’ threat to expand into Zaydī areas is frequently cast in local media as a political ‘nature’ that infects its victims with irrational proclivities for violence. But, as suggested here and by others, the generic ‘al-Qā‘idah’ partisan may very much be the product of a constantly shifting domestic dynamic that requires closer analysis, not generalizations.13 It does not help that the latest jargon of the ‘war on terror’ has fused with tribal and sectarian clichés to increasingly correlate terrorists with Salafists, and Ḥūthī with hitherto simple Yemenis. These associations are actually contorting and mutating over time. Unfortunately, in the hands of the uninhibited generalist, the groups intervening in complicated ways within the larger Yemeni context are still reduced to a ready-made category of analysis (and potential target for unmanned drones or a tank division), shutting out all reason to explore individual motivations. In the end, the loose associations made today that coopt Gellner’s paradigmatic characterizations of ‘Muslim Society’ command the same function as their colonial-era predecessors: the marginalization, objectification and decontextualization of otherwise dynamic agents of present history (Zubaida 1995). The consequences are not to be brushed off as merely academic; people are being kidnapped, tortured and killed because of their assumed affiliations in the larger context of the ‘war on terror’. It needs to be said here that I am not apologizing for any militant group and certainly do not condone the instrumentalist use of indiscriminate violence by any party. But waving a red flag at the imprecise uses of ‘terrorists’, ‘al-Qā‘idah’ and other generic slurs does not deny us the ability to judge; it rather empowers

34  Chaos in Yemen all of us, in an act of solidarity, to recognize when we are being manipulated at the expense of many brave people who, in another time and context, might have been heralded for their honour and sense of justice. In order to help provide an analytical framework that frees the outside observer from reducing Yemen’s events to one form of cultural determinism and thus ignoring some other possible motivations that make the struggle in Ṣa‘dah or in South Yemen infinitely more complicated, I highlight below both pitfalls and opportunities in exploring the region’s interface with imperialism prior to the First World War. As will be suggested, the very act of interpreting actions using Gellner’s model of ‘Muslim Society’ has become so distorting that there have been few studies of Yemen’s complex political and economic relations in the imperial era that do not rely on Gellner’s founding principles. To make better sense of how we can usefully apply these methodological concerns to the analysis of the chaos in Yemen today, I will briefly demonstrate how I apply these standards to the study of Yemen as it was in the middle of an international struggle for ascendancy in the pre-First World War era.

Limits to imperialism: the emergence of the local Past scholarship on Yemen’s imperial era, when consulting primary sources, relied on the internal bureaucratic logic of these documents rather than adapting a more critical analytical approach to their reading. Studies on Ottoman bureaucratic discourse, although still in their infancy, are revealing in the sense that the Ottoman elite, like their European and South Asian counterparts, used social typologies to create the necessary conceptual space between themselves and those they ruled (Deringil 1998: 16–92; Hanssen 2005). As a result, it is assumed that Ottoman officials had their own understanding of imperial order that is reflected in how it ruled distant territories such as Yemen (Kühn 2007). These perspectives alone, however, cannot suffice to provide a complete picture of imperial governance or state/society interaction. There were tensions in this ‘order of things’ for which scholars of Hamidian imperialism fail to account. As with the case in today’s misuse of categories, the problem is methodological. Imperial scholars are still too reliant on a literal reading of state documents, which often resort to the crude stereotypes disputed here. Since the early nineteenth century competing empires have struggled to carve out influence in the strategically important Bāb al-Mandab that guards the entrance to the Red Sea. The intensity of this struggle for ascendancy in such a strategically important corner of the world transformed over the course of the last two centuries the socio-economic, cultural and political dynamics of the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia. Among the more fundamental transformations was the manner in which the inhabitants of these long-integrated corners of the world were compelled to interact with each other and the larger world. Despite the fact the region has been for centuries part of the shifting flows of global commerce, as a result of the nineteenth-century scramble for power the parameters within which to study the region have narrowed dramatically.

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  35 At the heart of this narrowed space for studying the region is the intersection of Eurocentric scholarship, journalism and state bureaucracies working to service the interests of international banking, which became entrenched factors in the region by the middle of the nineteenth century. In this increasingly Eurocentric intellectual setting, scholars, journalists and policy-makers have associated Yemen in particular with forms of violence increasingly reduced to being by-products of entrenched social organization patterns linked to tribalism, sectarianism and economic backwardness. As a result, many of the events that have transpired over the last two centuries have retroactively been reduced in the social science, historical and strategic studies literature to the kind of reductionism more critical scholars have associated since the 1970s with a defunct and largely discredited genre of imperialist discourse (Mitchell 1988). In order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, while considering the imperial strategies of the Ottoman, British, French and Italian empires in southern Arabia, it is incumbent upon the scholar to remember that imperial projects do not conform to predictable models for every actor involved. Local populations, often marginalized in studies of imperial rivalries, also undergo significant changes, which in turn affect imperial strategies. Actors within the Ottoman vilâyet (province) of Yemen, for instance, struggled to find a place in the structures of internal hegemony affected by several regional wars, by creating alliances along lines that often go beyond the units of analysis social scientists and historians of Yemen use. In this regard, it is crucial to always remember that our units of analysis – in the case of Yemen they are usually framed in sectarian, institutional and tribal terms – never represent static entities. There is fluidity to legalities, ideologies and community allegiances, which are disguised when we apply markers dependent on pre-conceived values. It is, therefore, the challenge of the historian to strike a balance between broad generalizations and hyper-specific methodologies – Foucault’s ‘valorisation of micropolitics’ – that is the structural frame of this study. It is also a reason why we must be particularly wary of ethnographies that idealize patterns such as Ernest Gellner’s (1981) use of Ibn Khaldūn’s tribe/city polarity, which is assumed to function today as it did in the medieval era. By bringing to the surface the various forces at play, I hope to make it clear that Ottoman-era Yemen is far too complicated to be characterized with loosely applicable terms used by scholars of the Middle East. The actors portrayed in this study in particular verify that a strong emphasis on local interests and micro-managed social histories, largely divorced of these larger units of analysis, is a helpful way to begin to capture the dynamics of history in Yemen. More concretely, this is an attempt to explore the political history of various societies from outside, inside and beside the state’s perspective of Empire, focusing on a very specific time period and regional dynamics that reveal a new framework of symbiosis as opposed to rigid categorization of colonially indebted methodologies. Since the arrival of the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century, Yemen had undergone dramatic changes. The social and political transformations that took place in Yemen during this period are not universally applicable because of the variety of economic and political development within Yemen throughout the

36  Chaos in Yemen Ottoman period. In order to conceptualize this better, it is crucial to guard against characterizing Yemen as a singular, coherent geographical space. For the purposes of this discussion, I wish to concentrate on the northern highlands, which are often treated as a single socio-political domain, and the ‘Asīr (an area that includes Ṣa‘dah) to demonstrate that there are far too many complicated inter-relationships involved to ignore a specific geographic as well as political focus.14 By focusing on local identification patterns in the context of the period between 1904 and the First World War, I suggest one can begin to grasp the scope of the ‘public sphere’ – using a popular metaphor in the literature on the modern state – in a way that considers the possibility of establishing autonomous arenas of social and political power (Fraser 1990). Other attempts to explain events as part of larger regional phenomenon missed these important nuances. Paul Dresch, for instance, considers distinctions such as regionalism misleading in the attempt to understand the ‘tribes’ he treats as historically static actors (Dresch 1989: 387 n. 26). To the contrary, I would argue that regionalism, or maybe better yet, for the set of arguments made in the next chapter, localism, is a key tool in identifying evolving markers of self-interest and self-imposed standards of distinction in the context of the imperial state. Questions centred on how decisions are made by local leaders often reflect the patterns of interaction with external elements, which are themselves greatly determined by notions of physical limits or immediate interests.15 These conceptual boundaries are not fixed, of course, in the sense in which we have attempted to codify social and cultural boundaries today (for the parameters of alliances being built are in constant flux), but that is exactly why regional attachments are fundamental to studying political alliances in Yemen. It is the conceptualization of location – in a political as well as in a geographical sense – that gives coherence to the identifiable faction at a particular moment. It will be demonstrated that any all-encompassing strategy using, for instance, the Ḥāshid and Bakīl tribal confederations as units completely distorts the meaning of local events. Some participants in the Ḥāshid coalition of temporary constituent groups, for instance, attached themselves with an ascendant spiritual leader, commercial magnet and political patron by the name of Muḥammad al-Idrīsī, who emerged in a particular context in the province of ‘Asīr in 1906–7.16 I would argue such alliances across numerous assumed cultural boundaries are largely due to the conditions of the time in home districts, the effectiveness of Idrīsī in soliciting the confidence of ambitious community leaders and the geographic advantage the ‘Asīr had in conjunction with Zaydī polities centred around the Imam.17 This does not assume, however, that identifying units such as the Ḥāshid confederation imply alliances with Idrīsī that were either inevitable or impossible. As we see in Ṣa‘dah today, however, boundaries and interests do fluctuate with external and internal political changes. It is imperative, therefore, to deal in social units far more specific than these larger tribal confederations, which really are amorphous coalitions of numerous political and economic constituent groups. Furthermore, such a concern for specificity requires that one use periodizations that are much smaller than are normally stressed in order to avoid

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  37 constructing a linear, essential history.18 This local dynamic is not a static universal but, rather, a vehicle of inquiry from which I hope to extricate the dimensions of social and political history in Yemen during a specific period of time, including the late Ottoman. This also speaks of a need to move beyond accepting the ‘official’ representations of Ottoman policies, which often used the categories of tribe, sect and status in much the same way as British administrators did in Aden at the same time. A recently discovered document of how the Sulṭān’s administration itself had to adapt to the realities of power in Yemen, which contradicted earlier imperial categories, makes my point perfectly. Much as scholars of the period suggest, the Sulṭān’s regime officially sought to affirm its hegemonic role over all ‘his’ subjects and assert some paternalistic control over what may have been an overly exuberant administrative cadre. Contrary to our conventional understanding, however, the Sulṭān’s government at times proved susceptible to compromise. In a direct order from the palace written in 1894, the Sulṭān’s office advised regional commanders and administrators to better prepare the defences of Libya and Yemen, which were seen to have been weakened by the persistence of local rebellions. Normally, such demands would not be treated with much consideration. I would suggest the document is far more revealing. In 1894, the palace offered a new strategy to accomplish the imperial goal of securing its frontiers. The seemingly enlightened approach of treating the local population not as objects of derision but as partners certainly would constitute a novel approach to local governance. Perhaps eager to reinforce the inclusive gesture to all Muslims in the Empire at a time when locals may have been revolting, the Sulṭān’s advisors ordered administrators to run Yemen not as a ‘foreign place’ in need of occupation, but as one in which local Yemenis could be counted as equals. In an apparent departure from earlier methods of rule, the Sulṭān’s government demanded that locals be allowed to run the police, administer villages and monitor weekly markets. The Sulṭān’s men stressed in this document that the role of the government in Istanbul was to send judges and money to enhance production, tax revenue and trade through development of local education, and not necessarily to subjugate its inhabitants to the point of rebellion.19 Viewing this message in the context of a barrage of literature produced by Ottoman media and imperial administrators at the time proves to be an intriguing contradiction to the imperial ambitions most historians assumed to be manifest. Although it is certainly the case that the ‘colonial ambitions’ of the Empire could be noted in newspaper accounts, popularizing, in the process, the vernacular of distance so important to the whole project of imperial rule,20 such narratives clearly demonstrated the power of the imagery of savage, tribal Yemen in the halls of imperial power, be it in Istanbul, Rome, Paris or London (Gazi Ahmed 1996: 40–50). In this context, the concerted effort to inculcate loyalties through the creation of a professional bureaucracy clearly did not produce the kind of results Sulṭān Abdül-Hamid II thought necessary for Yemen in 1894. Therefore, the decree reflects, reluctantly or not, a shift in thinking. Locals of many kinds were talking back and Istanbul was forced to modify its policy towards them, engaging

38  Chaos in Yemen in a partnership rather than in a relationship of subjugation. This is rarely noted in the scholarship fixed by dominant tropes. What is most striking about the Sulṭān’s personal intervention at this time, therefore, is that locals are seen to be as much a part of the successful administration process as the trained cadre of bureaucrats Istanbul was sending down to Yemen (Findley 1980). Yemen for this reason alone is a fine case study of how imperial ambitions, the corresponding administrative rigidities and local reactions all translated differently in the historical text over time. Some scholars of the modern state suggest that the socially constructed hierarchies appearing in the media, including the categories of tribal peoples versus urban civilization, are the fundamental aspect of modern nation-states (Knight 1990: 72–3). In the context of the Ottoman Empire, this could more accurately be framed as a combination of social constructions that pitted urban, literate actors against ‘tribal’, rural ‘savages’, constituting a social polarity many found attractive at the time for the forging of a specific, collective Ottoman ‘bourgeois’ identity (Göçek 1996). Nevertheless, whereas the richness of the primary material found in Istanbul has told us much of the Ottoman ‘imagination’, this has ultimately blurred our understanding of what was taking place in Yemen at the time (Tuastad 2003). The Sulṭān’s order clearly sets a prevailing elitism’s limits. What really makes these resilient categories counter-productive is clear once we better understand how and why Yemen became such a key component to European and Ottoman interests in the late nineteenth century. Situated at a crossroads of trade routes and military strategic points, Ottoman Yemen represented a vital interest for a number of imperial powers at the turn of the century. This is evidenced in how imperial powers competed in the Red Sea, claiming, for instance, uninhabited islands as coal depots to refuel shipping that made the lucrative trips to Asia through the recently opened Suez Canal. What had previously been a minor enclave for Ottoman imperial ambitions suddenly became a point of obsession for British, French and Italian rivals.21 In its efforts to secure control of this key point facing British Aden, French Somalia and Italian Eritrea, the Ottoman state initiated a number of state centralization schemes after establishing formal claims to Yemen’s northern highlands in 1872–4.22 Fiscal reform, investments in infrastructure, telegraph lines, military barracks and elaborate plans to centralize judicial and educational life have been interpreted as essential to Yemen’s post-Ottoman society.23 Studies that invoke these transformations without considering how local communities reacted to such measures, however, miss an important element of the nature of power at the time. The underlying assumption in these readings of history between presumably unequal adversaries is that indigenous communities are being acted upon from positions of rigidly formed social structures incapable of adapting to the variables introduced by a modern imperial state. On the contrary, as seen in Chapter 4, we can observe the extent to which locals maintained a capacity to dictate events on the ground when studying the tensions between Britain and the Sublime Porte along the southern highlands that separated their two regions. I suggest this set of factors is also complicating events in present-day Ṣa‘dah for the Saudi and

Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream  39 Yemeni states (as well as external parties such as the United States) as they compete over still contested territories.24 These tensions usually surface in the archival material after incidents involving local ‘warlords’ bring imperial powers face to face. The imperial relationship, as a result of the intimate linkages between locals and the diplomatic gamesmanship taking place in London and Istanbul, was transformed in such a way that local figures, often as lowly as a village elder, could incite a diplomatic uproar. There can be little doubt that a similar dynamic of local actors coopting the operations of Saudi, US, Ethiopian, Israeli or Ṣāliḥ regimes to service their temporarily articulated interests is taking place. This capacity must be studied on grounds distinct from fixing the local actor along tribal or sectarian lines of analysis. In the next chapter, I argue that looking closely at the parallels between the Ḥūthī movement and what happened in the Ṣa‘dah area in 1907 may prove useful. As in 1907, 2004 for the inhabitants of Ṣa‘dah represented a shift in power: Ḥūthī abandoned the al-Ḥaqq party, which meant he was no longer co-opted by the Ṣāliḥ regime. The Ḥūthī, in other words, can be seen as equivalent in some important ways to Idrīsī. A number of local rivalries for political and economic ascendancy in northern Yemen took place after the election of a new Zaydī Imām in 1904. In the following period of adjustment and renegotiated alliances, we immediately see some important indications of the fluid boundaries between social and political categories I am discussing here.25 The case of Muḥammad al-Idrīsī, in particular, which I explore in greater detail in the next three chapters, serves as an interesting conjuncture of events in northern Yemen (in an area that includes present-day Ṣa‘dah) and a perfect example of how unreliable primordial categories used to write Yemen’s history prove to be. As leader of a regional political, commercial and religious order – the Idrīsīyah – al-Idrīsī’s ascendancy in what at one point extended well into so-called traditional Zaydī and Shafī‘i sectarian territories demonstrates most clearly that the dynamics at work during the late Ottoman period were not geographically, culturally or politically limited by sectarian regionalism (Bang 1996). Not only does the coalition of local communities around al-Idrīsī exemplify the shifting economic and political fortunes of a number of actors in a variety of regions in the larger Arabian Peninsula context, his allies’ activities would also translate into a central factor to Ottoman policy vis-à-vis the identified Zaydī elite. It is very much possible that similar transcendent dynamics are at play today with the so-called Ḥūthī movement, or the Salafists, whose loyalties to Riyāḍ are presumed but never fully demonstrated.

Conclusion By strategically calling into question the epistemological assumptions of the long-used analytical units of ‘tribe’, ‘sect’ and ‘Islamic tradition’ that persist through most historical studies of Ottoman Yemen until the First World War, and by identifying agency beyond the categories of the ethnographer, this book hopes to offer an attractive alternative for analysts and policy-makers today. Stated differently, I believe such a specific study of what is often deemed an unimportant

40  Chaos in Yemen region and its history has transcendent value, one that confirms the intellectual and moral spirit of those who changed how we understand the history of what is now called the post-colonial world. Through the filter of an empire that was far from ‘sick’, and a society that was far from being as rigid as terms such as ‘traditional’, ‘Islamic’ and ‘tribe’ imply, I suggest that the alternative analytical strategies that deal with diversity may also serve us well in a variety of other contexts. Indeed, if one were to abandon the persistent stereotypes traditionally used to study Yemen, the Ottoman period would suddenly prove to be valuable to social scientists interested in the questions of identity formation, political and commercial networks, state building and nationalism possibly shaping Yemen’s multiple societies today (Blumi 2003). As discussed above, a focus on the tribal or sectarian idiom used to understand Yemen’s political relations and fix them along a vocabulary of order obscures the political nature of communal/individual interactions. Reliance on these categories also unnecessarily taints our historical understanding of the reality of al-Idrīsī’s or Ta‘izzī locals’ strengths in contrast to the relative weakness of Imām Yaḥyā and/or the Ottoman state during specific moments of time. By privileging a small section of Yemeni society at the expense of the frequent ‘anomalies’ that appear in history, be they manifestations of the agency of women, former slaves or ‘weak’ merchants, we may be ignoring the many complexities that operated just beneath the surface of late Ottoman Yemen. In the end, there must be greater emphasis on the fact that power in Yemen, from the Imām or President Ṣāliḥ to local shuyūkh, is contested. By suggesting that Yemeni society, as much as European societies during the same period, was not static but in a process of constant change, we conceptually open up new avenues of interpretation that allow us to reconsider the parameters of modernity. In other words, asking new questions of the late Ottoman period in Yemen allows us to discover that human beings are not rigidly inclined to any one standard of interaction entombed in ‘tradition’ and immune to modern sentiments and agency. If there is any hope of adequately giving voice to the vast majority of humanity, as scholars influenced along the lines of the Subaltern Group often attempt to do, it is necessary to abandon categories that seek to erase the contingencies revealed above. As will be demonstrated in greater detail in the next chapter, customs, social allegiances, religious associations and legal traditions are fluid, reflecting the contingencies that make up local life, a fact that has similar consequences in our appreciation of events that take place not only on the southern fringes of the Arabian Peninsula but also in the larger Red Sea/East Africa area during this most complex period following 9/11.

2 The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities

As outlined in the previous chapter, lost in much of the social scientific discussion today about the animating factors behind the war in and around Ṣa‘dah, the rise of ‘political Islām’ or the resurgent separatist movement in the former South, is the heavy emphasis on personalities and loyalty to structural hierarchies that draw on analytical tropes of colonial-era origin. It has been argued that relying on certain categories of analysis to answer why events in Yemen are unfolding as they are will obscure any number of possibly crucial explanatory factors. This critique is shared by scholars sensitive to the distortions that mobilizing colonialera ethnographic categories brings to our analysis of events in the world, with some advocating, as here, searching for local anomalies to the dominant narrative (Asad 1973). In this spirit, the underlying concern this book has with looking into the micro-exchanges of Yemeni rural communities is to secure a larger number of analytical perspectives that may help understand in more complicated ways how certain processes evolve over time. To do this, the present chapter, in the process of disaggregating the putative ‘bricks’ of Yemeni society – namely the tribes, confederations, sectarian groups and socio-economic classes that have served as the primary agents of change in the country’s modern history – will begin to chart a transitional process that ultimately accounts for the emergence of modern polities. It needs to be highlighted from the start that what is meant by modern polities is not so much a concept hinged on a teleology assuming social, economic and political ‘development’ as the categorical disaggregation of a scholarly and journalistic unit of analysis. By recasting Yemeni stakeholders in this way, it is hoped that we can step away from reducing Yemen’s numerous problems to manifestations of social organization that are symbolically ordered into a grid of ‘sectarianism’, ‘tribe’ or ‘tradition’. In other words, instead of harking back to tired clichés of a disreputable past, we can start to think of Yemen’s local politics as we would similar events in Western Europe or the United States. What is important to remind ourselves when developing this reconstituted narrative, however, is to not succumb to the temptation of reduction. There will be a great many names presented below; they are all revealed in the documentary record preserved in various archives around the world. These personalities are not to be seen as pinnacles of larger social structures and their very presence cannot

42  Chaos in Yemen obscure the realities that they come from a specific social, economic and political context that is local, regional and perhaps global. They cannot, in other words, be studied outside their immediate and regional context.1 This caution goes back to the last chapter’s underlying points about method. The putative ‘chief’ of the community or communities with whom imperial or present-day state officials are interacting in the process of establishing some form of administrative, military or economic presence can very well be an authoritative voice for temporary subordinates. This is what we may call the community, with all its internal contradictions and tensions, discussed earlier. As is taken for granted in the study of the west, Yemen’s communities should not seem as fixed in time and place either; rather, the presumed hierarchy personified in an individual or coalition of ‘leaders’ is one always vulnerable to contingencies that arise from a combination of internal and external factors. These frequently changing conditions ultimately inform how larger society gives meaning to, and adopts certain methods in, local politics.2 To usefully explore this relational dynamic that had at one point reanimated debates on the role of the state in history (Tilly 1990), it is necessary to theorize what is transpiring within such societies that make up modern Yemen. In the next three chapters I give special emphasis to the historical roots of a Yemen that emerges in the form pertinent to analysts today only at the end of the Cold War. The following thus argues that what precedes the Ṣāliḥ era should be treated in an entirely separate manner, one that in some ways can be best disaggregated from both the current situation of a ‘unified’ Yemen (a condition that assumes incorrectly that ‘Yemen’ constitutes in the political imagination of all actors involved something that is worth fighting to preserve) and its pre-modern past as a set of loosely connected regions engulfed in imperialist rivalries during the second half of the nineteenth century. Historicizing the current conflict (and its antagonists), in other words, may help us begin to appreciate what is actually at stake in Yemen under a regime that has loosely ruled in North Yemen since 1978 and dominated the entire country since unification. Much as with nineteenth-century communities along the Red Sea coast, those found today in Ṣa‘dah, throughout the Ḥaḍramawt in southern Yemen and the immediate hinterland of Aden also serve as commercial intermediaries to various constituencies in larger Yemen and the larger world. As in the past, today’s events in Ṣa‘dah, Mukallā and Turbah thus highlight how political and economic fortunes of locals are determined by their successful management of seasonal trade routes and their continuing links to the larger region. All along the coast of Yemen today and its offshore islands, considerable opportunities still exist to service a regional demand for, among other things, fish products, weapons, various seasonal agricultural products and perhaps most importantly transport.3 This is especially true of the Tihāmah coast, for instance, where ‘gun-runners’ and smugglers of Somali and other African illegal migrants constitute a lucrative and politically invaluable asset to local merchants, boat owners and inland partners. Tens of thousands of African migrants seeking access to the GCC labour market use these services, resulting in a powerful mix of cash, crime and the inevitable

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  43 corruption of various governing agencies increasingly expected to regulate this business (HRW 2008a, 2009). Relatively powerful vested interests become entrenched in these networks, which in the past rarely attracted the attention of macro-economic reports for the World Bank but are proving increasingly important even in strategic and terrorism studies. For one thing, there is a growing number of studies that try to link the insurrections in Yemen to the regional weapons market and the relative ease with which goods and people are smuggled into Arabia. The Saudi navy, for one, with the assistance of the United States, has attempted to put up a naval blockade on Yemen’s northern coastline (Nasrawi 2009; Arab News 2009). What is missing from these rather dramatic measures, and from the studies that involve these events, is an appreciation for local factors. These informal markets often constitute the largest part of local economies, stretching from the businesses that coordinate passage into Yemen to the reception, processing and further smuggling of migrants or illicit goods into Saudi Arabia and beyond. The geographic reach of these business networks have only grown over the decades as the oil-rich economies elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula served as a magnet for both Yemenis themselves and their less fortunate African clients. Any and all attempts to formalize these trading networks either through government institutions or controlling points of entry inevitably lead to tensions. Other, perhaps more lucrative, and certainly older types of illicit trade contribute in even more dramatic ways to the internal dynamics of the regional political economy. What occurs throughout the process of securing the importation of the highly coveted stimulant qāt into the ‘Asīr region of Saudi Arabia or, perhaps even more invaluable today, the flow of guns through Ṣa‘dah, for instance, is a constantly shifting set of temporary alliances that cannot simply be dismissed by state officials wishing to control this trade. As is the case today with attempts by both the Yemeni and Saudi governments to clamp down on so-called illegal trade of all kinds of products across their common border, any sudden intervention by external forces that interrupts such trade has historically instigated chain reactions that often result in violent shifts in local power. They also, as intimated by the regional press, create profit margins so large that even top members of the Yemeni military are involved in the smuggling of weapons into the Yemen theatre. As elaborated more in Chapter 4, the Ṣa‘dah region and its Saudi neighbours, much like the dynamic environment along the Mexican and US border, is susceptible to sudden outbreaks of violence if governments, local officials or outside entrepreneurs attempt to change the temporarily established political and economic order along any part of the trade network. In other words, the violence today in Ṣa‘dah, the Tihāmah and offshore islands, large parts of the Ma’rib interior, some parts of the far east of Ḥaḍramawt and hinterland of Aden have long been reflections of a multiple set of local reactions to disruptions caused by the Yemeni state, US pilotless drones or German agents provocateurs. Recently, this borderland dynamic has been studied comparatively to highlight the interconnecting forces of change that often create contingencies on the ground that are rarely predictable (Zartman 2010). The important analytical point

44  Chaos in Yemen to stress here is that, as with other socio-economic phenomena, we cannot reduce the violence along these border areas to the religious or ethnocentric prejudices of the actors alone.4 Rather, we must account for how intricately those fighting for local ascendancy are already commercially tied to networks that often extend well beyond one location.5 Although it is premature to call the Ḥūthī a movement as encompassing of the region’s social, spiritual, economic and political life as Idrīsī’s, it is not too early to speculate on the parallels and realize that similarly complex interlinking factors contribute at times of political upheaval, related uncertainty and the possibility of external patronage, an opportunity for an entirely new order of regional life to emerge. The ‘Asīr has certainly seen it in the past with the Idrīsīyah movement and I would suggest the Ḥūthī are potentially following similar trajectories, albeit under a largely different set of intervening circumstances. It is within these unique, temporary conjunctures of interests and needs that the collaborative dynamics once theorized as indicators of Yemen’s democratic underbelly now constitute an entirely new communal dynamic. What proves exceptional in all of this is the Ṣāliḥ government since unification. This is hardly the time in Yemen for disparate local interests to push into the state sphere of influence because Ṣāliḥ’s regime is demonstrably eliminating that option with his recent shift in strategy. The ‘order’ the Ṣāliḥ regime represents is clearly and purposefully disrupting local life. Amid the chaos the regime is party to, it is then possible to eliminate the borderland polities long posing a bureaucratic headache to oil companies, international agencies and sovereign states. That said, what is occurring in Ṣa‘dah today, for example, is more pregnant with comparative possibility because both the Ḥūthī and Idrīsī cases occur at key moments in Yemen’s history. Although not directly connected, just as during the 1907–23 period that represents Idrīsī’s largest impact on local and regional history, various processes at play in the south of Yemen, for instance, invite states, competing local and regional interests and shifts in economic power to open possibilities for peoples in Ṣa‘dah, Ḥajjah, ‘Amrān and ’Asīr today as well. It is therefore the task of this chapter to interweave a narrative of local competition, risk taking and collaboration to highlight the crucial conjunctures of modern political communities. Returning to the nineteenth century makes this point clear. In this regard, rarely have social scientists studied interactions in Yemen outside an analytical model that is predicated on the state aiming for stability and commercial order. In contrast, Chaos in Yemen interprets Ṣāliḥ’s politics as a means to create disorder. For their part, the nineteenth-century imperial administrations in southern Arabia also seemed to look for ways to avoid direct governance; the difference being that, unlike Ṣāliḥ, their tactics were based on the hope of bringing stability, not chaos. Both the British and Ottoman administrations adopted a strategy of political decentralization that for important periods of time actually shunned central state power in order to more economically manage the region through local proxies (Blumi 2004). The administration of Yemen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, in other words, an amalgamation

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  45 of interests. The causal factors behind these empires’ expansion into ‘occupied’ areas of Yemen often prove to have local origins. What actually draws the modern imperial enterprise into regions hitherto inaccessible to early modern European states represents a combination of social, political and economic conjunctures that involve a set of local interests in a constant process of self-evaluation and adaptation. Put differently, the sudden shifts in local fortunes, the rise and fall of regional power alliances, and the interactions between individuals marginally linked to global capitalist interests often account for the development of imperialism (and Ṣāliḥ’s overreach in the 1990s) and ultimately impact the maturation of modern states and societies throughout the world (Blumi 2005: 19–31). The communities that live along Arabia’s southern highlands are especially useful examples of this complex, integrated story of modern state building. Unfortunately, historical surveys rarely consider the trans-regional connections of these areas outside the framework of an imperial history that assumes ‘European’ initiative, manipulation and scheming. It is thus common to find studies of these regions’ modern history placing exclusive emphasis on imperial state action and an implied local passivity (Farah 2002). The hitherto rigid compartmentalizing of regional events inside the framework of state expansionism has thus denied historians a valuable resource for understanding the modern world in a larger sense. Local interactions, conflicts and struggles were not simply a product of outside machination, but often extended beyond the immediate area of imperial ‘contact’ and ultimately created the opportunities for direct interactions between European and Ottoman state agents in the 1870s. The subsequent progression towards direct or indirect imperial engagement in Yemen also proved to be varied, as the conditions on the ground prior to and during ‘contact’ demanded quite different and frequently shifting strategies to reflect the different motivations and possibilities of both local and imperial actors (Jacob 1915). The task then is to not invest too much attention in the strategic interests of external forces and consider local interactions that ultimately induced the imperial powers or post-imperial states to directly engage them. Successfully doing this, however, not only requires investing considerable energy to research the primary documents of empires long vanished from the region; it also requires adopting an entirely new way of reading the motivations for social, economic and political affiliation in Yemen. The trans-geographic perspective adopted here should be especially helpful in respect to considering how events on the ground today animate, often with considerable discomfort, otherwise aloof foreign policy-makers and their academic apologists. For example, the impression some today wish to give about the external influences in the region – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, al-Qā‘idah and the US – has the potential of hampering us from spending adequate time studying the ambitions, needs and reactions of the real agents of events in Yemen today: the Yemenis themselves living in clusters of villages. By highlighting foreign influences as the principal cause of (and solution to) the chaos in Yemen, we may be losing sight of internal factors exploiting these perceptions of foreign intrigue while creating at the same time the conditions that induce outsiders to see Yemen through one

46  Chaos in Yemen strategic lens and not another. Furthermore, by looking at how such a possible matrix of interests played out in the late Ottoman/British era, I believe making this point can help us develop the necessary repertoire of research questions to analyse Yemen today in new ways.

The foundations of change In Yemen, during periods of transition, the vulnerabilities of weak states are manifested in the multitude of temporary local alliances that enabled the Ottoman, British, Italian and French empires, for example, to successfully insert agents into the dynamics of daily life from the 1870s onwards. This is especially the case with the rise of the polity around Muḥammad al-Idrīsī in the ‘Asīr by 1907. Idrīsī’s rise, however, can really be explained only by recognizing the significant disruptions of the mundane order of daily life. What caused these disruptions are a combination of shifting economic interests, new channels to commercial expansion and ecological disasters such as drought, disease and flooding, as well as the ripple effects of political upheaval in neighbouring regions such as the Horn of Africa, the Ḥijāz and India. As a result, in this period of transition the temporary concessions to authority assumed to represent ‘tribal loyalty’ or the Zaydī Imāmate are often voided or, more interestingly, under contestation within the communities of the ‘Asīr. In other words, what may have once been a temporarily stable community who accepted individuals (a mayor, senator, shaykh, president) to serve as adjudicators of local disputes and/or a faithful representative of the community in its relations with others, can dissipate in times of stress caused by the arrival of the Ottoman army, violence in a neighbouring valley or famine. Such communal disintegration, in the form of either communal factionalism or actual migration, constitutes moments of descent that ultimately enable agents of the Ottoman Empire by the 1860s, or the Idrīsī Sufī order in 1907, to engage with and then help transform various Yemeni political and economic lives. The subsequent and correlated process of a reorientation among presumably fixed sectarian or tribal constituencies proved transformative for the peoples living throughout what is today known as Yemen. In the ‘Asīr, shifts in local power elsewhere in the Red Sea and south Arabia opened a new set of channels of exchange in and around the coastal towns of Jizān and its main town in the hinterland Abhā. These opportunities for what eventually becomes an Idrīsī state worthy of British, Italian and Ottoman patronage – as well as Imam Yaḥyā’s fear – would correspond with the establishment of an Ottoman-led administration in Ṣan‘ā’, in Ta‘izz and along the coast south of Jizān, offering a set of developments that should dissuade us from harbouring any remaining assumptions about what Yemen is supposed to represent in political, economic and cultural form according to analytical tools habitually mobilized by social scientists. It is widely accepted that European and Ottoman expansion in the Red Sea region occurred during the 1800s as a by-product of imperial rivalries over the Indian Ocean and Egypt. Accordingly, the region’s local population in that literature is treated as if it is of marginal historical consequence. The Eurocentric

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  47 logic follows that whenever European states engaged locals they did so in order to address external agendas, not in response to the actions of locals themselves. In taking this approach, even historians from the Middle East presuppose European powers had an already well-articulated (and static) set of priorities in respect to the Red Sea (Murī 1993). Prior to what became conventional European imperialism, however, a complex set of inter-related processes took place in the region that helps us read more carefully this complicated exchange between empire and what are often called ‘marginal societies’. For example, trade along the coasts of the Red Sea had, prior to and even for decades after the arrival of European linked merchants, operated under the direction of alliances that conjoined coastal villages with the culturally mixed hinterlands known today as Ethiopia and Yemen. These alliances constituted temporary agreements between ‘power holders’ who could provide security for the caravans and dhows serving the major trade routes in and out of the area (Blumi 2005: 73–107). A closer look at how these trade networks actually worked leads to a greater appreciation of the inherent fragility of the region’s political order crucial for European arrival. Security for these trade networks was often provided by clusters of communities who were either coerced by or dependent on merchants based in the region’s ports. These local merchants, usually linked to ports in other parts of the Red Sea through marriage or association with a Sufī order, such as the Idrīsīyah, often temporarily monopolized access to the outside world by providing the logistical and administrative skills needed to maintain trade relations. This neglected relationship between coastal merchants and villagers in the hinterland may thus help us understand the region’s complex political environment as well as the eventual transformation that took place.6 At key moments throughout the nineteenth century, an ascendant alliance of villages under the leadership of a well-connected leader, often an effective preacher with family connections to a Sufī tarīqah based in a port town such as Suakin, Massawa or Mukhā, could secure a temporary monopoly on the trade of key resources flowing from the interior to the coast. These temporarily reconfigured networks often became so powerful that they started financing as well as operating the caravans themselves. Over time, new patterns of trade and power solidified around these networks, assuring that the trade supplying regional and world markets with foodstuffs (mainly dried fish, duara, qāt, coffee, mutton and dates) as well as ‘luxury’ commodities (slaves, ivory, gold) ran smoothly. Such shifts were not unique to time or place but clearly part of a dynamic set of circumstances throughout the history of the Red Sea littoral. On occasion, these shifting factions within regional networks caused the collapse of a trade network for long stretches of time, creating opportunities for outside interests to enter into the fray. Although chroniclers in Yemen and Ethiopia (Abyssinia) often noted disruptions caused by a local power struggle, they rarely connected the long-term effects of these disruptions to the significant political struggles that precipitated the eventual ‘penetration’ of outside interests (Blumi 2009a).

48  Chaos in Yemen In the short period spanning the late 1820s and 1830s, the entire Red Sea appears to have fallen into a struggle for political ascendancy. Newly emerging, wellorganized and heavily armed micro-polities openly challenged the old patterns of business dominated by coastal Arab-speaking merchants. Albeit beyond the scope of this study, recognizing the consequences of Egypt’s Muḥammad ‘Alī’s steady expansion into the Sudan and Ḥijāz during this period of local upheaval helps us better appreciate the new set of conditions being introduced (Fahmy 1997). By the 1850s, in large part due to a growing rivalry between the opposing regional empires of Egypt and Ethiopia, the once functioning commercial networks that maintained economic and political stability in many communities had disappeared and an all-out campaign to secure independent caravan routes emerged. As a response to and a consequence of the fragmentation of these local commercial networks, individuals and their communities adopted new strategies of survival. For many, their first line of action was to capitalize on the expansionist ambitions of Egypt and/or Ethiopia. Many interior villages, often straddling key caravan routes, solicited the patronage of one of these powers. At various times over the period, rival outside powers were then able to support these villages with shipments of modern rifles and silver in return for their cooperation. As a result, new political alliances, often representing nothing more than a cluster of villages found along a segment of a frequently used trade route, began to change the relationship between coastal merchants, their clients dependent on these caravans, and Mediterranean-based states. Perhaps the best-known early example of the interchange between rival local communities and outside powers was the East India Company’s activities in Yemen. When early contacts with communities in the Ethiopian highlands proved problematic for the company’s representatives (Ethiopia was considered the prize in the region), British agents were able to forge an alliance in 1838 with local communities in the port of Aden as an alternative. Securing access to Aden ultimately helped assure that British-allied merchants had a launching point for any future attempts to control trade out of Ethiopia. Beyond ambitions in Ethiopia, the slowly evolving arrangements established between company agents, government officials based in Bombay and a select group of locals in Aden secured for Britain access to trading routes into the interior of Arabia – the most important being the Ḥaḍramawt with its centuries-old trade links to India and Southeast Asia (Ho 2004). Although this part of the narrative fits most standard histories of British conquest, it must be stressed that local conditions in much of southern Arabia and the Red Sea played a far greater role in attracting British attention than any proactive expansionist zeal on the part of British merchants. The port town of Aden and its immediate hinterland presented itself as an opportunity because of the overtures a local ‘shaykh’ made to East India Company (henceforth EIC) representatives, while communities entrenched in points of exchange in the larger Red Sea did not. Egypt’s active engagement in a number of campaigns, from bribing local leaders to outright military conquest throughout the peninsula, limited the EIC to the isolated outpost of Aden (Ghānim 1999: 67–137). Once again, whereas historians

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  49 focus on how the British responded to Egypt’s expansionism, they forget to consider the role of locals in setting the interventionist stage that ultimately resulted in the company signing a treaty with a local potentate. Ostensibly, EIC officials based in Bombay capitalized on local fears of Muḥammad ‘Alī’s expansion deep into southern Yemen. In return for the freedom to conduct their business with a growing regional trading power and in all likelihood a stipend as well, some locals invited British involvement at the expense of the Egyptians. This context suggests that local Yemenis understood the contours of British ambitions and the limits of Egyptian power. In return for giving Britain the right to use Aden as a resupply station, local leaders freed themselves from Egyptian tax collectors as well as securing a place in the trading itinerary of a global power. This early history of the British role in the Red Sea, securing allies and then designating symbolic authority to individuals willing to cooperate with them, offers important insight into imperial strategies that were quickly adopted in Africa and India as well. The designation as ‘sulṭān’ of a local who Bombay assumed had influence over the trading networks in and around Aden initiated a string of similar transactions in southern Arabia that helped the EIC slowly gain a foothold in regional affairs. That being said, it would be a mistake to see these ‘treaties’ as simple extensions of British machination. These transactions empowered locals as much as they secured a foothold for the EIC in the region. Many of the company’s allies were in direct conflict with local rivals; access to EIC patronage (especially the gold and weapons) gave them a temporary advantage (Kour 1981: 111–18). In the end, these treaties set a standard of political interaction that would last for more than a hundred years (Blumi 2009b). Within a year of his initial overtures to the Aden community leader, the chief architect of British policy in the Red Sea, Stafford B. Haines, wrote to London that he had used British funds and weapons to secure other treaties with ‘all the neighbouring states’. In the process, Haines forged trade alliances with most of the Aden hinterland and made sure that Aden’s growing community would receive the necessary supplies for survival.7 The key benefactors were ‘sovereign’ leaders of states who in many cases had no history of community leadership. The ‘Abdalī cluster of communities and its ‘sulṭān’, for example, demonstrated no real power in the region prior to the arrival of British agents; it was only upon being designated the sovereign of Laḥj (and thus Aden) by Bombay that the ‘Abdalī sulṭān could assert power over his rivals. Indeed, the only influence the sulṭān had over his neighbours was that he now had the exclusive right to negotiate, on behalf of the Bombay-based company, supply agreements that linked Aden and the highlands. The ‘Abdalī sulṭān, as a result, served as S. B. Haines’s chief intermediary, an arrangement that ostensibly allowed an obscure local to forge lucrative ties with outlying communities in the Faḍlī, Yafī’ī, Ḥawshabī, ‘Alawī and Amirī regions as they all sought a part of the increasingly important business with Aden and the British capitalists (Waterfeld 1968; Gavin 1975: 127–40). Such a formal linkage, facilitated by locals who sometimes used coercive tactics to persuade some communities (but certainly not all) to declare their loyalty to Aden as a way to strengthen their claims to the British, involves a complicated

50  Chaos in Yemen set of political and economic transactions. Such transactions, if viewed as a complicated set of relations between multiple stakeholders in a variety of contexts, can be useful to studying Yemen today. This is certainly an angle to consider when investigating the factors surrounding, for example, the persistent issue of ‘Salafist’ movements in and around the former frontier regions separating North and South Yemen today. It is well known that many of the emerging groups currently designated, at least selectively, as a threat to regional stability, have often enjoyed formal patronage from Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni state.

Reinterpreting political Islām in Ṣāliḥ’s Yemen As detailed in Chapter 5, the interlinking use of these groups was based largely on their effective community-building skills. Many of these groups also seemed quite effective in recruiting disgruntled migrants from the north of Yemen and enough locals in the newly incorporated southern towns and villages to become key local and regional agents of change. They used money that seemed readily available for political establishments with schools and social service facilities linked to them (Burgat 2006; Clark 2003). These charities have a long history in the larger region. The money came from wealthy benefactors from South Yemen who had spent decades in exile in the Gulf or Saudi Arabia, and from nonYemeni organizations indirectly linked to the Saudi state and/or the Ṣāliḥ regime itself. These charities often would take aggressive positions within disorientated southern communities, some say to help colonize the region with a new, highly confrontational and intolerant brand of Islām (Joffe 1994). The ability of many of these communities to resist was hampered by the 1994 Civil War, the presence of large numbers of North Yemen troops and their conditions of poverty (Dahlgren 2008). The services provided by these charities were sometimes the only ones available to communities suddenly trapped in a situation of dependency on aid as their regional economies were completely disrupted by the bloody unification process. Although this is a story that can be easily treated as analogous to Pakistan, Iraq and much of Africa, it would be a mistake to just label them as typical cases of salafist/jihadist influence (Bonnefoy 2008a, 2009). These charities created the kind of trans-local links, often with the strongest source of support from outside the region in which they settled, that were equally crucial to the British, Ottoman and Idrīsīyah of the pre-First World War period. In other words, the process of establishing communities that became embedded in large parts of South Yemen, the Ma’rib, Ḥajjah and Ṣa‘dah (the areas where most resistance to the Ṣāliḥ regime is present) do not necessarily help us fully understand their contribution to post-unification Yemeni politics. Many of these same groups, for instance, would in time face hostility from their Yemeni patrons. This is in addition to the already hostile reception they received from many members of their local host communities. Even more confounding are the on-again, off-again relations they had with the Saudi state. As we will see with the shifting conditions in the south after 2007 discussed in Chapter 5, depending on the larger regional

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  51 context, the ideological and political orientations of so-called ‘fundamentalist’ organizations do not correspond to conventional wisdom. Perhaps the most confused period of conflicting alliances was the Civil War of 1994 in Yemen covered in Chapter 5. Many of these hitherto beneficiaries of Saudi largess became extensions of the Ṣāliḥ state when it wished to establish a firm hold on local events in the south. In this case, there is a well-established connection between the Saudi government and southern rebels under the leadership of ‘Alī Salīm al-Bayḍ, who was exiled in Saudi Arabia at the time of the war. In other words, Saudi Arabia had openly encouraged and directly supported financially, diplomatically and militarily the rebellion that emerged out of the failed coalition government during unification. That did not mean, however, these intermediate partners were entirely underneath the thumb of Riyāḍ, just as it is clear in regards to the multitudes of self-identifying salifīyun (Bonnefoy 2008a, 2009). For its part, it appears the Ṣāliḥ regime did fund select religious groups to counter the southern and Ḥūthī rebellions; this included facilitating the continued migration into many southern regions of particularly rigid Salafist-type movements (Bonnefoy 2008a). These were not, however, uniformly cooperative with the Ṣāliḥ regime. Indeed, these groups had their own internal dynamic, and their subsequent relationship with the local population is often not discussed in the growing number of studies that mention their role in regional politics. As noted earlier, at times they provided the only social security net for locals; at other times they were self-isolating because of their hostility towards local patterns of socialization and worship (Knysh 2001). Considering this, it is clear that a number of domestic factors corresponded with the infiltration into local political and cultural space of external agents of change since the early 1990s. This is a crucial story that deserves further elaboration, as it helps us speculate about why locals joined such temporary alliances. Complicating the explanations of why they were forged is part of the process of suggesting a new framework to analysing the chaos in Yemen today. Fortunately, a generation of French scholars are breaking new ground in deconstructing some of the less helpful sweeping generalizations about ‘Salafism’ in Yemen. The work of Bonnefoy (2008a, 2009) and his mentor François Burgat (2006) has usefully disaggregated the ideological and theological orientations of these movements. Although their findings are now circulating in Washington, DC, and feeding a growing industry of terrorism studies that actually contributes to the very reductionism their work disputes, it is their underlying caution not to treat these movements outside their specific communal, ideological and socio-economic contexts that proves invaluable to the points made here. Some of the important conclusions one can draw from their studies about the groups operating within former southern Yemen territories relate to the continuous emergence of new polities. Recognizing these various dynamics in rural Yemen regarding the phenomenon of proselytizers helps us consider, once we apply the analytical questions this book is persistently advocating, the deeper set of factors contributing to the relative success or failure of these groups locally and in larger Yemen. It is

52  Chaos in Yemen perhaps misleading to think of these groups as so influential, however. The measure of their success is often the paraphernalia coveted by terrorism experts these days: websites, newspapers, taped sermons. This fixation on objects of study does not necessarily assist the work of understanding the extent of local and group interaction. There is in fact plenty of evidence to suggest these groups are facing a hostile local population, with many adopting since day one a siege-like mentality, very much akin to early colonizers in native lands. This is especially interesting considering the quite different set of socio-religious movements seemingly establishing a foothold in South Yemen: Sufīsm. The heavy dosage of shrine visitation and the celebration of old personalities is anathema to so-called ‘Salafist’ doctrines and clearly demonstrates that the flood of fundamentalisms (in the plural) are not solely articulated in the form often associated with these groups. This growing interest in reviving Sufī traditions in Yemen may reflect a local or regional defiance to an aggressive Ṣāliḥ regime that has ruined the unification experience (southerners are widely acknowledged to be second-class citizens today), but also the reassertion of trans-regional networks that have been part of Haḍramī existence for centuries (Knysh 2001). To put it simply, there are no facile explanations for what is happening to South Yemen (or for that matter in Ṣa‘dah) and the simple evocation of ‘Salafism’ has its pitfalls. Rural South Yemen is a vibrant, complex set of cultural, political and economic systems that are changing all the time in this especially volatile post-unification period, something readily exploited by the Ṣāliḥ regime but which has, until now, produced ambiguous results. As the excellent field work of the anthropologist Flagg Miller (2007) has demonstrated, the cassette tape phenomenon offers an invaluable window into the extensive, if often inaccessibly parochial, networking that links taxi drivers, farmers, local leaders, group public relations officers and members of the diaspora together. What is clear is that the interlinking surveillance operations of, among others, the ‘Joint Meeting Parties’ coalition (Browers 2007) and rival and allied regional groups such as the Yemen Socialist Party, as well as the more formal state intelligence agencies all suggest an eclectic social universe that desperately needs order. This image, unfortunately filtered through ‘intelligence’ provided by the growing industry of ‘terrorism monitors’, shapes policies in Ṣan‘ā’, Muscat, Abū Ẓabī (Abu Dhabi) and Riyāḍ. At the moment, the collapse of traditional markers of the local social order is paradoxically frustrating old expectations of state power. Micro-politics prove vibrant as well as impossible to pin down, thereby making the conventional state’s task of establishing order impossible. As a result Ṣāliḥ’s orientation has completely changed – a reaction, in part, to the frustrations incited by the multitude of autonomous interests. At the same time, such disarray is cause for alarm in those analytical frameworks regularly adopted to provide accessible explanations to a limited audience. The US military–industrial complex, for example, does not like complications and prefers to produce one-to two-page executive summaries for the policy-makers upon whom they rely for funding. For Ṣāliḥ and his allies, they have realized the limitations of local knowledge and increasingly resort to claiming their opponents are extensions of al-Qā‘idah

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  53 or Iran in order to tap into the lucrative rewards provided by allies in the ‘war on terror’. As a result, the Yemen case is one in which the dynamics of local polities have compelled the Ṣāliḥ regime to adjust strategies. The slide to a new kind authoritarianism as predicated on chaos is explained further in Chapter 5. The lesson to draw here is that, the greater the impression groups can leave on the ever-shifting sands of regional politics, the more likely it is that a formal or informal link can be established by external patrons. Today, the added risk or benefit of these subtle association-building processes are the calculations US and Saudi intelligence agencies make on the utility of patronage or blacklisting. The Ṣāliḥ regime has clearly demonstrated enough sophistication in this nebulous world and has increasingly been able to manipulate larger actors by instigating intra-group conflicts and openly attacking or patronizing strategically useful Salafist groups scattered throughout Yemen. For their part, these groups’ roles can be meaningful only if they successfully engage their immediate host communities.8 In the end, the key here is not to overly reduce these dynamics to a simple radical Islamic group (sometimes) versus Yemeni state versus Sufī ‘grave worshippers’ (al-quburīyun) or Ḥūthī ‘infidels’ (kuffār) analytical model. These temporarily consolidated communities are animated by numerous interweaving factors that influence group and individual calculations about how to engage the world around them. When new intervening factors are introduced to these negotiated conglomerations of historical agents, often linked to considerable economic and political disruption to peoples’ lives, then entirely new possibilities, well beyond the capacity of fixed categories to contain, transform these temporary alliances. This point can be further developed by returning to the larger Red Sea perspective I use to look at Yemen prior to the First World War.

The Red Sea prior to the First World War The obvious importance of the Red Sea to world politics following the opening of the Suez Canal on 17 November 1869 has had the unfortunate consequence of obscuring the first half of the nineteenth century. At least since the early 1800s both France and Britain had aggressively sought ways to assure that their ships sailing to the Far East had access to the East African coast and Indian Ocean islands. The Red Sea was very much part of this commercial flow.9 Indigenous commercial networks that linked Arabia and East Africa to India and beyond were profitable and highly efficient enterprises that not only competed with Europeans but attracted many early European merchants to incorporate them in the system.10 In time, European-based commercial interests invested limited resources in lobbying their governments to make direct diplomatic contact with these indigenous networks in Somalia and Ethiopia/Eritrea. Besides the activities of the EIC, Marseilles trading families such as Vidal and Pastré also established commercial relations with East Africa. Between 1835 and 1837, the Pastré agents Combes and Tamisier travelled into Tigré and Shawa in the Ethiopian highlands, ensuring by treaty that French commercial interests had

54  Chaos in Yemen access to portions of the Danakil coastline (Blumi 2005: 62–134). In considering this early French activity, it is important to reiterate that Europeans did not have a monopoly on operations in the region. This was at once complicated by the fact that there were different interests actively seeking to secure trade arrangements with the same people. The Milan-based company Rubattino, for instance, entered the region by the 1860s, providing yet another significant external source of patronage (Codignola 1938). This gave locals an extraordinary amount of leverage that we find plays out in similar ways today. The Ottoman Empire – much like France or Italy in the region, a seemingly weak power with powerful rivals – found itself solicited by locals in Yemen desperately in need of stability (al-Jurāfī 1987: 204–6). The Ottoman invasion of the Yemeni highlands in 1872 was one outcome of the rapid succession of shifts in local and regional relations that gave increased value to the kind of imperial patronage the Ottoman, French, British and Italian states could provide. The chaos that followed had devastating effects on villages and their ability to adjust to contingencies as they arose. This was particularly dangerous in southern Arabia at the time, as a series of ecological disasters exposed much of the peninsula to drought and disease. Starvation and mass migration, therefore, became the overriding theme of the 1860s and later in highland Yemen, from where much of the population living in the northern highlands fled to the coast or southern Yemen and induced considerable fighting between regional stakeholders (al-Ḥibshī 1980: 306, 393–437).11 As much as Yemeni society was in turmoil, however, the chaos, pain and petty politics that frustrated local communities afforded Ottoman officials and eventually locally based actors such as Muḥammad al-Idrīsī an opportunity to intervene. For local merchants and their political partners, the issue was linked to calculations over what Ottoman patronage could do for them in the face of a systemic breakdown. Quietly cultivating alliances in much the same way Rubattino did in Eritrea and the EIC in Aden, Ottoman authorities based in the coastal areas of the Red Sea since the 1850s began to attract suitors. In a similar process characteristic of British influence on local politics around Aden, as conditions on the ground led to new forms of organized violence, Istanbul’s open support of one group over another made or broke the short-term fortunes of many communities. Northern Yemen’s rapid spiral into chaos, therefore, reflected an opportunity for Ottoman officials to begin an aggressive campaign that aspired to fill a power vacuum and thwart the possible encroachment of the Egyptians or Italian, French and British companies (al-‘Abdalī 1932: 34–41). When the forces of the Egyptian Khedive, for instance, sought to expand control over the lucrative trading routes running between Massawa, Port Said, Suakin, Tajūrah and Mukhā in this time of economic pain, locals in the ‘Asīr further north reacted by reaching out to the Ottomans and/or the British.12 In response, the Ottoman and British Empires, and not private commercial interests as on the African coast, promised state funds and diplomatic representation to locals requesting official protection from the Egyptian state.13 The nature of these overtures and the subsequent shifts in community relations to accommodate

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  55 the prospects of securing either Ottoman or British state assistance helped locals reformulate their interests; by subtly manipulating these rival foreign interests, they were able to sustain a steady flow of money and military assistance, and create the kind of new local power configurations that are manifesting the same kind of modern polities animating the Red Sea region and Horn of Africa today. Most of those who secured Ottoman trust at the time became the key elements inviting Ottoman intervention in Yemen in 1872. This is crucial to our application of these historical cases to the present, as it demonstrates how much states modify their long-term strategic thinking because of shifting conditions on the ground. Much like with Ṣa‘dah in the north or Abyan in the south today, both regions were initially under local commercial management. But the moment state authorities decided to directly take over the economic affairs of a region, the calculus changed for local constituent groups and ultimately external players. In the second half of the nineteenth century, long-established commercial links within Yemen and beyond helped shape local political relations, inducing a growing rivalry between newly established Ottoman officials stationed in the region and the British merchants cum colonial administrators based in Aden. What makes Ottoman Yemen a particularly interesting case to study is that rival businessmen were not always the ones pushing for structural changes. Rather, in frustration with the power structures built around entrenched commercial networks, state officials at times themselves initiated changes in the region. As outlined below, such dangerous gambles were often deemed necessary in order to effectively deal with sudden outbreaks of violence in an area; to many officials, a breakdown of order hinted that a new local rivalry was emerging between entrenched interests and newcomers. Much as Ṣāliḥ calculated that chaos is ‘advantageous’, so too did some Ottoman officers use local conflicts to gain a strategic foothold in Yemen’s highlands. In his detailed reports of the 1850–60 period, for example, the Ottoman officer Mehmed Sırrı describes the instability in parts of Yemen caused by trade disputes between regional rivals who competed for what appeared to be a growing number of opportunities to sign a treaty of cooperation with the British based in the south.14 In Sırrı’s eyes, conditions in Yemen were evolving to the point that such events offered Istanbul an opportunity to supplement the empire’s overall weak position in Arabia. The decision to intervene in local politics clearly reflects what recent research suggests was the Ottoman’s opportunistic self-insertion into local conflicts elsewhere in Arabia (Kurşan 1998). Unfortunately, recent work on Istanbul’s growing role in Arabia emphasizes Ottoman imperialist ambitions, neglecting as a consequence local dynamics that may have induced a change of heart in the metropole. Sırrı’s reports certainly hint at the latter. In this respect, revisiting what was happening and comparing that with what is currently transpiring in Ṣa‘dah, Ta‘izz and Abyan may provide new insight into the rationale for Ṣāliḥ’s administration to choose confrontation over simply allowing locals to work out their disputes traditionally. In the past, it has been understood that Ṣāliḥ’s weak state compelled the regime to embrace alliances when available, even modifying policies to accommodate potential partners (Phillips .

56  Chaos in Yemen 2008: 113–36; Schwedler 2003: 57–65). The sense that a shift in the regional balance of power could have given some local players the idea of openly soliciting Ṣāliḥ’s patronage in return for an opportunity to infiltrate state administration (or to redirect some of the revenue to family members and allies) was an incentive for many. Such factors are clearly still shaping the decision-making process in Ṣan‘ā’ and Ṣa‘dah; for outsiders to overlook these local dynamics can result in a disastrous set of lose–lose options forced upon the regime now required to act by outsiders with little appreciation of the conditions on the ground beyond the fact that Zaydīs may be at odds with Sunnis and northerners with southerners (Nu‘mān 1965: 21–9). In a similar fashion, events taking place from the 1860s onwards in the ‘Asīr, Tihāmah and Ta‘izz regions of Yemen show that communities closely linked to the larger Red Sea economic matrix were responding to events in the Eritrean hinterlands and British policies in Aden. Yemeni-based merchants, for one, expressed concern over the changing regional commercial situation and actively sought new channels that would help them survive any shift in regional power.15 By the time of the opening of the Suez Canal, the initial attempt by such men as Sırrı and Governor Muṣṭafa Sabri to secure the loyalty of communities actually intensified regional turmoil, especially in the ‘Asīr. The periodic subsequent outbreak of violence in the ‘Asīr (the region most affected by changes taking place in the Red Sea) suggests another link between the growing European activity and heightened local tensions: in response to regional challenges, numerous rival ‘Asīrī militias threatened trade along the Arabian coast. A possible explanation for ‘Asīrī ‘piracy’ was the growing economic marginalization of many coastal communities facing the expansion of regional rivals thanks to Italian, French and British patronage. Another contributing factor was Britain’s near monopoly on heavy freight shipping in the region. By 1869, Britishowned heavy tonnage steamers plying between Suez, Jeddah, Suakin, Massawa and Aden dominated regional trade. The numerous dhows that once served as key components of the micro-markets feeding off these large-scale enterprises began to suffer from falling prices for key commodities that made their storage and transport fees less attractive.16 As a result of a declining share of the trade in the Red Sea, local ‘Asīrīs, led by Muḥammad ibn ‘Azīz, organized a series of raids into neighbouring regions to both compensate for lost income and put pressure on regional powers. These raids eventually turned into an ambitious attempt to capture and occupy more secure trading posts, actions that had the potential of disrupting trade well beyond the ‘Asīr. As we will see in Chapter 4, similar dynamics were at play when the Ṣa‘dah crisis first began to surface in the early 2000s. Indeed, it appears that, once ‘Azīz’s militias started to raid the coastal region of Tihāmah, much of the trade between the Yemeni coast and the highlands stopped. Such a situation was particularly worrisome for communities located north of the highland city of Ṣan‘ā’ facing food shortages because there were no alternative routes to the sea. In response, a coalition of previously unallied communities joined forces to push ‘Azīz out of Tihāmah and openly solicited

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  57 Ottoman intervention.17 This constituted an opportunity by which Istanbul was able to imagine a long-term role in Yemen with unprecedented speed. In short order, Istanbul started to ship Ottoman troops into the Red Sea to prepare for a confrontation with ‘Aziz’s forces.18 Whereas the ‘traditional’ order of Yemeni society clearly could no longer sustain itself as compromised commercial links with the outside world created widespread economic hardships, the subsequent political opportunism introduced a new vocabulary of necessity and possibilities that ultimately transformed the Ottoman Empire. As some Yemeni historians describe it, the Qāsimī dynasty, and what was left of Yemen’s established government, was in the process of disintegration because of the turbulence in the Tihāmah. Besides the fact that the government in Ṣan‘ā’ could not protect its highland communities from the effects of ‘Azīz’s invasion of the coastal region of Tihāmah, there were a number of competing claimants to the Zaydī Imāmate that confused the situation even further. With no single community able to claim universal power as disparate interests competed over shrinking regional resources, the continued food crisis due to the ‘Asīrī events demanded action (al-Sayyāghī 1978: 125; al-Ḥibshī 1980: 296). It is clear that, for much of the period of Ottoman rule in Arabia, this dynamic of fragmenting power continued to plague local communities and offer the Ottoman Empire, at the time in economic crisis, the opportunity to transform itself into an expansionist regional power. The dynamism of the entire Arabian Peninsula, in other words, becomes for the first time evident with the ascendancy of a certain political order in Istanbul, London, Paris and Rome. That drive to control the interlinking forces that could either embellish imperial ambitions or marginalize the Ottoman state is at its most obvious point of articulation in the brief period of Ottoman expansion into the region after 1872. As hinted at above, the Ottoman invasion of the Yemeni highlands in 1872 was the outcome of a rapid succession of shifts in local and regional relations. These shifts gave increased value to the kind of imperial patronage the Ottoman, French, British and Italian states could provide locals on both sides of the Red Sea (Lenci 1990). Yemen, therefore, much like the coastal communities found in Eritrea, was caught in a period of political turmoil in which no single local power-holder could dominate. The chaos that followed had devastating effects on villages and their ability to adjust to contingencies as they arose. This was particularly dangerous in southern Arabia at the time as a series of ecological disasters exposed much of the peninsula to drought and disease. As much as Yemeni society was in turmoil, however, the chaos, pain and petty politics that frustrated local communities afforded Ottoman and British officials an opportunity to intervene.19 For local merchants and their political partners during the Ottoman invasion, the issue was linked to calculations over what Ottoman patronage could do for them in the face of a systemic breakdown. Quietly cultivating alliances in much the same way the Italians did in Eritrea, the Ottoman authorities based in the coastal areas of the Red Sea began to attract suitors. As conditions on the ground led to new forms of organized violence, Istanbul’s open support of one group over another made or broke the short-term fortunes of many communities. Yemen’s

58  Chaos in Yemen rapid spiral into chaos, therefore, created a window of opportunity for Ottoman officials to begin an aggressive campaign that aspired to fill numerous local power vacuums and thwart the encroachment of the British, already established in Aden. Such dynamics are at play today in northern Yemen, areas that are clearly still eyed with interest by Yemen’s influential neighbour to the north. In an attempt to secure greater concessions or patronage in face of the dramatic changes taking place in 1990, local political entrepreneurs throughout Yemen adopted a number of survival tactics. At times, communities that had the means kidnapped foreign oil workers in order to pressure the government (or the oil company itself) to pay for road construction or water projects. Often, the temporarily composed community extended beyond the village to embrace a much larger geographic area. One such community has emerged in the south when temporary alliances between various groups of ‘Salafists’, Socialists, peasants and labourers organize boisterous rallies to protest the effects of ‘structural adjustments’ imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1995 (Hill 2009). As these protests spread to include newly created groups linking the Laḥj-based Retired Soldiers Association, the Ta‘izz-based Idle Youth Organization and Change, demonstrations in November 2007 in particular opened up new opportunities for external actors to assert a role in local and regional affairs, a process that seems to have reanimated the Southern Movement in this period.20 Among those external actors was Ṣāliḥ’s regime itself. The escalation of violence immediately helped the regime secure better relations with outsiders. In the case of the frequent kidnappings of foreigners, Ṣāliḥ’s regime scored diplomatic victories when he was able to successfully obtain their freedom using force as opposed to negotiation. More often these days, especially if such traditional local tactics to secure state funds are carried out in coveted regions, the regime is likely to use force rather than traditional negotiations. The instability in Ṣa‘dah, Ma’rib and the south are good examples of what happens when such violent tactics fail to produce immediate results (International Crisis Group 2003: 13–20). To appreciate just how significant this shift to using force is to Yemen in the twenty-first century requires drawing historical parallels. Unfortunately, any attempt to find historical parallels is often lost in the secondary literature. Much of the literature resorts to crude sociology to analyse both the origins of the leadership crisis in Yemen and its consequences. This literature, dominated by Yemeni historians directly involved in current domestic politics or western-based international studies experts who cater to a policy-making clientele, misrepresents how politics prior to the modern state was carried out (Boucek 2009). Rather than considering the issue’s depth and complexity, these authors, influenced by models developed by British social anthropologists, simply referred to an old dichotomy of tribe versus urban, educated elite to explain events.21 Returning to the nineteenth century to make the point, no matter how these events transpired it is clear that the situation offered the Ottomans a window of opportunity; they invaded the Yemeni northern highlands in 1872. There is evidence of a complex interactive dynamic taking place between

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  59 Ottoman soldiers and locals as the Sublime Porte ordered troops to invade the Yemeni highlands in 1872–3. According to the eyewitness accounts of Ottoman officers, those Yemenis who opposed them as they moved into the highlands were selective in their tactics. The groups most likely to resist the invasion were the communities living along or near important trade routes. As they advanced further into the highlands, Ottoman soldiers wrote of the light resistance they faced as they marched to Ṣan‘ā’. Rather than an indicator of Ottoman military superiority, however, the small level of resistance spoke of a local strategy that used violence largely to obtain greater compensation from Ottoman officials eager to forge peaceful relations with Yemen’s inhabitants. This seems to be the case because, rather than simply using force, the Ottomans sought to secure the lands through which they passed by placating community leaders with gifts, stipends and honorific titles. According to officers’ memoirs, locals learned quickly that there were rewards for their cooperation; for many it proved strategic to use the possibility of their opposition to achieve greater leverage over their Ottoman counterparts. This was especially true of the skirmishes along the main road leading to Ṣan‘ā’ noted in Atif Paşa’s memoirs (1908: 63–109). By confronting the Ottomans, communities who were otherwise useless to the Ottomans marching towards Ṣan‘ā’ assured that the passing army would not simply ignore them. In other words, every time a unit came through their area, villagers fired a few shots at them, initiating a form of contact that would have otherwise been impossible. By demonstrating their capacity to make things difficult, the Ismā‘īlī of the Harāz region, for example, may have secured the opportunity to negotiate with officials who simply wanted to assure that the main road around Shibām and ‘Atarah would remain open. In a similar vein, the two main officers leading the expeditionary force into the highlands, Mirliva Veli Pasha and Miralay Musa Bey, were forced to negotiate with Ḥasan ibn Ismā‘īl from the Harāz region as they began their campaign into the highlands (Raşid 1874: 85–7). Although the communities identified as Ismā‘īlīs in the area could have indeed put up a nasty fight if they had wanted, they elected instead to offer their services to the invading army once they had made clear, by fighting for a short period of time, that it was in the Ottomans’ interest to buy their stand-down. Indeed, the alliance with the Ottomans represented a significant victory for Ḥasan Ismā‘īl, who just two years earlier openly supported Muḥammad ibn ‘Azīz as the ‘Asīrīs invaded the coast near Harāz. Making a successful transition, Ḥasan’s community became a key factor in the success of the Ottoman occupation of highland Yemen, handsomely profiting from its strategic position along a main supply route. The Ismā‘īlī example provides an early indication of how cooperation in Yemen was based on local factors that were constantly changing, offering Ottoman officials two rather distinct choices: to incorporate or to repress. It is clear that Ottoman policy was to exploit these rapidly shifting loyalties to best suit their long-term ambitions in Yemen, but using money and positions rather than guns was their main strategy.22 Such influence peddling in a post-conflict environment is something we can observe today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo

60  Chaos in Yemen and Timor, and ultimately speaks about the range of opportunities available to otherwise powerless people in the face of occupation. This way of reading many of the documented clashes between Ottoman troops and local subjects can explain a great deal about the politics in and around the commander’s tent in times of conquest.23 These interactive dynamics may also explain the success of Ottoman forces in the initial period of occupation in Yemen, as well as their future failures. In the end, the Ottomans were openly welcomed into Ṣan‘ā’ because scores of local leaders sought their favour in order to help secure or expand their own influence. Operating as ‘intermediaries’ in disputes often of their own making appears to be a key survival mechanism for actors who eventually became part of the historical record.24 The presence of a relatively powerful and wealthy occupying force offered a new set of possibilities for regionally isolated communities which recognized that the Ottoman state wanted to placate and incorporate the population by means other than force. This gave a great deal of leverage to communities and there is no doubt that Ottoman administrators witnessed the kind of petty influence peddling we see in contemporary Yemen, where incidents such as taking hostages or shutting down national highways are more likely to result in a handsome amount of money or supplies than a concerted effort to punish the offender. Over the long term, this obviously had its consequences on the Ottomans’ capacity to rule Yemen. The main problem was a complete reconfiguration of local power, one that permitted many among those initially proclaiming their loyalty to the Ottoman state to gain a dominant place in the region’s economic and political life. Once these new sets of local power configurations were established, new tensions involving local rivals arose, often at the expense of effective Ottoman administration, a condition that would certainly manifest itself in the more recent history of state formation in Yemen as well. Prior to unification, for example, North Yemen’s government (under Ṣāliḥ’s lead since 1978) was rarely involved in rural affairs. The heavy flow of money from migrant workers helped create autonomous communities who formed co-ops and agriculturalist unions that secured for much of rural North Yemen considerable freedom from the state. Of course, being self-sufficient meant the state could ignore rural Yemen, allocating funds elsewhere. As Ṣāliḥ soon learned after taking power in 1978, however, these self-sufficient communities also created power clusters that were harnessed by leaders within the Ḥāshid and Bakīl confederations or other communities that posed a threat to the state. In time, Ṣāliḥ needed to funnel resources and patronage of the state to try to coopt these autonomous sources of power. Today the regime is doing the opposite, often with the encouragement of the IMF. We may see parallels by returning to the Ottoman period. At some level, joining the Ottomans assured local communities protection from rivals who may or may not have been aligned with the Ottomans themselves. More than this, however, for those who proved particularly adept at providing the services an occupying state would prefer to outsource – tax collection, the maintenance of order – there seemed to be an unlimited amount of power they could obtain. The result of this

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  61 over the next twenty years was a geographic reconfiguration of Ottoman as well as local power. This had a regional dimension that ultimately affected Ottoman capacities to administer the entire province (Blumi 2003: 74–83). It was probably the shifting fortunes of farmers, however, that most impacted the Ottoman relationship with rural Yemen. As we will see with the events surrounding the 1909–11 harvest crisis in many northern regions, in something akin to Mike Davis’s study of British India, significant migrations towards the larger towns of Ṣan‘ā’, Ta‘izz and Ibb enabled the Ottomans to better manage the population (Davis 2002; Dresch 1989: 12–13). As power flowed towards southern areas during time of famine, it became permanent as the politics of trade and the rivalry with Britain took on new life along the recently established frontiers, creating regional economies that made the big families who hailed from the north but owned property in the Ta‘izz highlands very wealthy. As elaborated later, locals who saw the British and their ‘tribal’ allies as rivals in the search for ascendancy in southern Arabia used Ottoman officials based in Ta‘izz, Ṣan‘ā’ and Istanbul as a counterweight creating arenas of political conflict and thus the formation of numerous fragile polities. Locals with considerable sway in these key frontier areas became particularly important to the region’s post-imperial history. These beneficiaries of Ottoman or British state largess were usually rewarded for their loyalty with appointments to administrative positions. Such a strategy effectively tied the individual fortunes of local leaders to the overall success of the Ottoman administration. Men such as Shaykh Amin of Mukhā, for instance, participated in the largely symbolic establishment of Ottoman control over areas in the southern highlands in September 1872 by paying homage to Ottoman commanders and pledging in public to support the Sulṭān. In return for his wise decision to assist the Ottoman campaign, Shaykh Amin was rewarded a stipend and a top governing position. Throughout Yemen, such gestures of compliance and collaboration were rewarded with years of officially sanctioned authority. Such interactions inevitably redrew the lines of local power as Ottoman troops and their local allies moved south (Raşid 1874: 114–16). Here lay the central problems with reading into the history of Ottomanadministered Yemen. While locals became dependent on the Ottomans for providing both long-term nutritional and physical security, the Ottomans also become dependent on locals. This factor of mutual dependency contributed to a number of shifts in the period that precipitated a long-term transformation in Yemen. The most interesting possible shift was what appears to be a geographic bias to the way the Ottomans incorporated Yemen into its empire. A number of factors contributed to what may have been a dramatic population shift from the waterstarved and politically unstable northern highlands (populated mostly by Zaydīs) to the district of Ta‘izz located further south of the Arabian peninsula. One of the reasons for this exodus was the frontier dynamics at play along the southern regions facing British-administered Aden. As will be discussed later, a new political economy emerges in these ‘borderlands’ that stimulates a range of possibilities for local leaders, one that inspires labour-intensive agricultural development and

62  Chaos in Yemen the corresponding demand for labourers. Impoverished northern farmers were perfect candidates to supply that need. Another contributing factor to the migration from the northern Zaydī highlands to Ta‘izz was the instabilities caused by crop failure and inter-communal violence, which were in part related phenomena. Yet another was a growing insurgency along the ‘Asīr coast led by a spiritual leader who would ultimately threaten the religious and political elite in the highlands north of Ṣan‘ā’. It was in fact this ideological and economic struggle between the previously mentioned Muḥammad Idrīsī of the ‘Asīr and the incumbent Zaydī Imām that led to the challenges to their authority over the population in the north for much of the early twentieth century.25

Muḥammad Idrīsī’s challenge to Imām Yaḥyā As already suggested, an examination of the political rivalries for ascendancy in northern Yemen after the emergence of a new Zaydī Imām, Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad, in 1904 reveals the fluid boundaries between socio-religious and political categories discussed here. As leader of a regional Sufī order, the Idrīsīyah, Muḥammad Idrīsī’s ascendancy in what at one point extended well into traditional Zaydī and Shafī‘i (southern Sunni) territories clearly demonstrates the dynamics at work during the late Ottoman period. Not only does the Idrīsī phenomenon exemplify the shifting economic and political fortunes of a number of religious figures in the region, but his activities also translate into a factor central to Ottoman policy, vis-à-vis the identified Zaydī elite. Muḥammad Idrīsī came from a long line of successful Sufī leaders who established firm links throughout the Red Sea area and branches as far as Istanbul. Idrīsī’s forefathers – Muḥammad al-Quṭb and his son ‘Alī b. Muḥammad – settled along the ‘Asīr and Tihāmah coast when the Ottomans were making significant inroads in the first half of nineteenth century. What became known as the Idrīsīyah thrived in areas that resisted Sayyid/Shaykh Zaydī Imāmates, reflecting as a result the trans-regional possibilities for new political orders. Although ‘outsiders’, this cluster of families became entrenched in regional politics, offering for many an alternative to being subordinates to other state-like polities such as the Zaydī Imāmate. Muḥammad al-Idrīsī in particular became deeply involved in the local politics of his native town, Ṣabyā, and became known as the region’s chief arbitrator for feuding political and commercial groups (al-‘Aqīlī 1982: 634–7; al-Shahārī 1979: 33–6). Much of the ‘Asīr was a region in Yemen that historically resisted Zaydī hegemony; the ‘Asīr was conducive to the organizational and spiritual capacities of someone like Muḥammad Idrīsī because of its socio-political fragmentation and important commercial links to the outside world. What makes ‘Asīr an attractive case to follow in respect to a new method of analysis for present-day Yemen is that Idrīsī reveals how unreliable rigidly drawn universalisms based on nationalist or sectarian vernacular and contemporary geopolitical boundaries are for historians. If we did insist on using rigid characterizations centred on solely sectarian

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  63 or tribal markers, we would not be able to accommodate the frequent alliances between Idrīsī and many assumed allies of Imām Yaḥyā, who took over as the principal political leader of many Zaydīs in 1904 (Zabārah 1956: II, 8; al-Wāsi‘ī 1928: 201–3). Whereas Idrīsī represented a minority Sufī order and almost certainly came from a racially mixed background, Idrīsī’s ability to put a stop to inter- and intra-communal feuds and rampant banditry in the ‘Asīr – securing the tranquillity necessary for both a solid opposition against the Ottoman state and, more importantly, an economic environment that generated wealth – procured for him the affection of community leaders throughout the province. This affection and trust developed over a period of time would inevitably translate into a declared allegiance to Idrīsī in his inevitable clash with Ottoman and Imām Yaḥyā forces to the point where he could negotiate as a sovereign over ‘Asir with all the major imperial states.26 In addition to being the focus of Ottoman concerns, the case of Idrīsī represents the most visible political challenge to the Zaydī Imām since at least 1908. Although he was the leader of the anti-Ottoman uprising in his native ‘Asīr region, in the process of consolidating his economic and political influence Idrīsī also shifted the nature of local power in what has consistently been characterized as Imām Yaḥyā’s Yemen.27 As would be surmised in the literature, these actors’ so-called tribal and sectarian identities, if we are to accept them, would have precluded members of the Zaydī sect, or of the Dhū Muḥammad community alliance, from joining forces with a Sufī leader based in ‘Asīr. But, as demonstrated in the case of Idrīsī, so-called tribal and sectarian identities did not impede a fluid interaction between individuals and groups. It could be said that, as in the Ta‘izz highlands further south (discussed in the next chapter), the outbreak of tensions between local and imperial powers provided a variety of economic as well as political opportunities for a plethora of actors who would have otherwise been ignored in the imperial scheme of things.28 In this context, Idrīsī’s coalition could provide an economic environment that generated wealth, which only further earned it the affection and trust of community leaders throughout the province. The economic and correspondent political power Idrīsī commandeered during the First World War helps shape our appreciation for this dynamic, which I suggest is taking place throughout Yemen today. Beyond the economic inducements of joining forces with a British ally, a relationship formalized in a treaty in 1915, Idrīsī’s growing political and economic influence resulted in a number of alliances with Zaydī leaders who were otherwise isolated in their highland enclaves.29 These reconfigured political relations reflected an expansion of possibilities for a number of local players in areas nominally under Imām Yaḥyā’s heavy-handed control. As a direct consequence, the Zaydī Imām was compelled to change strategies. In time, he elected to forge a strategic alliance with the Ottoman state (consummated in the Treaty of Da‘‘ān in 1911), the very state-building enterprise that his constituents had chosen him to help defeat. Although the treaty which linked the Ottomans and Imām Yaḥyā hints at a new phase of Imām Yaḥyā’s political fortunes, I would suggest the factors that compelled him to join forces with Istanbul

64  Chaos in Yemen first in 1908 and then again in 1911 imply that his formal claims of legitimacy were hardly resonating in the impoverished highlands. In any number of documents we see that the Imām is soliciting Ottoman state assistance in his fight with Idrīsī, desperately, I argue, seeking a way to shore up his weak logistical and financial base needed to keep alliances viable.30 What induced Yaḥyā to take such a gamble? Scores of Zaydī shuyūkh, constituting the heart and soul of Imām Yaḥyā’s power, were repeatedly severing their ties with the Imām, their so-called tribes, and often their immediate family during the course of the period leading up to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) revolt of 1908. As discussed further in Chapter 3, after formally signing the Da‘‘ān Treaty, which secured an alliance between Imām Yaḥyā and Istanbul, there are even more examples of individuals and their companions leaving their ‘tribes’ to join Idrīsī’s cause and, by default, the infidel British. As intelligence reports suggest, Idrīsī’s men often faced in the battlefield members of their own ‘tribe’ or even family, suggesting there are different animating factors at play.31

Conclusion In order to tap into these different factors shaping the affairs of global powers and more modest political and economic enterprises alike, this chapter has highlighted the kinds of possible local factors that could account for dramatic changes within Yemen. These local dynamics have long been neglected in the study of Yemen’s past and current story, often relegated to the margins of scenarios that pit bigger-than-life personalities commanding over 50,000 tribesmen in the case of the Ḥāshid or servicing the nefarious strategies of a global terrorist network. Obscured by references to such all-encompassing objects of study are the social foundations of such superstructures. The daily exchanges between peasants, merchants, soldiers, mothers and the occasional South Korean evangelical proselytizer emit ripples in the larger pool of state or ‘tribal’ confederation affairs. The initial attempt here to narrow down the scope of inquiry to capture the local event not only serves to make a point about the interconnecting forces that contribute to the major events in Yemen’s modern history. It also aimed to establish a perspective of analysis to accommodate what I have framed as modern polities. These modern polities constitute a disaggregated, highly fluid set of intersecting constituencies that adapt to any number of historical forces and ultimately operate beyond the larger analytical schema normally used in the study of the ‘Third World’. These highly amorphous constituent groups resemble voting blocs or ‘demographics’ in the world of product marketing, resilient enough to formulate occasional collective reactions to forces of change and ideologically flexible enough to abandon their temporary categorical identity. These modern polities become the agents of change in Yemen from the 1870s onwards. As we shall learn in the next chapter, for Yemen at times of transition in the early and late twentieth century, the combination of Muḥammad al-Idrīsī and ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ’s privileged access to the outside world, the increasing economic impoverishment of the Zaydī territories, and the subsequent inability of

The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities  65 their communities’ presumed leaders – the Imām or the Ḥāshid or Bakīl ‘shaykh’ – to sustain their economic obligations to allies intensified the decentralization of local politics in both the late Ottoman period and the era of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) starting in 1962. Incapable of either coercing or buying the loyalties of communities constantly marketing their alliance for survival, the emergent modern polities of the twentieth century proved that even ‘weak’ social actors had a role to play in history.32 If we add to this dynamic the fact of power struggles between external states inflicting constant change within local politics on all sides of Yemen, it is clear that northern and southern Yemen were in a constant state of flux for much of the twentieth century. This turmoil not only destroyed constituencies, disrupted traditions and created demographic shifts, but animated political and commercial channels that pitted imperial states and regional claimants to authority against each other as well as the emerging polities that were to tip the balance of power in the region for much of the century. As a result of these battles for regional influence the Ottoman formal occupation of northern districts, for instance, would always be contested, thereby creating a measure of administrative instability that offered smaller community leaders the opportunity to forge alliances that often linked them to political allies beyond the reach of the Ottomans and the Zaydī Imām to control.33 In this contested space, numerous claimants to the Zaydī Imāmate would thus emerge. Such plurality only strengthened the draw of coastal leaders such as Idrīsī who often controlled access to Red Sea ports and their imported silver coins, foodstuffs and weapons. In fact, it is through Idrīsī and various Zaydī Imāms that we see the politics of the local limiting the capacities of the Ottoman state. As a result, Ottoman power (like the modern Republican state) in Yemen was often sitting precariously on the edge of disaster.34 Such an unstable situation helps us better appreciate the kind of considerations at play for both state officers, who could easily see the limits of their influence, and local parties constantly repositioning themselves to maximize their security vis-à-vis local rivals and accentuate their leverage over the state. When these precarious balances of power, often negotiated after considerable violence, fall apart, as has clearly been happening in the last few years in Yemen under the Ṣāliḥ regime, no single formula of social engineering patchwork, coercion or economic corruption can suffice. What that means to the methods of administrating the various regions of Yemen for much of the twentieth century is what is discussed in the next two chapters. The processes that help various coalitions of forces emerge to secure a relatively meaningful role in a regional context prove to be contingent to local factors infrequently registered in the historical narrative. Charting how the structures of power in Yemen are modified in the context of local agency will help retool the analytical possibilities for the future and the past. Indeed, the national historiography, which proves especially partisan in respect to the micro-political factors that intensify ambiguities of power and representative claims among stakeholders in the modern state, deserves the most rigorous revision. As demonstrated with the lingering bias regarding the old sādah class, there are narrative models

66  Chaos in Yemen that persist within Yemen, as in the larger world, that are heavily invested in by entrenched partisans of power (vom Bruck 2005). In order to avoid succumbing to the retroactive erasure of the nuance of local politics, the frame of analysis must remain firmly entrenched in the vernacular of localism that resists essentializing the local through tribal, sectarian or class metaphors constituted with meaning in a colonial context.

3 The contingent state

The dynamics of administrating Yemen

Examples exist throughout the modern history of northern Yemen that demonstrate how competing polities were consistently able to secure autonomy in the face of external administrative efforts to infiltrate their spheres of influence. In order to protect their immediate interests, these temporary communities demonstrated a willingness to clash with long-assumed regional leaders, be they the Zaydī Imām, their local allies or the current President of the Republic of Yemen. As a result, those with trans-regional ambitions such as Imāms or state governors were constantly forced to acknowledge the autonomy of these local polities as well as invest considerable amounts of social, political and economic capital in the attempt to forge a mutually beneficial alliance. This classic order of political life in the world may seem alien to many today, but as suggested with respect to other forms of social organization earlier, what has long been treated as quintessentially ‘non-Western’ about the patronage networks aspiring leaders are required to maintain has a lot more in common with self-declared modern states than initially thought (Mitchell 1991). Consider the influence peddling and favours law-makers grant to ‘special interests’ that fund their expensive political campaigns, all seemingly immune from public participation. Viewed in this light, there may be no more ‘corrupt’ country in the world than the United States. What remains distinctly Yemeni in the twentieth-century experience of state building is just how extraordinarily contentious and fluid the process remains to this day. As in the late Ottoman era, the perpetual quest for local, regional and trans-regional power in contemporary Yemen gravitates around constituencies that are constantly adjusting to local contingencies. In other words, nothing is certain in Yemeni politics and power was and is both precarious and constantly in need of reinforcement through means other than the threat of violence. To appreciate the extent to which Ṣāliḥ’s tactics today are clearly part of a strategy to change these vulnerabilities, this chapter revisits the evolving calculations of Muḥammad al-Idrīsī, Imām Yaḥyā and the Ottoman state in the period after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 as part of an effort to compare and contrast various administrative measures used to harmonize government rule with strategic interests of an eclectic set of historical agents. I will focus in particular

68  Chaos in Yemen on the conditions surrounding the creation of productive and socializing patterns in the northern highlands and coastal populations during the periods immediately preceding and following the previously mentioned Da‘‘ān accords of 1911.1 As demonstrated through the Idrīsī story in particular, it is in the context of a regional rivalry that threatened the legitimacy claims of the Zaydī Imām, long assumed to be the quintessential power broker in North Yemen until the 1960s, that would lead to new configurations of power in the ‘Asīr district. In this crucial period, a series of interlinking shifts of local power in time compelled Idrīsī and the Imām to invest in relationships with the Ottoman state and, in the case of Idrīsī, the Italians and British as well. In the process of forging controversial alliances with formerly declared ‘infidels’, the subsequent efforts at creating or reinforcing already established state functions in variable social, political and economic settings proved contentious. Crucially, these rivalries would help create the social and political context for even greater variety in local practices and, ultimately, the consolidation of crucial state-building measures that would shape much of the twentieth century. It is indeed paradoxical that relations with outside benefactors, in many ways crucial for otherwise vulnerable claimants to authority such as Yaḥyā and Idrīsī, actually alienated these putative leaders from many potential local allies whose own locally informed interests were challenged by the temporarily established configurations of influence in and around the emerging power centres. This remains the conundrum of politics in the region: the more the proclaimed leader or his rival depends on any number of outside powers to secure authority among a certain core of allies, the less likely it is for either of them to win over those most likely to threaten their long-term success. In the case of Imām Yaḥyā in particular, Ottoman partnership proved indispensable. Yaḥyā did not have the resources to secure the alliances he needed if he had any hope of maintaining leverage in the larger region increasingly shaped by the activities of Idrīsī, who controlled much of the trade along the ‘Asīr coast. The moment the Imām secured an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, however, both his credibility and, at times, his willingness to engage in negotiation with potential allies evaporated. Exploring this especially complicated period can help us ask new questions about the viability of a Ṣāliḥ regime whose evolving domestic administrative concerns mirror those of Yaḥyā in the early twentieth century: a heavy reliance on outside powers such as the United States and occasionally Saudi Arabia has left Ṣāliḥ in an unenviable position vis-à-vis a large majority of Yemeni citizens. The end result of the calculated risks he has taken (if Ṣāliḥ has a choice in the matter) may become predictable once we have revisited the multiple layers of factors contributing to the history of Imām Yaḥyā’s alliance with the Ottomans until 1918 (Sırma 1994). That being said, reducing our analysis of such a process to the pluses and minuses of an alliance with a more powerful external state can obscure the elements at the micro-level: the day-to-day politics at the village, market town and seasonal scale that are, I argue repeatedly, the foundations to political legitimacy in southern Arabia. This chapter will therefore identify such intimacies in Yemeni politics in order to highlight just how invaluable such perspectives are to

The contingent state  69 appreciating the range of calculations that go into the administrative decisions of modern Yemen’s political elite. To reiterate the central claim in this book, such considerations should be identified and equally studied today by commentators on Yemen – especially those seeking to influence how western states refine their policies towards Yemen in the future.

An imperial legacy and lessons learned In the context of a struggle to maintain autonomy while staving off rival empires, the Ottoman administration created a new set of social, political and economic conditions for the diverse population of North Yemen. Through these sets of circumstances it is clear that domestic players contributed to the new government structures periodically erected to address evolving security concerns and changing dynamics in the far-flung highland and coastal villages of the ‘Asīr (Mandaville 1984). Rather than simply being a matter of reapplying ‘tried-andtrue’ administrative methods in a uniquely Yemeni context, however, the Imām Yaḥyā and Idrīsī experiences with the Ottoman Empire highlight the fact that presumed leadership credentials predicated on ‘tribal’ affiliation or other forms of social authority did not suffice as a problem-solving strategy. There is no doubt that Ottoman attempts at managing the region transformed Yemen over the course of some fifty years of nominal rule in the highlands. It is not enough, however, to evoke administrative transformations and imperial intentions to explain how life in Yemen changed (Keiser 1989). When Ottoman officials worked within the confines of local political dynamics, they were often successful in forging meaningful joint-administrative enterprises. But, when Ottoman efforts shifted to solidify imperial control of Yemen in a manner increasingly in vogue in the 1880s, this shift to centralized state control proved unsuccessful largely because Istanbul’s immediate relationship as an imperial power with its subjects no longer corresponded with realities on the ground. New tactics would once again have to be developed in face of resistance (Kühn 2002, 2007; Blumi 2000, 2003, 2004, 2009a). To many scholars looking at events with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to ‘read’ where the Ottomans went wrong, as it is assumed the administration failed in some way since the empire ultimately withdrew from Yemen. But such an approach can lead to rather simplistic assertions about the nature of local interaction with that state. It has long been a cliché, for instance, to characterize the Ottoman provincial administration in distant territories such as Yemen as undermined by corruption (Farah 2002: 211–12). But such simplistic references to complex administrative operations rarely explore beyond the retroactive insinuation often provided by post-Ottoman historians who were prone to find no redeeming value to the Ottoman era. In fact, the Ottoman administration proved highly innovative, as already demonstrated in respect to the initial campaign into the highlands discussed in the last chapter. Far from simply seeking to rape and pillage, Ottoman officials developed complicated relationships with individual communities and over the course of the 1872–1918 period expanded their reach

70  Chaos in Yemen of influence, if not direct administrative authority (Mahmud Nedim Bey 2001). Even in areas where considerable unrest existed, this concentrated violence was often a reaction to alliances forged between some locals and the Ottomans, either directly or by proxy, which immediately upset regional politics. This is certainly the case throughout the Tihāmah, leading through the coastal regions of the ‘Asīr from the mid 1890s until the emergence of Muḥammad al-Idrīsī in 1906–7. What prove especially interesting in this period are various measures adopted by locally based Ottoman authorities to harness the domestic manpower potential to expand both economic development (and revenue production) and the enforcement of Ottoman authority through local militias. One of those measures that proved especially influential to the manner in which claimants to power prior to Yaḥyā and Idrīsī developed their own institutions of state was the effort to raise local militias to help supplement shipments of regular troops from the rest of the Empire. This drive to arm a select group of locals is an important window into the pre-1908 Ottoman state’s capacity to defer to locally posted authorities to develop innovative measures, contingent to local factors that would help administer what was deemed by the 1870s a strategically important corner of Arabia. In fact, as early as 1877–8, the Ottoman governor of Yemen, Muṣṭafa ‘Asim Pasha, attempted to recruit locals for the two battalions he considered necessary for continued Ottoman success in Yemen (Kuhn 2004; Rüşdi 1910: 50–2, 194–7). These units, composed of locals from the coastal regions, were further invested with administrative import by successors to Muṣṭafa ‘Asim Pasha, including governor Ismā‘īl Ḥakki Pasha, who enthusiastically reported to the Sulṭān that the policy was transforming the peoples of the region.2 The process of recruitment relied on intersecting interests that tied local leaders to the Ottoman authorities. Mutually beneficial relationships were established and proved crucial to the shifting power dynamics within those communities that participated. Those local leaders capable of recruiting and securing clusters of men, lauded by Ottoman officials as natural soldiers just waiting for modern training (Atif Paşa 1908: 225–6), became important agents of change and were awarded with the responsibility of securing order, collecting taxes and at times even managing the judiciary. The subsequent disruptions in regional politics that resulted from these alliances would often foment years of rivalry between different constituencies trying to either usurp Ottoman agents or secure for themselves Ottoman patronage.3 Such local rivalries opened invaluable opportunities for effectual political management by some of the more prominent and influential individuals in the region, especially Idrīsī, who was well known in the ‘Asīr for providing arbitration between local constituent groups struggling to maintain authority over conflicted communities. This reputation as a problem solver, most likely at the behest of influential merchants in the region who appreciated the relative stability a man such as Idrīsī could bring, led to this strategic region, centred on Ṣabyā, Jizān, Abhā and the hinterland around Ṣa‘dah, becoming the arena for a new political order led by Idrīsī, who took the honorific role of ‘Imām’ in December 1908 (al-Shahārī 1979: 34–5). It appears Idrīsī was eager both to establish religious authority (hence claiming

The contingent state  71 the role as chief judge in the region) and to expand his administrative potential by reaching out to communities far beyond his base of Ṣabyā and Jizān. In time, the drive to expand authority was directly tied to commercial growth and, at least he claimed, a desire for religious correction. Very quickly, the micro-polities formed around those with strong links to the Ottoman administrators led to power claimants who had cast their lot with the imperial officials being marginalized by their own constituents. In some cases, leaders with strong links to the Ottomans were arrested by their erstwhile subordinates and handed over to Idrīsī, who apparently used rather brutal punishments to help spread the word that he and his coalition were serious (al-Shahārī 1979: 35; al-‘Aqīlī 1982: 766–8). The measures proved effective enough for Idrīsī to take it a step further and establish an Imāmate in January 1909, under which he would supervise a group of allies that consisted of prominent merchants – including Muḥammad Yaḥyā Basuhī – and community leaders who reached out to Idrīsī in areas such as Ṣabyā, Jizān, al-Qunfunḍah and Maydī in the south (al-‘Aqīlī 1982: 641–8; al-Shahārī 1979: 35).4 Almost immediately, Idrīsī’s pretensions as a spiritual leader through the Sufī order his father established throughout the Red Sea clashed with other established communities. Although this struggle for power is interesting, what is important to recognize is that, whereas some community leaders objected formally to Idrīsī’s religious claims, it was the immediate impact his new state had on northern Tihāmah that proved essential. From the perspective of Imām Yaḥyā in the highlands to ‘Uthmān Fawanis of the Khatmīyah order based in the rival commercial centre of Ḥudaydah along the southern Tihāmah coast, Idrīsī’s growing influence in early 1909 diverted much trade and political leverage. The subsequent effort by Fawanis to mobilize his Ottoman allies to undermine Idrīsī proves crucial to understanding the subsequent chain of events that leads to Imām Yaḥyā signing a treaty with the Ottomans in 1911. As Ḥudaydah in 1909 had long been a strategic priority for the Ottoman state, the newly established ‘Young Turk’ reformers were eager to correct what had in the past been failed projects to build a pier and connect Yemen’s coast and highland capital with a railroad (Blumi 2005: 275–83). Considering the many reports being sent between Yemen and Istanbul, Fawanis’s overtures to the Ottoman governor – who had just received orders to establish firm, central control of Yemen – most certainly found a receptive audience.5 In the light of the drive by newly placed authorities in Istanbul and Ṣan‘ā’ to make Yemen into a reliable bulwark against British and Italian expansion, upstarts such as Idrīsī and the Zaranīq to the south of Ḥudaydah required new administrative measures that fused military reforms (again the recruitment of locals became a policy) along with new institutions geared to negotiating with local upstarts to join in alliance with the new Ottoman project.6 Such an investment by the Ottoman state meant that by March 1909, when Idrīsī initiated a gesture to his new constituencies that he meant to secure a sovereign state by attacking Ottoman garrisons in the area, a rapidly changing set of events dramatically transformed the Idrīsī trajectory and, as a result, that of Imām Yanyā and the Ottoman state. Idrīsī’s earlier successes, predicated on significant

72  Chaos in Yemen support from allies hailing from not just the immediate ‘Asīr, but as far as Sudan, led to the capture of key port towns such as al-Luḥayyah and trading centres in the ‘Asīr hinterland such as Muhā’īl north of Abhā (al-Shahārī 1979: 37–8). The Ottoman state reacted with some remarkable skill, not so much in terms of mobilizing troops (often with local gendarmerie whose recruitment was recently reactivated by newly placed Ottoman reformers) but with intelligence gathering and diplomatic operations. Therefore, rather than conducting a costly and potentially dangerous counter-offensive, the commanding officer for the Idrīsī campaign, General Ḥasan Sa‘īd Pasha, initiated contact with Idrīsī by sending an old Albanian acquaintance, Shaykh Tawfiq al-Arnā‘wūtī, to meet him (al-‘Aqīlī 1982: II, 664–5). A renowned spiritual leader from the Aḥmadīyah order, al-Arnā‘wūtī met Idrīsī when he studied in Cairo; the fact that Ottoman officials knew of this connection and were able to arrange a meeting in the hope of peacefully resolving the conflict suggests a remarkable depth to the Ottoman state’s local knowledge often missed in studies on the empire. In the end, the Ottoman general proved flexible enough to arrange for Idrīsī to be the recognized leader of the ‘Asīr in return for his cooperation. Much of the coastal region and the hinterland was thus partially released to Idrīsī’s coadministration (along with an Ottoman partner), who immediately saw to it that law and order was returned to the entire region, trade routes secured and even to the extension of a telegraph line linking Ṣan‘ā’ to Makkah for the first time (Bang 1996: 93–5). By early 1910, the relationship between Idrīsī and his Ottoman partners soured, however. In Yemen circa 1909–12, the Ottomans were implementing reforms to attempt to streamline the application and enforcement of civil laws that were drawn from European legal codes. The agenda was to ensure that the state had absolute authority over the enforcement of the law. The Young Turk regime in Istanbul thus had begun to initiate a formal reorganization of the empire’s legal system, which entailed centralizing the courts and, if not completely superseding locally run administrations, at least establishing a parallel system. In Yemen, regional leaders such as Idrīsī and Yaḥyā were especially sensitive to preserving their autonomy to run the courts. For his part, Idrīsī had invested considerable political capital to make sure he maintained a stranglehold on the courts by the appointment of loyal judges. This move to centralize state administration by the Ottomans provoked a sometimes violent response from their putative ally. Such infringements on the political legitimacy (and rights) of local leaders in Yemen immediately instigated separate revolts that were basically geographically dispersed attempts to secure the right to use the law as a tool of local authority. The rebellion proved instrumental to Idrīsī for opening up new channels of communication with the larger Red Sea world, one in which his father had established an integrated network of religious communities that formed the Idrīsīyah Sufī order. It is in this period that the first hints of Idrīsī’s evolving relationship with the Italian authorities now firmly entrenched in Eritrea led to new opportunities for the region’s disparate groups (Blumi 2005: 474–80). Despite efforts by the Ottomans to mobilize local intrigue and even secure the Shārif of Makkah’s

The contingent state  73 assistance against Idrīsī’s insubordination, his expanding alliance thwarted the Ottoman counter-insurgency efforts. By mid 1911, Idrīsī had secured a vast area under which his loyal surrogates were able to project authority and establish an administration that immediately produced results for merchants and local producers eager to gain access to the larger world. By the time the Italians started their military campaign against the Ottomans in October 1911, Idrīsī was entirely free of Ottoman pressure and was to establish a state that immediately threatened regional leaders as diverse as the Shārif of Makkah, the al-Sa‘ūd in Najd and Imām Yaḥyā in the Zaydī highlands. For their part, the British took a somewhat different approach in South Yemen from the Ottomans when faced with such indigenous political contingencies. For the British, the main objective was to sustain multiple fronts of political alliance in order to protect their Aden colony and its hinterland from the machinations of local stakeholders playing all angles, as well as the potential for Ottoman, French and Italian intrigue (Willis 2004). They generally accomplished this during periods of competition with other empires by directly funding clients who were willing to challenge, from within, Ottoman rule. The Italians operated largely in the same way, proving highly disruptive along the Yemeni coast as they funded individual bands of trouble-makers and weapons smugglers who occasionally formed politically significant alliances locally and reached out to the colonial administration in Eritrea, including Idrīsī (Bang 1996: 97–101; Blumi 2005: 321–4). In many parts of Yemen, local groups, families and individuals constantly adjusted to such regional conditions as they transformed because of conflicts and shifts in the larger world. Through the study of their complicated adjustments to such conditions we can observe the interlacing of imperial administration in Yemen with the political aspirations of such historical figures as Imām Yaḥyā, Muḥammad al-Idrīsī and their rivals, whose very survival within a complicated North Yemeni context often led to what would seem counter-intuitive alliances with the Ottoman state. Although confronting the Ottomans constituted an important legitimizing factor for two competing political alliances in the ‘Asīr and northern Yemen, as both Idrīsī and Yaḥyā scrambled to adjust to the socio-economic shifts created by an expanding Ottoman state throughout much of central and southern Yemen (thus obtaining considerable leverage in the north), many of the attempts to constitute a formal state proved precarious and contentious. Ultimately, the point to make here is that imperial rivalries do not pit against each other different powers that adhere to a constant, universal model of colonial administration. In Yaḥyā’s case, it is the signing of the Da‘‘ān treaty in 1911 with his supposed arch-enemy, the Ottomans, that offers another opportunity to move beyond the clichés of tribal loyalties and sectarianism to begin to appreciate the ever-shifting ground that makes Yemeni politics impossible to enclose in such generalizations. In order, however, to better understand the Zaydī Imām’s political strategies behind signing this treaty with the Ottomans, it is first crucial to appreciate his limitations. Simply being appointed Imām by intellectual and commercial supporters does not mean such conditions of temporary loyalty (compromise, concession, trade-offs) last forever for a Zaydī leader. A closer study

74  Chaos in Yemen into the numerous domestic and external threats facing different groups of Zaydī constituents of the Imām helps explain why any one community leader cannot represent and protect the interests of everyone, all the time. In times of turmoil, many temporary allies adjust; often such shifts in alliances lead to disciplinary attacks from the Imām, which in turn can lead to a chain reaction that further animates (and disrupts) local political and economic life. By 1911, such dynamics compelled the Imām to sign a treaty with the Ottoman Empire in order to protect his own interests threatened by widespread defections among numerous smaller groups of local stakeholders attracted by Idrīsī’s near monopoly on access to Red Sea trade. As already mentioned, it is Idrīsī’s presence in the ‘Asīr and ultimate expansion deep into the Zaydī-inhabited highlands near Ṣa‘dah that informs to a large extent Imām Yaḥyā’s relationship with the Sublime Porte. Idrīsī’s impact, in particular on highland politics (a region theoretically beyond ‘Asīr’s cultural and political influence), is especially clear when identifying the sources of contention between Imām Yaḥyā and other prominent power-brokers in highland politics. For one, much of the political and economic autonomy from the Ottoman state enjoyed in the northern highlands after 1911 reflects Idrīsī’s growing challenge to Imām Yaḥyā for spiritual, political and economic control over large parts of Yemen, not, as often claimed, the quasi-nationalistic resistance of the Imām.7 In other words, a regional rivalry over political resources between Idrīsī, the Imām and the Porte impacted the political economy of the region. This triangular rivalry empowered local potentates who played off the tensions and political aspirations of all parties involved and provided key channels of interactive space for a variety of local actors. Such a dynamic put in contemporary terms again highlights just how little Ṣāliḥ’s regime today can claim to be the best and only option for external apologists who are seemingly investing all their strategic hopes in the survival of his regime. Rather like the period studied in this chapter that pitted Idrīsī, Imām Yaḥyā and external state actors against each other, the present-day ‘rulers’ of Yemen face several distinct regional questions that have continuously confounded Ṣāliḥ’s attempts at reconciliation on his terms. All the talk today of a ‘revivalist Imāmate’ movement in Ṣa‘dah, for instance, needs to be put into a context that extends beyond mere doctrinal claims, which, in the case of the Ḥūthī, are ambiguous anyway.8 As argued repeatedly in this book, it is possible to analyse the evolution of the post-2004 Ṣa‘dah conflict only by recreating the pre-conflict environment and thereby allowing us to explore what changes for locals and state officials. I argue in the next chapter that new policies to formalize the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen antagonized many communities in the region, yet there are even earlier processes that can help offer insight in the Ṣa‘dah/Ḥūthī conflict. Clearly there were changes taking place since the early 1990s as state agencies began to adopt state-building strategies that encroached on the economic livelihood of many different local interests. Well before the movement emerged in 2004, for example, the social and economic frustrations that led to the Ḥūthī coalition seemed to only expand. In these same areas, a supposed ‘resurgence’ in

The contingent state  75 Zaydīsm linked to the political party Ḥizb al-Ḥaqq (Truth Party) was openly at odds with what seemed to be a growing Sunni or Salafist role in parts of northern society (Burgat 2006: 11–21). Partly on account of Ṣāliḥ’s manipulation of this factionalism, members of the Ḥizb al-Ḥaqq (until 1997 many of the more prominent members came from the Ḥūthī clan) began to articulate an anti-Wahhābī polemic in the larger Yemeni political context.9 It is from this experience, among many others, that those closest to Ḥūthī first cut their political teeth. Large numbers of former supporters abandoned the Ḥizb al-Ḥaqq by 1997, however, when its political leverage in several Yemeni elections diminished and the leadership decided to begin a new partnership with the regime. As outlined in Chapter 5, by the end of 1994, Ṣāliḥ clearly started his drive to eliminate his dependency on alliances that constantly required sharing power and resources. For the regime’s part, the aggressive social engineering policies adopted in the south since unification took a life of their own, creating new, virtually uncontrollable clusters of interests that quickly compromised the state’s ability to control events in the north. This is exactly what happened in the period leading up the rise of Idrīsī in the ‘Asīr mentioned earlier. Even Yemen’s most important opposition party, the Tajammu’ al-Yamanī līl-Iṣlāḥ (Yemeni Congregation for Reform, henceforth Iṣlāḥ), at the time of unification in an alliance with the Ṣāliḥ regime, began to calculate that greater opportunities lay outside a direct alliance with the floundering, increasingly vilified regime. This was especially the case in the Ṣa‘dah, ‘Amrān and Ḥajjah provinces, where poverty and the impact of the Gulf War and forced deportation of upwards of a million Yemenis hit these regions especially hard (Stevenson 1993). As a result, potential members of a more local party linked to a local agent attracted many to what became the Ḥūthī. They grew both in numbers and in articulated hostility towards the central government when the Ṣāliḥ regime’s political ambitions to consolidate authority in the region clashed with many locals’ economic security as it was linked to cross-border trade (Glosemeyer 2004: 44–6). Whereas Ṣa‘dah was not even on the radar screen of leading think tanks that were advising the western world on how to engage Yemen after 9/11, research trips taken in the 1990s already indicated that the inhabitants of Ṣa‘dah were facing unwelcome pressures from a number of different sources.10 For many living through the early years of unification, the double threat posed by an expanding desire of the Saudis to pressure the Yemeni government to settle their boundary disputes while still vulnerable because of the 1994 Civil War, along with a recalibration of ‘Yemeni’ national politics as a result of unification, transformed local relations with a variety of regional and national actors. In this respect, I argue that stepping away from the simple formula of Zaydī and Shī‘ī ‘traditionalists’ versus Sunnī, secularists and agents of a modern state, and instead actually studying the multitude of local interests that may have been directly affected by policies in the 1990s, will bear fruit. In other words, adopting this approach should allow researchers to gain a number of unexpected but nevertheless invaluable insights into the current conflicts in Ṣa‘dah that are now expanding throughout other parts of the country.

76  Chaos in Yemen Returning to the early twentieth-century Idrīsīyah example to reinforce my point, in addition to looking at the political rivalry between the Ottomans or Imām Yaḥyā and Idrīsī at length, the larger geographical context must also always be explored. During the First World War, for example, and especially after 1915, British policies to undermine Ottoman control of Yemen meant upgrading their sporadic relationship with Idrīsī to a formal treaty between two sovereigns (Mehra 1988: 118–20). Some of the incentives for locals such as Idrīsī to sign treaties with the British were purely economic. British naval power had cut Yemen off from the rest of the world, extending a period of virtual economic isolation since the Italian– Ottoman war of 1911–12. Such conditions thus gave Idrīsī a virtual monopoly on Yemeni maritime trade once he signed treaties with Italy and Britain.11 As a result, during the First World War, ports controlled by Idrīsī had exclusive commercial access to the larger Red Sea economic zone. Anyone, therefore, joining forces with Idrīsī at this time benefited handsomely. Such inducements certainly proved persuasive in the context of severe shortages in Yemen of even the most basic foodstuffs well into the 1930s.12 Such criss-crossing economic interests helped shape the alliances that permitted Idrīsī to rise to such prominence in areas long assumed to be exclusively the domain of Zaydī Imāms. Idrīsī, for example, attracted many putative members of the Ḥāshid and Bakīl (the two largest confederations of highland communities) partially with the income earned in trade and British patronage. Idrīsī thus profited from the subsequent fragmentation of previously reliable alliances which forced the hand of many local and regional actors in the subsequent months and years, including Imām Yaḥyā. It would be dangerous, of course, to suggest that economic rationalism served as the sole inducement for members of highland communities to break ranks, so to speak, and join Idrīsī. There are certainly a number of other factors that could have influenced individual decisions to seek an alliance with enemies of Imām Yaḥyā in the 1907–11 period. I am focusing on economic factors for the Idrīsī case because they provide conceptually the most accessible dynamic for those unfamiliar with Yemen in order to steer us away from essentialist claims about primordial sectarian and/or tribal causes. In this regard, it could be added that a number of regional wars and then the First World War provided a variety of profitable economic, social and political opportunities for a plethora of actors. As discussed in the previous chapter and again in Chapter 4 in regards to the lucrative trade in weapons, war was the only means to earn an income for many who were located in isolated highland areas. This is an important point to repeat. These actors were not making decisions solely on their fluid identity claims that were linked to a religious affiliation or so-called tribal identity. Therefore, whatever underlying ideological or cultural structure may have created the socially cohesive logic to the Imām’s legitimacy at the time of his ascension to authority in 1904, for example, was not evident in Yemen during times of conflict. Indeed, Ottoman administrators were able to exploit these realities to their own benefit by abandoning strategies of alliance building strictly based on ethnographic ‘truths’. Unfortunately, the way western

The contingent state  77 experts on the Middle East are trained, sectarian and tribal categories are the primary forms of association that political and economic actors make. In order to argue why such rigid analytical tools are useless to addressing the issues facing Yemen today, I must constantly return to the examples of the past to demonstrate how varied political alliances actually were. The stipend and British-supplied arms Idrīsī was willing to offer new allies, in addition to his other attributes as a spiritual leader, enticed many to abandon their assumed positions within the matrix of Yemeni highland socio-political life. Zaydī shuyūkh from a number of so-called tribal sections severed any nominal allegiance with the Imām, their tribe, and often their immediate family to act as virtual mercenaries who served Idrīsī’s cause and by default, the infidel British and Italians.13 As a result, by the time of the Italian War of 1911–12, Idrīsī attracted an impressive list of supporters who represented a cross-section of the province’s population.14 In the end, the combination of Idrīsī’s privileged access to the outside world, the increasing economic impoverishment of the Imām’s territories and the Imām’s subsequent inability to sustain his economic obligations to his allies led to the decentralized dynamics exacerbated by war.15 Interestingly, these relations were initially made when Imām Yaḥyā and Idrīsī actually were allies against the Ottoman state.16 As a consequence of the Da‘‘ān accords, however, growing perceptions of the Imām’s weakness and British intrigue led many key local players to publicly side with Idrīsī, thereby abandoning Imām Yaḥyā, and taking up arms against him.17 Although a more elaborate analysis of the micro-politics of the highland areas specific to this issue is needed to complement my summation of the economic conditions noted above, it is nevertheless safe to conclude that political conditions were contentious and in constant flux during the period. Such volatile and fluid conditions should serve as a warning not to assume that allies of the Ṣāliḥ regime are immutable to change. Loyalties, as demonstrated in the Idrīsī/Yaḥyā/Ottoman case, are not guaranteed by presumed tribal or sectarian affiliations; they can break down when conditions change. An interesting consequence of the Idrīsī-led disintegration of Imāmate polities was the secondary and tertiary rivalries that emerged. Such outbreaks of violence between ‘brothers’ have been translated in the literature as simply a struggle between Idrīsī and Imām Yaḥyā or more unsatisfactorily between Zaydīsm and Sufīsm that animated highland Yemen society at the time (al-Ḥibshī 1983: 411– 13). A more accurate reading of these events would highlight how, in fact, many lower-level shuyūkh were able to assert greater local power through the patronage of the outside forces that war brought to the region and did not rely on doctrinal or blood ties as a rationale for their association with Idrīsī. Himām b. Sair, Nāṣir Habkut Ibn Abas Na‘ib and other Zaydī notables, for instance, previously loyal to the Imām, evicted his men from Tawaslah, Ḥajjah, Hida, Kawkabān, Ānis and ‘Amrān and started to collect taxes independently. In other words, semiautonomous polities were able to emerge in the heart of what was supposed to be sovereign Imāmate territory.18 For Idrīsī’s part, he was able to exploit the fact that many of his future allies were relatively obscure in any context beyond their

78  Chaos in Yemen immediate area of influence. Idrīsī seems to have been able to reach these isolated constituent groups because he earned a reputation for being a fair arbitrator, a skill in high demand as internal tensions between Zaydī leaders and clashing merchants’ commercial needs threatened to spin out of control (Bang 1996: 84–6). Whereas the Da‘‘ān accord had supposedly granted the Imām widespread autonomy under Ottoman protection, including rights to collect taxes (Zabārah 1956: 2: 213–15), the Imām’s own capacity to enforce his governmental responsibilities was greatly limited by the fact that the local power of many subordinates had been enhanced by their allegiance with an ‘outsider’, such as Idrīsī.19 A particularly important example of how this played out locally (and its consequences) is when we recognize that Idrīsī’s infiltration into traditionally Imāmate territory had a direct impact on the Imām’s capacity to assert fiscal control over his territory. For example, there are a number of incidents in which the Imām’s tax collectors were attacked, with the assailants fleeing into Idrīsī territory.20 Such manifested shifts in local alliances and loyalties can lead to any number of contingencies with consequences well beyond the region. As previously noted, quite a few of Idrīsī’s allies were actually fragments of large families traditionally attached to the Imām. The fragmented family, a phenomenon to which I suspect foreign imperialism contributed a great deal, is quite evident in the composition of Idrīsī’s alliances. The nephews of Ḥasan Muqbil Yara and of Ḥāshid Dhū Yarī, the latter being a nephew of Dirhām Ibn Yaḥyā and Aḥmad Ibn Yaḥyā, two of the Imām’s own sons, at one point fought for Idrīsī.21 Again, the political conditions in the highlands appear to have been animated by the emergence of multiple sources of stipends, arms and prestige, rendering assumed family loyalties vulnerable. For the ambitious youngster, poor uncle or marginalized shaykh, Idrīsī, and the conditions which made him, represented an opportunity to scale the social and political hierarchies of highland society. Put differently, Idrīsī’s temporary alliances were microcosms of the diversity of the Yemeni scene.22 The downside of such broad alliances, however, was clearly the logistical and political tensions that were bound to materialize. Ultimately, Idrīsī’s own political success hampered his military capabilities and thus his utility to the British. Try as he and his closest allies might, the capacity to manage such disparate groups of temporary allies compelled Idrīsī to aim for fiscal administrative normality while sustaining trade that would produce wealth for those who sought his patronage. In the end, Idrīsī was never able to overcome the individual agendas that manifested themselves under his watch. His allies were highly factionalized and composed often of personal rivals who fought amongst themselves on the outskirts of the port town of Jizān, Idrīsī’s military headquarters. It became clear early on, for instance, that the elements of the Ḥāshid and Bakīl confederations aligned to Idrīsī could not be trusted to remain focused on fighting just the Ottomans.23 Aside from looting areas newly conquered from the enemy (posing an obvious public relations problem for Idrīsī), most groups attached to either the Ḥāshid and Bakīl coalitions also proved notoriously unreliable in battle as they fled upon being confronted by any credible challenge.24 In the end, even Idrīsī’s plans to raise a joint army of so-called Ḥāshid and Bakīl ‘tribesmen’ to

The contingent state  79 fight in the Tihāmah exceeded all political and economic realities.25 This changed the form of government for Idrīsī as his influence transformed how the Ottomans and Imām Yaḥyā envisioned applying governmental power on their respective, shifting constituencies. Similar processes, if revisited and studied outside the confines set by our conventional strategies to analyse Yemen today, may become evident in the Ḥūthī case. Indeed, the chain reaction that had been spurred on by a heavy-handed attempt at regulating cross-border trade in the Ṣa‘dah north since the early 1990s ultimately presented Ḥusayn Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥūthī with an opportunity to capitalize on the Ṣāliḥ regime’s relative vulnerability in the region. The broad coalition created by the Ḥūthī movement must be considered, in part, as a temporary grouping of allies who were all frustrated (and threatened) by the Ṣāliḥ regime’s slide towards authoritarianism. This slide, in itself, was a product of Ṣāliḥ’s own litany of internal and external threats, which included the largely autonomous farming communities in the rural north since the mid-1970s, the Saudis and their on-again, off-again hostility, the persistent danger of a military coup throughout his career, several short-term border conflicts with the south and finally the consequences of countering the Americans’ path of war with Iraq (Burrowes 1987: 94–132). Such a litany of threats to his regime says something about Ṣāliḥ’s political flexibility. President Ṣāliḥ demonstrated within a year of taking power in 1978 that he was prepared to take numerous risks to stay in office. Largely marginal within his presumed Zaydī constituency, Ṣāliḥ’s young regime was vulnerable to a new rebellious group operating by the name of the National Democratic Front (NDF) that found a safe haven in the south as new tensions along the border emerged. Whereas the deep incursions into the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) territory had been halted thanks to outside diplomacy, the fundamental weakness of the new regime was clear as long as the NDF threat of renewed violence persisted. To many in Ṣan‘ā’, the NDF, led by Sulṭān Ahmad ‘Umar and Yaḥyā al-Shamī, was a means for South Yemen’s socialist regime to apply pressure on the untested Ṣāliḥ, deemed uneducated, naïve and vulnerable to manipulation because of his lack of domestic support. This became clear in April 1979 when there was an attempted coup. Coupled with the persistent threat of a new outbreak of war in the southern highlands of YAR, Ṣāliḥ initiated the first of many bold (and risky) plans to establish for himself a crucial role in the political horizons of many of the region’s central interest groups (Burrowes 1985). Ṣāliḥ first invested considerable energy to resolve the NDF problem. While negotiating with the group’s leaders, Ṣāliḥ also attempted to free the country from the increasingly disruptive policies of the Saudi government, which at the time was funding various programmes that became the roots of a coalition of northern groups in what could be called a precursor to the Iṣlāḥ party. Burrowes (1985: 297–9) highlights that Ṣāliḥ opened up channels of trade with the Soviet Union that permitted the YAR to import hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and thus replace a much smaller ‘aid’ package that the US offered through Saudi Arabia. The move eventually allowed him not only to rebuild an army that would become loyal to him, but to introduce the USSR into the ongoing

80  Chaos in Yemen rivalry YAR had with the NDF and their South Yemen allies as well as establish some autonomy from the hitherto overbearing Saudi state. In a word, Ṣāliḥ had begun to secure himself some manoeuvrability by keeping the Saudis at arm’s length, just as Idrīsī and Yaḥyā tried to do in their respective settings. As was to be the case for most of Ṣāliḥ’s career as President of the YAR and then unified Yemen, the strained relationship with Saudi Arabia and its considerable influence on local politics put the government in Ṣan‘ā’ in a perpetual state of instability. It has long been established, for instance, that many of those allied with (or at least willing to accept financial support from) Saudi Arabia were likely at one point or another to use their relative strength vis-à-vis the state to exert greater concessions, more access to state funds or leverage over rival communities. Whether or not these agents of Yemen’s modern history ultimately served Saudi Arabia’s bidding is questionable; for Ṣāliḥ in the early 1980s, however, the issue was clearly more than merely academic. Iraq, crucially, at this time just beginning its war with Iran, initiated a long-term relationship with Ṣāliḥ’s government. In time Baghdad sent upwards of $300  million to shore up the regime’s position as a bulwark against Saudi pretensions of hegemony in the region as well as give it additional leverage over South Yemen. Certainly there have been many things that have shaped Yemen’s development since the 1978–83 period that warrant our attention but it would be a mistake to ignore this early career of Ṣāliḥ, as it reveals a considerably more sophisticated, at times very adroit, politician with a great deal of understanding of the regional and global forces at play in any given moment. Although money and weapons would certainly play their part in strengthening the Ṣāliḥ regime after its very shaky first two years, it is clear that more investment in dominating domestic politics entailed the bold reform measures introduced by the state over the first five years of Ṣāliḥ’s reign as president. The Local Development Associations he set up, the high-profile appointments of key members of the Ḥāshid coalition to his government and then finally the invitation of Shaykh Abdullāh ibn Ḥusayn al-Aḥmar, leader of the Hāshid, to join the inner circle were meant to fuse the interests of major political and civic groups in the country with his own (Burrowes 1985: 299–302). These measures have all but been forgotten today and that is a problem. Ṣāliḥ certainly played his cards right in this period when he was perhaps most vulnerable. Since then, he has only reinforced the impression that he is actually far cleverer than his temporary allies make him to be; perhaps even more adept at manipulating his ‘patrons’ than they him. Recall that, in the first decade under Ṣāliḥ, YAR became fully embroiled in a still meaningful struggle over Saudi, US and IMF hegemony in oil-poor countries such as Yemen. This struggle created new channels of political collaboration between the regime and his erstwhile allies, soon to be named Iṣlāḥ, that would take the country through the process of unification and past a civil war with the elite in the north becoming the prevailing political and economic force in all of southern Yemen (al-Aḥmar 2007). These early links would then translate into new channels of opportunity for non-state

The contingent state  81 actors that are crucial to understanding present-day Yemen as it faces a new era of societal collapse largely managed by the Ṣāliḥ regime.

Internal alliance building: the case of Ṣāliḥ’s flirtation with political Islām In contemporary Yemen ascendant merchants with close links to international supplies of highly sought-after goods (weapons, wheat, gold, automobiles) can quickly become formidable players on the regional, national and even international political scene. Indeed, the power of so-called shuyūkh in Yemen such as those who formed Yemen’s most important opposition party, Iṣlāḥ, in the 1980s reflects as much the disruptions in local life as authority predicated on traditional loyalties. The influence that Iṣlāḥ’s co-founder ‘Abd al-Majīd al-Zindānī enjoyed during the immediate post-unification period, for instance, was partially due to the fact he could harness commercial resources in his area of influence and make himself indispensable to a variety of interest groups (Bonnefoy 2009). This factor is rarely appreciated and thus never mentioned in studies on Yemen that target a policy-making readership.26 The authority of men such as Zindānī cannot be simply accounted for by asserting traditional loyalty. Rather, like those before him, Zindānī was compelled to create allies, often at the expense of alliances he had forged with, among others, the Ṣāliḥ regime. Local credibility and strong links to independent sources of patronage in Saudi Arabia clearly posed a threat to various constituent groups in Yemen, including Ṣāliḥ’s. And yet, the damage is clear that Washington’s policies can cause when it expects the Ṣāliḥ administration to persecute such powerful figures as Zindānī in order to effect a largely fraudulent ‘war on terrorism’ in Yemen. Under pressure from Washington to ‘do something’ about religious schools that at the time were being fetishized in western scholarship as ‘incubators of radical Islam’, the Ṣāliḥ regime deported hundreds of students and temporarily shut down the Imām University created by the powerful Zindānī. As a result of this affront to a potentially dangerous rival, the Ṣāliḥ regime has had to reconsider its relationship with Iṣlāḥ.27 Forcing Ṣāliḥ to suppress Zindānī invited predictable trouble for the regime, manifested today by a ring of splinter groups with strong local connections that are virtually autonomous from government control. Without a full-spectrum, multi-disciplinary analysis of local contexts, however, any policy that requires challenging entrenched interests can create a chain reaction that does more harm than good. Several adjustments that Ṣāliḥ’s regime has made over the past decade indicate an important administrative shift that can only be interpreted in hindsight as a provocative reversal of older policies of accommodation for some allies. In the past Ṣāliḥ released prisoners as a public gesture of statesmanship, now he is just as likely to publicly execute them in a gesture towards the outside world who demand the regime assist in the ‘war on terror’. In previous confrontations with communities in Ṣa‘dah over the lack of government services or abusive

82  Chaos in Yemen and corrupt officials, after an initial exchange of often heavy weapons, outsider arbitration always brought the two sides to peace. Recently, Ṣāliḥ’s Operation Scorched Earth in Ṣa‘dah says it all. There will no longer be negotiations; it is complete annihilation he and his allies seek. Similarly, events in South Yemen have disintegrated because of the use of systematic violence and heavy-handed prosecution of dissent. Much as with the Ṣa‘dah events, increasing brutality has equally hardened the regime’s opponents in the south. Today we can see the consequences of the regime taking a more violent approach to engaging with its presumed constituents. In something similar to what is happening in Pakistan today, where large swaths of that vital country are now reduced to violent localized clashes often involving extra-state actors, especially private companies, Yemen is sinking into a similar low. As suggested throughout, these struggles cannot only be read in regional or doctrinal terms; everything cannot just be reduced to ‘good Muslim/bad Muslim’ formulas that inevitably put the regime in a difficult situation vis-à-vis its temporary American friends. Outside observers and terrorist experts in particular have consistently failed to calculate the long-term instability the ‘go in strong’ policies they advocate cause for the Ṣāliḥ regime. If one investigates the particularly heavy-handed operations in Abyan (1998) and Ṣirwāḥ (2000–2), for example, it is clear that assertive ‘counter-terrorist’ measures taken by Ṣāliḥ loyalists simply exasperated local alienation (and hence hostility) towards the regime.28 This escalation of tensions and ultimately the creation of an armed resistance movement that may or may not still exist today did not need to take place when there was plenty of evidence to suggest that those targeted by the regime had previously enjoyed strong relations with the state. Indeed, according to news reports, it was Ṣāliḥ’s regime itself that recruited activists recently involved in international operations against the Soviet Union/ Russia, Uzbekistan, Iraq, China and Afghanistan to settle in Yemen. This influx of so-called ‘Afghan Arabs’ into South Yemen after unification led to the creation of, among other politically entrepreneurial groups, the ‘Aden–Abyan Islamic Army’, which waged a campaign of terror against the Yemen Socialist Party (YSP), Ṣāliḥ’s main rival in the newly unified country (al-Lawjrī 2007). According to the Saudi-funded al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ (8 November 2001), this loose group of opportunists, mercenaries and legitimate proselytisers was linked to the commander of Yemen’s First Armoured Division, ‘Alī Muḥsin al-Aḥmar, who happens to be a close relative of President Ṣāliḥ and has also married into the powerful family of Ṭāriq al-Faḍlī, itself purportedly linked to various ‘mujāhhidīn’ movements around the world. Despite the fact that there are clear links between Aḥmar (thus Ṣāliḥ directly), the Yemen military and the weapons being sent to the ‘Aden–Abyan Islamic Army’, over time the relationship soured.29 According to local sources, the group increasingly attacked ‘rivals’ who were no longer just ‘communist infidels’ linked to the YSP (Knysh 2001). In fact, much of the violence had little to do with spiritual principles and increasingly had to do with the money earned from extortion, intimidation, ‘security’ and smuggling. In the end, its seems the impunity once

The contingent state  83 granted to the group led to increasingly contentious relations with anyone who did not submit to their assumption of authority. In short, the plan to use extra-legal means to eliminate potential rivals from the political scene of a supposedly upand-coming democracy led to the creation of niches for a group who developed into a veritable movement with well-articulated social engineering (and commercial) agendas (al-Ḥayāt, 10 October 2005). This in the end clashed with the interests of the Ṣāliḥ regime itself, leading to some bloody confrontations that required immediate attention. As is clear in the Abyan case of 1998, Ṣāliḥ did not need any foreign coaxing to go in strong against the ‘Aden–Abyan Islamic Army’, which instigated, at least as far as the outside world is concerned, the radical Islām crisis in Yemen when it took sixteen foreign tourists hostage (al-Jamhī 2008).30 Despite the seemingly clear-cut dynamics of who was responsible, the subsequent violent confrontations with these ‘terrorists’ were clearly shaped by a history that went deeper than the events themselves. One thing is sure: choosing to use force against this now well-entrenched cluster of communities did not serve Yemen’s best interests, as violence by then had subsumed much of South Yemen in a confusing blur that is impossible to generalize as simply secessionist or ‘Islamic terrorism’.31 For Ṣāliḥ’s regime, as I argue throughout, the escalation and subsequent death of foreigners and many locals may have been exactly what it wanted. Over the next several years, communities throughout the country challenged the Ṣāliḥ regime, often in specific reference to the coalition Ṣāliḥ forged with European and US interests at the expense of local relations that were once considered sacred. In time, despite efforts to frame these conflicts to Ṣāliḥ’s heroic struggle with ‘radical Islam’ or archaic ‘tribal groups’, the very fact such confrontations took place has transformed the political horizons of many in Yemen and has thus forced Ṣāliḥ deeper towards a point of no return in respect to the slide towards a unique form of authoritarianism. Indeed, according to some opponents Ṣāliḥ has used the ‘war on terror’ as a pretext to introduce his son into the political arena. By using his son to lead the commando raid against the ‘radical Islamists’ defying state authority in Abyan, Ṣāliḥ probably demonstrated most clearly how his relations predicated on subordination to external political agendas can undermine the ability of a regime to rule locally.32 It is one of the paradoxes of Yemen that Ṣāliḥ’s early post-unification strategy in the south created new niches for locals that gave them leverage over surrogates of the state. Over the last few years, these niche polities flourished, ultimately frustrating Ṣāliḥ’s allies, who demand a state with a stronger hold on Yemen’s society. In the end, it is possible to say Ṣāliḥ created his own Frankensteins by flirting with Salafist and jihadist groups. But, at the same time, he has actually used the rising tensions his government has had with his previous allies as a point of emphasis in the larger ‘war on terror’ that the US imposed on the global south. Over the years, bloody clashes with various ‘radical’ groups has strengthened a sense in Washington that, with a blank cheque, Ṣāliḥ would eagerly use force to confront any group deemed uncooperative in this self-declared war. Now, the struggle for ascendancy is not so much leverage or consolidation but simple

84  Chaos in Yemen conflict; the more resistance Ṣāliḥ faces the more lucrative the relationship with the outside world seems to become for the regime.

Internal alliance building: the case of the confederacy during the First World War Ṣāliḥ’s maturation as a leader and his long-term survival offer a stark contrast to the experience previous regimes in Yemen had in conditions that differ only in magnitude. As is often suggested in the literature, during the 1872–1918 period, a significant number of northern-based communities opposed the Ottoman presence (Abāẓah 1979: 355–60). Despite their shared opposition to Ottoman rule, factionalism predominated because the conditions of resistance themselves were diverse (Glaser 1884: 170–83, 204–13). Regional centres of gravity changed over time, often leaving Muḥammad Idrīsī’s territories the most attractive for Zaydī shuyūkh located geographically close to him. The draw of Idrīsī’s success of course shifted with the changing political tides in the province as a whole, but in general Idrīsī’s success left Imām Yaḥyā often short of allies when he most needed them. By 1912, for instance, it appears there were at least three groups of Zaydīs that opposed Imām Yaḥyā and claimed the Imāmate for themselves (Sālim 1971: 137). As argued earlier, such a diverse set of challenges to Imām Yaḥyā ultimately compelled him to align with the Ottomans in the form of the Da‘‘ān treaty. On occasion, opposition to Imām Yaḥyā’s alliance with the Ottoman state translated into short-term but noteworthy collaborations among Zaydīs in the northern highlands. These political alliances between individual shuyūkh had political consequences that serve as key markers to the nature of internal Yemeni politics. It is suggested however, that it was not a general ideological theme that provided the basis of such resistance. Rather, specific to geography and economic and political conditions, particular groupings would emerge as a result of individual events and fade off again when those conditions changed. One such incident motivated a temporary coalition of forces that, in fact, even transcended the frequently evoked Zaydī/Shafī’ī barrier: the Abū Ra’s incident of 1917. In July of 1917 a prominent member of the Bakīl confederation was executed for actions he took against the Ottoman state. The trial was closely followed in Yemen at the time. The fact that Imām Yaḥyā, who had already a difficult relationship with many Zaydī factions throughout the war, did not intervene in the defence of one of his own represented an enormous symbolic breach of trust for many who had supported him. To many, Imām Yaḥyā’s whole claim to legitimacy rested on his special relationship with the Ottomans by which he had virtual judicial independence in his areas of influence (Kühn 2007: 328). As the region’s sole arbiter and guardian of Sharī‘a law in cases involving Zaydīs (since Da‘‘ān, the Imām saw fit to intervene in everything from inheritance disputes to tax collecting) most of his partisans expected him to insist on overseeing the trial of one of his own.33 After all, the Imām always insisted on appointing judges loyal to him and violently opposed allowing those not under his authority to take up key posts, the kind of pressure the Ottomans always seemed to submit to in the past.34 In the

The contingent state  85 end, therefore, his silence and Abū Ra’s’s execution proved a revelation to some still loyal allies. It exposed Yaḥyā and his façade of power for everyone in his community to see. Studying the reaction to Imām Yaḥyā’s decision to support the Ottoman’s public execution of a powerful regional leader may prove helpful to reassessing the way in which we analyse events in Yemen today. For one, the execution of Abū Ra’s provides us with important insight into the political capacity of the Imām during the war. The inability of the Imām to halt the execution, despite the fact it was bound to create enormous political fallout, reflected both how weak he really was in the decision-making processes concerning issues seen as central to preserving Ottoman power in the area and that he was actually much more politically and militarily dependent on the Ottoman state than represented in the historiography. This is an important point to stress and is somewhat of a revelation since past interpretations often identified Imām Yaḥyā as more or less autonomous from the Ottoman administration in the post-Da‘‘ān period. I would suggest that, contrary to al-Wāsi‘ī and other Yemeni historians, Imām Yaḥyā was isolated politically within his traditional areas of influence and was much weaker militarily than his adversaries (al-Wāsi‘ī 1928: 259; Abāẓah 1979: 361–2). It is when this weakness became apparent to other Zaydī leaders that many drew justification and/or incentive to oppose the Imām and then join Idrīsī. Claims of being powerless made by Imām Yaḥyā during the course of the uproar after the trial failed to shield him from the political consequences of this judicial scandal and clearly proved detrimental to his ability to assert power among his constituency. Whereas the tensions were long in the making, this single event inspired a call to arms for its symbolic value. In what British intelligence officers called ‘The Confederacy’, we see the emergence of a coalition of former Imāmate allies who elected to turn their energies against Imām Yaḥyā’s failed leadership in the northern highlands at the height of the First World War. As a result, disturbances began to spread throughout Imām Yaḥyā’s areas of control in ways that forced him to modify his strategies constantly, in much the same way ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ today has been compelled by the Americans and perhaps Saudis to adopt a more aggressive position vis-à-vis his diverse population.35 In respect to the case of Imām Yaḥyā’s relationship with the Ottoman Empire, it is clear with the Ṣāliḥ case in mind how contingencies often force the ambitions of state-builders to modify their ambitions as well as introduce new policies that ultimately transform the very society over which they had hoped to rule. In this respect, the Imām’s reaction to pressure from the Ottoman governor who was seeking a quick and peaceful settlement to the trial is especially informative. It appears the Imām, who was truly in an unenviable situation, made the strategic decision that giving in too much to demands made of his assumed constituents unnecessarily aggrandized the claims of local shuyūkh who were actively opposing him. Initially, then, the Imām attempted to persuade opponents to accept his terms by more or less ordering his subordinates to accept his offer as opposed to negotiating with them. Early in the crisis, the Imām’s chief representative met with members of Dhū Muḥammad and Dhū Ḥusayn, two important components

86  Chaos in Yemen in the ‘Confederacy’, and offered 13,000 Austrian silver thalers as compensation for Abū Ra’s’s death. In addition, all the territories owned by the victim would be handed over to his rightful successor. In the case, however, that the terms were not accepted (they were not), the Imām explicitly stated that he would consider the two his enemies and would deal with them accordingly.36 In the past, such tactics may have been sufficient, but the conditions at the time were not in Imām Yaḥyā’s favour. His prestige and claim to collective legitimacy had been weakened by a number of factors. Upon failing to win the support of his traditional allies, Imām Yaḥyā, desperate, offered new ultimatums, this time under the guise of the Ottoman/Yaḥyā alliance.37 This was not surprising in hindsight. Throughout the war, when all else failed, the Imām would end up going to the Ottoman state and its large, modern army as his political crutch, a remarkable, public declaration in face of accusations that he had, by in large, sold out his local constituents for an alliance with a foreign power.38 There is plenty of documentary evidence of the Imām attacking Zaydī communities that were in the midst of battling with Ottoman troops. For example, the Imām specifically identified the Arḥab (Bakīl-linked community from an area around Ṣan‘ā’) as targets for the Imām’s troops because of Arḥab’s continuous fighting with the Ottoman state. Acts such as these certainly convinced many of the Imām’s true loyalties (Abū Ghānim 1990: 476). This partially explains, therefore, the reason behind the refusal of the ‘Confederacy’ to reach a conclusive settlement with the Imām. Their movement could only gain momentum as the Imām continued to paint himself into a diplomatic corner. The Imām’s attachment to the Ottoman state meant politics in his home areas would be more contested and thus, in a vicious circle, forced him to increasingly resort to calling in Ottoman troops to deal with his increasingly violent opponents.39 In the end, Imām Yaḥyā, whose loyalty to the Ottomans did not waver throughout the crisis, resorted to extreme measures, essentially declaring war on those who did not support his settlement. As a result of his weakness in his traditional areas of influence, he sought new alliances in areas historically out of reach to a Zaydī Imām, namely the southern highlands. Much in line with the calculus of diminishing prestige in the northern highlands are the effects the war had on relations between the Zaydī Imām and well-established elites in the Ta‘izz and Ibb area. Ironically, it was the Ottoman Empire’s extensive political networks and administrative infrastructure that provided the context for the trans-regional interchange in Yemen that became key to Imām Yaḥyā’s efforts to consolidate power throughout the southern highlands after the war. Late in the war, for instance, Imām Yaḥyā contacted Ibb’s Ottoman-appointed governor, Ismā‘īl Bāsalāma, humbly requesting military assistance in the effort to subdue a revolt in the coastal region of Tihāmah that threatened the garrison and its Ottoman commander.40 The letter is suggestive in that it first demonstrates that the likes of Bāsalāma enjoyed a great deal of political autonomy at the time. There is no doubt that the Ottoman governor made similar overtures in Ibb; but, by giving the Imām the opportunity to make these requests on his behalf, the Ottoman governor may have been setting the stage for future alliances

The contingent state  87 potentially useful to the Ottoman state. The strategy for the Ottoman administrators never came to fruition, since they lost the war, but the Imām and Bāsalāma maintained strong political links after independence, with Bāsalāma becoming the Imām’s appointed governor of Ibb. Once again, we are able to see new political networks emerge that can provide new kinds of explanations for events in Yemen today. Understanding the difficulties Imām Yaḥyā had with Zaydī shuyūkh in the north, political expediency would suggest using Ottoman channels to create new alliances for the future. This is a pattern that can be observed throughout the province during the Ottoman era; although it would be premature to draw conclusions at this stage, I suspect the Ottoman state may have provided the infrastructure (and the context) for what we would externally call a Yemen ‘national’ identity beginning to form. In northern Yemen, the links made on both sides of the Imām Yaḥyā/Ottoman state coalition provided the foundation for a national political culture to emerge as the Imām struggled to secure legitimacy after the Ottomans left. There is little doubt from the public campaign the Imām conducted in a new political arena, the southern highlands, that Yaḥyā depended on the Ottoman state to provide him with an alternative base of support as he continued the struggle for hegemony in the north. Such dependency meant open displays of loyalty to the Ottomans, a calculation that seemed perfectly logical at the time but, in hindsight, could have been devastating to the Imām’s efforts at securing control over postOttoman Yemen. For example, Saif al-Islām, his spokesperson, declared on behalf of the Imām at the Wednesday market in Ibb that any constituent group giving the Ottomans trouble would be treated by the Imām as his enemy and be confronted by him with force.41 It is unexpected for a Zaydī Imām to make such statements in Ibb, an area presumably out of his spiritual, legal and political jurisdiction. And yet he felt compelled to publicly express his loyalty to the Ottomans while laying a new claim to authority in a political milieu that was previously out of bounds to a Zaydī authority. What accounts for this geographic reorientation? For one, it was the context in which the Imām found himself at the time. The Imām was clearly unable to stage such a public manifestation in his home districts. Instead, the Imām was actually reaching out to a new possible set of constituencies. Such gestures, which we can also observe throughout the 1990s and 2000s in contemporary Yemen, are reflective of how spheres of power shift over time. They also prove that for the Imām in Ibb in 1917, and Ṣāliḥ and his many rivals or temporary allies today, such declarations could be made in areas that according to conventional wisdom were beyond their area of influence. Ultimately, the inability to come to any settlement over the trial of Abū Ra’s exposed Imām Yaḥyā’s precarious standing in many Zaydī circles. In response, the leadership of the ‘Confederacy’ saw an opportunity to depose the Imām on the grounds of one unifying incident and refused to end it in a negotiated settlement. The old ways of negotiation were ineffective during the war because the Imām lacked the credibility and the political and military power to enforce respect for his overtures in geographically identifiable areas. This proves essential to

88  Chaos in Yemen understanding Yemen’s political history: the ability to intervene, negotiate and assert political influence in Yemen is tied quite dramatically, not only to structures of legitimacy and oratory skills, but to collective perceptions. If we compare Imām Yaḥyā with his main adversary Muḥammad Idrīsī, located in the ‘Asīr, the different levels of success are dramatic and emblematic of the realities of the internal dynamics of power in Yemen during the First World War. This forced the Imām to shift his political compass southwards, creating an entirely new political reality that would transform post-war Yemen. The creation of the ‘Confederacy’ itself also demonstrates how events can trigger alliances across Zaydī political and so-called tribal divides. Again, these alliances challenge the very notion that ‘tribal’ or sectarian associations are useful categories for analysing Yemeni politics. Many of the so-called tribes of the Ḥāshid tribal confederation, for example, were partners in the ‘Confederacy’. That being said, they were not all willing to align with Idrīsī (and, by default, the British at the time). The fact that a number of related constituent groups of a ‘tribal confederation’ did not join Idrīsī is suggestive of the diverse notions of political capital at play. Such varied calculations among members of the so-called tribal confederation leaves one to ask: if such anomalies were possible then, are Ḥāshid and Bakīl political affiliations today so much different? The execution of Abū Ra’s ignited a chain reaction, fuelling already strong opposition among Zaydīs, becoming the focal point of a more coherent alliance that had a single unified, and definable goal: the replacement of the Imām. But there was no political core, hence members of the coalition sought contradictory courses of action, much as they did prior to Abū Ra’s’s trial. Idrīsī, therefore, had no influence over the ‘Confederacy’ but did have influence over some fragments. In the end, the British and Idrīsī had little to gain from being attached to a doomed alliance of competing northern communities that would only perpetuate chaos. The strategies of alliance making in the northern highlands resemble the dynamics at work in the ‘Asīr and Ṣa‘dah today but with dramatically different results. Perceptions are key in such interactions in Yemen. Yemeni politics are partially driven by maximizing returns from alliances that are in a constant state of flux. Imām Yaḥyā’s failure to suppress the initial outcry over the Abū Ra’s event led to a collectivizing effect that was a reconfiguration of Zaydī and highland politics. Many, I suspect, saw that such a reconfiguration would bring an opportunity to move into more advantageous positions and offered their support to the Confederacy despite its disjointed political centre. There was, again, no single reason for the creation of the Confederacy but it is safe to say the central force was composed of communities from the Zaydī highlands staking their own claims to the Imāmate. It is conjecture at this point but I suspect many of these participants saw the Confederacy as an opportunity to impose a new Imām from their own geographical area of influence, thus enhancing their own standing within the larger Zaydī community. This may even partially explain the persistent effort during the late Ottoman period and then throughout the inter-war era by those opposed to Yaḥyā to replace him with one of his sons. Indeed, many, including Abū Ḥarb of Dhū Muḥammad and members of constituent groups known as the

The contingent state  89 Dhū Ḥusayn, Qayyid bin Rajih and Yaḥyā bin Yaḥyā al-Shayif [sic] among others were strongly behind the campaign to replace Imām Yaḥyā with one of his sons, Sayyid ‘Abdallāh. It is clear from the emergence of these factions that there are ruling factors involved in the creation of alliances among highland communities that do not hold paramount the concept of blind loyalty to the Imām.42 To conclude, the following combination of factors may be seen as reasons for the creation of alliances during the First World War. Lower-level shuyūkh marginalized by the Imām’s alliance with the Ottoman state and the presence of a formidable alternative military power, for instance Muḥammad al-Idrīsī in ‘Asīr, led to ideological inconsistencies in the opposition to the Ottoman state. Varying notions of political interests among the opposition collectively made them unattractive to parties interested in building a state in Yemen – the imperial powers and Idrīsī – but they posed a significant enough threat to the Imām, who had based his political and military existence on their patronage. Tied to these factors is an assortment of secondary impediments to a unified resistance: constant profit making, diverse local power relations and internal rivalries, all of which rendered such movements disorganized and fractious but threatening to the Imām.43

Conclusion Through the Idrīsī case and the various claimants to the Zaydī Imāmate throughout the 1904–18 period, we see that politics of the local limited the capacities of the Ottoman state to the point where new opportunities arose to create unexpected and historically unique alliances. As a result, Ottoman power in Yemen was always sitting precariously on the edge of disaster or a new era for trans-regional collaboration. At the same time, however, as discussed in the next chapter, the same socio-economic dynamics that made these regions so difficult for modernizing imperial states to control left them economically vibrant and capable of resisting the onslaught from global capitalism. With so many disparate, largely autonomous communities constantly acting in ways that forced the reconfiguration of state administration, be it in the Yemeni Imāmate or the British-administered Aden protectorate after the First World War, the importance of methods of state rule was always overshadowed by the requisite negotiation with empowered locals. In many ways, the precursors to the “deliberative” politics that so fascinated outside scholars for much of the post-unification period were born in this dynamic environment in which no single administrative enterprise could hope to secure power in the region. In this context, the vicissitudes of local life enabled the process of interactive governing to last for decades longer without the tarnish of economic peripheralization dictating the manner in which those living in North Yemen interacted with the world. Such fluctuating relations within regions and beyond the southern Arabian Peninsula ultimately shaped the nature of post-Ottoman rule in the region. In turn, the manner in which the unification process would evolve over the course of the next century is impossible to appreciate unless we study the legacy of this late imperial rivalry in terms of a precariously defined territorial imagination of

90  Chaos in Yemen polities. As discussed in the next chapter, this increasingly ‘modern’ sensibility of territoriality reconfigured Yemen into separate spheres of experience as defined by boundaries drawn out in very contentious moments during the 1901–5 period and also in the post-Idrīsī era in the 1920s and 1930s and now since at least 2000. Until the formal erection of boundaries separating states (and, more importantly, their enforcement), the harmonization of practices and governmental effects, expected by normative explanations of modern political life, was not really ever at play in Yemen. Political, cultural, legal and commercial life was always a contentious process and one as much reflective of the contingencies beyond the control of claimants to paramount authority as of actual state capacities to enforce uniform authority. This crucial reality of political development is explored in the next chapter in the context of territory and a reconceptualization of state power vis-à-vis concerted resistance from indigenous polities to the enforcement of borders cutting right through communities.

4 The frontier as a measure of modern state power

Ārdak . . . ’ardak. (Your land is your honour.)

Local Ṣa‘dah proverb

The transformation of the Ottoman and British Empires over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was indelibly linked to the subtle, daily exchanges between subject and state. Similar dynamics impacted the means by which postimperial states in Arabia asserted sovereignty over territory. The cumulative result of these daily interactions was the emergence of a complicated range of economic and political opportunities for many non-state actors. In response to people taking advantage of these opportunities, state administrations have been constantly forced to modify policies in the hope of establishing political and economic order in an otherwise contentious, often unstable environment. In this chapter I expand on this observation by focusing on the cumulative effect of newly introduced practices that attempted to realize territorial redefinition of the northern regions of Ottoman Yemen, the territories that became the frontier separating North and South Yemen and finally the modern boundary between Saudi Arabia and unified Yemen in the ‘Asīr. In exploring how the state defined authority by way of its borders, both those separating ‘different’ people (nations, ethnicities or faiths) and those confining them for the purpose of outlining administrative jurisdiction (Smith and Katz 1993: 68–73), we gain a new understanding of the scope of transformation in the history of different regimes governing parts of Yemen. This is especially true after the military defeat of Ottoman forces in its war with Tsarist Russia in 1877 and early 1878, a defeat that led to a dramatic redrawing of the empire’s borders (Blumi 2003). The subsequent efforts by outside powers to regulate the redistribution of Ottoman territories in the Balkans, Arabia and Eastern Anatolia using completely alien concepts of territoriality required first that the state distinguish its subjects by their presumed ethno-religious affiliations and then define a new set of socio-economic possibilities for these aggregated inhabitants. The concern here will be the policy adjustments adopted to address the dwindling capacity of empires to maintain their territorial integrity while also asserting a particular

92  Chaos in Yemen kind of regime on an increasingly resistant local population. Exploring how subsequent ‘reforms’ ultimately impacted those living in the affected regions opens up another way of understanding the effects of empire on Yemen by expanding the way the Ottoman and British empires are studied in cartographic as well as in administrative terms. Violence in the Ṣa‘dah region today has arisen because the relationship between the local and the larger world was abruptly changed in ways that parallel the late Ottoman period. Over the last decade, this once porous zone of commerce has become the centre of Saudi state efforts to change its border management regime. As a result, the Ṣa‘dah region and its inhabitants are threatened with being shut out of a traditional source of revenue and its accompanying political leverage.1 On the other side of the country, the former border separating North and South Yemen has in itself retained significance in larger Yemeni politics. Among other factors, since unification the area has been a targeted zone for influence, with migrants from the north encouraged to settle in the south with the subsequent change in land ownership patterns playing out in complex ways. Comparing and contrasting these two experiential zones with more or less their historical analogues in the period before the First World War should serve as a platform to explore more closely the extent to which the modern Yemeni state is shaping lives towards conflict. As in other chapters, to make these cases stand out, the pre-First World War period serves to provide a constructive perspective by briefly explaining how the border as a diplomatic issue emerged in the late Ottoman era and how it directly affected the lives of those living throughout contested areas of Yemen.

The border as object of state control The history of the modern Middle East is marked by the way territorial space was both occupied and produced (or reproduced) by states that succeeded the Ottoman Empire (Altuğ and White 2009). Some scholars exploring the phenomenon more generally have persuasively argued that the creation of these modern states can be linked to a ‘process’ in which institutions and actors ‘normalize and naturalize’ a spatial order that was contingent to unrelated ‘historical forces’ (Corrigan and Sayer 1991: 141–2). Such an understanding of the modern world proves helpful in appreciating the impact of the new set of cartographic realities produced after the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877–8 and then the Berlin Congress of 1884–5 for the delimitation of ‘spheres of influence’ in Africa. In many ways, the ‘reality’ of this process and the transformation of much of the non-European world into distinct possessions, colonies and then nation-states first manifested itself in the form of maps written on flimsy paper by European bureaucrats. As is clear with the case of Yemen, it was only later (if ever) that the new order of ethno-national states was ‘really’ implemented on the ground (Wedeen 2008: 22–38). More than simply being part of an international effort to resolve the question of the Ottoman Empire, however, the mobilization of what some believed were spatial metaphors to redefine who lived where introduced a larger concern with ‘space’ that is actively discussed in critical theory today.2

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  93 As suggested in the literature, the actual signing of formal treaties, creating independent spaces that distinguish one territory from another, should not coax us to thinking of the process as being transparent and ideologically neutral (Smith and Katz 1993; Turnbull 1993: 32–45). Similarly, the ‘space’ of various Yemen polities – the Imāmate, ‘tribal lands’, sovereign post-imperial states and indeed the truncated Ottoman Empire – are not detached from meaning and experience. This is especially clear with the case of the Ṣa‘dah and Ḥujarīyyah regions, which became centres of social and political contestation in the period prior to the First World War and then again in the twenty-first century. Markings on a map outlining governed spaces high in the mountainous regions of these two regions inaugurated a new set of political opportunities for its inhabitants. Although these places and peoples were treated as if they had histories separate from the process that delineated a ‘frontier’ through their homeland, in a paradoxical way the act of drawing the frontier through these regions actually gave locals a central role in the very process of delineation and the direction modern states would move. In other words, cartographic space does not simply ‘display’ itself in the form of a dot or line on a map. It has to be enacted and realized on the ground, sometimes by people tragically transformed by them. Henri Lefebvre noted that in “space . . . there is a productive process’, which suggests that ‘history’ and power are applied (Lefebvre 1991: 46). But it is not always the victorious that impose a reading of their power in the form of a map. As much as states that sign treaties, be they the Ṭā’if agreement of 1934 that secured Saudi claims over much of the ‘Asīr or the British/Ottoman treaties over the valuable Ḥujarīyyah area that straddled the future borders between north and south, men sanctioned by diplomatic protocol may make the lines on the map a fact but such acts certainly did not erase what was ‘missing’ from them. As discussed at length later in this chapter, the story behind the 1934/2000 frontiers dividing the ‘Asīr into Mutawakkilī and Saudi spheres of influence reveals how key aspects of the modern world order were not enforceable under certain circumstances. In the end, the logic of power in its modern application failed to address the concerns of the inhabitants of affected regions, resulting in transforming an imperial ontological fact – a ‘frontier’ separating ‘different’ peoples, nations and states – into a precarious object of negotiation that made agents of change out of subjects previously ignored. Recognizing this offers us intriguing and potentially complex angles to interpret the changes taking place in Yemen over the last century. First, the range of opportunities to confront the process of ‘modernization’ becomes vast the moment it becomes clear how the enforceability of, for instance, realized ‘facts’ on maps is limited. The question, therefore, immediately becomes one of feasibility for states. As the cases in Yemen’s northern and southern extremities prove, the state, be it Ottoman, Saudi or British, had only limited means of enforcing new forms of social, economic and political order created as a response to the imposition of a frontier. The constant reminder of this in Ṣa‘dah today has clearly transformed the attitudes of Ṣāliḥ’s inner circle as well as in Riyāḍ and Washington, DC. In response, the claimants to state power have adopted new kinds of administrative

94  Chaos in Yemen practices that are designed to correct obvious shortcomings to earlier policies; but, as is clear in the Ḥūthī/Ṣa‘dah case, these measures may actually be instigating new forms of local agency that will be impossible to suppress by coercion. The foundations of what is actually taking place today can be traced back to a period of transition during which the Ḥujarīyyah region became a frontier for the first time. As is known, between 1914 and 1990 southwest Arabia was divided in two by a border, the first 138 miles of which were drawn by the Ottoman and British Empires in negotiations that lasted from 1902 to 1914.3 Largely forgotten, however, are the dynamics surrounding the actual erection of this frontier in the first place. Moreover, the subsequent impact this new policy of dividing the Aden highlands (Ḥujarīyyah) had on the region’s inhabitants speaks directly to a larger point made here: monitoring how local contingencies are far more important to an analysis of events in contemporary Yemen than applying a layer of sociological clichés. Below, I lay out this complicated dynamic surrounding the creation of borders in order to offer a new set of tools to study the current crisis in the south and Ṣa‘dah to the north. In the post-imperial era, such tensions emerged with the creation of the Saudi state (and formal expansion into the ‘Asīr in 1930). With the shifting enforcement of its boundaries over the years, new kinds of political and economic opportunities and challenges also emerged. One source of tension in recent years is the fact that Saudi Arabia initiated a new policy of enforcing state sovereignty along its shared borders with Yemen that directly regulated, in hitherto unknown ways, who could cross the unmarked territorial boundaries. As a result, peoples living in these areas faced new threats as the Ṣāliḥ regime, the globalization of the ‘war on terror’ and a more aggressive Saudi state instigated an economic transformation that directly impacted how communities in and around Ṣa‘dah engaged in daily commerce and social exchange. Their subsequent revolt, in part, originates from the consequences of these socio-economic changes. The reasons why the resulting violence persists cannot, as highlighted earlier in respect to the Idrīsī story, rest solely on doctrinal differences. The so-called Shī‘ī opposition today, much as with the Idrīsī coalitions of the turn of the century, constitutes a diverse set of interests in a region long known for its economic and political autonomy from the rest of the country. Similarly, what happened in the south after unification in 1990 – which I discuss in more detail in the next chapter – is not new to Yemen. To fully appreciate this, however, it is necessary to further theorize the border experience in the context of the Ottoman Empire.

Object of state becomes subject in history The Berlin Congress of 1878 may be characterized as the Great Powers’ attempt to impose a particular reading of space in the Ottoman Empire. This reading would thus establish an order to the larger world predicated on some basic guiding principles. Unexpectedly, the people living in these spaces, by resisting the attempt to implement and enforce this reading of the world, actually influenced the subsequent performance of empire in Yemen (Blumi 2003). The areas in which

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  95 they lived in a matter of months became ‘known’ as contested areas that needed to be renegotiated between agents of empire and its inhabitants. This assured a place in history for those living in these regions; the incredulous authorities managing imperial affairs were compelled to write about them as they resisted what has long been assumed to be a quintessentially modern exercise of state power. Such exchanges between locals and modern empires force us to think of the relationship actual people have with the territories under negotiation between states. Modern politics and diplomacy, in other words, is much more a product of interactions between diverse groups of stakeholders than abstract theories would have us believe. This ultimately helps us resurrect Said’s important assertion that some people do make their own history by way of their understanding of geography.4 The dots with names on maps suddenly become ‘places’ that have meaning to people who live there and thus have been ascribed value.5 Where one could differ from Said is the focus of who takes part in the process; it is as much the marginal Yemeni peasant, shepherd or merchant as the European imperial agent who draws the lines of state, community and history. The relevance of this intervention for our study of contemporary Yemen is made clear by realizing that the dynamics of Great Power politics in the decades leading up to the First World War were largely shaped by events on the ground, not in the smoke-filled halls of imperial capitals. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, the entire redrawing of European and Middle Eastern maps was as much a reflection on events in the territories under question as in Berlin, St Petersburg or Istanbul. For example, in order to politically ensure that the ‘sick man of Europe’ survived Russia’s efforts to tear it apart after the 1877–8 war, new mechanisms were introduced by Istanbul to streamline the political and administrative operation of the Ottoman state. The tools mobilized by the state were supposed to establish a cartographic order to its territories demanded by the Berlin Treaty of 1878. The most striking manifestation of this was the attempt to establish a stable method of naming land within the confines of an ethno-national state. In order to effectively accomplish this, certain bureaucratic routines – surveying, place-naming and mapmaking – were adopted and normalized. Although there was a long history of such activities in the Ottoman Empire, a new set of operational demands caused by military defeat transformed the way the state monitored and conceived its territories. Texts in the form of maps, titles, deeds and geographic descriptions found in the Ottoman archives reveal a process in which bureaucrats and speculators strove to produce new conceptual spaces in order to grasp an objective reality that carried analytical, ideological or monetary value. Basically, the Berlin Congress of 1878 established the importance of cartographic order in maintaining a global system dependant on a state system centred on Europe. In time, Ottoman modifications of how it conceived the state in maps, thereby marking state frontiers with named ‘spaces’ such as the provinces of Yemen, ‘Asīr or Ḥijāz, created a sense of stability essential for the performance of government. The process of realizing this stability, however, quickly produced material facts of its own that ultimately contradicted that sense of order. The 1872–1918 period in Arabia is especially important because it marks a

96  Chaos in Yemen conjuncture of disciplinary and operational developments that attributed new significance to territorial and cultural borders by way of defining people in certain ways (Abercrombie 1991: 95–7). Among other things, boundaries began to serve as tools for states to make sovereign claims over geographical, historical and, more importantly, sociological spaces defined by ethnicity and faith. What made this change possible were in part the growing capacities of the state to assume and then project power in all aspects of its relationship with subject populations (Pyenson 1993; Vincent 1990: 13–23). As a consequence, the redefinition of communal identities became a product of central administrative policy, resulting in an exchange of at times conflicting readings of the world and local reality. Importantly, these contradictory interpretations of the ‘frontiers’ (both territorial and cultural) calibrated by the imperial state created over time a context for exchange that did not fully confine itself to parameters set by the state. Indeed, the ‘subaltern’ natives who were frequently targeted by these measures reacted in ways that persistently confounded the principal assumptions of power embedded in the shift towards defining the world within neatly confined territorial and ethnographic (‘tribal’) boundaries. Tragically, the exchanges between subjects and the state over where local readings of territory and space end and the state’s begins evolved into governmental policies (and their organized local reactions) that sought to correct the ‘inconsistencies and anomalies’ within newly conceived borders. In other words, both the state and its subjects, many who violently resisted the changes to their lives caused by new cartographic realities, adopted similar methods of redefining their respective communities. As a result, imperial rivalries along Yemen’s frontiers translated into the systemic use of modern technology (guns, maps, bureaucracies) to realize self-fulfilling prophecies of ‘recaptured’ ethnic heartlands, while locals adopted what I call strategic identities that required the use of violence in order to protect new inter-personal boundaries (Blumi 2005: 138–82). This process irreparably transformed the region’s heterogeneous past (it was legally no longer possible to claim multiple ethnic identities) and quickly pitted state allies against resistant ‘rebels’. One of the consequences was ethnic cleansing, which became an administrative tool that ultimately created the modern world’s image of itself and its heritage. As discussed throughout, from the very outset indigenous politics played a central role in shaping imperial interests in south Arabia. In the highland regions of Yemen, economic partnerships with foreign, especially British and Egyptian, merchants reinforced Yemen’s connection to the global economy in the nineteenth century. Coffee, honey and the indigenous mild stimulant qāt, harvested exclusively in the mountains, became important commodities in the early nineteenthcentury regional economy. For some, such as the numerous communities in ‘Abdalī located outside the southern port of Aden, such partnerships helped them to establish as local dynasties that evolved into pseudo-states by the late nineteenth century. In this respect, most of the region had enough manpower and influence to maintain their political and economic autonomy, which is the key to understanding its relations with outside powers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  97

Territorializing southern Yemen

Since the East India Company (EIC) secured the port of Aden by way of a commercial treaty with locals in 1839, the ‘Abdalī region by default became the centre of British commercial and administrative expansion into southern Arabia (Gavin 1975: 1–38). The British main strategic and commercial concern was ensuring that the port remained supplied with food and water and that it remained secure from external attack (Kour 1981). As a partner in this growing commercial enterprise that saw a growing importation of South Asian labourers to handle the increasing amount of ships arriving in port, the cluster of communities in the ‘Abdalī region were expected to maintain the supplies of potable water and protect the supply caravans coming from the highlands in exchange for the periodically renegotiated stipends they received from the Government of India, which administered Aden from Bombay. This kind of partnership with locals in Aden’s hinterland influenced local politics and shaped in particular the political fortunes of the extended ‘Abdalī family for more than a century.6 Aden’s administration negotiated its first political treaty with various representatives of the ‘Abdalī in the 1840s. As a result, authorities in Bombay who oversaw the Aden operations had assumed that their commercial connections in the highlands were assured and that they would retain some influence over the region’s commercial activity by way of the treaty signed with an ascendant local intermediary the British would designate as the ‘Abdalī ‘sulṭān’. As already suggested, the situation changed with the arrival of the Ottomans in the 1860s – followed by France and Italy – who intensified the competition for influence in Yemen soon after. The consequence of this infusion of multiple interests in Yemen was that the entire Ḥujarīyyah region between the highland city of Ta‘izz and Aden became an arena for imperial intrigue. The principals involved included imperial agents and local political entrepreneurs who negotiated with community leaders the loyalty of large clusters of inhabitants in the region. As in the case of ‘Asīr discussed earlier, such opportunities were not lost on locals. For their part, the Ottomans responded to local political opportunism with some positive results. For example, in a short period of time after settling in the highlands in and around Ta‘izz, the Ottoman authorities were able to secure by means of treaties agricultural lands that promised large increases in tax revenue for the central state coffers.7 In this context of rationalizing the investment of state building in potentially hostile territory, Aḥmed Muḥtar Pasha, the commander of the army that conquered the highlands and established the first administration, envisioned Yemen’s eventual full integration into the Ottoman Empire.8 Within two years, a legal and fiscal bureaucracy was in operation in Ta‘izz, with courts adjudicating Ottoman imperial laws and a regular tax being collected by local allies.9 The British response to these changes was confused at best. Officials both in Bombay and in London assumed the diplomatic relations the British Empire solidified with Istanbul since the 1850s meant the Ottomans were not going to interfere in areas clearly under British influence. The problem from the start

98  Chaos in Yemen was that such assumed ‘spheres of influence’ were ambiguous at best. Almost immediately after the Ottoman expeditionary forces moved into areas south of Ta‘izz in 1872, shifts in power among communities previously assumed to be allies of the ‘Abdalī hinted at future problems. Sensing a potentially dangerous undercurrent of local power shifts, authorities in Aden (and the British media in London) voiced fears that the newly arrived Ottoman administration to the north of Aden could lead to their eventual political and economic domination of the region, thereby threatening some of the lucrative commercial relations established by British companies. Reflecting these shifts were the reports coming from Aden that authorities had difficulty with some of their local allies. In respect to the crucial area around Laḥj, for example, attempts to shift strategy in dealing with local developments more directly as a response to Ottoman gains resulted in attempts to reduce the influence of their increasingly ineffective ally, the Sulṭān of Laḥj (Gavin 1975: 127–9). In a panic, the Sulṭān, Faḍl b. Muḥsin, resisted by cultivating as much as possible local alliances that could be used to help remind the British of his utility to them. At the same time, however, Muḥsin also recognized opportunity with the arrival of the Ottomans. As we can observe on numerous occasions today in respect to local actors seeking external patrons (such as well-endowed religious movements based in Saudi Arabia or the Saudi government itself) to pressure the Ṣāliḥ regime to grant them concessions, the Sulṭān exploited the growing Ottoman military campaign to his north. By raising the issue of possible Ottoman infiltration, Muḥsin was hoping to convince his British interlocutors that only he could secure their interests.10 As with the events in the Laḥj prior to the First World War, shifts in local politics could lead to new political orientations that, in the 1990s and 2000s, developed along the lines of fluid regional alliances resulting in the possible geographical reconfiguration of Yemen’s political map. The point that is especially crucial to highlight here is that, unless we can faithfully study the politics beneath the surface of an often misleading simplistic cronyism, new developments that threaten the establishment in Yemen may materialize when interested parties – both domestic and foreign – least expect them. Such conditions exist today both in Ṣa‘dah and throughout the southern highlands that make up the former borderland separating North and South Yemen. To emphasize again how important it is not to settle for simply monitoring the leadership currently claiming representative responsibilities in Yemen, we shall continue with the history of the Laḥj region and to highlight the role internal rivalries played in forcing two empires to change completely their policies towards Yemen. Six months after Sulṭān Faḍl b. Muḥsin communicated to British authorities that there was trouble brewing in his district, Brigadier-General Schneider, the new Resident in Aden, expressed his concern that his superiors in Bombay and ultimately London were not appreciating the dangerous turn of events in Yemen. In the course of his highlighting the tactics of the Ottomans, he advised that his superiors adopt a more aggressive approach, if for no other reason than to demonstrate to local allies that they were in fact serious about maintaining a presence in the region.11

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  99 The Government of India responded to Aden’s complaints by reasserting the notion that the so-called Sulṭān of Laḥj was an independent sovereign whose diplomatic alliance with Britain meant he was immune from any Ottoman pressure.12 In this context, authorities in Bombay expressed their support for the Schneider plan to send out delegations into the highlands in order to reassure ‘wavering chiefs’ that the British were both firmly behind the Sulṭān of Laḥj and able to commit to long-term formal alliances with individual communities willing to promise their allegiance (Ingrams 1938: 634–9). This action quickly produced results as authorities in Aden secured nominal alliances with what the British recognized as nine separate community leaders.13 Such measures, meant to stem what seemed to be a rapidly deteriorating position in respect to regional politics, appeared to successfully stop Ottoman overtures in some areas. ‘Alī b. Manī, the Ḥawshabī leader, however, responded negatively to this kind of pressure from Aden, exerted by way of Sulṭān Faḍl. In time, the persistence of ‘Alī b. Manī’s resistance to British efforts to establish order in a little corner of southern Yemen proves a crucial reminder that local calculations contributed far more to this process than previously acknowledged by historians.14 With al-Manī’s defiance of Aden’s orders, the Ottomans seemed to have driven a wedge into some of the British alliances. As a consequence, within a short period of time, more locals saw an opportunity in aligning with the Ottomans. Sulṭān Faḍl’s younger brother ‘Abdallāh, for example, accepted Ottoman overtures a year after Schneider’s tour in the highlands supposedly solidified British influence. As a reward, the governor of Ta‘izz promptly offered ‘Abdallāh a position in the Ottoman administration. Soon after, ‘Abdallāh proved himself a valuable local asset as he constantly challenged his brother’s authority and thus undermined the British in and around Laḥj. In protest, the British once again evoked a principle that had yet been fully established diplomatically; in this case, claiming the Ottomans had no ‘legal’ right to conduct their affairs through the younger brother of the ‘rightful’ sovereign leader of Laḥj. If the British, upon formally signing a treaty, recognized the sovereignty of Sulṭān Faḍl, the assumption seemed to be that the Ottomans had to recognize that authority as well. Unfortunately for the British, the Ottomans had become especially adept at recruiting members of many of these highland communities the British hoped to control through their treaty with Sulṭān Faḍl. In fact, the Ottomans reported that their successes in recruiting the supposed subordinates of men such as Sulṭān Faḍl largely came as a result of locals soliciting Ottoman support. The fact that large numbers of village elders flocked to the Ottomans required of the British (and Sulṭān Faḍl) a new set of measures to stem the exodus.15 These early Ottoman successes clearly indicate that the British and their allies faced a serious problem with legitimacy. Some bureaucrats in Bombay and a growing cluster of voices within the Aden commercial community began to suggest that more effort was needed to gather better intelligence about the communities in the immediate area. In so doing, it would be possible to thwart Ottoman expansion at British expense. In the end, Aden authorities acknowledged that they needed to be better informed about events in the highlands and perhaps take a

100  Chaos in Yemen more proactive approach (and not rely solely on Sulṭān Faḍl) that included aggressively recruiting communities living in areas deemed most threatened by Ottoman overtures.16 In order to better protect the alliances they expected to make, there are indications that these officials started to advocate demarcating a series of borders in the Red Sea region in order to clearly highlight Britain’s ‘sphere of influence’, a precursor to a diplomatic principle codified several years later in Africa between the European imperial powers.17 The case of Yemen therefore provides a perfect example of the inadequacies of both empire and some theoretical paradigms developed to study them. In the end, the surveys and the archives of empire, be they commissioned reports about ‘Aden’s Tribes’, Ottoman ethnographic surveys or the boundaries of the empire, speak not of imperial fiat divorced from local conditions but of a scramble to react to actual events taking place on the ground that were largely initiated by local forces.18 As a result, rather than being subjugated by the ‘technologies of power’ (implying complete subordination), many of the people identified by terms such as ‘tribe’ and ‘sect’ in the imperial archives and on maps quickly adopted and manipulated the very tools of state to empower themselves and resist imperial control.19 It was only in 1880 that a formal treaty between the British and local allies was actually signed; that is to say, more than six years after officials in Aden scrambled to assert a place in highland politics (Hunter and Sealy 1968: 4–6). Clearly these six years mark a time of considerable weakness on the part of the British (and the Ottomans) as they struggled to insert themselves in the day-to-day affairs of areas well beyond their ‘sphere of influence’. The treaty signed in 1880 between Aden officials and the Amir of Ḍāli‘, for example, highlights the complex dynamics at play in even a seemingly isolated sub-district located deep in the highlands of what was previously Laḥj territory. Ultimately, it seems both the Ottomans and British agreed that recent examples of locals taking advantage of the tensions in the area threatened the larger interests of both administrations. For example, the Laḥj, which the Ottoman authorities in Ta‘izz fully accepted was under British protection, had witnessed numerous attempts by competing communities to infiltrate neighbouring districts in what constituted dangerous provocations that often resulted in open gun battles. More troubling, these inter-community rivalries spilled over into the rich agricultural land belonging to villages located in the Qa‘ṭabah valley. This region was under the Ottomans’ protection and Ottoman clients in Qa‘ṭabah warned that they would not stand still. The threat of a trans-regional war erupting galvanized a new form of communication between the two imperial administrations and, in so doing, also transformed the way both empires interacted with locals. It seems both parties agreed on a scheme to avoid future escalation that entailed incorporating the local inhabitants by way of formal treaty and thus create, through local proxies, a string of larger communities, ‘tribes’, which would then be administratively managed out of Aden. One of these treaties was signed in 1880, which in theory gave someone the British designated as the Amīr of Ḍāli‘ more local authority in the hope that,

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  101 through him and his allies, the British could assure no future entanglements with the Ottomans (Gavin 1975: 200–2). Such arrangements immediately introduced new problems. For one, the money and weapons the newly created polity in Ḍāli‘ received from the British were quickly being used to bully non-compliant neighbouring villages. The subsequent readjustment of local power created a sudden new set of violent confrontations that rested on control over smuggling routes in and out of Ottoman-controlled areas. Whether or not it was their intention, as a result of their formal alliance with the Amīr of Ḍāli‘ the British were now directly involved in a set local rivalries that actually opened up a new set of opportunities for Aden. Officials in Aden realized, perhaps after conversations with the Amīr of Ḍāli‘, that they could actually control some of the lucrative caravan trade passing through these areas; the authorities sent out several expeditions over the following years to conduct surveys of the region that ultimately resulted in expanding their range of influence in the larger region. The unintended result of signing a stopgap treaty with the Amīr of Ḍāli‘ was the signing of numerous agreements with the so-called ‘shaykhs’ of Baysī, ‘Amirī, ‘Alawī and Ḥawshabī. Over the next ten years, these newly ordained polities (eventually codified in ‘Protectorate treaties’) would make up the British frontier zone that became the future borders of South Yemen.20 Ironically, the treaties that were intended to strengthen local and state collaboration set off another scramble for influence among locals. Between 1885 and 1900, against British intentions, these treaties (and the subsequent distribution of stipends and highly sought-after rifles) in fact resulted in social disruption and a number of inter-related power-struggles that undermined communal hierarchies. As large numbers of communities along recently established trade routes protected by Ottoman troops came under increasing attack, authorities in Istanbul realized that the British, often through local proxies, were threatening Ottoman control of commercial activity from the Ta‘izz valley down into Ḍāli‘. Such perceived threats forces Ottoman authorities to interpret the British activities in the highlands, and especially these ‘treaties’ they advertised to their Ottoman counterparts, as markers of a new period of British aggression, not the stopgap measures they had agreed upon to stop locals from threatening regional stability.21 Once again, largely as a result of local activity, what had been in its early stages a fine example of imperial cohabitation was turning into a source of years of tensions. In other words, locals both manipulated imperial states’ sensibilities and ultimately dictated for long periods of time the events in Southern Arabia (Blumi 2009b). As events increasingly disrupted the regional economy and strained relations between the two empires, officials in Bombay suggested a new form of delimitation of territory was needed. Such measures were not necessarily acknowledged solutions to such problems, and any frontier delineated on a map would require convincing Ottoman officials that such an innovation was needed. Here officials in Bombay and Aden appear to have taken the initiative by applying pressure on the Ottoman administration in Ta‘izz by allowing the smuggling of weapons into Ottoman Yemen. In time, this crude move would backfire as the influx of modern

102  Chaos in Yemen rifles actually limited the capacity of both the British and Ottoman to use military force to ‘discipline’ local subordinates in the future. Indeed, the new supply chains created with the increasing demand for these weapons led back to the Horn of Africa, which by the 1880s was firmly under the influence of Italian and French administrations. By the late 1890s, Italian and French manipulation of smuggling and piracy dramatically changed the situation in Yemen, yet another lesson from the past that should serve as a warning to the United States and its European allies that their interventions in Yemen tomorrow may lead to some unanticipated (and unwanted) consequences.22 In the short term, the scheme worked and the British and the Ottomans formally agreed to form a joint commission that would eventually delimit a boundary and establish a working frontier. Ironically, the wording of these initial declarations of intent emphasized that one of the rationales for this unprecedented procedure was the shared concern with the problem of smuggling, something a formal border would theoretically help resolve.23 Although those officials and local allies who manipulated British policy got what they wanted with the agreement to establish a border, their interactions with locals in the vain hope of ‘manipulating’ events on the ground seem to have backfired in the end. The borders were coming, but the price for the agreement between the Ottomans and British empires was subsequent years of influence peddling and claims and counter-claims all vulnerable to local manipulation. Indeed, from the boundary commission’s first meeting in February 1902 until April 1905, the empowerment of local agents of history is clear and the scramble for control by both empires in face of a now heavily armed set of constituencies permanently reshaped the way the Ottomans and British operated in Yemen.24 The weapons local communities were able to secure from smugglers were of course mostly directed at competing communities, even at factions within the same family. The end result was that an even greater number of stakeholders emerged who increasingly learned to lobby both the Ottoman and British border commissions for support. In this context, any overture for support potentially meant a claim of ‘influence’ that could help in the delineation of a frontier. The Ottomans, in particular, proved adept at pre-empting any British claim to areas by evoking temporary alliances they forged with compliant locals. Moreover, locally based Ottoman officials erected symbols of direct administration to reinforce their claims. Throughout this period of time, Ottoman officials were placing troops in villages that welcomed them and erecting forts on the land of allies to lay claim to these areas when the boundary commission came to draw a border. In time, British authorities recognized that, if they did not clearly designate areas of influence on a map that they could use to reinforce their claims, these Ottoman tactics would completely reorder the Aden highlands. The central problem facing the British in this regard was the fact that the only available maps of the areas under potential dispute were those produced by one Colonel Wahab in the 1880s. These maps were both outdated and ambiguous, considering all that had happened among local communities since the 1880s. Wahab himself, a veteran of the region and Aden’s chief negotiator, complained that the India Office

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  103 misunderstood far-away Yemen through ‘misinterpretations’ of his maps.25 For veteran officials such as Wahab, the British needed to investigate ‘actual circumstances’ on the ground, which had dramatically changed since he last visited the areas in the 1880s. Wahab and superiors in Aden thus lobbied the authorities in Bombay to immediately send out a new map-drawing commission that would help negotiators reinforce any subsequent British claims with documentary evidence that the Ottomans would have to accept.26 In other words, Col. Wahab argued, as I do in this book, that context, not the ‘statistical and ethnographic’ generalities of state bureaucracies, is crucial to understanding the motivations of these locals. Understanding the direction of Wahab’s thinking, the Ottomans displayed confidence that they could counter any claim made in Bombay or London with documentation of their own. In the months leading up to the first set of boundary commission meetings, Ottoman officials toured the region collecting the very kind of evidence that would reinforce their claims that past treaties signed between the British and locals were not necessarily clearly translated on the map. As Ottoman officials and their local allies were so successful over the years with recruiting villages once assumed to be under the authority of British allies the Sulṭān of Laḥj and his subordinate, the Amīr of Ḍāli‘, for example, Istanbul was beginning to claim that the entire topography of local power had changed since the 1880s. Specific to the cases of the Laḥj and Ḍāli‘, the ‘sovereigns’ the British claimed had authority in the region were in fact marginalized in an area that would become the biggest point of contention, the Ḥumaydī and Aḥmadī cluster of villages. As far as the Ottomans were concerned, their ally in the area, by way of his command of several forts and his ability to charge local taxes, had the only real claim to authority in the region.27 It also appears that the actual 1880s maps, first introduced by the British to make certain early claims, actually reinforced Ottoman claims as they depicted the Ḥumaydī and Aḥmadī areas as not under British allied control at that time.28 The subsequent negotiations with the Ottomans over exactly how to define the boundary separating each party’s sphere of influence were thus based on entirely different sets of documentation. The Ottomans would prove even more aggressive in these early stages by making the historical claims that allies in the Ḥawshabī, Ḥumaydī and Aḥmadī areas had long formed part of the Ottoman sphere of influence.29 Even more important was the support they gave a local ally named Muqbīl as he aggressively pursued alliances prior to the actual process of delineating a frontier (Blumi 2004). What changed the dynamics on the ground in Britain’s favour was a set of insurgencies in several regions of Ottoman Yemen. In part a product of British machinations, these insurgencies along the Tihāmah coast, Zaydī highlands and the ‘Asīr ultimately led to a number of capitulations by the Ottoman authorities to British demands in 1903. Among the prizes was formal control of all of the Ḍāli‘ plateau, including all the previously mentioned areas of contention.30 Clearly this contentious process of delineating borders in the Ḥujarīyyah would have longterm consequences for all parties involved. Perhaps the most unexpected was the opportunities the frontiers offered locals. In time, the less than servile activism of local communities readjusting to new contingencies created by the boundaries

104  Chaos in Yemen meant the political and economic parameters of empire were constantly being negotiated at times when the two imperial states simply wanted to regulate and ultimately draw revenue from their territories.31 As a result of these unwanted local factors, the roots of the modern frontiers of southern Arabia as well as the very nature of the states meant to enforce them were planted. The borders of empire in the end were the result of bureaucratic reactions to indigenous agency. It is clear that initially the two powers had simply wanted to avoid confrontation in Yemen and until 1901 would not countenance drawing a border. This hesitation in laying down formal boundaries in Yemen should give historians and social scientists pause: the formal need for borders was the consequence of local politics. Drawing from this understanding of the process, British and Ottoman reluctance to reconfigure Yemen’s physical and political geography could be the source of serious theoretical rethinking of the entire paradigm of the modern imperial project. This dynamic takes on similar trajectories in the 1990s with the formal delineation of the Saudi–Yemeni boundary. The application of a new set of ‘universal legal principles’ during the course of the events from the 1870s onwards sought to ensure that those states which shared a common interest would limit their future actions for the benefit of all (Joseph 1999). But, as would become clear with the ‘scramble for Africa’ in 1884–5, a precedent had been set with British expansion into the Aden hinterland using ‘treaties’ signed with local ‘sovereigns’ who welcomed British oversight, thereby creating a new set of tensions in the region that shaped new spaces of action for local and regional powers. Recall that such innovations introduced by the British were in reaction to local events in Laḥj in the late nineteenth century. Their reaction to increasing ambiguity over who represented whom in these unmarked frontier areas led to a joint British/Ottoman adoption of some kind of border solution, a model that the British would help insert through their behind-the-scenes support of the Sa‘ūd family in the 1920s and early 1930s in the ‘Asīr.32 What eventually became known as the Treaty of Ṭā’if of 1934, again a product of British machinations through their Saudi surrogate, led to much of the Jizān, Ṣa‘dah, and Najrān areas of the ‘Asīr being ceded to Riyāḍ. We now turn to exploring in more detail the events that instigated the imposition of these concessions to the new Saudi state and their long-term consequences on the region’s stability.

The modern Saudi–Yemen border In Ṣa‘dah province today, much of the violence increasingly covered in the media takes place within the territories of communities historically straddling the frontiers of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. One of the border areas covered in this chapter is located in parts of Ṣa‘dah province that comprise valuable farm and pasture land belonging to long-established communities who traditionally maintained commercial properties in the principal town of the region, Najrān in Saudi Arabia. Not only were these Zaydī and Ismā‘īlī communities legally connected to these lands, neither the Yemeni nor Saudi states had the means to formally subjugate the area, thereby making any formal delineation of a border between two sovereigns

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  105 difficult for all of the twentieth century. In recognition of the logistical limitations of both states, the Ṭā’if Treaty of 1934 simply ignored the sticky question of sovereignty; the treaty allowed for the inhabitants of the region to freely pass back and forth across a ‘boundary’ that would be marked but never enforced.33 The local dynamic, in other words, dictated the nature of state-building policies and, as in the south of Yemen, frustrated the British as they attempted to solidify their influence in the region through their partner Ibn Sa‘ūd in the 1920s and 1930s.34 The media have largely distorted the nature of the Ṣa‘dah conflict today, increasingly making it synonymous with the Ḥūthī movement when in fact it is largely the by-product of one of these ill-conceived, lingering legacies of an era that parcelled out sovereignty over territory to parties who had limited actual authority. Over the last decade, for example, this once porous zone of commerce over which the peoples known as Wā’ilah, who are mostly Zaydī, and the mostly Ismā‘īlī Yām freely traded, grazed livestock and cultivated cash crops such as fruits and qāt, has become the centre of Saudi state efforts to change its border management regime. As a result, the Ṣa‘dah region and its inhabitants have been targeted for new forms of regulation that are designed to directly inhibit the pursuit of their daily lives. The burdens put on various peoples, such as the Wā’ilah, are clear after even a cursory look at what is taking place as a result of Saudi efforts to formalize the boundary with walls, fences and security posts. People once able to travel freely across their lands, for example, have been forced to obtain visas to pass through newly erected fenced areas that constitute an extension of their farm land. Increased attempts by both states to regulate commercial exchanges across ‘borders’ have also led to the disruption of daily lives as families find it increasingly difficult to cultivate their land, maintain wells and lead flocks to seasonal pasture. To add insult to injury, not only did the Saudi state begin the process of alienating people from their land by actually initiating a formal border treaty that expanded on the 1934 Tā’if Treaty, itself only a temporary agreement renewed every thirty years by both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, but the regime in Riyāḍ and its United States partner has also pressured the Ṣāliḥ regime to assert formal state authority over the region. As noted in the limited literature on the Ṣa‘dah crisis, there are several possible explanations for the region’s indigenous population’s persistent hostility to the Saudi and Yemeni states. The most often invoked is once again the doctrinal differences, with the majority of the native population being of Shī‘ī and Ismā‘īlī heritage whereas the Saudi state is overwhelmingly Sunni (al-Ḥasan 1993). Before giving too much credence to this ‘ancient hatred’ model, however, there are also lingering issues in the larger Ḥijāz region that link the nature of the smuggling boom economy dominated by natives of the ‘Asīr, Najrān and Ṣa‘dah, armed militant groups operating within Saudi Arabia and the growing concern with illegal immigration. In part, the sudden decision in 2000 to formalize and then fortify a border area stemmed from an increasingly worrisome set of regional economic trends that threatened long-term Saudi interests. By the 1990s, Saudi concerns with the unified Yemen, for instance, translated into a new effort to reconstitute its borders in order to secure further oil development projects, better

106  Chaos in Yemen regulate the flow of cheap labour that passed through Yemen and finally halt the infiltration of weapons, drugs and unwanted political activists. Along with building fences, barriers and trenches along much of its boundaries (this includes a dispute with Abū Ẓabī [Abu Dhabi], which still claims that Saudi Arabia illegally occupies its once shared frontier region with Qaṭar), Saudi Arabia also started to impose a heavy burden on local life in the entire ‘Asīr province. For one, they have tried to take power away from the mostly Yemeni merchant families who control the gold, currency and weapons trade in the Ḥijāz while undermining other ‘Asīri trading families with strong Shī‘a and especially Ismā‘īlī roots. Restricting the movement of these families’ wealth as well as personnel constitutes a direct threat to the livelihood of the region’s ‘minority’ populations and is as much a part of the war in Ṣa‘dah today as any fanaticism on the part of ‘brainwashed’ al-Shabāb al Mu’amin (Believing Youth) led by Ḥūthī. The militarization of the border area even prior to the actual agreements signed with Yemen in 2000 (Bruce 1996) has heightened the sense that people along these borders are under siege and their livelihood threatened. Local communities mobilized their considerable human resources in response. The rise in kidnappings, blockage of highway traffic and other forms of local protest induced a response from the various state and extra-state actors that would have long-term consequences for the region’s stability. After mobilization and persistent efforts to halt what ostensible became a state-centred land grab at the expense of local communities, the Ṣāliḥ regime began by the late 1990s to assist directly the Saudi enforcement of various border policies, extending a largely Saudi problem into Yemen itself (Whitaker 2000). It seems there was enough diplomatic pressure levied on the Yemeni regime along with the ongoing frustration with local activism to initiate a change in policy from the Ṣāliḥ government who had, until then, actually supported the people of the area. Ironically, these conflicts originate from a period in the post-Ottoman era that, with the signing of a formal treaty between the Saudis and the remnants of the Idrīsī state in 1926, saw the rise of the Ibn Sa‘ūd state in the Hijāz and eventually in the ‘Asīr. The Makkah Treaty of 21 October 1926 signed between King Ibn Sa‘ūd and the successor to Muḥammad Idrīsī, Imām Ḥasan al-Idrīsī, put the Idrīsī Amirate under Saudi protection.35 The agreement, facilitated by British officials who had maintained relations with both sovereigns since the First World War, constituted an expansion of Saudi territory through much of the ‘Asīr and the upper reaches of Tihāmah. In November 1930, this region was annexed by Ibn Sa‘ūd (Schofield 1993: 20: 529). As many locals claim it is trying to do today, the Saudi state had created by coercion the conditions leading to a formal transfer of the ‘Asīr by 1930. Imām Yaḥyā did not recognize the agreement of 1926 and subsequent annexation in 1930 and may have had considerable support from local merchants seeing nothing good from the expansion of a Najdī dynasty at the expense of the longestablished partners in the Ḥijāz (Schofield 1993: 20: 505; Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 8: 170). This territorial dispute must have been shaped to a certain extent by the interplay of locals, many of whom were former allies of Idrīsī but were not

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  107 opposed to joining Imām Yaḥyā in an eventual struggle with the invading Saudis. This possibility of associating with locals in the ‘Asīr uneasy about being incorporated into a notoriously violent state run by at times religious fanatics most likely gave Yaḥyā the confidence to persist in his territorial claims. His open threats of resistance produced results with the so-called ‘Arū Agreement of 1931, which the Saudis and their British guardians hoped would settle a potential boundary dispute by ceding much of the Tihāmah to Yemen and the Imām (Quick and Tuscon 1992: 4: 153). In 1933, Saudi Arabia attempted one more time to formally agree with Yaḥyā on a mutually profitable distribution of the old Idrīsī state. Perhaps miscalculating the power of British and Sa‘ūd leverage over ‘Asīrī merchants eager to secure access to the larger world, Yaḥyā remained adamant that he would never concede the Najrān oasis, at the time occupied by his temporary loyalists (Schofield 1993: 20: 496). Perhaps reflecting the sensibilities on the ground, the response to the occupation was a request from Sa‘ūd to either keep Najrān neutral or at least divide it along community lines – the north, linked to the Ismā‘īlī Yām, who had recently signed a treaty with Riyāḍ, would go to Saudi Arabia while portions of the Wā’ilah territories would go to Yemen (Schofield 1993: 20: 554). War finally broke out when Yaḥyā ignored this last overture. The fighting did not last long because Imām Yaḥyā failed to secure the loyalties of locals long associated with Idrīsī; he signed a truce in February 1934 having lost on the battlefield. A formal Treaty of Muslim Friendship and Fraternity was signed in Ṭā’if on 20 May 1934 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 8: 191–228). With Yaḥyā having been forced to accept Saudi terms, the treaty proved comprehensive.36 It covered cultural, social, military, economic and political areas. Article 4 of the treaty fixed the boundary and sovereignty claims to ‘Asīr, Jizān and Najrān, with emphasis on ‘tribes’ as markers of boundaries, clearly a British intervention, as in the 1905 treaty with the Ottomans. Here the confusion over which resident community belonged to which confederation and thus allied with which state shaped the subsequent seventy years. Therefore, although Ibn Sa‘ūd signed a treaty with both Idrīsī and the Ismā‘īlīs (Yām) based in and around Najrān, the region’s mountainous terrain made it impossible to enforce any formal treaty among the groups of locals who did not recognize the sovereignty of either state at the time. As a result, one particular concession made to reflect this reality would have long-term consequences in the decades to come: both the Yām and Wā’ilah were allowed to retain the freedom of movement across the borders. Such privileges are important because these are the same rights that the Saudi–Yemeni agreement of 2000 discussed below actually revoked (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 8: 226–7). The reason why the border was impossible to formalize in the 1930s was a dispute between the Ismā‘īlī Yām, who had signed a treaty with King Abd al-‘Azīz bin Sa‘ūd in 1934 in exchange for local protection, and the Wā’ilah, who shared with the Yām the Ṣa‘dah and Najrān water sources and agricultural or pasture land. As a result, neither the Saudi nor the Yemeni state could secure absolute authority over the area in the subsequent decades. Without a precise border, years

108  Chaos in Yemen of dispute followed. In this context, these already distinctive communities developed over time new associations as their local and regional orientations shifted with the rise of a lucrative business in trading locally produced goods as well as smugglers of more illicit materials to and from Saudi Arabia. Further south, there were immediate consequences for the Yaḥyā regime after the loss of so much territory that many of his northern constituencies considered as part of their sphere of influence. To some current allies of Imām Yaḥyā, the most damning concession given to the Saudis under duress of military defeat was the handing over to Saudi authorities the right to determine who would be granted citizenship and thus ‘rights’ to live in these unmarked borderlands. This loophole opened the gates to social engineering policies that included the migration of Najdī settlers into the border areas. According to local sources, within months of the formal transfer of sovereignty over Najrān to the Saudis, Najdī interests began to push out natives as they favoured trading to the north. The resulting reorientation of capital flows in the ‘Asīr immediately impacted North Yemeni communities and marginalized non-Najdī merchants based in Najrān and throughout ‘Asīr, now claimed by Saudi Arabia. The immediate response within Saudi Arabia to this loss of stature requires more research, but in Yemen the decline of local power led to a reordering of loyalties in much of the Ṣa‘dah and Ḥajjah region, which in turn led many to consider removing the Imām and placing his younger brother ‘Abdullāh or Aḥmad in his place. The origins of this opposition can partially be traced back to the rise of the Shabāb movement, which found considerable support from the economic elite of the northern highlands directly affected by the Ṭā’if Treaty. As the merchants relied heavily on the trade linking coastal areas to the hinterland, they were most directly affected and thus made up an important part of the Free Yemeni Movement from 1935 onward (Douglas 1987: 23–68). Although the Ṭā’if Treaty in many ways reveals considerable vulnerability and acknowledged lack of authority in the region, the fact that the larger ‘Asīr region had been drawn into the Saudi sphere of influence undermined the Imām’s credibility from the 1930s onwards. In this respect, the Ṭā’if Treaty included a clause that proves crucial to understanding the evolving dynamics of the current Ṣa‘dah conflict. The clause provided for the possibility of future amendments and lasted for twenty lunar years. In other words, the treaty could be renewed or modified during the six months preceding its expiration. Nothing it turns out was final here; the treaty reflected an understanding of the power of ebbs and flows and local dynamics something the Jeddah Treaty of 2000 tries to erase (al-Shahārī 1979: 16). In March of 1953 the two monarchies renewed the treaty but, by 1960, the Saudis renounced the treaty in reaction to Yaḥyā’s desperate attempt to accommodate shifting dynamics within his country. This was a period when the Free Yemeni Movement had grown in strength within the Imām’s government and among the larger population. Influenced by pan-Arabism, the Free Yemeni Movement’s demands for the reincorporation of all of the ‘Asīr previously ceded to the Saudi state in 1934 and the growing nationalism within Yemen in regard

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  109 to formerly ‘lost’ territories sparked a period of tensions between the two monarchies (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 14: 64). This eventually took on the contours of the Arab Cold War with the Imām quickly realizing an alliance with the Saudi state was needed in face of the imminent threat posed by Egypt’s Nāṣir, who was cultivating a relationship with these various reformist groups in Yemen. The subsequent war by proxy in Yemen lasted from 1962 to 1970 and changed the region indelibly. In this new context, the border issue persisted until 2000, when finally Saudi Arabia was able to impose a new treaty. Throughout the history of the Ṭā’if Treaty the Yemeni state condemned efforts by the Saudi state to retract the ‘special privileges’ granted to those communities living along the borders. Clearly, the Imām’s government felt compelled to speak on behalf of local communities facing disruptions in their daily lives. As far back as 1960, the Yemeni state has used the various side agreements preserved in the Ṭā’if agreements to defend the interests of regional communities (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 14: 64). Not only did tensions flare, but Yemen and Saudi Arabia even fought a war as late as January 1994 over the mistreatment of locals whose special role in the region had been threatened by Saudi attempts to formalize the frontier.37 The key here was Yemen unification. Although both North and South Yemen would periodically resort to challenging the legality of the Ṭā’if Accord and demand a new treaty that honoured Yemen’s claims to ‘Asīr, it was not until unification in 1990 that Yemen could meaningfully exert the right kind of pressure on its larger neighbour. Periodic clashes since unification along the poorly marked border, especially in the Jizān and Ḥajjah coastal zones, exposed Saudi weaknesses in face of a new regional power. As a counter to Yemen’s growing potential as the region’s future power, the Saudis actively supported opposition groups in Yemen that have contributed to the destabilization of the country since unification. It is in this context of heightened tensions, often resulting in open warfare between the two country’s armed forces, that the new treaty of 2000 was signed (al-Enazy 2002). Why the two parties, Ṣāliḥ and his Saudi counterparts, invested in this potentially disruptive alliance is explored further in the next chapter. What is crucial to remember for the moment is that such a move ultimately changed the relationship each state had with their respective allies and partners in the ‘Asīr/Najrān/Ṣa‘dah/ Ḥajjah borderland. Perhaps the single most important decision on the part of the Saudis, for example, was the revocation of the rights of the Wā’ilah communities that straddled the unmarked mountains and whose de facto sovereignty over this area included the pastures and water sources of the Ṣa‘dah and Najrān provinces. The still unexplained reason for this policy shift towards confronting communities such as the Wā’ilah over free movement across an unmarked boundary had a devastating effect on local stability. As subsequent generations would demonstrate, neither party at the Ṭā’if accords in 1934 really had any right to sign away this land; it was neither occupied nor conquered by either state and remains to this day firmly within the control of various communities living quite autonomously from the Saudi and Yemeni states. This border’s function for seventy years reflected the fact that people

110  Chaos in Yemen living in affected areas were allowed free movement across these borders. Over the years, these people – among them the Yām, Wā’ilah, Yāfi and Wazīr – became entrenched as merchants, farmers and the guardians of a labour corridor linking Africa’s cheap labour to the larger Persian/Arab Gulf. Nevertheless, since 2000 we see an attempt by both states to change that by formally imposing principles of state sovereignty in face of long-held ownership claims by the inhabitants. Sadly, this departure from a hands-off approach that for decades had existed is leading to numerous tensions. The origins of the conflict in Ṣa‘dah today thus require some study beyond the doctrinal schisms supposedly animating the Middle East today, as it is impossible to appreciate the range of possible explanations or justifications for resistance unless we see it from the perspective of locals. To them, both Saudi and Yemeni state moves into the region constitute a quintessential land grab at local expense. Predictably, the dominant political figure in the Wā’ilah region, Shaykh bin Shāj‘i, organized protests for almost two years once it became clear what the Saudis’ intentions were with regard to formalizing the border (Yemen Times, 2 July 2000). These protests resulted in numerous open confrontations between bin Shāj‘i’s more than 3000-man militia and Saudi or Yemen government officials (‘Abd al-‘Atī 2000). Using the media, invoking patriotism and community honour, bin Shāj‘i was a constant thorn in the side of Ṣāliḥ’s government.38 When the actual border markings were being installed in early 2002, for example, bin Shāj‘i led a number of raids that literally blew up the newly placed posts.39 His actions were not isolated works of a disgruntled local, however. Government officials and members of the Yemen political and cultural elite shared similarly articulated amazement that the Ṣāliḥ regime would allow such a disruptive set of agreements to be implemented.40 As happened with the Ḥūthī several years later, the charismatic opposition of a local captured the imagination of a larger audience who could not accept the underlying justifications presented to them by the Ṣāliḥ regime.41 He was conceding the ‘Asīr to Saudi Arabia, something even Imām Yaḥyā could not do. What is perhaps the most important aspect to this discussion, therefore, is Ṣāliḥ’s willingness to abandon local interests for larger ones that would enable his regime to now enter into negotiations that could eventually lead Yemen into the GCC while destroying the local economy. Put in this framework the resistance to the changing order in 2000 is not simply an issue of Shī‘ī fanatics resisting the legitimate claims of authority by the state and the rest of Yemeni society. There are serious local concerns threatened by Saudi and Yemeni state border enforcement policies and an abandonment of local interests by the Yemeni state. Around the same time, the Yām who live in the fertile Najrān valley, today located inside Saudi territory, got into a public confrontation with Saudi state officials over their religious freedoms. By early April 2000 public protests among Najrān natives decried open persecution by officials linked to the Saudi government. The simmering tensions that were manifesting on the Yemeni side of the frontier exploded in Najrān on 23 April 2000, when a confrontation between Saudi forces and locals took place after the so-called morality police arrested

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  111 local Ismā‘īlī clerics. After a shoot-out, leaving several Ismā‘īlīs dead, the Ismā‘īlī community erected defences around the community’s main spiritual complex in Khushaywah. Over the subsequent weeks, several dozen Ismā‘īlīs were arrested, leaving an ongoing tension that certainly contributes to the conflict along the frontier (HRW 2008b: 19–28).42 In response to the growing tensions within Saudi territory, which clearly concerned the regime, measures were introduced by December 2000 that clearly marked a new seriousness in Riyāḍ’s intention to compel Ṣāliḥ’s government to fully assist in implementing the Jeddah Treaty. In many ways, the Saudis bought the Yemeni state’s compliance. For one, concessions given to the Ṣāliḥ government for signing the treaty included the reduction of Yemen’s debt to Saudi Arabia, and a new loan of $350 million to finance development projects. Despite all of this, it took the Yemeni government years before it actually set up its first border posts on its side of the border in the ‘Asīr.43 Such hesitance from the regime, fearing the kind of resistance experienced already in 2000, reflects the long-term dynamics shaping Ṣāliḥ‘s unique form of authoritarianism. Clearly, there are far deeper issues at play, as demonstrated by the local violence emerging during and immediately after the formal signing of the Jeddah Treaty. There has been barely any work on this important story in southern Arabian history and, with the exception of a few ethnographies of the various communities in the area, it is extremely hard to fully appreciate the individual dynamics at play. That being said, the work that is available helps us challenge the paradigmatic approach adopted by the media and the Ṣāliḥ, Saudi and US governments regarding the Ṣa‘dah tragedy. In this regard, Lichtenthäler’s work (2003: 7–33) presents the only real study of the communities involved in the ongoing war in Ṣa‘dah that offers a possible set of analytical tools to understand the conflict outside the normative claims that Iran is supporting local Shī‘a. Although researched and written prior to the actual imposition of the Jeddah Treaty of 2000 that finalized a boundary between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the Lichtenthäler study highlights that any attempt to regulate the Wā’ilah territories and thus impose restrictions on travel were likely to cause tension. As demonstrated in Lichtenthäler’s work, the peoples in these areas affected by the frontier are not simple agriculturalists and pastoralists. The region has long been a gateway for the trade to and from the two countries, in particular after the completion of the paved highway in 1979. Prior to 2000 this meant trade flowed with minimal government oversight, creating important market niches in the trade of weapons (the Suq al-Talh being the region’s largest gun market) and labour markets as African and Yemeni migrants passed to access work in the oil-rich GCC countries. Similarly, a massive vehicle market existed in Ṣa‘dah and much of the fresh fruit consumed in southern Saudi cities came from the fertile valleys that are now besieged by Saudi, Yemeni and US aircraft and artillery. The Treaty of Jeddah, therefore, was flawed as it opens up plenty of potential conflicts in the future.44 The more the Saudi and more recently, Yemeni states try to regulate the trade that has historically kept this region thriving, the more such policies clash directly with very big, entrenched commercial interests.45

112  Chaos in Yemen Paradigmatically, as argued throughout, the conflict with locals and the subsequent chaos may also serve the strategic interests of various actors. For instance, the current crisis in Ṣa‘dah may have opened up that window of opportunity for the Saudis to actually expand into Yemen territory. This is certainly what those who hail from the region fear. For his part, Ṣāliḥ may not be fully appreciative of the situation in which more chaos and societal collapse could be an invitation for Saudis to justify to expand its territorial reach. Reports of Riyāḍ creating a buffer zone 10 km within Yemeni territory may be an early indication of this.46 The documented forced resettlement of the Ismā‘īlī population along the entire border area, something akin to what happened in New Orleans, may be another.47 There are of course other external factors contributing to these conflicts. Despite the popular assertion that Iran is somehow naturally involved because the principals are ‘Shī‘ī’, this argument is far less useful than considering the commercial windfall from such a set of events. First, huge contracts have been awarded to the company EADS ($2.3  billion) to effectively design, implement and help police the Saudi frontier.48 As in other ‘hot zones’ around the world, the conflicted interests of the military industry and diplomacy are increasingly subsumed under the pressures for profits. The growing role of the United States in this conflict also creates confusion as policies of deception, denial and the interrelation between vilifying Iran and promoting the ‘war on terror’ have distorted the situation in southwest Arabia considerably. Today, as a result, it is basically impossible to find in the analysis of events any reference to local interests that are not framed in terms of Shī‘ī and Ḥūthī; as a result, Yemenis of various political colours are beginning to express their frustration.49 As evidenced by the immediate opposition led by Shaykh bin Shāj‘i between 2000 and March 2002 against the imposition of the Saudi border, a number of currents pre-dated the emergence of the Ḥūthī family, who clearly tapped into an already dynamic set of issues when they emerged in 2004. The rise of the Ḥūthī, in other words, can be appreciated only when considering that bin Shāj‘i was murdered for his opposition in March 2002 when his car crashed (Yemen Times, 17 March 2002; al-Quds al-‘Arabī, 8 March 2002). Similarly, it is forgotten that up to 3000 heavily armed men and growing support from neighbours, including members in Yām territories long assumed to be loyal to the Saudis, are contributing to a varied and multi-dynamic resistance that has taken on a much broader significance than simply being a fringe movement inspired by a religious crackpot. Even after bin Shāj‘i’s death, for example, a movement around the Wā’ilah community continued to agitate and resist the border. In February 2004 the Wā’ilah leadership publicly renewed its opposition to the border in a statement offered to the media that stated the barrier being erected, despite local protests, was cutting off owners from their property. Attempts at offering compensation were rejected as community leaders reiterated that nothing will get in the way of local agreements between Wā’ilah and Yām. This suggests members of the Yām were also agitated by early 2004 and willing to challenge both Saudi and Yemeni state efforts to formalize the frontier by forging an alliance with the Wā’ilah communities (al-Quds al-‘Arabī, 9 February 2004).

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  113 When pressed on this matter in a Saudi-owned London-based paper, officials rejected the idea that concrete and steel pipes constitutes a separation fence that resembled the one being laid down by Israel in Palestine. Obviously sensitive about the accusation, Saudi officials insisted the barrier was laid solely on Saudi territory, clearly missing the point that it is not about Saudi or Yemeni territory, but about local control of their land (al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 9 February 2004). In this context, the local representatives reiterated the threat of ‘war’ if the barriers stretching from Jabal Hubāsh to Jabal al-Farah were not removed (Yemen Times, 12 February 2004). This is the context from which the Ḥūthī rebellion emerges. Up until November of 2007 at least, periodic efforts to resolve the Ṣa‘dah crisis ran into problems because of objections from the very Wā’ilah community that resisted the Jeddah Treaty in the first place. Its leaders, Shakyh bin Shāj‘i al-Tuhāmī and later Shakyh al-Dhurāmī, both demanded equal treatment from the Saudi authorities that would assure their free movement across borders, as stipulated by the Tā’if Treaty.50 Despite their demands being made independently of the Ḥūthī , their resistance was still misinterpreted by late 2007 because of the poor quality of analysis that lumped all resistance together. While the Ṣāliḥ regime and its Saudi and American allies crudely attempt to confuse the issue through innuendo, staged seizures of ‘Iranian’ weapons and claims that members of Lebanon’s Ḥizbullāh are fighting alongside ‘their Shī‘ī brethren’, the fact that the Ḥūthī, Yām, Wā’ilah, Baqim, Jawf and Ḥaraḍ are all fighting the same forces of change suggests this regional conflict is one that can easily turn into something much bigger. The more the Saudis impose new barriers to local trade, as along the villages of Ḥaraḍ, Tuwāl, Masfaq and Khawjarah in early 2008, while deporting 60,000 ‘Yemeni infiltrators’ across the Ḥaraḍ border, it is only natural that many whose lives have been ruined through this campaign of expulsion will think long and hard before resigning themselves to an existence in a poorly run refugee camp. In fact, thousands of these people have demonstrated time and again a willingness to join locally run rebellions, including the Ḥūthī, to restore some dignity to their lives (al-Kibsi 2008). Indeed, the Ṣa‘dah conflict has reshaped the coalitions that had formed the basis of the Ṣāliḥ regime’s success in the 1990s to the point where a number of groups linked to the so-called Bakīl ‘tribal’ confederation today openly support the rebels. Some have even suggested to willing outside audiences that the war in Ṣa‘dah has turned into a conflict involving the two largest political coalitions in the northern highlands and is far more a struggle for power in all of Yemen than merely involving the Ḥūthī. We may be better served therefore not to accept the blanket naming of this regional conflict as a Ḥūthī or Shī‘ī one. As reported in local newspapers and the ICG (International Crisis Group 2009: 17–19), open battles between Bakīl- and Ḥāshid-connected militias have broadened the significance of the Ṣa‘dah conflict.

Conclusion Using this Ṣa‘dah example to continue our larger discussion on the importance of

114  Chaos in Yemen studying the minutia of local politics, we may conclude that much of the political life of the Ṣāliḥ regime’s most violent rivals is shaped by their shifting connections to local, regional and international economic forces. When it is understood that considerations such as access to markets, supplies and securing lucrative concessions from external patrons profoundly influence the manner in which neighbouring regions in South Yemen interact, present-day analysts’ flagrant neglect of these factors in the larger context of the Ṣāliḥ regime’s struggle for power proves frustratingly counter-productive. The Yemeni state today has become so intertwined with securing economic and thus temporary political leverage over everyone else in the country that potential allies and enemies can no longer afford to wait for Ṣan‘ā’ to approach them. Rather, they have continued to engage the world around from their specific, local perspective. As in the early twentieth century, even those who are in theory subordinate to regional leaders are capable of exploring new opportunities. Such opportunistic ventures at forging alliances beyond traditional areas of exchange often result in opening up new channels of penetration for foreign interests and, at times like these after 9/11, initiate a set of unpredictable contingencies that spiral out of control. Throughout the twentieth century, the Saudi and Yemeni states were programmed to cartographically erase local existence forever, level or separate pasture lands, water sources, trade, culture and family. Modern institutions inscribed cartographic abstractions that needed to be enforced, suggesting hegemonic pretensions that required subtle, long-term insinuation. In Saudi-administered ‘Asīr, constant reference to the Saudi dynasty, in the form of naming buildings, reference to the Najd in street names and name-checks on television, has yet to be fully negotiated with locals who have strong regional and familial loyalties. The resistance the dynasty’s armies are experiencing in Najrān today is a testament to lingering ambiguities about state sovereignty in the ‘Asīr. The war with the socalled Ḥūthī may thus represent a last effort to formalize over the next decade the Saudization of the ‘Asīr, thereby rupturing the links Yemen has with the region. This takes the form of physically removing the Ismā‘īlī Yām from the region while building military bases throughout the region (Morris 2008; HRW 2008b). These acts constitute an unspoken tension in larger Saudi history. Despite efforts to suppress these regional issues, the central mediating factor for the long-term stability of the region remains addressing the needs of the local. By antagonizing previously entrenched economic interests that relied on traditional trading patterns (as those found throughout Ṣa‘dah today and the ‘Asīr in the late Ottoman era), a number of adjustments among local constituencies can result in the formation of new coalitions that actually threaten to overwhelm entrenched economic and political interests beyond the region. Once the ‘Asīr territories and the entire northern frontier along the present-day Saudi border were closed (or increasingly patrolled), previously innocuous transactions became points of tension. Events in the north of Yemen today thus appear to be as much a reaction to a series of measures that over the course of the 1990s and early twenty-first century, has significantly damaged local commercial activity. In time, new quasi-religious,

The frontier as a measure of modern state power  115 political or economic associations erected around individuals (Ḥūthī and Shaj’i today, Idrīsī in the past) reflect a real ability among many emergent leaders to protect local interests. Subsequent heavy-handed efforts to suppress these reactive gestures from locals vis-à-vis state authority inevitably lead to a chain reaction that the Ṣāliḥ regime (like the Imām, Ottomans, Saudis and the United States) cannot (and could not) fully control. More recently, Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad Muqa’it of the Baqim district in Ṣa‘dah also resisted these developments by closing the Ilb border crossing with his men.51 Much like those who protested the borders earlier, Muqa’it invokes past agreements, which seem to have been ignored on account of the post-2000 policies adopted by both the Saudi and Yemeni states. Clearly, for these local leaders who have used age-old tactics to gain leverage over the state, this is not a crisis along the frontier that can easily fit the sweeping generalizations used in the media today. It is neither a simple case of Zaydī fanatics following a dead leader nor the incapability of the states involved to secure its frontiers. As always, there is a need to contextualize by localizing the scope of analysis.52 The irony is the more we fail to see the Ṣa‘dah crisis as complex and multi-faceted the more likely victims will align to challenge the Yemen and Saudi governments. In the end, recognizing that local constituencies play such an instrumental role in dictating the direction in which the Ṣāliḥ regime would pursue its post-unification policies also helps us reassess the very process of ‘unification’ of Yemen at the end of the Cold War. But recognizing that local agency is both unpredictable and susceptible to external influence does not ultimately mean we concede that the rise of modern states – especially in the case of the Marxist South Yemen in 1967 – is entirely at the mercy of foreign issues. Freeing our analysis of the process of Yemeni ‘unification’ from dependence on external influence as the sine qua non of the postcolonial modern state – especially, in this connection, Saudi-dominated political Islām and a new form of economic globalization – we can appreciate once again how local factors contribute to two decades of political instability in Yemen. And, since we have abandoned simple assertions linking violence in Yemen to primordial affiliations to ‘tribe’ or ‘sect’, the following chapter will prove crucial to introducing a suggestive new method of analysing the post-modern world with reference to a new kind of authoritarianism until now overshadowed by cultural essentialism and ‘the war on terrorism’ policies.

5 Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push

This chapter explains the evolution of the Ṣāliḥ regime in the context of a complex story of interaction between Yemen’s numerous political agents. In the process, it is necessary to read how a unified Yemen became politically necessary for two historically antagonistic regimes – the southern Marxists tied to ‘Alī Sālim al-Bayḍ and the northern allies of Ṣāliḥ – while avoiding the temptation to reduce everything to nationalistic, ideological, sectarian or tribal motivations. As highlighted by exploring the turn-of-the-century imperial past, a complex and often confused set of local rivalries, permanently shifting within the larger context of the fortunes of various states administering the region, informs how the unification process in the 1990s changes the horizons of a long list of previously obscure constituencies. In the process of analysing some of the scholarship published in the past few years that attempts to explain the events in southern Arabia in uniquely ‘Yemeni terms’, it seems one may reasonably ask: if at the end of the Cold War unification was so central to the ideological and historical foundations of both states’ political elites, why has this been such a disaster for everyone except those closely associated with Ṣāliḥ’s regime? I suggest throughout this chapter that, in order to adequately answer this question without resorting to social scientific clichés, another set of issues must first be addressed. As is now well known, the unification process in Yemen ultimately led to civil war in 1994 and a less than successful reconciliation process since then. In this regard, the Ṣa‘dah war and turmoil in the south that is increasingly attracting the world’s attention must also be seen as a direct by-product of a struggle for power plaguing Yemen since the rise of the Ṣāliḥ regime. This search for hegemony, beginning in 1978 when Ṣāliḥ brought relative stability to North Yemen, which had been traumatized by the assassination of the two previous leaders in the 1975–8 period, has evolved from being a simple quest for security in the north to one that culminated with the unification of a disaggregated social, economic and political space throughout southern Arabia. The story of unification, therefore, is heavily biased towards a focus on the state and those who commandeered it. For decades now, theorists with little interest in Yemen have believed the strength of a state should be gauged by the relative degree to which it can expect

118  Chaos in Yemen compliance from the society at large. For those who have studied power in this way, it has been crucial to point out coercion is not itself an indicator of a state’s institutional strength (Bromley 1994). Rather, the true measure of a viable, stable state points to an ability to intervene into the lives of subjects and, if need be, alter large segments of the population with the intention of supplanting desires that may be threatening (or too costly) for the state (Zubaida 1993: 121–82). This is done by way of concession, intimidation and, sometimes (but never exclusively), force (Owen 1992: 3–133). Michael Mann in particular has noted the importance of ‘infrastructural power’ that can serve as a substitute for despotic power. Mann wrote about an ability of the modern state to influence civil society and implement political decisions without the threat of force as a particularly crucial aspect of a well-adjusted state. As the process of implementing policies without conceding any real compromise is thus central for strong and stable states, it is all the more important for long-term regime stability that policies are accepted voluntarily (Mann 1984: 189). Judging from the scholarship, it is rare that such a case could be made in the modern Arab world. Reading the literature, we are led to believe that the entire Middle East has been subsumed by violent interactions between vulnerable, authoritarian states and largely unrepresented societies. In response, a whole genre of scholarship of Arab state/society case studies has emerged to contest the dominant paradigms of the field (Luciani 1990). Scholars such as Ayubi in particular have distinguished between types of states, thereby identifying those that are ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ in terms not fully applicable in either Mann’s or Joel Migdal’s often-cited models. In Ayubi’s view, these Arab states are not structurally secure in ways associated with ‘strong’ modern and mostly ‘western’ states identified in the literature. Rather, the ‘Arab State’ uses violence to coerce compliance and, in the process, shape a kind of ‘civil society’ not fully amenable to remaining on the margins of power. These states’ lack of legitimacy thus results in a complicated set of actions and reactions that Ayubi summarizes as often violent because the state, vis-à-vis a plethora of non-state actors, is by nature weak (Ayubi 1996: 438–45). Note here Ayubi still assumes that power necessarily remains in the exclusive domain of state actors in order to be considered viable. It may be useful to consider Ṣāliḥ’s regime today in these terms. Although there is a plethora of case studies (and certainly many applicable models) of states in the Middle East that highlight the traditional definition of an authoritarian regime (Phillips 2008), I suggest Yemen in many ways demands a careful deviation from this literature. The case of a unifying Yemen introduces a rather unique set of circumstances by which at least two groups of stakeholders initially agreed, in theory, to incorporate two quite distinct institutional and governing traditions into a common state. This is important as the differences between the ways North Yemen and South Yemen were governed prior to unification are significant: the former has long been viewed as a quintessentially ‘weak’ state with quasi-independent regions constantly threatening the viability of the Ṣan‘ā’ government; in contrast, South Yemen was notorious for its highly

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  119 centralized Marxist dictatorship during the height of the Cold War. If anything, the benefactors of this Marxist dictatorship on one side, and a loose and fast history of political expediency on the other, would have seemed constitutionally incapable of translating the political and economic pluralities of a unified Yemen into a viable system of equitably distributed power. And yet, as we will see below, the unification did result in an ascendant (albeit at the expense of southern Yemenis), what I call uniquely Yemeni, authoritarian regime that keeps the country together by way of conflict. To understand how this process first began, then contorted, and finally solidified into a uniquely effective form of authoritarianism that thrives on chaos, not order, we must return to the paradox of unification itself. Ostensibly, both North and South Yemen, long considered diametrically opposed to each other – indeed, despite some periods of thawing in the 1960s, the borders were as tightly guarded during the Cold War as those separating East and West Europe – were not naturally inclined to unification. What ultimately set the process in motion was a conjuncture of events in the late 1980s that basically created two weak and vulnerable regimes that saw unification as a means to secure long-term security in an otherwise volatile and dangerous political environment. In other words, both the northern and southern political elites at the time of negotiations seemed to have believed that unification would develop their respective authoritarian capacities. Why this may prove interesting for our purposes is, at one level, the way both sides struggled to engage their assumed constituencies during and after formal unification had been accomplished.

Yemeni paradoxes As in other chapters, in order to truly appreciate the complexity of modern Yemen’s puzzling history we need to pay far more attention to local dynamics. Once these dynamics are acknowledged, it is then possible to frame the analysis of more recent events in a context of competing regional interests within the confines of loosely defined Yemeni states from the 1960s onwards. At the same time, among the most important external factors shaping the direction of local political development since the collapse of the Ottoman administration in 1918 was the strategic imperative of securing shipping lanes through the Suez Canal.1 As a consequence of South Yemen’s ultimately successful struggle for independence from Britain within this larger security dynamic, the ascendant rebel leaders faced isolation and immediate hostility from a variety of regional and international agents (Jones 2004). Subsequent direct ties to the Soviet Union only intensified the nature of external competition for influence in South Yemen as in the north the Mutawakkil dynasty fell to disciples of the pan-Arabist sentiments infusing the entire Middle East at the time. The founding military elite of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) at once professed a desire for unification – with Egypt and the Nāṣir regime – while at the same time confronting British hostility as an increasingly endogamous political

120  Chaos in Yemen class.2 In this geo-strategic context, the rhetoric of unifying Yemen would not take on a sense of purpose until many years later because of the internal dynamics affecting both Yemens.3 It is in this context of internal chaos that relations between the two Yemens were shaped for more than twenty years. The periodic border wars in which the two countries engaged during the 1970s attest to a political culture of violence, entrenched interests deeply linked to the military and a haphazard approach to addressing domestic challenges peacefully. It is this period of ideological malleability, Saudi intrigue and war profiteering that leads to Ṣāliḥ’s emergence as North Yemen’s political leader (Gueyras and Shehadi 1979: 21–2). In the south specifically, a cadre of the battle-scarred political elite (many of whom during the war for independence spent as much time assassinating rivals as negotiating with them) emerged from British rule prepared for years of selfentrenchment. This isolation certainly characterized Adeni politics for much of the 1970s and 1980s and intensified the sense that North Yemen was representative of a threat rather than a source of possible sustenance (Bujra 1970). It certainly did not help that Nāṣir directly confronted the various ideological colorations South Yemeni intellectuals borrowed from their putative Soviet and Maoist Chinese affiliations from 1966 to the mid 1970s.4 Coups, assassinations and, ultimately, exhaustion transformed the once vibrant intellectual class of Aden into a petulant, nervous and callously opportunistic pool from which the ruling elite drew its moral support well into the 1980s (Halliday 1986). That being said, no matter how dysfunctional the politburo seemed, considering the challenges facing them since 1967, South Yemen turns out to be a remarkable story of survival. Part of this must go back to the fact that historically South Yemen was geographically quite fragmented. Large parts of the eastern Haḍramawt region, for example, were dispersed by British strategy from each other and Aden, a policy that rendered these sensitive regions geographically, socially, economically and culturally well beyond the reach of the newly formed People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). This handicap was reason enough for concern among the new economic planners in Aden. Recall that Ḥaḍramis had for centuries linked Arabia with Sumatra, Borneo and East Africa by way of trading networks, a legacy that made the region and its people impossible to ‘rule’ (Ho 2004). From the very start, then, Aden as an administrative hub of various state building enterprises was a world unto itself with much of the population in its immediate hinterland and the distant Ḥaḍramawt hostile to any and all state-building endeavours. As a result, post-British Aden had to contend with a long tradition of virtually independent polities in many of the areas east of the capital operating de facto foreign relations with the north, Asia and the Gulf independent of state supervision (Bujra 1967). For a new state building on a model of power distribution that required absolute loyalty to the party, such a legacy of regional autonomy and trans-oceanic networks proved debilitating. The subsequent battle for ascendancy clearly had a long-term impact on the way power was distributed among the politically ambitious in Marxist Aden and purposefully denied to ‘outsiders’ who maintained an elaborate set of connections

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  121 in North Yemen, Saudi Arabia and beyond (Halliday 2002: 41–52). This legacy of a multi-dimensional society with contradictory ambitions in respect to dealing with the outside world had equally important consequences on the road to unification (Gause 1989). The resurrected political elite of Ḥaḍramawt and the Adeni hinterland served as the backbone of two often conflicting interests hoping to secure a political and economic stronghold in both countries. In fact, the first major figure to solicit the political alliance of the Ḥaḍramis and natives of Laḥj during and after the early unification process was Ṣāliḥ himself, North Yemen’s President and Head of the General People’s Congress (al Mu‘tammar al-Sha‘abi al-‘Am, henceforth GPC). The Ḥaḍramīs and Laḥj natives are a forgotten factor in ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ’s strategy to both undermine his southern rivals (by late 1986, consisting of the YSP, whose party boss was also President of the PDRY, ‘Alī Sālim al-Bayḍ), as well as counterbalance rivals who were constantly threatening his influence within the former boundaries of North Yemen. Both the Laḥj and Haḍramī migrant communities formed an important substratum of the regional economy in Ta‘izz throughout the twentieth century and were able by the 1980s to embolden Ṣāliḥ’s state to confidently pursue the unification strategy of the early 1990s.5 Not only would these agents of the GPC be crucial to sustaining a commercial link in the south during the unification process, but many of these Haḍramī allies would become key actors in Ṣāliḥ’s own version of ‘neo-tribalism’, a strategy that aimed to undermine the ability of the YSP to rival Ṣāliḥ in the unification process.6 Such factors help explain a growing link in the late 1980s between the Ṣan‘ā’ political elite and southern exiles living a precarious existence under Saudi or North Yemeni protection. It also suggests a possible source for Ṣāliḥ’s increasing confidence to pursue unification with the socialist south, a strategy that, in theory, could have easily backfired: the Ṣāliḥ’s regime consistently faced domestic challenges and the Aden regime’s formidable military and broad-based appeal as socialists could have overwhelmed the north. With the Ḥaḍramī seemingly behind the Ṣāliḥ regime, however, the comparative advantage the Socialists in the PDRY appeared to enjoy was never to be so clear cut after unification. This brings us to the main southern political party in the unification process, the YSP. Able to secure power in 1986 and formally consolidate authority over a well-trained, heavily armed South Yemeni force, ‘Alī Sālim al-Bayḍ would identify several opportunities to unify the two Yemeni states that would ultimately threaten Ṣāliḥ.7 The fundamental problem for this group, however, was the lack of time. Between the violent capture of power in 1986 and the collapse of the Soviet overseas empire, there was too little time for Bayḍ and his cohort to really establish trustworthy alliances in the surprisingly fluid political environment of South Yemen. Without secured commercial ties to the outside world, the future of South Yemen, both political and economic, seemed precarious, a problem highlighted by the tensions arising from the discovery of oil in areas that Saudi Arabia (KSA) had begun to claim as well (Burrowes 1989). Without replacing the outside patronage lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new Bayḍ regime faced an aggressive KSA supporting recently exiled factions who fled the 1986 coup to

122  Chaos in Yemen instigate, through Ḥaḍramī channels, internal strife. In the end, the combination of the Soviets’ departure from the scene and the late 1989 rise of Saddam Ḥusayn’s aggressive opposition to the GCC monarchies created a new set of regional political alliances that compelled southern Yemeni leaders to rush unprepared into a process of unification. With this in mind, it may be useful to focus more closely on some of the factors that contributed to South Yemen’s decision to unify with the north. Despite the north being a much more populous, unruly and vastly underdeveloped neighbour, unification was a gamble the YSP would have to take. For one, unification would provide legitimacy to the YSP that was in short supply; after the coup of 1986, the new regime’s base of support was precarious at best. At the same time unification would provide security. By all accounts, Bayḍ’s regime constantly feared that exiled groups based in Saudi Arabia and North Yemen were plotting a counter-coup (Katz 1992). From their perspective, unification with the north would protect the Bayḍ regime from such forces, as unification would provide a new political context from which, it was believed, Bayḍ and his allies could secure and perhaps expand a constituency beyond the confines of the YSP. In short, the well-educated, ‘modern’ Socialists of the south believed unifying with a politically unsophisticated north could help expand a base of support that would secure them immunity from political challenge in the future. Mindful of this potential, the formal agreement negotiated with Ṣāliḥ for the ‘sharing’ of power in 1990 seemed to assure the YSP a significant role in North Yemeni affairs as much as solidify the southern base from external attack. In many ways, the YSP maintained access to key assets of a new state – with key portfolios in the future government such as that of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Ministry – that seemed to promise a political and economic windfall for the southern political elite (Gause 1990: 75–149). For its part, North Yemen’s leadership also invested in the unification process with the intention of solidifying a hold on power. For years Ṣāliḥ’s base of support had constantly shifted, with a concentration of the most sensitive positions in the hands of immediate family and those from his region of origin. This common strategy of self-preservation hints at a shrewd survivor, to be sure. These manoeuvres, however, also suggest that Ṣāliḥ was not secure within his traditional area of operations; periodic challenges from well-funded and heavily armed community leaders are just the most well-known examples. Indeed, during much of Ṣāliḥ’s political career, North Yemen was the quintessential exception in the Arab world: not only was power notoriously decentralized, but the competing factions in two or three quite distinct areas of the country operated in virtual autonomy from Ṣan‘ā’. In sum, since taking formal control of the GPC in 1980, Ṣāliḥ had been operating on a highly unstable stratum of mutually interested groups strong enough to maintain and expand their power, even as they were nominally subordinate to Ṣāliḥ. Put differently, Ṣāliḥ’s longterm survival strategy required a somewhat paradoxical combination of strong, core support from a base personally close to him – members of his own extended

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  123 family and community leaders who are associated to Ṣāliḥ on account of coming from the same region – and the fact that he could never fully trust those in that coalition. This quality of Ṣāliḥ’s political management deserves a closer look. The apparent failure of the North Yemen state to channel popular and elite energies towards the centre allowed for a plethora of historically competing interests to dominate a contentious political arena. Sheila Carapico argues a number of groups throughout this period secured virtual political autonomy and were thus able to thwart efforts to build state power after the 1962 overthrow of the Zaydī (nominally Shī‘a) Imāmate (1998b: 290). Therefore, despite the rise of Nāṣirism and modern state-building ambitions in the post-Imāmate era that invested in remaking the political space in which competing interests would interact, research has consistently hinted at a continuation of so-called ‘tribal’ politics in North Yemen (Wedeen 2008; Phillips 2008). Although the so-called ‘tribal’ factor is often overstated when put in these social anthropological terms, it does, however, prove critical in political terms to study the groups that gravitated around these associations and were constantly challenging the central government’s ability to manage the affairs in rural North Yemen. At the heart of the issue is whether or not Ṣāliḥ’s own ‘tribal’ background contributed (and still does) to the nature of political and economic partnerships in Yemen. It is certainly the case that, much as Saddam Ḥusayn and Ḥāfaẓ al-Asad surrounded themselves with members of their specifically self-identified groups, Ṣāliḥ’s base of support has often been traced to familial, regional (tribal) associations. At the same time, however, monitoring the last twenty years suggests that Ṣāliḥ does not trust anyone exclusively and periodically demonstrates the ability to balance one ally against the other. As demonstrated throughout, so-called ‘tribal’ loyalties only go so far in Yemen.8 It is at this level of northern domestic politics that the evolving role of Islām, as a political glue to some, becomes a factor in explaining Ṣāliḥ’s initial motivations behind unification. To put it simply, Ṣāliḥ would always have to deal with a powerful constituency that had at best divided loyalties between any patronage they received from a largely secular state and religious institutions. Not surprisingly, Ṣāliḥ found in Shaykh ‘Abdallāh bin Ḥusayn al-Aḥmar a willing and highly capable ally who would both bridge the legitimacy gap between at least two ‘tribal confederacies’ – in the Ḥāshid versus Bakīl context – and provide a secure link to a political force cultivated by KSA in the form of puritanical groups.9 This is important because by the early 1980s Shaykh Aḥmar, who has recently passed away, created within the context of shifting domestic fortunes a third political coalition, Tajammu’ al-Yamanī lil-Iṣlāḥ (Yemeni Congregation for Reform) (Schwedler 2003). Iṣlāḥ emerged at a time when so-called tribal alliances were further complicated by a set of dramatic shifts in the larger regional economy (large numbers of migrant labourers capitalized on the rising importance of oilproducing economies in the Persian Gulf) and the juxtaposition between the Cold War and the rise of political Islām as animated by the KSA.10 It was the fact that

124  Chaos in Yemen Ṣāliḥ, on account of political and socio-economic contingencies, was able to harness Iṣlāḥ at the right time that would ultimately help explain how he has become a unique leader in modern world history. As much as Ṣāliḥ depended on Aḥmar’s alliance throughout much of the 1980–2000 period, it was always clear he would not be able to remain dependent on a man whose ambitions probably exceeded his own.11 Because Aḥmar was Ṣāliḥ’s lifeline, many of his borderline allies remained exceedingly nervous. In the drive to assuage these concerns about Ṣāliḥ’s long-term viability, he recognized unification as a window of opportunity that could immediately produce political dividends while potentially serving as an economic windfall for those closely affiliated to his regime. There are indications, for instance, that Ṣāliḥ was informed of large oil reserves by oil companies surveying South Yemen’s territories at the time.12 The motivation for the oil companies was clear: with unification they could remove a regime in Aden that was hoping to maximize its returns from oil (to pay off huge debts to Russia) and, with Ṣāliḥ in power, make better agreements. This knowledge about the extent of South Yemen’s oil and gas reserves was clearly not passed on to southern leaders, who might have considered a different line of action if they had known of the oil wealth in their country. This combination of political leverage and economic incentives created by unification proved the necessary assets Ṣāliḥ needed to reward loyalty to his regime. Ultimately it was under these quite different conditions that both Bayḍ and Ṣāliḥ recognized opportunities in unification. The outcome of the unification process discussed below, however, would suggest that Ṣāliḥ’s calculations proved more realistic. As a result, a process that had been pushed along by both parties for their own internal political reasons ultimately set up a chain of events that assured long-term conflict within a ‘unified Yemen’ and the ultimate ascendancy of the northerner Ṣāliḥ at the expense of the rest of Yemen’s political elite.

Conditions of unification The unification process evolved quickly in the 1989–90 period.13 Fraught with a lack of preparation and no relevant template from which to draw a plan, it became clear that not much of a ‘unified state’ existed that could help implement the integration of two vastly different, and ultimately conflicting, systems of governance. When the union was declared on 22 May 1990, only a small number of government agencies were to be initially affected. Ironically, this left the majority of both states intact and operating on a parallel basis. The subsequent process thus led to two coexistent state apparatuses that only further complicated the integration of power because duplicated state resources continued to remain in the hands of equally ambitious ‘partners’ for at least two years (Halliday 2002; Dresch 2000). In the end, the first phase of the union was realized only by statements, leading to some common policies in customs and taxation but leaving the crucial process of integrating the army commands, for example, totally up in the air (Detalle 1997: 272). More important perhaps for the long-term political development of

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  125 a unified Yemen was the fact that trade unions serving as the power base for the YSP and ‘tribal’ militias loyal to Ṣāliḥ and Aḥmar remained basically separate, with only superficial integration at the top allowed and thus resistant to infiltration by outsiders. This meant two different societies still existed with two completely different sets of patronage networks in operation. Interestingly, this bifurcated system of power allocation actually led to new rivalries in hitherto obscure sectors of society. Such emergent constituencies created opportunities for both leaders to exploit emerging tensions at the other’s expense while laying the foundation for a post-unification society that would be incapable of fomenting a uniform resistance to the ascendant autocratic regime. Ultimately this all took place in the context of general uncertainty in larger Yemeni society caused by the expulsion of 800,000 workers from the GCC after Yemen opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 1990 and the subsequent economic chaos (Van Hear 1994; Colton 1991). There is evidence that the general public, largely sympathetic to the idea of unification, was surprised at how little the unity process had been planned and at its ad hoc nature. As their respective leaders failed to incorporate Yemeni citizens into the agenda, the lack of any clear sense of assimilated, shared interests simply intensified the perception among people that they needed to remain loyal to their local associations in order to protect their long-term interests. In other words, there was from the very beginning a multi-tiered set of reasons to be suspicious of the unification process. Part of the reason none of the crucial preparation took place was the clear intention of both leaders to keep intact as much as possible the political ‘cultures’ (norms, methods, associations) that they had brought with them to the table. Bayḍ, for instance, was adamant about keeping the southerners’ highly organized, bureaucratic form of government. Not only did this make sense in regards to taking advantage of a well-tuned administration that surpassed in organization anything found in the north, this bureaucracy was also politically crucial for the YSP because the state was the primary patron for much of the entrenched urban elite of South Yemen. In this regard, many formally loyal to Bayḍ expected their traditional privileges to continue under the new unified state and would have abandoned the YSP if this relationship were to stop (Rougier 1999). This kind of political culture also contributed to rendering the northern and southern communities politically and culturally incompatible for much of the unification process. For instance, the clannish and ad hoc nature of northern parties (GPC and Iṣlāḥ) seemed to turn many potential southern clients away from ever considering developing links with their, in theory, fellow countrymen owing to different political, cultural and economic values. Southerners, for one, favoured the active participation of women in society. This advocacy for a public role for women consistently rubbed some northern leaders the wrong way (Carapico 1998b: 162; Clark 2004: 197). Additionally, a strong emphasis on education and the protection of secular institutions that had emerged in the south since the 1970s represented a challenge to northern sensibilities (Dresch 2000: 172–5). Northern political culture, on the other hand, emphasized a more autonomous, self-sufficient

126  Chaos in Yemen and often independent-minded localism that historically minimized direct interaction between the government and the population. Moreover, the northern political elite sustained their political legitimacy by highlighting conservative and traditionalist values long erased from South Yemen’s social existence. Thus schools were extensions of private patronage strategies, not within the purview of the state. It is in this context that negotiations over the integration of the two quite distinct political traditions took place. As both sets of interests had long monopolized the interactions between their respective states and society but under completely different circumstances, unification proved virtually impossible from the start. The utter lack of a government presence in many parts of North Yemen, for example, was diametrically opposed to the experience of southerners. These differences ultimately contributed to the distrust that translated very quickly into violence. As only cooperation between elites could have saved the unification process between 1990 and 1993, seeing that even they were firmly entrenched in their respective circles of power, it is not a mystery why many have characterized the unification process as actually heightening tensions by pitting assumed partners against each other as they scrambled for leverage within the new state (Hudson 1994: 10–19). A series of strategic steps taken by the various interests, each with their own internal logic, marked the crucial two-year interim period before elections were held for a unified administration. The adjustment required of the YSP was significantly different than that demanded of the GPC. On the other hand, from the GPC’s perspective, the interim system proved ideal as it ensured its domination of the process by weight of its larger constituent base. As was argued on several occasions, the demographic factor was an opportunity to legally and formally eliminate southern politicians from the process. Such thinking may in fact explain why Ṣāliḥ conceded to southern demands that Yemen as a whole allow a free press (meaning some southern-controlled papers would circulate in the north) and permit ‘multiple parties’ to participate throughout the unified country leading up to the first elections (Schwedler 2006: 59–61). Ostensibly, in exchange for preserving the existing power structures in the north, Ṣāliḥ calculated he could afford southern ‘infiltration’ by way of socialist newspapers and workers’ parties in the north because he could ultimately count on his numerical superiority to overwhelm any inroads won by the YSP (Burrowes 1998: 187–213). The system that emerged to formally integrate the two states did establish a discourse on unity by which all parties would have to pay lip service to a pluralistic Yemen Republic. It is in this context that at least forty political parties emerged, clearly representing a broad spectrum of political interests. The press in Yemen, always an anomaly in the Middle East, supported at least thirty-five newspapers and periodicals in this period. On the surface, this image of a growing, pluralistic, multi-party society was significant because it would logically lead to a plurality of sources of pressure that would compel the two major parties to form coalitions in order to secure a majority in the parliament that both strove to dominate in subsequent years (Dresch 2000: 186–98). The problem was the rapidly changing international conditions that ultimately forced the hand of both parties while favouring only one in the end.

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  127 The biggest source of dissention in Yemen during the interim period leading to unification was the worsening economic crisis caused by the GCC’s reaction to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. As punishment for Yemen’s less than emphatic condemnation of Saddam Ḥusayn’s actions, the GCC not only cut off more than $500 million in aid to the struggling country, but proceeded to expel upwards of 800,000 Yemeni workers from their countries (Colton 1991). The return of so many people, plus the loss of more than $2 billion in remittances, transformed the political horizons for both parties (Stevenson 1993). In a process still misunderstood, it seems that the force of this demographic shift ultimately undermined YSP’s ability to secure long-term influence in much of the country. In many ways, the labourers who were now without work, angry and vulnerable to mobilization, were to become the new kingmakers of unified Yemen. Perhaps counterintuitively, the best equipped to exploit this sudden change of events were not Socialists from the south but the northern political elite. It was the old patronage networks in rural North Yemen and the mobilizing and resource-rich Salafī groups (whose GCC money did not stop flowing) that ultimately catered to the needs of these hundreds of thousands of families suddenly without income (Clark 2004). Proving incapable of addressing the nuanced needs of these potential assets, the YSP demonstrated a strategic ineptness when contrasted with the client-building abilities of Iṣlāḥ; the consequences would be dear not only for a political party, but the Yemeni population as well (Carapico 2003; Day 2001: 219–57). At the heart of the problem for the YSP was its clumsy attempt to hold onto a traditional means of distributing power. The YSP’s lack of flexibility simply resulted in the party failing to undermine Ṣāliḥ’s considerable network of alliances crucial to adjusting to the needs of so many disrupted lives. With the transition period in full swing, the YSP as a body shared some crucial values and concerns that did not necessarily translate well outside their immediate social milieu. Michael Hudson’s revealing study of Yemen at the time noted that the YSP elite all tended to promote the recreation of a bureaucratic, institutionalized and formal state order. Very much a legacy of the Marxist state that existed between 1967 and 1990, most leaders also came from southern urban centres such as Aden and Mukallā and proved incapable of hiding how much they despised the rural traditions they actively sought to eradicate. In the words of one source who spoke to Hudson in 1993: ‘our party rejects the use of tribal concepts to impede development or oppose law and order’ (Hudson 1995: 13). For the southern YSP elite, this may have seemed a winning position to take to the northern masses, long assumed to resent the bullying of Ṣāliḥ and his so-called ‘tribal shaykh’ allies. It did not prove to be the case at a time of economic and communal turmoil caused by the massive influx of expelled migrant workers. There were some high-ranking YSP members aware of just how confounding their socialist platform was to the unassimilated farmers and the urban poor in the north. As a result, they consciously kept out of their public statements the more incendiary examples of what they believed were Marxist values. Nevertheless, it could not be ignored that most of their polemic in Yemen at the time went against the grain of northern traditions: from inclusion of women in political life to the

128  Chaos in Yemen secularist principles behind which they objected to the role of religious figures in the state. In so many words, the YSP was ideologically obsolete in the north (Carapico 1998a,b). In this context of clashing social policy agendas, the rivalry between the two parties intensified the more the social chaos instigated by the migrations entered into the political debate. At the heart of the problems created by the flood of expellees was the failure of both parties to coordinate a viable policy to address the issue. Instead, the flood served as a pretext for new forms of exploitation that became possible when party officials linked the state apparatus to addressing the needs of expellees and the communities forced to accommodate them. According to outside observers, corruption and the use of political violence were endemic at the time because the interventions usually took on an exploitative and highly politicized nature (al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 14 March 1991; al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 18 October 1991). Part of the problem was that the vulnerability of the expelled migrant workers translated into leverage for many opportunistic party officials, a callous exploitation that would ultimately push hundreds of thousands into the more ‘traditional’ channels of social interaction. Such early failures to address real human needs go a long way towards explaining the popularity of movements such as the Hūthī in Abyan in the south today. In this sense, the northern elite proved more adept at profiting from the growing rivalry by simply resorting to old strategies of social networking and leaning heavily on those networks already established by Iṣlāḥ to help people in need (Gause 1990: 1–15, 119–62). Although armed with limited state funds, Ṣāliḥ and his allies did have the social resources of the new Islamic parties and the so-called Ḥāshid confederation under Aḥmar’s control. Ṣāliḥ as the interim President of unifying Yemen, therefore, continued operating in unified Yemen as he had ruled North Yemen in the past. Revealingly, Ṣāliḥ also treated the south according to the principles of northern politics, making inroads into southern groups through personal contacts, political appointments and economic pressure (Ayubi 1996: 434–7). In this regard, the ability of the GPC and Iṣlāḥ to funnel Saudi money and provide services to entrepreneurial southerners signalled they had a chance to score a comprehensive victory in the upcoming elections the more YSP officials failed to address the growing economic crisis. Soon it became clear that the larger northern population was unreceptive to inroads from the YSP, favouring the GPC and Iṣlāḥ. At the same time, the YSP was losing at the margins of its own sphere of influence as unification corresponded to economic collapse (Carapico 1998b: 172). As a result, the YSP proved especially concerned with the GPC slowly undermining stability in the south. In reaction, YSP simply made things worse by mobilizing its bureaucracy to cover party interests, a tactic that more sharply separated the party from local concerns, and thereby undermined its hopes of using the apparatus of the state it controlled to secure new alliances throughout the unified territories. Reflective of this political environment, tensions between Bayḍ and Ṣāliḥ rose to a personal level. Ṣāliḥ’s increasing overtures to southerners through his cultivated Haḍramī network, much of which was by this time funded indirectly

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  129 through GCC channels, started to openly challenge the YSP within the framework of the transitional government.14 In face of all this, Bayḍ not only misused his limited assets, but actually slid further into the political margins by the end of the first year. In one of numerous demonstrations of frustration, he left the Presidential Council in September 1992 as a form of protest. At the same time, his YSP allies were also feeling the pressure, especially the Minister of Defence, Haytham Qāsim Ṭahir, a former PDRY chief of staff. Ṭahir’s vulnerability within the still-divided military indicates that the GPC was even beating the southern elite at what was supposed to be their strategic advantage: using the armed forces as a tool to secure power in the unified Yemen (Bakr 1995). Specifically, Ṭahir wanted to use the professional and tightknit community of the southern military to the YSP’s advantage. For instance, he demanded during the initial negotiations surrounding the unification that the two armies be immediately integrated, a concession that would have given southerners effective control over them. The GPC refused, however, indicating it too had a long-term strategy that recognized both the YSP’s strategic control over the more professional southern army and its own ambition to gain the military’s loyalty. The GPC was thus adamant about maintaining the right to keep the armies separate, thereby not conceding the future of the armed forces to the YSP. Importantly, the GSP was at the same time able to assure that the southerners were not permitted to infiltrate the Ministry of Interior apparatus controlled by Ṣāliḥ’s loyalists. This last failure on the part of the YSP to at least insert some of its former intelligence forces inside the unified Interior Ministry basically left the entire country’s security apparatus in the hands of the GPC. The end result was without a doubt devastating to the YSP. Almost immediately after the unification program had been agreed upon in 1990, a campaign of violence against YSP members began to take shape (al-Watan al-‘Arabi, 25 October 1991). As modern MIG fighter jets and Soviet tanks in the hands of southern units could do little to stop small-scale, incremental violence targeting individuals, Ṣāliḥ’s monopoly on domestic violence proved to be the most important strategic advantage of the pre-election period. The failure to stop the assassinations proved an especially dramatic indicator of the YSP’s political failure. In the face of political violence that overwhelmingly targeted southerners, the failure to infiltrate the Ministry of Interior had dire consequences for the YSP (Bakr 1995: 26–36; Shumayrī 1995). YSP members could not feel safe anywhere in the country by the end of the first year.15 Aside from directly intimidating party members, the violence seems to have undermined the credibility of the YSP among many in the middle tier of the party. As Aden and other southern cities became dangerous places (with more than 150 murdered in this period) many YSP constituents began to solicit a more direct role for the Ṣāliḥ-controlled Ministry of the Interior. To them, the violence was the result of actions taken by rivals to the YSP who were forced to flee South Yemen in the aftermath of the 1986 coup. Likewise, unification allowed the return of formerly exiled religious radicals who, under Saudi patronage, became especially useful proxies for conservative groups in both the KSA and the north (Schwedler 2006: 205–13). The end result was a set of groups who were able to intimidate

130  Chaos in Yemen and ultimately coerce southern community leaders with apparent impunity. It was the ‘failure’ to restrain the activities of the increasingly powerful ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindānī and his KSA-funded Muslim Brotherhood apparatus that represented a clear and present danger to YSP operatives throughout the south, many of whom began to solicit direct protection from Ṣāliḥ (al-Saqqāf 1996: 25–30) Although ideology and revenge were important considerations to help explain the upsurge of violence in the south during the 1990–3 period, the single largest factor contributing to the growing tensions at the time points back to the economic chaos caused by the mass expulsions. A rising prevalence of violence plagued the cities as they swelled with unemployable expellees whose deprivation made them the targets for political manipulation.16 Dresch reported a clear trend early on by way of mass demonstrations among both the expellees and their host communities demanding state action. The central concerns among the tens of thousands who showed up to these rallies were the scarcity of housing, especially in the south, as well as increased petty crime (Dresch 1993). The YSP Prime Minister, al-‘Aṭṭās, attempted to use the apparatus of his government to provide additional funds to address some of these demands but was always blocked by the GPC, which had the power to veto any major spending. The problem for the YSP was that the ultimate blame for the failure to distribute funds to the needy was directed at it.17 In these tense days during 1991, both the YSP and Iṣlāḥ mobilized support among what should have been their traditional constituencies. The YSP’s links with trade unions would seem a logical avenue of mobilization for the party. Strikes did break out throughout South Yemen during the spring and summer of 1991. Ṣāliḥ reacted by permitting Ministry of the Interior forces to target the organizers of these strikes as ‘instigators of violence’, indicating that the GPC did see the expelled GCC labourers and their YSP sympathizers as a political liability. Not only did the GPC’s response translate into open criticism (Ṣāliḥ frequently used the media to condemn the activism as unpatriotic and dangerous to the nation) but the criticism also opened the door for political violence, resulting in the death of several key members of the YSP and their labour activist partners.18 The labour unrest continued all over the country well into September 1992. Not surprisingly, the political assassinations also continued unabated. Beyond the violence that affected them, the southern elite were also being hard hit financially with a 100 per cent inflation rate and the rapid devaluation of the riyal. In this context, perhaps the YSP’s resources were directed at simple survival and thus the party did not have the organizational wherewithal to exploit what seemed from afar a perfect opportunity to gain the loyalty of a large number of the urban and rural poor. And so, while there was ample opportunity for the YSP to exploit Ṣāliḥ’s conservative and somewhat heavy-handed approach to dealing with the migrant worker crisis, the YSP ultimately lost out to the Islamic parties that, with the considerable funds flowing from the KSA, began to monopolize the future loyalties of these people through their charity work (al-Wasaṭ, 6 March 1992). Facing such odds and organizationally weakened by the violence directed towards members, the YSP publicly sought to mend fences with the GPC.

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  131 Aside from forcing the parties to return to the task of unifying the country, one of the consequences of the violence was an agreement that the sooner the elections were held, the better. To this end, both parties agreed on April 1993. It may be speculative on its own, but put into the larger context of what unification was supposed to accomplish for both parties, it is quite possible elections were still seen as a means to a larger, less democratic end: complete domination of Yemen’s political scene (al-Ḥayāt, 5 May 1993). Judging from the increased labour activity in subsequent months after the November agreement that brought Bayḍ back from self-imposed exile in Aden, it would seem the YSP’s calculations were not without merit. A new round of social unrest spread throughout the country, with public employees, Central Bank workers, teachers and employees of the Foreign Affairs office, as well as the Federation of Labour Unions, collectively demanding wage increases and, importantly, domestic security. In response, the government announced within a few days an across-the-board 85 per cent wage increase for all public employees. This concession, clearly indicating that the GPC was concerned about the direction the violence was going, averted a nation-wide strike. With the elections just a few months away, the tide seemed to have clearly shifted in the YSP’s favour, despite its being seemingly outmanoeuvred by Ṣāliḥ and his allies for much of the interim period (Dresch and Haykel 1995). The problem is, as had been the case throughout 1992, the disturbances did not translate into any cohesive political movement with which the YSP could align. As is still the case in 2010, most of all the civil disobedience was locally organized. Because no national party took the lead, the labour activism throughout Yemen dissipated into largely self-isolating cells that had no means to pressure the central government. Another explanation, therefore, for why the YSP seemingly failed to exploit this massive upsurge in labour activism is the simple fact that the various non-religious parties really did not constitute any formal unit. In the end, the opposition was diluted by a number of third-party elements trying to tap into the frustrations of people who were ultimately confused by contradicting claims. As noted by Sheila Carapico, there were factions in the north that were not linked to Ṣāliḥ’s GPC or Iṣlāḥ and could have easily joined in a broader, transregional coalition that included the YSP and other parties. The so-called Bakīl confederation in northern Yemen, for instance, proved especially well suited to open up a third option for what was clearly a large number of disaffected constituents. In fact, early in the election season, groups associated with Bakīl had been able to organize a series of cross-spectrum conferences that aspired to address the crisis in the name of the masses. The same was true of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jifrī, who, through his own coalition of opposition parties, successfully galvanized a number of prominent Yemenis, both locally and in the diaspora, in an effort to unify urban intellectuals, teachers and professionals on a common front. Clearly these organizers saw a vacuum that neither the YSP nor the GPC and Iṣlāḥ could fill (Carapico 1993a). While these northern secularists hoped to tap into the frustrations of many

132  Chaos in Yemen experiencing the spectre of a unified Yemen divided between two dominant parties, GCC-funded religious parties had already made their triumphant debut in Yemeni politics. Aḥmar of Iṣlāḥ and his allies were ultimately able to thwart Bakīl’s attempts at coalition building by calling for their own town-hall meetings, reportedly dominated from the beginning by Zindānī, who had already caused so much havoc in the south (Dresch and Haykel 1995: 406). At the same time, a southerner turned ‘Jihadist’ and a protégé of Zindānī, Ṭāriq al-Faḍlī, expanded Iṣlāḥ’s influence deep into the YSP’s territory not only in the form of intimidation, but also as a community builder (Dresch and Haykel 1995: 425; International Crisis Group 2003: 10–12). Adopting the kind of coercive tactics used in other societies at the end of the Cold War, Faḍlī proved perfectly willing to use violence and intimidation. To Aḥmar and his allies in the north, such a character was useful as an agent willing to intimidate by backing threats with violent action.19 In short, Aḥmar’s masterfully shaped tactics of tough love strategically created a problem and then offered a solution to it. Aḥmar thus often diplomatically stepped in, as in April 1993, to protect Faḍli from persecution in Yemen’s still decentralized courts, even though he was being linked to the murder of ‘atheist’ YSP members. In many ways, Aḥmar’s rhetoric seemed to encourage such violence, but, more frequently, his straddling the line between rebel and peace-maker secured for him considerable influence in regions well beyond his traditional base. Iṣlāḥ, in other words, became Yemen’s first real party that transcended north/south barriers. In light of these interactions, every one possibly undermining the GPC’s own agenda to exploit the unification of the two countries, it needs to be emphasized that the rise of political violence in Yemen and the corresponding emergence of political Islām is not a coincidence. Moreover, despite the possibility of Iṣlāḥ becoming too powerful, Ṣāliḥ’s interests seemed to be better served by Aḥmar’s growing influence. To put it bluntly, certain groups of Islamists mobilized forces on behalf of the northern party elite, a relationship of convenience that still plagues domestic politics today. ‘Abdul Raḥmān al-Jifrī, the exiled leader of the Sons of Yemen League, put it this way: ‘ ‘Ali Abdullah Salih presents himself to the world . . . as someone who is capable of resisting extremism, whilst domestically he has been encouraging this very extremism’ (Watkins 1996: 225). Clearly, one must establish to what degree Ṣāliḥ was attempting to successfully coopt Islamic groups or parties into the patronage network which he dominated.20 In that regard it is clear that, leading up to the elections, both Aḥmar and Ṣāliḥ were careful not to tilt their respective parties too far into the radical Islamist camp. Carapico notes, for instance, that Iṣlāḥ ran two types of candidates during the April 1993 parliamentary elections. In the Ḥāshid strongholds, which are generally antagonistic to the moralizing of religiously conservative activists, the party ran people chosen more by kinship links with the Aḥmar family, whereas outside these areas Iṣlāḥ ran those more broadly identified with the Islamists. As Carapico writes:

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  133 parties did not represent tribes nor did party loyalty rest on tribal affiliation. Rather, within each locality (and some families) were many parties and within each party were people of different tribal (and non-tribal) origins. (Carapico 1998b: 166) For his part, Renaud Detalle argues that the GPC did exactly the same thing: In putting together their slate, the GPC looked for persons well-rooted in their communities, with party affiliation being second. Many [were] tribal leaders, of course, but also big merchants and high officials. (Detalle 1998: 335) Amid all of this jockeying there was that underlying dynamic that held the union together for the elections in April 1993. Despite the rivalries and the obvious incompetence or corruption with respect to failing their governmental duties, neither party believed breaking the union apart was possible. For the most part, the process was still very popular and if either faction had moved away from that platform it could have resulted in a political disaster. Unity was by now a sacred cow that was beyond dispute. The leading elites thus settled for maintaining their hold on the traditional centres of authority and tried to secure by proxy as much influence outside their core areas as possible. At the same time, unification was dragging the rival camps into a perpetual state of conflict. The logic of the situation, from the perspectives of either the GPC or the YSP, led to a ‘zero sum’, for any gain for the YSP was a loss for the GPC and vice versa (Hudson 1995: 16). This ultimately prevented the realization of a ‘democratic transition’ and stimulated the causes of further unrest, which only complicated the task of government officials who had hoped to broaden the reach of the state. Perhaps most important for the future of the Yemeni state was that this systemic impediment, along with the fact that each group had firm control over quite separate units in the military and paramilitary groups, left a vacuum in coercive power. In other words, with no single entity monopolizing power, and violence having long been used as a tool of coercion, intimidation and political leveraging, the Civil War of 1994 was waiting to happen.

Elections and their consequences Despite some instances of disorder and violence, the outcome of the 1993 elections indicated a genuine contest (Carapico 1998b: 3). The results of the elections in April 1993, however, did not replicate the power-sharing formula concocted in 1990. The GPC took most of the votes, while the YSP not only found itself a very junior partner, but also faced a new rival in Iṣlāḥ, which practically took over the position of unified Yemen’s second party. Among the approximately 3 million registered voters, about 80 per cent went to vote on 27 April 1993 (Glosemeyer 1993). The massive turnout was a clear indicator that this was something Yemenis

134  Chaos in Yemen themselves took very seriously. The vote was for 301 seats in Parliament. Voters had to choose from more than 3,500 candidates. The results published on 1 May gave the GPC 123 seats, Iṣlāḥ sixty-two and the YSP fifty-six, while the Ba‘thists obtained seven, Nāṣirists three and an assortment of religious and special interest groups made up the rest (al-Majalla, 26 May 1993). From this distribution of votes, problems were bound to emerge. The two northern parties had a clear majority of the seats; southern Yemenis were in a definitely subordinate position, which, although reproducing the previous political matrix, was no longer mediated by the joint interest in respecting electoral representation. The goals of sharing power, despite the demographic disparities, were ostensibly forgotten. After the elections, the two northern parties basically refused to permit a process by which the state created a doctrine of cooperation among parties. As the 1990–3 period failed to integrate the country economically, culturally, socially and, clearly, politically, the post-election period would be one of little to no accommodation for the minority party. Aḥmar was elected the Parliament chairman. The YSP, as agreed prior to the elections, kept eight portfolios (GPC fifteen, Ba’thists one and Iṣlāḥ six) and ‘Attās remained Prime Minister. Tellingly, as prior to the elections, the parties still could not agree on how to merge the two militaries. Clearly the YSP leadership was rethinking the union. From the outside, the YSP seemed to burst at the seams. It appeared to be fragmenting as members contradicted each other in public statements and slowly lost their composure. For those at the head of the YSP politburo, the party had a mandate to defend the country’s middle classes, the political centre and the left from the traditional forces lurking in the north. That meant advocating modernization, democracy and women’s rights and opposing religious fanaticism. Other officials, however, preached strong security that would halt the ‘terrorism’ afflicting the country, an obvious reference to the political violence that had targeted YSP members since 1991. To these hardliners, bringing security to Yemen meant disarming the northern ‘tribes’, a position any ‘national’ party could hardly afford to take. The deputy secretary-general of the party, Sālim Ṣāliḥ Muḥammad, added to this chorus by stating there was a fundamental need for political reform, including expelling political hacks from government and replacing them with technocrats (another reference to the political style that seemed to suit GPC’s traditional power base). Local government, Sālim Ṣāliḥ continued, needed to be transformed. But, in what seems to be a contradiction, he claimed the goal was decentralization, perhaps revealing a strategic fissure within the YPC ranks after it became clear the south had no chance of legally governing the state.21 For its part, the GPC was perfectly content with the results; President Ṣāliḥ’s strategy of fusing violence with overtures of solidarity seemed to play out as planned. In statements after the elections, he said he regretted the clear North/ South outcome of the elections but said the ‘people had spoken’ and the ‘march towards democracy’ could not be stopped to accommodate those who were not supported by the people. Ṣāliḥ, the winner, was in no mood for sharing power any more (Detalle 1993).

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  135 Already by the summer of 1993, the differing views of the country’s future were evident (Carapico 1993a: 4). Proposed amendments to the constitution were submitted to the Parliament in June, with all parties initially consenting. The document was mostly designed to institutionalize the presidency (two-term limit) and vice presidency and create a consultative council that would be accessible to all major parties. It was when the amendments were debated that the new order in Yemeni politics was made clear. Ṣāliḥ seemed happy to allow Aḥmar and the Iṣlāḥ to raise objections to the very need for a consultative council and challenge the idea of holding direct elections for provincial government posting, all potential sources of YSP power that they could not secure at the national level. Interestingly, it appears that after the elections the YSP did begin to enjoy newly emerging pockets of support in North Yemen and threatened to gain a foothold in many areas through local elections. This development was no doubt a reflection of the Bakīl/Ḥāshid tensions discussed above. After the elections Bakīl loyalists were clearly open to forging an alliance with YPC candidates to help thwart the nearly incontestable power of the Iṣlāḥ/GPC alliance in the northern rural districts. This debate about locally held elections and regional autonomy proved especially interesting in the light of the defeat in the elections and may excuse Bayḍ and his allies for believing they could have done better if future elections were held to select local governments rather than serving merely as a contest for national platforms. Perhaps, under a different electoral system, which was on the table during the summer constitutional meetings, the balance of power would change in favour of the YSP in the future.22 All this was taking place in the context of a new wave of riots in the south. The shortages of cash, fuel, jobs and food left the entire region vulnerable to social unrest. Labour activism brought into the open the ideological struggle going on inside the YSP with many hardliners wanting to stick to traditional Marxist positions, which they felt, in the context of social unrest, would appeal to the hungry masses. Hardliners such as Jārullāh ‘Umar opposed cooperating with selfproclaimed Muslim parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood at all and publicly condemned the ‘backwardness’ of the north.23 To make matters worse for the YSP, ‘Umar led a coalition within the party, mostly composed of intellectuals and probably many others linked to the pre-1986 elite silently making their way back into southern politics. This internal faction began to publicly oppose the ‘Ḥaḍramī faction’, that is Bayḍ and ‘Aṭṭās, for ever agreeing to the unity government. ‘Umar proposed that the YSP should actually take an oppositional role, a clear indication that many from within the southern party elite were itching for a fight. This was all too much for Bayḍ and he left Ṣan‘ā’ for Aden with no agreement, presumably to placate ‘Umar, who was gaining support within an increasingly factionalised YSP. Within days of his arrival in Aden, a series of political murders using sophisticated car bombs left several crucial members of Bayḍ’s party dead and his son injured. Within a month, apparently after consultation with his disgruntled party members, the party issued a letter that listed an eighteen-point ultimatum to the coalition. The list of demands were clearly laid out and obviously the product of some serious brainstorming in Aden over the month of September.

136  Chaos in Yemen ‘Umar’s hard-line tactics clearly won over many of Bayḍ’s base in face of a new wave of violence targeting YSP loyalists. They were particularly lucid in respect to where the differences between the YSP and its northern ‘partners’ lay in regards to building a unified state. Theirs was a platform of reform that would eliminate the traditional power structures of Ṣāliḥ and Aḥmar, such as replacing arbitrary policy and kinship ties, and create a government based on laws and appointments based on merit. There was also a demand that the economy be directly under the supervision of the government, and that elected bodies encourage, rather than attempt to thwart, the involvement of hitherto excluded social groups, a clear gesture to the social outcasts that existed throughout Yemeni society and who had no direct patron. This last demand was a clear pitch to broaden the political field and could be the first and only clear example of popular politics in this period that reached out beyond traditional parties’ ‘spheres of influence’.24 The actual progression to open conflict followed violent confrontations throughout the end of 1993 and the spring of 1994, with what seem like obvious attempts by northern forces loyal to Ṣāliḥ and Iṣlāḥ to isolate if not eliminate the southern military and paramilitary units based in the north. That being said, although the Civil War of 1994 ended with a victory for the northern forces, the battle was not without its moments of doubt. Southern scud missiles and fierce armoured battles along the main highways linking the two regions required a set of unexpected, sudden mishaps and northern good fortune to result in Ṣāliḥ’s victory. Additionally, while outside arbitration (along with meddling) helped result in a termination of fighting, a political stalemate remained, leaving no resolution to the question of sharing power in unified Yemen (Detalle 1994: 113–22). The details of the bloody war do not need revisiting here (Bakr 1995; al-Saqqāf 1996). It was a terrifying example of failed leadership and external manipulation. It was also, however, a crucial wedge for the GPC/Ṣāliḥ hegemony. In sum, Ṣāliḥ had basically calculated that he was in a no-lose situation while hardliners such as ‘Umar, based in the south, capitalized on the war and secured a new place within the YSP. The way the war was conducted, it must be said, ultimately solidified a north/south divide that is obvious today when one travels the country. In no time, this new ambience supplanted the old rhetoric of unionism, serving the interests of not only Ṣāliḥ but outside countries as well.25

Post-war Yemen Joel Migdal once noted that leaders of weak states have to weigh their need to create effective agencies for political mobilization and security against the risks to political stability and their own survival, which come in creating potential power centres they cannot control. (Migdal 1988: 264) This succinctly highlights Ṣāliḥ’s dilemma after the 1993 elections. For a leader such as Ṣāliḥ, the potential challenges to his regime could come from within his

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  137 inner circle, various factions within the military, or those groups, such as the Islamists, he had long used to help secure the reigns of the unified state throughout the 1980s. One of his biggest problems, therefore, was stepping back from fighting a war against his southern opponents and beginning to create a viable, unified society on his terms. It is at this juncture that it becomes clear that Ṣāliḥ had a well-conceived strategy to use the unification process to not only strengthen his authority among his northern constituents – a loosely banded and often highly unreliable base of groups linked by little more than state patronage – but also infiltrate previously inaccessible sources of legitimacy in the geographic south. This strategy of cooptation not only intensifies a lurking rivalry between the two power-holders in the unified Yemen, but ultimately results in the erasure of any leverage that non-aligned southern and northern politicians had hoped to sustain once unification (and military victory over the south) was realized. This will prove especially important in the subsequent, post-war period, one which follows the bloody if ultimately short war between the factions in 1994, a period of post-unification civil war that simply intensified the regional disparity between stakeholders. Post-war reconciliation in general was by all accounts stymied by the northern elite, who basically plundered the south both materially and psychologically from the moment of their victory.26 It is here that the colonial nature of the Ṣāliḥ-led state (the exploitation of the south for the benefit of a growing number of northern allies) is especially important to appreciating the post-war period.27 Robert Burrowes perhaps best captures the spirit by characterizing post-war Yemen as a ‘kleptocracy’ in which a ‘government by and for thieves’ orchestrated an ongoing policy of placating allies by allowing them to plunder the south (Burrowes 1998). Today South Yemen is literally in a state of intermittent revolt. The unrest in South Yemen has its roots in northern hegemony following unification, the return of old southern families living for years in exile and the struggle for influence over the area’s oil and gas revenues. Post-war reconciliation was further thwarted by the corruption among the northern oligarchy and by the installation of President Ṣāliḥ’s relatives in many top military and security posts directly administering the southern territories. Successive constitutional amendments have also centralized power in the executive, leading to a de facto merger between the ruling party and the state, both headed by Ṣāliḥ. In the meantime, the GPC has severed its ties with its old partner, Iṣlāḥ (Browers 2007). Following Migdal’s observations about similar conditions of power distribution, one begins to see the paradox of Ṣāliḥ’s situation and the increasing movement towards his unique form of authoritarianism. For, as much as Ṣāliḥ’s party navigated post-war Yemen to assume power, parallel developments in civil society signified the failure of a formal opposition. These moves to secure the rewards of power spurred on a dramatic rise in civil society activity, with self-help groups and local communities fending for themselves as the spoils of power increasingly translated into a disfunctional government. In fact, Yemen in many ways has become the darling of political scientists because of the explosion of grass-roots organizations and the persistance of

138  Chaos in Yemen so-called ‘third parties’ such as Iṣlāḥ in the face of Ṣāliḥ’s drive to secure power in Yemen (Schwedler 2006: 103–21). In the light of the dramatic and rapid change of attitude the GPC has with the rest of the country after the war of 1994 – basically changing laws to secure power without the need of coalition members – Sheila Carapico has found a silver lining in this turn for the worse: Yemen may be the one country where a regime can be forced to move incrementally and unwillingly, to incorporate the real pluralism of its society into the practice of statecraft. (Carapico 1998b: 264) Although I agree that in theory Ṣāliḥ must have made concessions to the pluralism of society and still must be careful to at least appear consultative, especially given that Yemeni society is heavily armed, he has not been forced to accept true power-sharing options as he was prior to the war. In fact, Ṣāliḥ seems to have extended his power at the expense of opportunities to demonstrate a new interest in dialogue because he has been violently attacking any and all dissenters strong enough to pose a threat. This intransigence is in face of at times terrible violence and disorder playing out in many parts of Yemen since unification. The short answer to the question of why Ṣāliḥ is not responding to pressure more ‘democratically’, despite his relatively weak state, is because the kinds of resistance that do surface are disparate and often centred on private initiatives easily placated, intimidated or ignored. In the larger international context that is often codified in conferences and special issues of academic journals, it is considered very encouraging at one level that grass-roots organizations are filling a void to provide services the otherwise politically marginal need. At the same time, however, such ‘charities’ (indicators of a strong ‘civil society’) basically do the work of the government; thus, at the bare minimum, Ṣāliḥ’s state permits the accommodation of people’s needs, while selectively attacking or supporting these isolated operations depending on whether or not they pose a threat to a state apparatus more and more invested in exclusively serving the needs of Ṣāliḥ and his allies. The numerous ‘Islamic’ charities that are often associated with this ‘thriving’ civil society in Yemen (again, unique to the Middle East) still find little room to operate beyond a social context defined by the state. So too the Ḥūthī movement, which may very well have its origins as a political activist movement seeking to articulate the growing frustrations of a regional constituency affected by new borders, is at times vulnerable to open attack by a regime that actually now thrives on open confrontation. This unique form of authoritarianism proves to be Ṣāliḥ’s indelible contribution to the region’s rapid slide into chaos. As increasingly the world is being asked to focus on Yemen as a source of ‘Islamic terror’ and the chaos for which the regime is largely responsible is a principle reason for the United States and Saudi Arabia (perhaps other ‘partners’ as well) visiting Yemen’s shores, a closer discussion about the process is in order.

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  139

The anatomy of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarianism

The origins of this downward slide towards using violence as an intermittent tool of state already took shape prior to the Civil War. While still beset with a vast array of domestic and foreign problems, President Ṣāliḥ announced a reduction of some 50,000 men in the country’s armed forces and tens of thousands of civil servants, almost all of whom came from the south.28 The regime adopted this policy at a time when southern political leaders and their military allies were already feeling betrayed by the process of unification. Ṣāliḥ argued that these cuts were made in line with austerity measures recommended by the international lending institutions. Such claims were hard to accept as the cuts were far from comprehensive; they were in fact restricted to recruits of the YSP, those who had not shown themselves strongly loyal to the GPC and those who deserved to retire on a pension. Indeed, it has been observed that these dismissals were confined mainly to the southerners in a comprehensive process of purging. Therefore, these changes threatened to strengthen Ṣāliḥ’s control and tightened Yemen’s defensive position around a party apparatus clearly gearing up for a fight (IRIN 2009). Great attention was paid at the time to the purchase of increasingly sophisticated military hardware and to the modernizing of the military forces, particularly the elite Republican Guards.29 Clearly, the president was not reducing the country’s military might; rather he was streamlining it while demanding absolute loyalty from it. At the same time, the Political Security Office (PSO) played a very important role in strengthening the position of the president since the pre-civil war days. The PSO is headed by a key figure in the GPC, who is very close to the president. Over the course of Ṣāliḥ’s taunting of the southern political class prior to the Civil War, the PSO expanded its activities all over the country, penetrating different political organizations, military units, government bodies and even NGOs. Active NGOs were particularly targeted when they had penetrated and established allied civil bodies.30 A second goal of the PSO during the height of north/south tensions was to consolidate all sources of legitimacy that had previously supported the regime vis-à-vis its rivals. In this quest, PSO has apparently formed the National Council for Opposition, which actually supports several new southern power centres and has coopted some sympathetic Islamists in the GPC.31 The GPC has thus enhanced a well-established surveillance apparatus which it inherited from the pre-unification era. This is based on the so-called tribal–military–commercial complex often mentioned in the literature.32 Therefore, post-war attention was increasingly paid to the expansion of the structure of control in the south and to the merging of it with that in the north into a single network. As a result, it has been suggested that the regime continuously instigates conflicts between groups within the Bakīl and Ḥāshid alliances in order to prepare groups to seek arbitration under so-called tribal law monitored by Ṣāliḥ’s allies. In the knowledge that these communities would not trust civilian courts controlled by the regime, the contentious nature of these cases ultimately aspires to undermine the community’s autonomous resources.

140  Chaos in Yemen This serves the regime in two ways. First, it deflects regional power away from opposing the regime. In addition, the conflicts within the communities weaken them, rendering their leaders dependent on the state for either support or mediation. Furthermore, such tactics give the regime leverage over communities that are trying to create a new generation of leaders after a wave of state persecution left the previous one exiled, dead or in prison. Often, when new leaders do emerge, they do so under new conditions, either compelling them to serve as intermediaries expected to help control society on behalf of the regime, or placing them in the unenviable position of those today linked to the Ḥūthī revolt.33 Yemen has thus become a country of compartmentalized politics, where state policies are strictly geared to satisfying special interests. This has resulted in a strategic compromise, a system of pluralism, yes, but a political diversity that requires endless bargains mediated by the state. But, because of an increasing appearance of incoherence in policy by way of shifting institutions, the nature of this system prevents the development of strong and enduring coalitions into interest groups of political parties. Instead, there is always space for personal contacts, patronage or client ties that can serve as spaces for negotiation. But this hardly constitutes the foundation for a serious opposition to the regime. Here, the cooptation of Islamic parities for the purpose of securing a stranglehold over southern groups and then the management of their role in subsequent years proves to be the most significant development in Yemen since 1994. It is in this light of increased direct authority over even potentially autonomous political forces among the so-called tribes in otherwise isolated rural northern communities that Ṣāliḥ’s regime proves to be one of the more effective examples of political expansion in the Arab world today. Unfortunately, the rush by political scientists to analyse this dynamic in innovative ways often leads them to ignore some of the more obvious signs of authoritarianism. Ayubi defined the kind of consociation evident in Yemen as a ‘grand coalition’ based on ‘high internal autonomy’, with a proportionate measure of representation that allows these actors to block either rivals or the state with something akin to a veto (Ayubi 1996: 190). Ayubi thus assumed corporatism is predicated on collaboration rather than confrontation. It is suggested one can historically identify such periods in the so-called Arab world when class or group hegemony was not possible. The formula of corporatism, as it may apply to Yemen after 1994, could be interpreted as such a mechanism used to avoid conflicts between the GPC and the Iṣlāḥ, for example. In some ways, it could be argued that, indeed, the Yemeni elite and its clients have solved the problem of power. Ayubi’s formula appears to be convenient for urban elites wishing to initiate reforms, while controlling its form and direction. The only problem is that Ayubi did not tap into the organizational form by which such collaboration (for the sake of elite stability) would take place in postwar Yemen. I must therefore argue that the plethora of union workers, urban poor and rural voiceless have not been institutionally or organizationally incorporated; rather they have been left stuck addressing concerns parochially, and often to the state, through an intermediary. In other words, there has been no nation-wide effort

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  141 to consolidate the political forces of society. In many ways, Yemen has remained largely a fragmented country that empowers Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian tendencies. This is crucial because continued pockets of instability have persisted, especially among the increasingly marginalized communities of the northern regions; and this instability has left Ṣāliḥ’s state more room to operate (Glosemeyer 2004: 44–6). Southerners, as well, with little political role to play and no representation of merit in Ṣan‘ā’, have resorted to civil actions, strikes, protests and other forms of civil disobedience. Even in North Yemen, thousands protest in Ta‘izz for cheaper food while, in the oil-producing Ma’rib governorate, demonstrators demand a share of oil revenues, jobs and development funding. In ‘Amrān, 10,000 members of the Ḥāshid confederation reportedly demanded governmental reform and teachers, students, doctors, pharmacists, trade unions, unemployed youth and journalists have held individual and sometimes joint protests in Ṣan‘ā’ (Yemen Times, 18 November 2007). In order for any of this to actually threaten the regime, however, it all needs to be channelled in some way institutionally. Ṣāliḥ’s government is effectively submerging Yemen’s vast potential for rebellion by simply allowing endless numbers of local action groups and NGOs to consume the energies and organizational capacities of civil society. Despite the high tenor of demands for relief and reform, Ṣāliḥ’s regime is responding with the same tactics that spurred the protests, leading to organizational redundancy as each community, in a fragmented, parochial manner, voices its demands to a local audience. The regime has thus adopted a predictable (and very effective) pattern when responding to civil unrest: by characterizing the opposition as agents of foreign forces, and particularizing manifestations of collective disapproval, Ṣāliḥ’s regime justifies its harsh treatment of dissenters, treatment which often includes the use of US unmanned drones to rain down missiles on those least compliant. On the grounds of a reticent local group failing to bow to state pressure, the regime can ‘justifiably’ increase violence at strategic moments and persist in judicial repression in ways that are sanctioned by the outside world. Recall that important voices in the international community, such as the US and members of the EU, demand that ‘partners’ like Ṣāliḥ play their part in the ‘war on terror’. Among other tools available to assure that these important outside allies properly interpret the character of local resistance to Ṣāliḥ’s power, hostile media and public relations campaigns effectively avoid addressing the specific issues facing the Ḥūthī of Ṣa‘dah or southerners, who are left with the stigma of having their actions tied to al-Qā‘idah or Iran. In this respect, in the process of rejecting any responsibility or refusing to recognize the legitimacy of popular grievences, the regime has begun to use sectarianism when needed, reflecting a new discursive pattern in conflicts throughout the region (e.g. Shī‘a versus Sunni) that usefully exploits the anti-Iranian rhetoric circulating many corners of the world. This micro-management of local (and isolated) pockets of opposition has become a masterful case of post-Cold War survival. This slide toward choosing violence over negotiation needs some further historical background. At the formal level, which seemed in the late 1990s to be still

142  Chaos in Yemen important to the United States and other partners eager to steer Yemen’s potential as an oil and gas producer in the right direction, Ṣāliḥ increased the number of seats won by his GPC in the 1997 parliamentary elections.34 This apparent success at the polls, largely given the seal of approval from outside observers, signalled an important asset in the hands of the regime: legitimacy by the ballot. In 1999, Ṣāliḥ was re-elected as president, challenged only by a member of his own party. In 2001, Ṣāliḥ succeeded in forcing amendments to the constitution guaranteeing his executive power despite opposition from Zaydī rural leaders, Iṣlāḥ (now permanently in opposition to the GPC) and the Socialists based in Aden. By 11 September 2001, those same resources Ṣāliḥ used in the period leading up to 1993 – the so-called tribes and Islamic groups – in order to bully southern rivals, were now marginalized by an ‘electoral’ process that successfully pitted them in opposition to Ṣāliḥ. As a result, with the dramatic changes taking place after 9/11, former partners were forced to act outside the ‘rules’ of the state as determined by the Ṣāliḥ regime, thus further intensifying the tendency to use force instead of politics to resolve Yemen’s disputes (Bonnefoy and Cheikh 2002: 169–71). As discussed throughout, this is made apparent in respect to the north. According to some, the war in Ṣa‘dah began as a quasi-police operation to arrest a former parliament member, Ḥusayn al-Ḥūthī. Over five rounds of negotiations, endless ceasefires and international hand wringing, it has become an increasingly complex struggle between numerous interests that have accumulated grievances with the state and its allies. Indeed, as each new confrontation brings the state into direct contact with a larger group of antagonists, the nature of the struggle expands beyond Ṣa‘dah: the conflict now both covers a wider part of Yemen, and involves foreign actors against the backdrop of a regional struggle for ascendancy. As a result, in the words of the International Crisis Group, the conflict has become self-perpetuating, giving rise to a war economy as tribes, army officers and state officials have seized the opportunity to control the porous border with Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea coastline. Tribal leaders and senior officials have amassed military hardware and profit from illegal sales of army stockpiles. Continued operations have justified increased military budgets without government or independent oversight. As competition over resources intensified, the benefits of war exceeded its drawbacks – at least for the elites involved. (International Crisis Group 2009: iii)

The shaping of new political boundaries The issue in Yemen today is the lack of a significant, unified source of opposition that can contest Ṣāliḥ ‘legally’. Whenever there is an emergent challenge, Ṣāliḥ mobilizes a number of counter forces – from US ‘anti-terrorism’ assistance to creating factions within groups against each other, or sectarianism – to balance the fact there are sources of loyalty within Yemen other than the state. The argument made here is that the Yemeni system, unique within the spectrum of authoritarian

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  143 states in the Middle East, is a product of a variety of factors.35 The most important is its plural society affected by the nature of patrimonial relationships that are in essence political deals that have been made by elites and small, well-intentioned NGOs and grass-roots organizations. When need be, Ṣāliḥ did bring the state’s limited resources to bear fruit by destabilizing potential challenges, either by cooption or by litigation as an alternative to simple violence. In 1999, for example, Ṣāliḥ appointed a new fifty-nine-man consultative council that ‘works both as a cushion that absorbs the frustrations of different influential groups and individuals . . . and as a tool to incorporate and co-opt rivals’ (Saif 2000: 105). This is a classic strategic approach to dealing with opposition when state resources are otherwise limited. Going back to Migdal, the distribution of social control among the many organizations in society reveals the capabilities of the ‘strong’ state to penetrate societies, regulate social relationships, and extract resources and determine how they are used. In other words, a leader such as Ṣāliḥ can reshape societies by promoting some groups and economic classes while, at the same time, repressing others (Migdal 1988: 5–9). Because most developing countries have very weak political institutions, it is this ability to infiltrate potential sources of opposition by other means that I believe made Ṣāliḥ’s Yemen in the pre-9/11 era an especially interesting and unique case. What is so tragic and frightening about what has happened to Yemen and the regime more particularly is the conscious shift away from the deliberative practices required of any ambitious leader in Yemen. As already indicated in the Civil War of 1994, the Salih regime, representing an increasingly entrenched cluster of both domestic and international stakeholders who owe their considerable power to the state’s ability to use force, is as capable of instigating and prolonging violent conflicts as adopting coopting strategies to avoid them. As suggested throughout, the Ṣāliḥ regime has gravitated towards violence as a means of monopolizing the strategic imperatives that the resulting chaos creates within circles of global power. In the context of the now ubiquitous ‘global war on terror’ Yemen’s status as a ‘frontline’ state has given the regime a strategic option that simply expands instability in order to reiterate the fundamental value of the regime to this larger concern of the United States and its allies. Very little is at stake any longer for a regime capable of entrenching itself around several key revenue-producing assets of the larger society: oil, gas, import/export duties and direct payments of financial aid from the IMF and allied countries. Ṣāliḥ and his allies can simply expand the conflict the state has long had with under-represented subjects who receive little to no state services; in our post-9/11 world, with war and counter-insurgency tied in so neatly with the ‘war on terror’, Ṣāliḥ’s domestic conflicts become part of the business of ‘fighting al-Qā‘idah’. It is indeed worrying that these tactics can easily be adopted by other regimes in the region, thus offering otherwise ‘undemocratic’ monarchies a plausible way to offer ‘pluralism’ while ensuring power remains in a dynasty’s hands. The more neighbouring regimes try to mimic Ṣāliḥ’s tactics, however, the more likely it is that an unexpected outburst of violence may pull regimes and entire societies in directions that are impossible to control. Because of this potential replay of chaos

144  Chaos in Yemen in Iran in the late 1970s, Lebanon in the 1980s and Iraq since 1990, it is suggested here that Washington and other cheerleaders for the Ṣāliḥ regime rethink their medium- and long-term strategies.

Conclusion The Ṣāliḥ regime has adopted a two-front mentality when it concerns consolidating a stranglehold over the resources of the state. The violence in Ṣa‘dah has clearly taken on international dimensions since its latest outbreak. What has begun to fade into the shadows again is the fact that violence in the south not only is on the rise, but has shaped the dynamics of any future attempt at reconciling the inhabitants, who clearly feel since 1994 that they are under a state of siege. The very nature of the post-war colonization of the south, for example, has created a demographic shift whereby entire neighbourhoods in cities such as Aden, Ḍāli‘ and Mukallā have been overcome by newcomers with little or no capacity (or desire) to extend links to previous areas of settlement (Bonnefoy 2009: 29–31). In a dynamic very much like that in the United States, where organizational capacities beyond the two major parties are limited to the immediate geographic area, Yemen’s largely frustrated and angry population lack a coherent structure to effectively articulate their concerns. The tension for action is diluted by the parochialism of constituencies that do not and cannot communicate with each other. This is made most evident in the impressive plethora of media available on any Yemeni city street newsstand: a diversity of voices but each and all muddled, overshadowed and, thus, irrelevant to Ṣāliḥ’s overall agenda. The result is spontaneous outbreaks of protest in the south that are increasingly violent since 2007. As yet, these protests are restrained enough to be localized, unlike similar forces at work in the north, which has clearly found a representative body, perhaps in the form of the Ḥūthī or the Bakīl, who are willing to fight for their causes. As it would turn out, Ṣāliḥ’s gamble with unification proved a great success that pays huge dividends today. Not only has he proven the most effective strategist among the myriad of potential claimants to authority, he created the coercive resources needed to shape a new socio-political dynamic in both the south and north whereby he is the ultimate arbitrator. The losers in this quest for authority, Bayḍ and his YSP partners, proved incapable of harnessing the most likely constituents in a Yemen needing a national party. The YSP could have potentially been the patron of all the hundreds of thousands who take to the streets periodically today. Instead of the masses mobilizing against the regime, the urban poor and the vast number of people are entrenched in a patronage system (Iṣlāḥ, Bakīl/ Ḥāshid) empowering Ṣāliḥ in the process. Failing to organize beyond the local NGOs and self-help committees, Ṣāliḥ’s power continues to dictate the terms through which most (the exception at the moment being the Ḥūthī) victims of poor government and abusive cronyism are to engage the world around them.36 The authoritarian regime that has a stranglehold on Yemen’s human and material resources succeeds with a minimal amount of state institutional capacity; the remnants of the South Yemeni Marxist elite have been unable to do anything

Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push  145 other than issue statements from their posts in exile in Abū Ẓabī (Abu Dhabi) and London. What became a political disaster as much as a strategic blunder for these would-be masters of a unified Yemen has become for southerners in general a nightmare out of which they have yet to awake. They, like their northern counterparts, are not likely to find a way out of this chaos without a new form of societal infrastructure that is built around a truly representative body that reaches beyond the parochial, though very legitimate, needs of those fighting with the Ḥūthī today. Scholarly analysis of these processes must in the future demand that historiography, theoretical and ethnical endeavours be coextensive. No better justification for the convergence of intellectual and moral rigour exists than the contributing impact complacent discourses on ‘tribalism’, regionalisms and sectarianism have had on misrepresenting the terrifying situation in Yemen today.

Conclusion

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1949: 364)

Yemen’s collapse over the last few years has in many ways been comprehensive. And yet, whereas the consequences for the many different stakeholders in Yemeni society have been profound, its continuation will prove disastrous for the entire region if not reversed. By drawing on an historical analysis of Yemen’s late imperial past to offer new angles of interpreting current events, this book has highlighted some of the many reasons for this slide into violence, poverty and dysfunction that have been missed by conventional readings of the situation. Chaos in Yemen has been especially focused on introducing new methods of analysis to challenge the approaches by which Yemen and the Middle East as a whole are too commonly understood today. Among the more useful current themes in academia and strategic studies is the impact of outside forces, especially so-called radical Islamic groups universally lumped as ‘Jihadists’, ‘Salafists’ or simply ‘al-Qā‘idah’ on Yemen’s political, cultural and economic landscape (Bonnefoy 2008a). Although terrorism specialists (whose growing numbers keep pace with the money spent on the subject) have argued that there is evidence that Yemen is becoming increasingly an arena in which similar ‘terrorist’ groups have indigenous roots, it still is largely accepted that Yemen is a net importer of such organizations. Asked the larger question of why Yemen is so vexed by internal strife, many Yemeni informants will also insist it is the persistent foreign dynamic that is contributing to the chaos in their country. For the most part, regardless of political orientation, region of origin or social class, Yemenis will insist, when asked, that Saudi Arabia plays a significant role in destabilizing their country. Expansionist by nature, the House of Sa‘ūd is notorious among many Yemenis for its long history of instigating and then exploiting local conflicts; and there is plenty of evidence to support such an analysis. Saudi

148  Chaos in Yemen encroachment on its northern neighbour in Iraq throughout the twentieth century as well as the dynasty’s expansion into Rashīdī territories, the conquest of Ḥijāz, ‘Asīr and large parts of the Persian/Arab Gulf coastline all serve to give further legitimacy to Yemeni contentions (Yamani 2004). At the same time, there is increasing recognition that the US has played an even more disruptive role in Yemen’s malaise. Some of the more extreme claims heard in Yemen of late effectively link Saudi Arabia’s ongoing fear of a unified Yemen and America’s imperialistic nature in a conspiracy aimed at assuring that Yemen remains fragmented and weak while its natural resources continues to be plundered by foreign interests. This last analysis assumes an intimate relationship between the Sa‘ūd dynasty and its American benefactors, guardians or clients that is supported by the research of a growing number of scholars (Vitalis and al-Rasheed 2004). As can be monitored through the media since November 2009, the increased focus on Yemen as a strategic concern gives credence to Yemenis making the direct link between US/ Saudi machinations and the regional instability that certainly facilitates the two states’ control of Yemen’s natural resources. The problem with these repeated theses on the role of external factors is that they often forget the important role local agents of history play. As emphasized throughout this study, it is crucial for any analysis of Yemen today to recognize the local dynamics of what seems to be phenomena of transregional import. As highlighted in Chapter 4, for instance, subjects of ambiguous citizenship who live within the increasingly important frontier zones separating modern states have proven to be perfectly capable of protecting their particular, local interests that directly clash with the modern political order (or disorder). In a similar fashion, it has been noted throughout this book that in Yemen’s modern history, stemming back to the 1860s, seemingly contradictory alliances could be temporarily forged between various local constituencies to have a dramatic impact on the development of state administrations and inter-state relations. This is especially true over the course of the last twenty years of Yemeni unification. For its part, the pliant regime of ‘Alī Abdullāh Ṣāliḥ has adjusted over the years to the vicissitudes of power that long plagued the British, Ottomans and successor states. Laying out the complicated intersecting interests involved in this process, Chaos in Yemen warns against limiting our analysis of this recent history to a level of exchange that reserves agency to the Ṣāliḥ state or America alone, no matter how intriguing the power politics of rulers and regional or global powers may be. Local context does matter. Despite considerable debate (Mitchell 1991), the simple binary of ‘state’ as ontologically separate from ‘society’ long utilized in the social sciences continues to reinforce a conceptual premise in the analysis of Yemen that the primary agent of history is anything but the disaggregated ‘people’. One of the ultimate goals of this study, therefore, is to complicate the Yemeni story by highlighting how there are numerous other factors generally obscured by the larger narrative of the post-9/11 world. Chaos in Yemen argues, for example, that the precarious state of affairs in

Conclusion  149 Yemen today cannot be understood as a product of abstractions, such as recalcitrant ‘tribal’ habits or the machinations of external agents linked to one or another along an ‘axis of evil’. Rather, it is suggested that, to better appreciate the elements that contribute to Yemen’s current state of affairs, we should consider them as the result of strategic calculations made by the Ṣāliḥ regime, its allies and its opponents in recent years. For the regime’s part, it regularly manipulates the ill-informed fears about present-day ‘threats’ to American security. In the process, it has adopted the larger discourse of ‘containment’ in respect to, for instance, ‘Iranian’ influence and the struggle against ‘radical Islam’ to securely position the regime’s survival within the larger strategic interests of the United States.1 This meeting of strategic rationale and simple survival instincts clearly shows that otherwise dismissed ‘puppets’ of Great Power machinations actually have agency in local, regional and international events. The Ṣāliḥ regime’s exploitation of opportunities presented by outside events does not grow out of a Yemeni vacuum, however. These rhetorical adjustments are efforts to balance local and regional as much as international concerns. As I revealed by using examples from the Ottoman period, this is nothing new in the region’s history. I have argued consistently that recognizing the Ṣāliḥ regime’s multiple points of tension can prove helpful in explaining the regime’s perceptible change in tactics when dealing with domestic as much as international affairs since the late 1980s. Put differently, as much as the Ṣāliḥ regime in the past had been compelled to engage in cumbersome negotiations and power-sharing schemes to keep some control over the decidedly ‘weak’ central state, it is really only a continuation of previous dynamics. Something, however, has changed over the last twenty years. The new coercive resources made available thanks to America’s ‘war on terror’ have transformed the Ṣāliḥ regime into something quite unique in Yemen’s history (du Bouchet 2007; Burrowes 2005). Whereas in the short term this means Washington, Riyāḍ and Brussels have ‘found their man’ in the ‘war on terror’, this book has shown that such utilitarian short-sightedness does not bode well for the region’s future; the regime is actually now expanding its strategy of creating chaos in order to secure greater leverage in the larger world by opening new fronts of conflict with the United States and Saudi Arabia as its direct partners. The regime, in other words, made a fateful decision in the early 1990s to politically capitalize on early variations of the ‘war on terror’ by invoking orientalist tropes, which asserted Yemen was ‘backward’ and needed fixing. Once positioned to help ‘fight Islamic terrorism’, the Ṣāliḥ regime has increasingly used the financial, military and diplomatic support it now receives to rob Yemen of more peaceful means of resolving pressing domestic issues. Ultimately, the resulting chaos has become the regime’s tool to avoid power-sharing (and wealth distribution) arrangements that prove unattractive in a world increasingly informed by absolute greed, greed stimulated by, among other things, the country’s still untapped oil and gas assets that grow increasingly valuable as commodity prices soar. This, again, is in direct contrast to much of the region’s modern history. I have demonstrated this throughout Chaos in Yemen by comparing and contrasting the

150  Chaos in Yemen apparent strategic shifts adopted by the ever-flexible Ṣāliḥ regime with earlier periods of the region’s history. Whereas the Ottoman, British and post-imperialera regimes dealt with equally dynamic societies, the governing strategies of these ‘weak’ states were to accommodate and interweave the demands of government with the ever-shifting local dynamics. In the past, in other words, diverse groups whose composition changed depending on conditions on the ground had been able to persuade every regime in Ṣan‘ā’, Aden or Jizān to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement on account of the leverage they had over the effective management of their respective spheres of influence. The manner in which the Ottoman, Mutawakkilī, Idrīsī, British and even early post-Imām Republican states dealt with these contingencies was to coopt, harness and selectively engage local and regional agents of history in the full recognition that it was futile to attempt to ‘formally’ rule over such diverse polities. At the administrative level, therefore, the analytical context for these states’ methods of rule was a belief that it was in the interest of the state managers to maintain some form of ‘order’ in larger society by way of harnessing the local interests in realizing that order. Chaos, in other words, was not something people in Yemen wanted then, and they certainly do not want it today. Their lives are governed by principles that invest considerable value in maintaining law and order in their immediate and often multi-sited communities. The current state of affairs thus constitutes a tragic disruption of these well-established governing principles. That being said, unlike many places in the world, large amounts of people in Yemen are still willing to defend their inherent rights to the dignity, security and the economic autonomy these principles should assure. As highlighted throughout, for local communities facing periodic threats to their temporary understanding of group interests, their resistance (increasingly lumped together with ‘al-Qā‘idah’) was not carried out for its own sake. Again, these are not rebellious peoples ‘by nature’; their acts of resistance are well-established methods of initiating a process with other agents of authority to find an arrangement that would maintain order and respect the interests of multiple parties. I have used numerous cases from Yemen’s past to reveal that, when government and locals maintained channels of communication, often a mutually beneficial arrangement could be made. This historically demonstrated ability to maintain order often resulted in local, seemingly isolated communities gaining access to much larger political, social and economic arenas. This accommodating spirit was often the strategic orientation of both the Ottoman and British empires; and it certainly developed in time among many local surrogates of empire who often proved to be far more influential in the day-to-day functioning of regional economies than any imperial bureaucrat. Unfortunately, this resilient sensibility of autonomy, agency and possibility has increasingly been stunted in parts of the world largely subjugated by global capital – and its vehicle of asset management par excellence, the nation-state. As I suggest by preaching empathy towards the people involved in these events, this history needs to be celebrated as the viable method of adjudicating Yemen’s many problems today, while at the same time serving as a counter-narrative to the dominant narratives about the country’s current condition.

Conclusion  151 Until recently, these ‘deliberative’ practices have won the praise of scholars studying the region as a unique example of democratic possibilities in a Middle East otherwise plagued by unrepresentative dictatorships or resource-rich monarchies capable of buying cooperative subjects (Carapico 1998a; Wedeen 2008; Schewdler 2006). Sadly, these transactions were also read as an indication of the Yemeni state’s relative ‘weakness’, a nuisance to external interests, especially representatives of the oil and gas industries, who equated local autonomy to unwanted complications to their exploitation of Yemen’s natural resources. The contradiction between local realities and the ill-informed demands for ‘clarity’ abroad has proven to be dangerous for a ruling class in Ṣan‘ā’ that needs to assure its long-term value to external forces. Tragically, the resulting chaos in Yemen today is the product of the regime’s structural, ideological and moral adjustments to these post-colonial realities.

Agents of history At the same time, however, those millions forced to live under such conditions of chaos are not passive agents. As emphasized throughout this book, it is both analytically incorrect and morally irresponsible to ignore the constant resilience, adaptability and ultimate active role various temporary constituent groups play in world events. In the past, it has been demonstrated that imperial and nation-state policies have been transformed by the realities of local adaptability and resistance. So too, it is clear, something similar has happened in Central Asia, Iraq and now Yemen in face of the new world order emerging from the ashes of the Cold War and 9/11. As much as the Ṣāliḥ regime and the self-appointed ‘puppet masters’ negotiate their own relationships, local contingencies are constantly forcing external actors to adjust and modify their strategies and tactics. In some important ways, the recent violence and chaos that has visited the lives of so many in Yemen – for instance in Ṣa‘dah – has over time helped constitute a temporary community among otherwise rival polities. Put differently, whereas the Saudi/Yemeni frontier in theory marks a divide between two distinct states, and their citizens, the violence in Ṣa‘dah since at least 2000 has clearly instigated a process of community formation still at work today. For its part, Saudi Arabia has taken measures to address these emerging community groups that transcend the boundary and perhaps even the ‘Asīr altogether. Instructively then, unlike the regime in Riyāḍ, which is adamant about keeping the potential chaos of its precarious existence in the region under wraps, Ṣāliḥ is actually provoking formerly set group affiliations to break apart in response to societal collapse. Whether or not Ṣāliḥ’s men are fully aware of the potential for entirely new constituencies to emerge that could ultimately resist joint American/ Ṣāliḥ military operations, as often happened in the Ottoman and British era, it is clear Yemen’s various political spaces are changing. This is at once clear with the Ḥūthī movement, which is probably gaining considerable support from a larger group of communities who are directly affected by the Ṣāliḥ regime in the north. Similarly, and perhaps even more intriguingly, there are new orientations taking

152  Chaos in Yemen place in the south today that may ultimately frustrate the Ṣāliḥ regime and its external allies. The interesting union of hitherto antagonistic members of Iṣlāḥ and the southern Socialists (YSP) is one possible consequence of the Ṣāliḥ regime’s strategic collapse of the old political order (Browers 2007). More importantly however, if the accounts of these public declarations of solidarity are true, the increasing collaboration between ‘jihadist’ groups in South Yemen with former enemies among the YSP and South Yemeni nationalists can suggest a number of important recent local adaptations.2 First, over the past twenty years, it is clear these various religious-orientated parties have integrated themselves into local communal life. Often, the sensationalist reporting of their intolerant behaviour has blurred the adaptive capacities of both host communities and these evolving religious groups. In so many words, there has been a fusion of interests as a result of shifting dynamics in the region. This has resulted in the formation of a temporary community of sorts that coalesce largely around common problems and shared adversities despite their disparate views of the solutions to these issues. That is to say, hardcore ‘fundamentalists’ have adapted to become relevant to people’s lives in the south, whose ongoing frustrations with the way unification has marginalized them makes for a powerful, and I suspect largely unanticipated, set of new social forces. Now (as of December 2009) that the US, at the behest of the Ṣāliḥ regime (or perhaps on its own), is attacking southern communities with its advanced weaponry, the purported ‘targets’ can no longer be so easily identified. As in the north with the Ḥūthī, the greater the frustrations of many different groups of peoples, the less distinct are the regime’s enemies from something called a ‘general’ population. This means that, unless the US plans to annihilate Yemen’s population, this battle in the ‘war on terror’ can never be won. It has been a goal of this book to show that throughout history it is impossible to generalize about what is actually animating events on the ground. So, although it is not clear if Ṣāliḥ’s intensified use of violence will work over the long term, what we can say is that the resistance cannot be reduced to simple religious fanaticism or tribal rivalries. Scholars who insist on accounting for the ferocity of their resistance to tanks, jet fighters and indiscriminate shelling by invoking ancient social loyalties and organization patterns do a disservice to the humanity of those resisting the Ṣāliḥ state. Moreover, their approach is an obstacle to the development of a working model that might help resolve conflicts. As has been shown elsewhere, the haphazard use of orientalist social categories constitutes a kind of rhetoric that actually perpetuates violence and apologises for a regime that is to a large extent responsible for the conflict (Shapiro 1997; Campbell 1998). I suspect the persistence of these tropes discussed at length in Chapter 1 also represents a sort of institutionalized pathology that is perpetuated by certain vehicles of influence peddling and, frankly, social engineering, in the service of a multitude of interests. It is clear that the oft-cited ‘military–industrial complex’, which has truly become an entity unto itself, has shaped the way the world operates since the Second World War. But, beyond this, the many other, often antagonistic, systems that profit from this global process need to articulate in readily

Conclusion  153 accessible ways the ‘nature’ of the dilemma a putative ‘West’ has with the rest of the world in order to justify the expenditure of untold trillions of dollars every year. Here I sense there is an underlying theme that can be understood as the west’s post-colonial anxiety about the apparent resiliency post-colonial states and societies have in forming their own identities and, more importantly, sense of justice, values and needs. Some of the scholarship, perhaps best known from Said (1981) onwards, stresses in often problematic ways that there are resilient, collective ‘EuroAmerican’ polities that are pathologically concerned with the purported ‘other’. Whereas such patterns of exclusion and reduction are clear to the extent that so-called ‘subalterns’ throughout modern European and US history come into play in the formation of Euro-American identity, I have actually suggested in this book that another set of forces are at work often beyond the immediate ability of that same ‘military–industrial complex’ and ‘international financial oligarchy’ to control. In other words, Chaos in Yemen is suggesting that on many occasions, as evidenced with the case of the Yemeni state’s leadership today, the putative ‘other’ have actually internalized and then strategically mobilized these same orientalist conceptions of themselves and their constituents. More importantly, those ‘parvenus’ who opportunistically coopt the modern world’s racism – with the aid of global capital – have become complicit in the exploitation of their own populations. In this way, as argued so powerfully by those who have criticized certain shortcomings in post-colonial/subaltern theory long positioned as the quintessential counterweight to ‘European’ power (Young 1990), the underlying ethical imperative in addressing this madness is to recognize the agency of everyone involved and from that point onward analyse, without the tools of crude reductionism, the context of each specific agent of history’s action. With the recent arrest of a Nigerian airline passenger and his purported connections to groups in Yemen, it is obvious that those who are pushing an apparent US military/imperial agenda in the world today are investing their resources to extend their global operations into Yemen.3 Whatever this momentary coalition of quite distinct interests is calculating as it pushes the US further into this corner of the world, it is quite possible that it is misreading Yemen’s people. At some point, as suggested throughout, the overly simplified formulas used to explain ‘Arabs’, ‘tribal people’ and ‘Muslims’ miscalculates the capacity of people to adapt and ultimately resist vulgar imperialism. Yemen, as a result, very well may become Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia or Pakistan. The indicators are all there: the media preparations seem to be in motion, slowly educating the public about Yemen and the inherent threats the country presents – from ‘al-Qā‘idah’, child brides, slavery and Iran’s support of the Ḥūthī, to piracy. This is in conjunction with the fact that American soldiers have been operating in at least two distinct areas of the country since early 2009 and are directing the increasing number of deadly attacks on ‘al-Qā‘idah’ assets that only serve to expand the number of people in Yemen who will resist the regime.

154  Chaos in Yemen All is not lost however; the ICG proposes that, with the right kind of intervention, there is always hope for Yemen because: renewed war is not preordained. Local, national and international actors can do much to set the stage for durable peace. There is every reason to proactively intervene before more damage is done and to build on core Yemeni assets: a tradition of compromise between political, social and religious groups and the state’s tendency to coopt ex-foes. International help should be multilateral, involving Western and regional countries ready to exert diplomatic pressure, mediate and, most importantly, pledge reconstruction assistance as an incentive for peace. In duration and intensity, destruction, casualties, sectarian stigmatisation and regional dimension, the Sa’ada conflict stands apart from other violent episodes in Yemen. It will need more than run-of-the-mill domestic and international efforts to end it. (International Crisis Group 2009: iii) It is within Yemen’s contested arenas of ‘domestic’ politics that a socio-political dynamic in the larger region must be studied (Mundy 1995). One part of the methods of accomplishing this successfully is to move beyond the reflex assumption that Yemen will necessarily survive the present chaos intact because it has ‘always been this way’. It is a sad testimony if ‘we’ (and I include outside observers, scholars, policy-makers and all the present, past and future participants in Yemen itself, be they ‘al-Qā‘idah’ militants or Harvard-educated members of parliament) concede the point that Yemeni communities cannot aspire to any more than a perpetual state of violence because of their ‘tribal’ nature and weak state. Rather, the need to understand and empathetically read the complexity of social, economic and political life in Yemen is apparent when (and if) we can concede that it is not necessary that the state or the ‘global financial oligarchy’ have hegemonic authority over society. At this point, I need to reiterate that recent events are actually a departure for Yemen in a number of ways. The first is the assumption that the Ṣāliḥ regime is actually trying to enforce a ‘justifiable’ demand for state monopoly of force. To the contrary, Ṣāliḥ’s regime has evolved to actually thrive on chaos rather than order. The Ṣāliḥ case over the last few years proves to depart from previous assertions that state managers want to capture hegemony. In earlier work, scholars have highlighted the temporary power of Ṣāliḥ’s regime and correctly celebrated the fascinating interlacing of parochial interests and demands for a strong state. But this scholarship has become outdated by events over the last few years. The new opportunities created by 9/11 have given the Ṣāliḥ regime the impression that external patronage is enough to strengthen key alliances while permitting it to abandon formerly essential alliances once acclaimed in the literature as the civic balance to state power in Yemen. What interests us here beyond the many anomalies discussed when studying pre-unification Yemeni history or the possibility of a far more complex ‘Islamic’ story to Yemen is that much of the nuance of ‘traditional’ forms of negotiation is

Conclusion  155 lost by the way scholars, policy-makers and international institutions have chosen to analyse the actors involved. To many writing on the country today, Yemen is a world of constant tension between the modernist ambitions of state-builders and the primordial instincts of primitive tribesmen. As a result, many of the extenuated and ever-shifting local factors that have made Yemen so interesting for ethnographers and frustrating for modern states are overshadowed by scholarship that focuses on conventional themes of political Islām, tribalism and nationalism. In other words, to the journalist and social scientist today, Yemen is more than likely to be seen as a space of conflict. This cliché has opened room for the Ṣāliḥ regime to actually mobilize the limited capacity of his state to manufacture conflict (reaffirming stereotypes about backward tribesmen and belligerent Islamists in the process) and thereby secure from the outside world greater investment in the regime’s authoritarian capacities. The logic that permits this exploitative relationship (Ṣāliḥ’s regime is just as exploitative and opportunistic as its outside patrons) is a hegemonic set of orientalist tropes discussed throughout. As explained by Edward Said and many others since his seminal study on imperial knowledge first surfaced in 1978, it is rarely acknowledged by even radical critics of global capitalism that generations of philology, historiography, ethnography, art and print journalism persistently have reaffirmed the inferior position of the generic other and by doing so have deployed a mode of ‘knowledge’ that abets the institutionalization of the financial elite’s power over the world.4 The constant invocation of Yemen’s social pathologies as interlinked with larger ‘Muslim Society’ thus increases the likelihood that the specificities of various local conflicts such as the Ḥūthī/Ṣāliḥ struggle in the north are swept under a generic category of analysis. It is precisely when the ‘white mythologies’ about the Middle East are not themselves the focus of debates that the ‘war on terror’ (Yemen has attracted the attention of the New York Times only because of the assumed presence of a generic terrorist connection) supersedes all other issues. When Yemen simply is an extension of the ‘war on terror’ story, the people involved in these complicated, constantly shifting dramas become nothing more than clichés that are readily accepted as objective and selfevident in the mainstream media and academic circles. Again, the recycling of imperialist epistemologies only exacerbates conflicts in and worsens the suffering of people it fails to comprehend.

Yemen’s geopolitical trajectory It may be useful to end by exploring more of what this geo-political and politicaleconomic conjuncture in the twenty-first century actually means in a more conventional political and sociological framework of analysis. As rightly discussed by observers over the last decade, with decolonization there has been a constant demand made of states in the global south to formally establish central authority in order to streamline the economic and strategic potential of their respective territories. Naturally, the subsequent efforts at managing the assets of the ‘third world’ by means of strong states have in important ways directly clashed with

156  Chaos in Yemen local sensibilities. Very much a story repeated throughout the world, an increased demand from external lending agencies such as the World Bank, IMF and United States for more absolute, streamlined relations with a minimal number of local counterparts has resulted in new opportunities for some. In Yemen, this has meant that those with access to the relatively weak state can count on international support to consolidate individual and group power at the expense of ‘traditional’ patterns of mutual respect, accommodation and patronage. As I have shown throughout, in order for the regime to effectively disengage from larger society it is required that it abandon old methods of governing. In order for the Ṣāliḥ clan to actually accomplish this it has elected to instigate a dangerous set of confrontations with old allies, be they the YSP, Iṣlāḥ or even more radical ‘Salafist’ groups now scattered throughout much of the country. Recently, the regime has proven to be more than capable of doing just that. By actually invoking those same western tropes critiqued here about the generic Yemeni tribal savage and the irredeemable ‘Islamic terrorist’, the regime has effectively secured for itself a place in the strategic planning of the United States. The growing violence in the country is evidence that the Ṣāliḥ regime, armed with outside patronage that includes military advisors, unmanned drones and cruise missiles on call, as well as ever-expanding pools of money, is entering a unique phase of the history of the modern state. Here the links between the rise of dictatorship in the asset-rich global south, the interests of a ‘global financial elite’ seeking to maximize profits from extraction industries, and the role of international agencies such as the World Bank, UN and IMF are clear. As outlined in Chapter 5, the Ṣāliḥ regime’s evolution since unification cannot be simply read in terms of its relative authoritarian capacities, at least in the traditional sense of the term. Ṣāliḥ has actually taken authoritarianism to a new level, one that neatly (and tragically) fits with the analysis of Mike Davis (2002) and Naomi Klein (2007), who also studied regimes that purposefully wrecked havoc on previously resilient and autonomous societies in order to cheaply extract wealth from the ensuing chaos. Much as Davis exposed how British imperial officials used periodic droughts and famine in India to monopolize the food market as well as starve into submission vast portions of the continent (2002: 23–210), Ṣāliḥ has opportunistically exploited analogous contingencies. The shifting dynamics of the regional and global political economy since the early 1990s – including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War and the growing strategic value of the Red Sea shipping lanes to the ‘war on terror’ – have presented opportunities for the Ṣāliḥ regime to strengthen its command over the key commodity assets a unified Yemen offers. The regime has consolidated its position by actually operating a kind of ‘controlled demolition’ of the structure of local polities. In the subsequent chaos, much as has been proven in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eastern and Central Africa, profits and greater strategic value can be secured for the regime and its external allies. Chaos in Yemen has made this counter-intuitive argument on the basis that some fairly resilient tropes about the so-called ‘Islamic World’ generally and Yemen in particular still hinder the ability of many to move beyond the bankrupt

Conclusion  157 categories typical of Near Eastern studies. The cumbersome ‘traditional’ society motif, for instance, has in an updated form crept back into otherwise useful analyses of post-unification Yemeni politics. Thus, there are still models of analysis used by social scientists that evoke Yemen’s purported ‘tribal’ nature in order to explain why the supposedly ‘weak’ Yemeni state can use ‘democratic assets’ such as civil activist groups and so-called ‘Islamic’ charities to strengthen the regime’s power (Phillips 2008: 89–135). Yemen’s colourful ‘tribes’ and ‘religiosity’ are, in other words, still fetishized by social scientists while at the same time dismissed as archaic social practices in a manner not so different from those advocates of state-led ‘modernization’ projects popular in the 1950s (Huntington 1969). In the past, Yemen and other similarly ‘undeveloped’ countries were the targets of social engineering strategies that today translate into unquestioned support for authoritarian regimes, military suppression, extra-judicial assassinations of suspected ‘terrorists’ and economic liberalization schemes (Mitchell 2002). The subsequent transformation of Yemen from the late 1980s onwards is therefore largely the result of a series of attempts by a certain educated class at harnessing the privileges of state authority and to serve as managers of a sovereign state in the modern international system. But, as highlighted throughout, not only were these unrealistic and rather irrelevant criteria for modern statecraft simply ‘cut’ from a generic model for the ‘third world’ and crudely ‘pasted’ to the very specific conditions of Yemen, but the strategic value of the ‘strong state’ itself has faded. Mainstream NGOs are given considerable amounts of money to promote ‘decentralization’ in the world. Coupled with the idea that the regime in Yemen is aiming at chaos and societal collapse as its model of statecraft – one that uncomfortably mirrors the outcomes of US interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Africa since the 1990s – one cannot help to think the theoretical debates around the ‘role’ states have in shaping the events of the world needs serious recalibration. Again, in the case of the Ṣāliḥ regime, its strategic shift towards instigating violence against its former partners has proven possible because of the lingering stereotypes about Yemen’s cultural primitivism and continued reductive treatment of the Islamic world in scholarship and the media.5 These tropes have provided important cover to justify policies by pointing at tactics employed in Iraq, Lebanon, East and Central Africa, and Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ṣāliḥ’s adoption of a new set of policies vis-à-vis current and potential future rivals, in other words, helps his regime consolidate a monopoly of diplomatic and commercial relations with the outside world, including the United States, GCC countries, European Union and IMF, while eliminating the cumbersome domestic politics that have burdened local regimes since the 1860s. At the same time, chaos in Yemen fits in nicely with a larger structural orchestration by various market, corporate, and supra-governmental interests that had a vested interest in the invasion of Iraq, the violence in Central Africa and an expansion of the ‘war on terror’ to Central Asia. In the end, resilient regimes such as the one in Yemen today will adapt to any and all manifestations of global power politics that surface in the future. But, while these regimes will resort to pretty much anything to survive a

158  Chaos in Yemen constantly changing world, it is the engineers of this chaos who stand to continue to reap the profits from precious commodities extracted from war-torn regions, from the expansion of American military power (especially as it is increasingly privatized), as well as from the ever-useful violent reactions from the millions of people whose lives have been forever changed by the consequences of ‘disaster capitalism’.6 Ordo Ab Chao indeed!

Notes

Introduction

1 Yemen ranks 153 out of 177 on the Human Development Index, according to the 2007 UNDP Human Development report. 2 More than 20,000 migrants are smuggled annually into South Yemen from such ports as Bossaso in Somalia. Hundreds drown offshore and the rest are often abused by smugglers who charge upwards of $250 per person (Médecins Sans Frontières 2008). The problem has grown to crisis proportions with a staggering 74,000 Africans entering Yemen in 2009 (UNHCR 2009). 3 As late as 25 November 2009 (BBC News 2009), five days before the forty-second anniversary of South Yemen’s independence from Britain, over a thousand protestors flooded the streets of the district town of Aṭaq in Shabwah province. As in the past, the protestors were demanding greater autonomy for the south, more access to the profits generated by the sale of oil and natural gas extracted from the region and the freeing of activists arrested in previous rallies. In the subsequent clashes, five protestors and two police officers were killed. 4 There were attempts on at least two other occasions in the 1970s to unify the two Yemen states – the northern Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and southern People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) – but it was only with a confluence of internal forces in both countries discussed in the latter chapters of this book that really made unification possible by 1989–90 (Carapico 1993a; Burrowes 1991). 5 Named after the founder, Ḥusayn Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥūthī, many members of al-Ḥūthī are at least formally members of the Zaydī sect, which is a branch within Shī‘ī Islām that arose from the political/spiritual movement of Zayd b. ‘Alī (d. 740). Doctrinally speaking, it is widely acknowledged that the Zaydī are far closer to the country’s ‘majority’ Shafī‘i Sunni madhhab than more ‘mainstream’ Shī‘a elsewhere in the world (Haykel 2003: 5–10). 6 See Ḥusayn Jarabani’s reporting on the Ḥūthī and the sequence of deaths of the founders of the movement that seemed at the time to mark the end of the conflict, al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 12 April 2005. 7 According the latest figures, more than 175,000 people have been displaced and thousands have been killed since fighting resumed in early 2009 (UN News Service 2009a). 8 By late November of 2009, Saudi forces were conducting ‘major cross-border ground and air attack[s]’ that included, according to local witnesses, tanks, artillery, Apache helicopters and jet fighters (Gulf Today 2009). As late as 20 December, Saudi air raids were reported in North Yemen; in one case attacks on the border town of Raziḥ killed over fifty people (Washington Post 2009). 9 On 25 January 2010, the belligerents signed one more of the ceasefire agreements that

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since the conflict between the Hūthī and Yemeni government began in 2004 have been regularly broken. This current ceasefire, like the last one signed in September 2009, will most likely break down in time as the persecution of locals continues unabated. Little more than a month into this latest ceasefire, for example, it has been reported Saudi officials are conducting sweeping raids on likely participants in a war that expanded deep into the Kingdom’s southwestern province of ‘Asīr (Allam 2010). These raids, along with reports of tense face-offs between Yemeni government forces and the still armed communities throughout the region, suggest war can break out again at any time. Contrast Sale (2001) with Hill (2008) and Boucek (2009). According to the United States Congressional Research Service (CRS), in addition to between $20 and $25 million in annual non-military aid, the US will be sending $28  million in military assistance in 2010 (Sharp 2009). Those numbers are likely to increase, as the Obama administration requested another $65 million in military and ‘counter-insurgency’ aid (Fleishman 2009). For their part, Germany, among other major European powers, has contributed to the growing pool of aid the regime receives as it ‘fights the war on terrorism’ (Neukirch 2010). On 18 December 2009, two days before the Saudis launched an invasion of Yemeni territory around Ṣa‘dah, the New York Times confirmed that the US ‘provided firepower, intelligence and other support . . . to strike at suspected hide-outs of al-Qaeda’. Although it is still secretive about the extent of its support to the Ṣalīḥ regime, it is widely known that US special forces are operating within Yemen and that the weapons used in this particular attack were cruise missiles fired from offshore ships (Landler and Shanker 2009). Human Rights Watch in 2008 revealed in detailed reporting the regime’s troubling pattern of the indiscriminate use of force (HRW 2008b). In addition, since at least the reported meeting in October 2009 between Ṣāliḥ and the US commanders from Joint Special Operations, which included General David Petraeus, the US is reportedly flying (and presumably using) unmanned drones again over Yemen (al-Aḥmadī 2009). Exposure to this illegal use of violence has been limited in the United States, with the mainstream media largely complicit, according to some, in keeping US citizens ignorant of what is done in their name overseas (Mayer 2009). Much as in other cases of societal collapse, when soldiers sent to fight their own fellow citizens begin to think about whose interests are being served by war, order within the armed forces can quickly disintegrate. A fascinating window into the sentiments of Yemen’s soldiers may be found in videos of those captured by Ḥūthī forces. From their declarations on tape, it is clear many are not at all convinced they are fighting a just war. See for instance, (accessed 4 December 2009). Already in 2006 it was noted that Yemen had become a society on the verge of collapse largely because of the regime’s aggressive, anti-democratic policies (Freedom House 2006). Recently, reports have revealed that the private firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, has been managing on behalf of the United States an assassination campaign inside Pakistan. Such a policy has resulted in effectively tearing the country into violent pieces, a result that many different interests may actually find useful in a strategic sense (containing China, domination over Central Asian energy) and profitable for those contractors and consultants whose ‘special talents’ are continuously being rewarded with US government contracts (Scahill 2009). Although hers is different in many ways from Chaos in Yemen, the political scientist Sarah Phillips (2008) recently offered a rereading of what happened in Yemen since 1990 that suggests the political plurality in Yemen actually served to strengthen Ṣāliḥ’s quest in developing his unique brand of authoritarianism. For Phillips, a fragmented

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civil society, framed in a problematic state/society analytical scheme, strengthened the ability of the regime to project authority and power. The purported balance that Phillips argued kept the ‘experiment’ relatively stable is clearly gone, however. I argue that the once iconic ‘deliberative’ nature of Yemeni state/society relations, largely predicated on a balance of coercive power between various regional stakeholders and the central government, is giving way to a new kind of authoritarianism. For examples of the innovative scholarship that accurately positioned Yemen as a dynamic case of other forms of democratic practice in the world, see Wedeen (2008), Carapico (1998a) and Schwedler (2006). This body of work has been rendered largely obsolete by the dramatic shift in tactics adopted by the regime and its external allies over the last decade. Perhaps the most influential project to bring about the ‘decolonisation of knowledge’ is R.  J.  C. Young’s (1990) White Mythologies, which went beyond just questioning imperial-era ideologies by exploring the ways in which even the most radical opponents of global capitalism shared the same assumptions about the Middle East. The goal in Young’s work is to retheorize history as multiple, something I suggest corresponds well with the pluralist thinking advocated by Connolly (1991, 2005) and invoked throughout this book. For a thorough review of the history of oil production operations in Yemen since unification, see Landers (2004); on the oil finds in South Yemen just before unification, see Burrowes (1989). Yemen’s oil sector provides 90 per cent of export earnings and 75 per cent of the revenue collected by the state, which in 2008 had jumped from $1.2 billion to $2.6 billion (SPA 2008). Until recently, only twelve of Yemen’s eighty-seven oil blocks were in production owing to high production costs. With the steady rise of oil prices, however, there is clearly going to be future expansion of Yemen’s oil production along with its liquefied natural gas, which is expected to bring in at least $11 billion over the next twenty years. This revenue in part constitutes the spoils of power in Yemen. See World Bank (2007, 2008). Despite an interest in the process, many fail to appreciate the historical set of contingent forces that would later undermine ‘unification’, including Ṣāliḥ’s ambition to consolidate power by way of harnessing the process at the expense of potential rivals (Dunbar 1992; Braun 1992; Schmitz 1995). One only needs to watch a few videos from the areas being attacked by Ṣāliḥ’s forces to recognize there is little to gain other than perpetual violence from present policies. As one video clearly demonstrates, even in ‘Amrān province, far from the presumed epicentre of the Ḥūthī rebellion, villages are being bombed, with tragic consequences for the civilians whose bodies are pulled from the rubble. These communities are not likely to ever reconcile with the regime. See (accessed 4 December 2009) or (accessed 6 December 2009). A nuance often missed by outside analysts. For an exception, see Wedeen (2008: 148–85). Drawing from William James’s (1996) conceptualisation of a pluralistic universe, it is possible to adapt to the contingencies of life in a manner that honours the complex intervening factors accounting for the actions of distinct groups of historical agents largely obliterated by the disciplinary practices of government, including the analytical tools used by social scientists. See also W. E. Connolly (2005: 68–92). A warning recently issued by the astute Roula Khalaf (2009). The principal concern highlighted in the prominent think-tank productions on Yemen in the past year is assuring the steady flow of oil and natural gas through the region. This is the logical conclusion for strategists animated by this mindset, who ultimately posit that Sālih’s regime needs support to thrive rather than usefully demand that outside powers do something about changing the abusive dynamics in the region that

162  Notes actually is capitalizing on societal collapse. Examples of this dangerously limited set of parameters influencing advocacy in circles of power include Ginny Hill (2008) and Christopher Boucek (2009). 29 For important appraisals of how prevailing analytical paradigms in security studies and international relations theory shut down possibilities of peaceful resolutions to conflicts, see Campbell (1998). 30 The problem with social science methodologies has been especially glaring in the field of economics, which, as Michael Hudson has repeatedly shown, relies on a set of abstract assumptions that do not depend on the correspondence (or lack of it) between theory and observations in the real world (Hudson 2000). In other words, as William Vickery admits, a social theory is an internally consistent system that remains valid if the conclusions follow logically from its premises, even if it does not correspond to reality. ‘In any pure theory, all proposition are essentially tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the assumptions made’ (Vickery 1964: 5). Chapter 1 in particular highlights how such paradigms meant to codify methods of observing ‘Muslim society’ end up dictating how we interpret reality. 1  Yemen’s social pathologies beyond the strategic mainstream

1 Mohanty (1984) and others have amply demonstrated, in their own ways, the manner in which western scholarship constituted women of the Third World as a monolith, which it then used as a category of analysis on the basis of certain sociological and anthropological principles which erase the specific cultural, historical and socioeconomic contexts in which women lived. I believe this critical engagement with the protean western liberal relationship with the generic Third World Woman exists in numerous ways in respect to Yemen as well. 2 Since September 2009, what at one point may have been interpreted as a regional crisis pitting locals against a corrupt and ineffectual central state has metamorphosed into a centrepiece to the larger Sunni and Shī‘ī struggle with Iran as the culprit (alAsaadi 2009). Indeed, instruments of such a campaign to label the conflict in northern Yemen a larger Shī‘ī plot has even suggested recently that Bahrain’s Shī‘a are providing support (Grewal 2009). On the Yemeni government’s claims, see Wedeen (2008: 152–5). 3 Typically, some have argued that the Ḥūthī, supposedly a Zaydī (Shī‘ī) revivalist movement, had originally been a creation of the Ṣāliḥ regime used to thwart the rising influence of Saudi-backed Salafist groups in Yemen (al-Ṣan‘ā’nī 2005: 33–5). The regime, for its part, avers to its foreign allies that ‘al-Qā‘idah’ is coordinating its efforts with the Ḥūthī (al-Mumāyīd 2009), while the Ḥūthī offer the counter-claim that it is the Ṣāliḥ regime that has permitted the infiltration of ‘foreigners’ (read ‘al-Qā‘idah’) to disrupt the lives of indigenous Zaydī. Two entirely different strategic logics are evoked that equally rely on the stereotypes prevalent in the larger media to discredit their enemies. 4 In this regard, a particularly distorted prism through which ‘experts of sharī‘a’ were to study and catalogue ‘Islām’ served an especially important purpose in ruling over various Muslim societies (Asad 1986). 5 I initially explained this concern with misusing colonial-era stereotypes to read history by critiquing how the ‘tribal’ idiom distorted the way we study Ottoman Yemen history (Blumi 2000, 2003, 2004). It appears my concerns specific to Yemen and the abuse of tribal categories has gained some traction. The recent study by Wedeen (2008: 170–6) on the ‘performative’ dynamics of participatory politics in Ṣāliḥ’s Yemen, for instance, has drawn similar conclusions about the problematic use of categories such as tribe in understanding the foundations of the conflict in Ṣa‘dah. 6 One of the more precise critiques of Gellner’s construction of Islām as well as the role

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anthropology has played in the dissemination of imperialist power may be found in Talal Asad (1992: 333–51). In contrast to British-trained anthropologists, others conducting research in Yemen have developed an appreciation for the possibility that power structures in so-called tribes are never fixed (Manea 1998). In her long-awaited study of the Jabal Rāziḥ region linking Ṣa‘dah to the ‘Asīr coast, Shelagh Weir (2007) attempts to mediate the professional debate over conventional representations of daily events in rural communities and market towns. Her excellent ethnography of complex interactions reveals a sensitivity to some of the concerns raised in this chapter while understandably resigning her narrative to retaining the problematic term ‘tribe’ to analyse territorial polities that share a set of common patterns of interactions set by certain rules or standards of exchange. The problem is the term still substitutes for the necessary continuous desegregation needed to understand how life among ever-changing communities orientates temporary affiliations towards or against both internal and external challenges to their immediate needs. Reading Dresch’s charts of the Dhū Muḥammad coalition of communities, the superstructure of a ‘tribal’ identity in an area within the Ṣa‘dah province is clearly diluted by shaykhly families which have been notoriously independent political actors in history (Dresch 1989: 90–1). There are numerous titles circulating the Middle East, published outside the country for which each is written, that clearly attempt to legitimize the regime in power by asserting theological correctness and purity. For an example concerning Saudi Arabia see Kishk (1981) and for one that challenges the Sa‘ūd dynasty’s legitimacy by the same medium see Ibrāhīm and al-Ḥasan (2003). An exploitative instinct of which the late Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥūthī and others had publicly accused Ṣāliḥ during negotiations to settle the Ṣa‘dah conflict’s first phase in 2005. See comments made in an interview found in a Ṣan‘ā’ weekly, al-Wasaṭ, dated 9 March 2005. Alarmist reports in Yemen’s mainstream weekly highlighted to its readers that battles between locals accused of supporting the Ḥūthī were reaching the outskirts of Ṣan‘ā’ itself by the end of 2009. See al-Wasaṭ, dated 10 November 2009. It is possible to compare and contrast how scholars based in the Middle East and in the west adopt similarly narrow representations of the principal agents of local politics in Yemen, always hinged on ‘Wahhābī’ versus ‘Zaydī’ or tribal axis points (Zayd 1991). For an informative review of the distinctive areas in North Yemen and their social and cultural configurations in Ottoman times consult Dresch (1989: introduction). Al-Ḥibshī (1983: 245) noted how local events reflected considerations for the external world. For a biography of Idrīsī and his charismatic father see O’Fahey (1990), Abāẓah (1979: 196) and al-‘Aqīlī (1982: 626–65). Although a more elaborate analysis of the micropolitics of the highland areas is needed, it is, nevertheless safe to conclude that political conditions were contentious and in constant flux during this period. I suspect, as a result, it is the second-tiered rivalries evident in the primary materials that animate highland Yemen society at the time. Many lower-level shuyūkh were able to assert greater local power through the patronage of the outside forces European imperial rivalries brought to the region. Idrīsī, in particular, was able to exploit the relative obscurity of future allies with a variety of credentials enhanced by the dynamics of internal tensions between Zaydī shuyūkh, merchants’ commercial needs and a semi-permanently based Ottoman element that animated all these factors. I do not consider the physical boundaries of tribal sections necessarily important. For, if Dresch is right and physical boundaries remain more or less fixed, individuals are clearly making dramatically different political choices within these identifiable

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tribal boundaries. Such openly divergent choices made by individuals and temporary clusters of actors suggest a multiplicity of interests within such imagined ‘territories’, thus highlighting why tribal identifications are on many occasions secondary to other factors that contribute to peoples’ political or socio-economic choices (Dresch 1989: 90). BBA, YA.RES 71/35, Yıldız Saray to Meclis vükela, No. 339, dated 5 Safer 1312 [9 August 1894]. It must be pointed out that this is not an extraordinary moment of state crisis, but a part of a process that can be read in literally hundreds of documents in the archives. The key is how one reads a document, not that it can be translated. Therefore, asking the right kind of questions about the material that historians and social scientists use is a part of the training necessary to successfully work in any archive. See, for example, the Ottoman-language daily, Tanin, Number 438 (21 November 1909) for a depiction of life in far-off Yemen through the eyes of an Istanbul intellectual. The Ottoman government was particularly concerned at the foreign activity in the Red Sea as per the uninhabited islands. See BBA, MV, 1/20, dated Receb 1302 (April 1885). For a study on the British in the area see Abāẓah (1987: 277–327). For early reactions from Istanbul’s principal rival in Yemen see PRO, FO, 78/2753, private letter addressed to Sir Henry Elliot, dated Aden, 2 January 1873, documents 8–12. For an example of how Ottoman imperial projects were conceived in Istanbul see report from the Ottoman Defence Ministry on the advantages of expanding the famous Ḥijāz railroad down to Yemen. BBA, Bab-i Ali Evrak Odasi, 286439, dated April 1912. Demonstrations of the interconnectedness of regional economy, political ambitions of locals and global flows of commodities such as salt may be found throughout the late Ottoman period in Yemen. These connections forced the Ottoman state administrators in Yemen to actively work within a local as opposed to a universal context. BBA, Irade-i Şura Devlet, Report number 639, dated 21 Cemaziyelahir 1305 [10 March 1888] for instance, discusses the impact of shortages of Indian salt on local relations in Ottoman Yemen. BBA, YA.HUS, 472/61, Sublime Porte to the Yemen Governor. It was reported that the old Imam [identified as a criminal in the document] is ill in Ṣa‘dah. Some of the ‘ulamā’ from the Ḥāshid district are reportedly in Ṣa‘dah to elect a new leader, later known to be Imām Yaḥyā. The Ottoman governor was assigned to infiltrate and assure the right successor would be elected. 23 Safer 1322 [9 May 1904].

2  The local scramble for ascendancy and the rise of modern polities

1 Here I must depart from Wedeen’s interesting exercise, which asserts that there is a presence in larger Yemeni society of a sensibility that invests in the unified Yemen state. Although Wedeen was largely accurate in her analysis of events until early 2003 and usefully considers how the absence of a strong Yemeni state could counter-intuitively still ‘generate idioms of affective national connection’ or ‘episodic expressions of national identification’, things have so dramatically changed outside Ṣan‘ā’ that the choice to frame events in Yemen along other meaningful coalescences, such as nationalism, may obscure the specifics taking place in quite distinctly local contexts that articulate a decidedly local concern (Wedeen 2008: 67–102, 201–11, 220–1). 2 Theda Skocpol initiated a crucial reorientation of state theory analysis by arguing how state organizational patterns, especially as institutions engaged in economic and social life, influenced the way nominal non-state actors were involved in politics. As argued throughout this book, it is the often tense, but also collaborative, relationship that segments of Yemeni society have with either the Ottoman or British imperial state

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13

14

or the increasingly violent Ṣāliḥ regime that politicizes certain local conflicts and in turn, as a response, directly or indirectly affects the nature of state policies themselves (Skocpol 1985). Unfortunately foreign fishing giants operate with impunity in Yemeni, Somali and Eritrean waters, stealing the wealth of these poor countries and devastating local ecologies as well as fishing cultures. When Yemenis do make money off their natural resources such as fish, much of the money goes into the hands of corrupt officials or local mafias who smuggle up to 20 per cent of the country’s total production to waiting foreign fishing companies without paying taxes, clearly hurting local economies (SABA 2009; Assamiee 2009). Readers familiar with the history of the American southwest should appreciate the dynamics at play in Yemen’s various borderlands, both at the turn of the century and today (DeLay 2009). Whereas smuggling illegal migrants from the African coast into Yemen has received most of the media attention, Yemen’s place within the narcotics trade is increasingly evident. Recent arrests reveal how Baluchi smugglers of heroin or pills passing to and from the Gulf states often infiltrate local networks and help pass the material onwards, either to and from Latakia in Cyprus, often via Syria, or overland into a thriving Saudi market. See ‘al-ḥawthiyūn yaslimūn al-jabil al-āḥmar lilquwāt al-maslaḥah’, in Yemen Today Net, dated 28 February 2009 (last accessed 1 March 2009). Specific to Yemenigrown qāt that is smuggled into Saudi Arabia, producing enormous profits because prices have risen 300 per cent since the latest outbreak of war in the north, see Zaydi (2009). Several studies have made inroads into this important relationship along the East African coast from Somalia, southward, one of the more useful being Felicitas Becker (2004). See enclosed dispatch from political agent in Aden, S. B. Haines, in PRO, FO, 78/373, no. 21, Campbell to Palmerston, 28 February 1839. Indeed, Haines was already communicating to Muḥammad ‘Alī’s main commander in Yemen that Aden was a British ‘protectorate’ after the successful completion of a treaty with one of the region’s ‘sulṭāns’, a designation Muḥammad ‘Alī’s son, Ibrāhīm, refused to accept. See second enclosed dispatch in same file, dated Haines to Ibrāhīm, 25 February 1839. As is clearly taking place in Somalia under the Islamic Courts movement led by Shaykh Sharīf Shaykh (Anderson 2009). These impressions are reinforced by the observations of a French traveller to the region. See AMAE, Paris, Fonds Marine, 3JJ/359, ‘Rapport sur la navigation de la mer Rouge de Th. [Théophile] Lefebvre au ministre Beaupré de Freycinet’, dated Paris, 20 July 1840. Guillaume Lejean reported extensively on the merchants of Suakin and their links to other ports in the Red Sea and India. AMAE, Paris, AE, Commercial Correspondence, vol. 2 (1864), fols. 34–5. Even in the Najd region, struggles over power reflected the inability of regional economies to support themselves in face of ecological disasters hitting the entire peninsula (Steinberg 2004: 77–81). See for example, BBA, I.DH, 13820, dated 3 S 1267 [7 December 1850] for a petition addressed to the governors of Massawa, Jeddah and Mecca demanding relief from the heavy tax burden imposed by the Khedive. See also complaint by Ḥudaydah merchants in PRO, FO, 195/579, Stephen Page, vice-consul in Jeddah to Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, Ambassador, dated Constantinople, 9 March 1858. For an overview of this period, see (Farah 2002: 58–81). See also British review of political instability in the highlands including a letter from one of the Zaydī imams seeking British recognition in IOR, R/20/A/209, Coghlan to Anderson, 16 January 1859. Among these reports, one may consult BBA, I.DH, 14528 and 15808.

166  Notes 15 See various reports out of Yemen during this period, which again expressed fears of outside influence on locals. BBA, YEE, 12/14, Officer Mustafa Sabri Bey’s Report (Layiha), dated 29 Za 1297 [2 November 1880]. 16 See IOR, R/20/A/376, no. 96/241. G. West, British Consulate, Suez to Major General C. W. Tremenheere, Political Resident Aden, dated Suez, 3 June 1871. The Ottoman reformer Midhat Pasha recommended in a nine-point plan ways for the Ottomans to secure the Red Sea from British domination, including fortifying the Yemeni coast and modernizing their merchant fleet. BBA, Irade Meclis-i Mahsus, 1661, 2 Ra 1287 [1 June 1870], p. 5. 17 The battle for the port of Ḥudaydah that took place in January of 1870 makes this clear. It is here that a coalition of Ottoman troops and groups of men sent by Ḥamūd bin ‘Alī Ḥamīd, Shaykh ‘Umar and other highland communities defeated Muḥammad ibn ‘Azīz’s forces (Raşid 1874: 1: 317–18). 18 For preliminary attempts to consolidate Ottoman influence along the Arabian coastline, see Naval Ministry report to the palace in BBA, Irade Meclis-i Mahsus, 1611, 2 Ra 1287 [1 June 1870], pp. 3, 13. 19 That said, some rightly noted that it would be a mistake to think of these movements in monolithic terms (Carapico 1998b: 204) In a similar fashion, South Korean, German, American and Saudi ‘missionaries’ have flooded into Yemen since 1990, offering ‘development’ in one hand and some form of religious salvation in the other. The consequences of these new dynamics have yet to be studied beyond innuendo in respect to the ‘Wahhabis’ (Stiftl 1999). 20 ‘Taiz Uprisings’, Yemen Times, 14 November 2007. 21 Sayyāghī’s treatment of ‘tribal excesses’ in which the raiding and pillaging of areas led by a who’s-who of Yemeni ‘tribal’ patriarchs speaks more of imagined orders in the past than any serious sociological insight into what made this period different (al-Sayyāghī 1978: 125–6). Dresch has specifically addressed this genre of Yemeni historiography (1989: 198–275). 22 Raşid writes of the desperate efforts of two members of a prominent family in the Manakhah region to secure Ottoman assistance and supplies. The two brothers, Shaykh Ḥusayn al-‘Amrī and ‘Alī al-‘Amrī, played key roles for years to come in the Ottoman effort to maintain order in Yemen, as the little region they controlled was key to supplying troops based in the highlands (Raşid 1874: 98–100). 23 This is made clear in Raşid (1874: 129–31) with regards to the pockets of resistance in the ‘Arhab district, just north of Ṣan‘ā’; the so-called culture of resistance in ‘Arhab was more likely a reflection of the rivalry between villages that had successfully won over Ottoman support and those that had not. 24 This is especially true in regard to the selection of symbolic leaders of the Zaydī community. Almost immediately upon entering Ṣan‘ā’ in mid-April 1872, the Ottomans were embroiled in the politics over the selection of a Zaydī imam. In the end, through careful negotiation with the most vocal supporters of the Ottoman campaign to capture Ṣan‘ā’, Ottoman commanders appointed a claimant to the succession of the recently discredited Imam (Atif Paşa 1908: 74–7). 25 The arrival of the Ottomans to the highlands created numerous fissures and new crystallizations of local power dynamics around the Zaydī Imāmate. Especially from 1882 onwards, rival claims to the leadership of the larger community came from, among others, Muḥammad al-Ḥūthī, who challenged the two normally recognized Imams of the period: al-Hādī Sharaf al-Dīn and al-Manṣūr Muḥammad (Dresch 1989: 219–20). 26 Idrīsī unabashedly reflects on his successes with gaining local trust in his Bayān (statement/report) published in 1912, Bayān li-l-nās wa-hudā wa-maw‘izah li-l-muttaqīn, reprinted and translated by Bang (1996: 145–88). 27 Reflective of his growing importance, the Ottoman state sought to coopt Idrīsī throughout the early twentieth century as his activities threatened their imperial designs. See

Notes  167 28 29

30 31

32

33

34

for instance, BBA, DH.MUI, 1–1/10, dated 24 Muharrem 1327 [16 February 1909] and BBA, MV, 227/248, dated 24 Zilkade 1330 [6 November 1912]. BBA, DH.MUI, 1–1/33 27 Safer 1327 [21 March 1909], report from Ṣan‘ā’ that Imām Yaḥyā is having trouble keeping his various military allies loyal, suggesting a fresh series of losses to Idrīsī as a result of these fluid lines of loyalty. Idrīsī forged a formal alliance with the British in 1915 to fight Ottoman forces, thus opening a second front as British troops faced the Ottomans from Aden. See PRO, WO, 95/163825 Report from Political Resident, Aden D. G. L. Shaw, Major-General to Residency, Cairo. ‘The War: Egypt, Turkey’ 18 October 1915. For an early order by Ottoman officials to capture Idrīsī, see BBA, BEO, 265661 [February 1909]. BBA, DH. MUI, 1–1/12, 25 Muharrem 1327 [17 February 1909]. The case of Idrīsī shows that such concern with kinship and tribe has far more play among European-influenced categories than for those on the ground in Yemen. For examples of intra-‘group’ strife elsewhere, see BBA, DH.MUI, 1–6/17, dated 3 Zilhaade 1327 [16 December 1909], Documents 3 and 6. Imām Yaḥyā’s official historian, for instance, noted the role of merchants in opposing his patron’s rule during the late Ottoman period (al-Wāsi‘ī 1928: 121) while seemingly marginal (and thus pliable) individuals sent to Baghdad for training by the Yemeni state became the fountainheads of a revolutionary era (Burrowes 2005), as did humble migrant workers who created a powerful current of change barely contained by the Ṣāliḥ regime (Burrowes 1985; Chaudhry 1997). Among the more contested areas was around ‘Amrān, which pitted many small communities against each other. I am suggesting the underlying issue for them was the search for links to the outside world. For a contemporary view of events, see Raşid (1874: 168–207). This was always made clear in reports from the region and when the Ottoman state intervened to repair damage done by previous administrators. For two revealing reports from Shakir and Ferid Pasha late in the reign of Abdülhamid, see BBA, YEE, 8/20, dated 24 Muharrem 1325 [9 March 1907] and a later attempt to implement reforms by the Porte, who sent Ḥusayn Hilmi Pasha to Yemen, BBA, YEE, 8/19, dated 11 Safer 1325 [26 March 1907].

3  The contingent state

1 As already discussed in the last chapter, the treaty was signed between representatives of the Zaydī community – Imām Yaḥyā in particular – and the Ottoman imperial state led by Marshall Aḥmet Izzet Pasha. The treaty ended hostilities that had continued sporadically since 1904. In return for his cooperation, Istanbul conceded significant local powers to the Imām, including a greater role in adjudicating locally through his version of the Sharī‘a, and administering, on behalf of the Ottoman state, the collection of taxes (Sālim 1971: 135–61). 2 BBA, Y.A. HUS, 167/74, dated 18 Cemaziyelahir 1298 (17 May 1881). 3 Kühn has provided an important insight into the evolution of this administrative policy of devolving power to locals to help manage the affairs of various regions in Yemen (2007: 329–31). 4 On Basuhī, who the British authorities in alliance with Idrīsī by 1915 against the Ottomans suggest was the ‘most powerful man in the ‘Asīr’, see Arab Bureau (1916: 107). The British intelligence is clearly suggesting that Basuhī actually ran the region, with Idrīsī serving the powerful merchant as a front man. Idrīsī seems to have performed his duties in the ‘Asīr in a way reminiscent of modern authorities in Yemen and the United States in that it assured the masking of commercial activities by their commercial paymasters. In this regard, Basuhī and two brothers had reportedly cornered a lucrative smuggling business that extended the length of the Red Sea.

168  Notes 5 When Ottoman reformers visited places such as Ḥudaydah to inspect the progress of projects such as those to build a modern port, they often sent home a long list of corruption cases. In the end, as reported by one of the more prolific Ottoman writers on Yemen, the Ḥudaydah port was a complete disaster. Obviously, years of investment did not result in a better port for Yemen (Seni 1910). That past projects were failures did not stop Seni from proposing to the Young Turk regime to build up Yemen’s port facilities, this time building a completely new complex just a few kilometres north of Ḥudaydah (Seni 1909: 23–5). 6 South of Ḥudaydah, the new Ottoman administration invested heavily in placating an otherwise rebellious Zaranīq community that had undermined the crucial trade routes from the southern highlands and Mukhā on the coast; see BBA, DH.MUI, 82/17, dated 26 Rebiulevvel 1328 [12 April 1910]. 7 It should be noted that post-Ottoman historians have marginalized Idrīsī (al-Wāsi‘ī 1928: 338–43). 8 Some even suggest that the Ḥūthī ‘Believing Youth’ were the beneficiaries of both Ṣāliḥ government funding and Saudi-linked Salafī largess (al-Ṣan‘ā’nī 2005: 4, 32, 64), a claim that cannot be taken seriously but is nevertheless useful as it highlights how political slurs reflect temporary loyalties among the intended readers. 9 Ḥizb al-Ḥaqq’s polemic against Wahhabism is perhaps best articulated by the party’s secretary general, Sayyid Aḥmad al-Shāmī, as quoted in Haykel (1999: 198). 10 Despite a thorough survey of all possible ‘tribal’ versus state conflicts recorded to date in 2003, the International Crisis Group and its well-connected analyst could not predict the outbreak of violence in Ṣa‘dah (International Crisis Group 2003). 11 A document from the office of Imām Yaḥyā, found in Abū Ghānim (1990: 539), speaks of the ill effects the blockade has on the local economy and its impact on local politics. 12 Reports from British intelligence noted locals knew they would be starving without the Idrīsī ports open. As a result, many saw Idrīsī as the true saviour, with at times spiritual overtones , while Imām Yaḥyā lost credibility during this period of depredation. PRO, WO, 95/163825, Report from Political Resident, Aden D.  G.  L. Shaw, Major-General to Residency, Cairo: ‘The War: Egypt, Turkey’, dated 18 October 1915. 13 It is important to note that there is ample evidence of such leaps occurring throughout Yemen’s history and not just in this 1907–18 period. In the period immediately following the First World War, scores of examples litter the history books of ‘tribes’ jumping from one patron to another, completely ignoring the logic of segmentary units stressed by some anthropologists (Zabārah 1956: 3: 27–9, 76–90, 119). 14 BBA, DH.MUI, 1–6/17 1327.Z.3 (Documents 3 and 6). 15 One may speculate that, as time passed and news of Idrīsī’s wealth and influence spread, the Imām’s inability to pay his allies because of stinginess noted by observers led to the many defections noted in British intelligence reports. Interview with Lieut.-Colonel Ismā‘īl Effendi, commandant of Ta‘izz Garrison, as reported by W. F. Bainbridge, dated 19 February 1919 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 401–9). 16 For the alliance the two had before 1911, see Sālim (1971: 162–3) and BBA DH.MUI, 1–2/18 1327.S.18. 17 A complete list of allies can be found in ‘Notes of an interview with Sayyid Mustafa al-Idrisi on 20th August 1917’, report by Major Wood [?] (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 112–13). 18 Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J.  H. Stewert, Aden Protectorate, 24 November 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 203). 19 For a detailed copy of the agreement, see BBA MV, 158/38, 12 Eylülevvel 1327/25 September 1911. 20 Elsewhere, the Imām reportedly had Sayyid Maḥmud Darwīsh’s family members held

Notes  169

21

22 23 24

25

26 27 28

29 30

31 32 33

34 35

hostage to ensure his good behaviour. Darwīsh, as a result of this extortion, collected tithes on behalf of the Imām in the districts of Qa‘ṭabah and Yāfi‘ country. Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J. H. Stewert, Aden Protectorate, 24 November 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 203). Idrīsī also claimed to be holding a letter from Imām Yaḥyā’s oldest son, Ahmad, who requested assistance from Idrīsī to overthrow the Imām and set himself in his place. Report to First Assistant Resident in Aden from Major B. R. Reilly, dated 20 October 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 131). Report to First Assistant Resident in Aden from Major B. R. Reilly, dated 20 October 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 124) and Report to First Assistant Resident in Aden from Major B. R. Reilly, dated 20 April 1918 (ibid.: 307). Letter to Political Resident, Aden, from L. F. Nalder, dated 29 June 1916 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 84). It is noted that prominent defections took place when relations between Idrīsī and Britain cooled. At the end of June 1914, Shārif Ḥusayn bin Khudān and Shaykh ‘Alī bin Khudān, along with several other Shārifs in Banī Marwan and Bilād Misṭabah in the vicinity of Tihāmah, paid a visit to the Imām suggesting a large-scale defection could be arranged. They apparently solicited support against those loyal to Idrīsī in Misṭabah and Banī Marwan, and the Imām astutely prepared a military expedition on the same day under the leadership of Qāḍī Muḥammad bin Sa‘īd al-Sayle and Sayyid Qāsim bin Imām al-Hadī. PRO, FO, 78/53785, no. 107, Letter from Sulṭān Ali Bin Ahmad Bin Ali of Abdali to Colonal H. F. Jacobs in 33rd weekly letter from Aden Residency, dated 19 August 1914. Notes of an interview with Sayyid Mustafa al-Idrisi [sic] on 20 August 1917, report by Major Wood [?] (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 114). This may have been the central reason why Idrīsī refused to engage the enemy in any large-scale battle for long periods of time: his army was highly unpredictable. For a conventional study of Zindānī that misses these crucial economic roles he played in Yemeni politics, see Johnsen (2006: 3–5). See Yemen Times, 26 November 2001, pp. 1 and 2. For the numerous separate cases of local communities in the Ṣirwāḥ (located between Ma’rib and Ṣan‘ā’) resorting to kidnappings to gain leverage vis-à-vis the Ṣāliḥ state as well as regional rivals, see among others Yemen Times, 3 July 2000, 17 July 2000, 4 September 2000 and 11 December 2000. Founded by Abū Ḥasan Zayn al-‘Abadīn al-Midhar, who had military training and considerable funds, the group became a key asset to the Ṣāliḥ regime as the government sought to infiltrate newly incorporated South Yemen. A cynic would point out that local Yemenis have for years been taken hostage as a means to coerce families or the government to distribute funds to aggrieved communities; the attention paid to this incident and the subsequent sloppy handling of the ‘rescue’ that received applause from Europe and the United States was forthcoming only because the hostages were European and white. See Jamhī (2008) for a summary of these events that is sympathetic to the regime. For details on the Abyan events, see Carapico (2000). Clearly the Imām had an interest in maintaining complete dominance over judicial rulings in his territories, which was one of the main concessions given to him by the Ottoman governor in the Da‘‘ān agreement. See an example of Imāmate intervention dated 8 Rajib 1330 [July 1912]. Found in Sālim (1995: 229–31). In the Ta‘izz and Ḥudaydah regions where he had no influence, such demands were never acknowledged. ASMAI, 91/9 f. 125 Telegraph no. 1779, Matrino to MAE, dated Cairo, 9 July 1905. As discussed later, the permission Ṣāliḥ has granted to US to use unmanned drones to murder ‘suspected’ al-Qā‘idah sympathizers (and anyone who happen to be around),

170  Notes

36 37

38 39

40 41 42

43

along with the very aggressive position regarding internal dissent, has angered many who believe the regime has reneged on previous agreements that preserved local relations with the state. Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J.  H. Stewert, Aden Protectorate, dated 20 September 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 185). A proclamation issued jointly by the Ottoman governor and the Imām stated that those Zaydī opposing the court decision were rebels and that the government, in the hands of the Imām and Ottomans, would eliminate them with appropriate force. The joint declaration called upon the people of Yemen to defend the state against these rebels. (Incidentally, Muḥammad Idrīsī was also included in this list of infamous rebels.) Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J.  H. Stewert, Aden Protectorate, dated 7 September 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 181). See Major Wood’s Report from 20 August 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 112–16). Again, the Imām offered to pay 13,000 thalers for Abū Ra’s’s death and unilaterally have the three responsible for his execution – Ḥusni Bay, Ilias Bay and Muḥammad Nāṣir Muqbil of Nawi’a – sent to Ṣan‘ā’ for discipline. Such a gesture was important for the Imām, who, again, had specific claims on judicial grounds. Ultimately, the Imām did not honour either promise, either because the revolt was unaffected by the second proposal or because he simply could not arrest those responsible because they were key Ottoman allies. Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J. H. Stewert, Aden Protectorate, dated 9 November 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 193). A photograph of the document is in Messick (1993: 232). Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J.  H. Stewert, Aden Protectorate, dated 20 September 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 185). Perhaps the most prominent threat to Imām Yaḥyā’s authority in the latter stages of Ottoman rule and then throughout the 1920s and 1930s was also the family he had to rely most on to raise troops, money and leadership in the Imām’s various armed struggles to consolidate power. The Wazīr family, in particular Sayyid ‘Abdallāh bin Aḥmad al-Wazīr, became so prominent in Imām Yaḥyā’s military campaign against Idrīsī and later the Saudis, who had expanded deep into the ‘Asīr. The subsequent crisis caused by the lost of the ‘Asīr so weakened Yaḥyā that he was compelled to exile all members of the family to relatively distant corners of his fledgling kingdom. The result was years of intrigue that ultimately created an undercurrent of opposition and the rise of a domestic resistance movement known as the Free Yemeni Movement. See PRO, FO, 371/21825, Report number E4327/716/91, B. W. Seager to FO, dated Aden 11 April 1938. Report to General Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner, Cairo from J.  H. Stewart, Aden Protectorate, dated 7 September 1917 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 6: 182).

4  The frontier as a measure of modern state power

1 The fact that this border dispute also led to direct clashes between Yemeni forces and the Saudi state is a crucial issue. Sadly little research has actually connected local politics in places such as Ṣa‘dah with this ongoing dispute, which has shaped much of the 1990s in southern Arabia (Schofield 1997). 2 Much of the work of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault uses spatial metaphors that tend to assert a functional banality to the places and peoples encapsulated by the map. This leaves out the possibility for challenges and modifications of these peoples

Notes  171 3

4

5 6

7

8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15

and places. See for instance Althusser and Balibar (1971) and Michel Foucault (1980: 70–2). For a copy of the final meetings which sealed the actual delimitation of the border that would eventually be codified by a treaty signed between the two states in March 1914, see PRO, FO, 371/1805, ‘Minutes of meeting at Shaykh Said signed by Colonel Mustafa (Ottoman Commissioner) and G. H. Fitzmaurice (British Commissioner)’, dated 20 April 1920; for a copy of the signed convention, see PRO, FO, 372/573, ‘Signing of the Convention between the United Kingdom and Ottoman Government relative to Aden boundary’, dated 4 and 9 March 1914. Said was correct to locate the use of geography in colonial thought and practice. It was a particular method of analysis that orientated the world in geographic form, collapsing much of the world into a single analytical unit with a specific essence that helped construct, in turn, the identity of the ‘West’ (Said 1978: 49–71). For more discussion on this reading of place in respect to the space delineated by maps, see Tuan (1977: 31–129) and Gregory (1994: 23–41). In time, the Aden administrators developed similar relationships with communities even further in the interior. Clusters of allies the British would call the Faḍlī, ‘Amīrī, Yāfi‘ī, Ḥawshabī and ‘Alawī ‘tribes’ were all to be governed through appointed ‘sulṭāns’ or ‘amīrs’ (acknowledged by the British through formal ceremonies and treaties), who would delegate the power to administer much of Yemen to compliant locals (Waterfeld 1968). The Ottomans’ principal administrative architect of the 1872–3 campaign into the Ta‘izz highlands offers an important insight into the strategic thinking of his government as they basically stumbled into the role of dominant power in North Yemen (Raşid 1874: 2: 258–9, 351–5). BBA, Irade-Meclis-i Mahsus 1922, Aḥmed Muḥtar Pasha’s report to the Grand Vizier, dated 10 Kanun-ı sani 1288 [22 January 1873], document 1–2. On the extent to which courts were in operation by 1875–6, see BBA, A.MKT.MHM, 486/18, Muṣṭafa ‘Asīm Pasha to Grand Vizier, dated 15 Temmuz 1292 [27 July 1876]. PRO, FO, 424/32, Translation of letter from Sulṭān Faḍl of Laḥj to Major-General Tremenhere received 17 May 1872, enclosed in Major-General Tremenhere to Gonne at Bombay Castle, file no. 4, dated Aden, 21 May 1872. ‘I need not scarcely refer . . . to the feeling with which they [local allies] will regard us, if they are coerced by the Turks against their will, while we, as they would suppose, looked on with indifference or with no power to prevent such a proceeding.’ PRO, FO, 424/32, Brigadier-General Schneider to Gonne at Bombay Castle, file no. 5, dated Aden, 26 October 1872. PRO, FO, 424/32, The Governor-General of India in Council to the Duke of Argyll, file no. 30B, dated Fort William, 14 February 1873. On 10 February 1873, Schneider communicated to the Ottoman authorities in Ta‘izz the list of local shuyūkh whom Aden considered to be under treaty with the British. The tribes under this ‘Protectorate’ – ’Abdalī (Laḥj), Faḍlī, ‘Aqrabī, Ḥawshabī, ‘Alawī, ‘Amirī, Subayhī, Yāfi‘ī, ‘Awlāqī – were to be treated as formally independent entities that would be firmly under British protection. PRO, FO, 424/32, BrigadierGeneral Schneider to Mr. Gonne in Bombay, file no. 30B enclosed letter 15, dated Aden, 10 February 1873. Interestingly, the formal declaration of the Protectorate did not include territorial boundaries, as the geography of the region was more or less unknown. IOR, R/20/E/96, no. 38, Declaration of Protectorate, Government of India (Foreign Department) to Duke of Argyll, dated Fort William, 11 April 1873. PRO, FO, 424/32, Brigadier-General Schneider to Mr. Gonne, file no. 52, enclosed letter 5, dated Aden, 18 May 1873. BBA, HR.SYS, 90/3, correspondence no. 5516/166, Embassy to Sublime Porte, dated London, 13 June 1874.

172  Notes 16 PRO, FO, 424/32, Brigadier-General Schneider to the Duke of Argyll, file no. 42, dated Aden, 27 May 1874. 17 See PRO, FO, 84/1813, Kaiser Wilhelm to King of Portugal, 19 October 1884, f. 302–3. For the British, the challenge was deemed part of the consequences of being ‘the Colossus’ that dominated the outer world. In face of other challenges, including the Irish rebellion, the Afghan wars, the Boers, Mahdists and Egypt, the German challenge in Africa seemed modest to most observers. See PRO, FO, 84/1813, no. 152, Enclosed clipping, ‘Contra Inglattera’, The Liberal, dated 14 October 1884, f. 3. 18 For British-commissioned surveys of Yemen at the time that have been the staple for historians of the British Empire, see Hunter (1968) and Hunter and Sealy (1968). 19 This process by which conditions on the ground transformed how Ottoman administrators such as Aḥmed Muḥtar Pasha would run Yemen is clear once early efforts to impose outside models of governance failed. BBA, Irade Meclis-i Mahsus 1922, Aḥmed Muḥtar Pasha’s report to the Meclis-i Vükelâ, dated 23 Zilkade 1289 [22 January 1873], docs 1 and 2. 20 Ottoman officials were opposed to such activities almost immediately; their complaints lasted well into the formal process of delineating a frontier between the two empires discussed below. BBA, Meclis-i Vükelâ Mazbatakları, 106/89, dated 28 Rebiyülahir 1321 [25 July 1903]. 21 BBA, HR.SYS, 90/7, London Embassy to Said Pasha, no. 15212/111, dated London, 14 May 1892. 22 Events over the period 1900–11 represented a window of opportunity for Italy in particular, which would eventually establish an alliance with a local power-broker in Mukhā by the name of ‘Umar Salim and, as demonstrated earlier, with Idrīsī to the north. BBA, HR.SYS, 1568/2. For a detailed report on the French connection in Yemen’s weapons trade that also secured them political leverage see BBA, Y.MTV, 238/82, dated 14 Şevval 1320 [15 January 1903]. 23 IOR, L/P &S 10/63, P.  J. Maitland, The Political Resident, Aden, to Sir W. LeeWarner, dated Aden, 6 November 1901 and enclosures. 24 All too often, the diplomatic exchanges taking place in this period would use rhetoric that denigrated local actors, calling their actions ‘illegal’, and ostensibly denying their right of participation. These so-called illegal activities involved a number of actors who were operating in a field of logic that carried a great deal of importance on the ground but increasingly did not register in the language of empire. This is the beginning of a tragic disconnect that I would suggest constitutes the real ‘beginning of the end’ for the British and Ottoman empires – something the Americans should consider as they expand their ‘war on terror’ to Yemen and the larger Red Sea area. For a detailed report see BBA, YA. HUS, 418/65, dated 16 Rebiyülahir 1319 [2 August 1901]. Further disturbances in the formalities of power recently established in Bombay caused a rise in tensions among locals and British officials, who requested an increasing number of troops to be dispatched along the still unmarked frontier. BBA, YA. HUS, 418/66, dated 17 Rebiyülahir 1319 [3 August 1901]. 25 IOR, R/20/E/233, Wahab to Secretary to Governor of India, dated Aden, 16 May 1902. 26 IOR, R/20/E/233, Wahab to Governor of India, Foreign Department, dated Dhali’, 7 April 1902. 27 For early reference to this position see BBA, Y.PRK.UM, 22/93, Meḥmed Ziya to Palace, dated 27 Mayıs 1307 [8 June 1891]. 28 IOR, R/20/E/234, Wahab to Secretary of Governor of India, dated 13 June 1902. 29 Indeed, as reported by Col. Wahab, the chief liaison for the Government of India in the negotiations, Ottoman troops and their local allies were collecting taxes in key districts – Ḥumaydah, ‘Amrah and Wadī Safīyyah – that constituted a significant threat to the road network leading to Aden. IOR, R/20/E/233, Wahab to Secretary to the Governor of India, dated 23 April 1902, and summary of Wahab’s reports in IOR,

Notes  173 30 31 32

33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45

R/20/E/233, Political Resident to Political Department in Bombay, dated Aden, 24 April 1902. IOR, L/P&S/10/65, no. 1, ‘Memorandum on the Boundary of the British Protectorate near Aden’, dated Foreign Office, 3 January 1903. IOR, L/P&S/10/66, no. 1, R. A. Wahab, Commissioner, Aden Boundary Commission to Government of India, dated Aden, 20 March 1904. British officials tied to Ibn Sa‘ūd had accompanied and advised him during his successful conquest of the Ḥijāz, his defeat of his erstwhile allies the Wahhābīs, the incorporation of their other client state in the region, Idrīsī, in 1926 and finally the imposition of the Treaty of Ṭā’if at the expense of Yemen’s Imām Yaḥyā in 1934. British Legation Dispatch to Foreign Office, no. 209, dated Jeddah, 18 July 1934 (Ingrams and Ingrams 1993: 8: 187). The actual border that had been ‘temporarily’ approved by the victorious Ibn Sa‘ūd and the defeated Imām Yaḥyā only delineated a frontier up to Jabal al-Thar; all points east, including the lands in question, belonged to communities known in the literature as the Wā’ilah and Wada’a, who have long been linked to the Bakīl federation (Gingrich and Heiss 1986). The details of this relationship or partnership are still poorly studied but, after even a cursory look at the published documents, it is clear a much more active British team played a role in the territorial expansion of their Saudi partner in the 1920s and 1930s. This expansion was all at the expense of the Hāshimites, Rashīdī, Idrīsī and Mutawakkil in Yemen. Among others involved in these British machinations was Philby, a close confidant of Ibn Sa‘ūd. See Philby (1939: 251–9, 431–2) and ‘Summary of Statements made by Mr. Philby about his Expedition to Shabwa and beyond’, enclosed in Message to British Minister in Jeddah, no. 16, dated Jeddah, 18 February 1937, found in Schofield (1993: 20: 675–8). Copy of treaty is in Schofield (1993: 20: 48–9). Another source to consult regarding the text of the treaty is Quick and Tuscon (1992: 4: 336–45). Coincidently, the fighting in 1994 around al-Buga’, located just east of the unmarked border, was in the same area where much of the fighting since 2000 is taking place. He occasional had his ‘open letters’ to Ṣāliḥ published in local media, including the English-language Yemen Times: ‘Bin Shaji’ Appeals to President Saleh’, Yemen Times, 19 February 2001. ‘Tribesmen Blew-Up Border Demarcation Marks’, Yemen Times, 21 January 2002. ‘Jeddah Treaty 2000 Did Injustice to Yemen’, Yemen Times, 17 July 2000. Shaykh bin Shāj‘i Interview, Yemen Times, 3 September 2000. These tensions played out in many forms over the subsequent years, including several violent confrontations between locals and the police and even assignation attempts against top Saudi officials such as the interior minister, Prince Nayif, who was accused of being the architect of this growing policy to persecute the Ismā‘īl of Najrān (Coker 2009). ‘Follow-up to 2000 Jeddah Treaty: Yemen gets border posts’, Yemen Times, 13 February 2005. See 26 September, 22 June 2000, pp. 8–9 for Arabic text of treaty. Despite the ongoing war along the entire ‘Asīr border the smuggling of drugs, weapons and migrants has clearly not abated. According to officials, Saudi forces had arrested over the second half of 2009 127,875 ‘infiltrators’ and 2,206 smugglers as well as seizing 30  kg of gunpowder, narcotic substances found in 2,140 cases and large numbers of handguns (al-Majid 2009). This kind of business has clearly not reduced, despite the fact the border has been increasingly fortified since 2004. See for example ‘Saudi foils bid to smuggling arms on Yemen border’, Khaleej Times, 3 September 2005; ‘Saudi Arabia: Terrorist Groups Trading Drugs for Money and Weapons’, al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 5 September 2005; ‘Weapons Haul in Najran’, Arab

174  Notes 46

47

48 49

50 51 52

News, 26 November 2005; ‘Security Tightened across Yemeni–Saudi Borders’, Yemen Observer, 28 February 2006. The Saudis now admit that it has created a 10-km ‘kill zone’ within Yemeni territory (Lyon 2009), something that enrages Yemeni opposition figures and may even lead to greater sympathy for the Ḥūthī. As mentioned by Ḥasan Zayid, the leader of the Joint Meeting Parties, Yemen’s largest opposition coalition party, Yemenis are beginning to read this policy as expansionism at Yemen’s expense (Yemen Post 2009). Officially, the forced relocation of upwards of 250 villages along the border is for the safety of the inhabitants; informants, however, fear their relocation north of Abhā marks a policy of permanently changing the demography of the region (Nebehay 2009). ‘Fencing the Kingdom: EADS Lands Huge Saudi Border Deal’, Defense Industry Daily, 19 July 2009. The online source Yementoday has provided a useful analysis of the growing US interest in Yemen as it begins to see ‘security threats’ emerging from the Ḥūthī activities in the region. See Yementoday Net, 16 December 2009: (accessed 22 December 2009). See Yemen Post, 26 November 2007. See ‘Saudi–Yemen border closed by Disgruntled Shaykh’, YemenOnline, 1 March 2009. It has been reported that the Saudis are making strong demands on neighbouring countries to send their best forces to help subdue what may actually be a much larger, region-wide rebellion, even within Saudi territories itself. Whereas Egypt has declined the invitation to send commandos, Jordan has reportedly contributed ‘several hundred troops’, as a response to reports of Shī‘a members of local armed forces who made up the bulk of the border defence units refusing to engage in the war against the local populations of the Ṣa‘dah region (World Tribune 2009).

5  Unification and the roots of Ṣāliḥ’s authoritarian push

1 As noted earlier, already in the 1920s the British treated the entire Yemeni coast as a sphere of strategic influence, marshalling all of its available assets to thwart potential adversaries as diverse as the Soviets, the Idrīsī state, the Saudis further north and, most importantly, Mussolini from establishing a foothold in even North Yemen, theoretically a sovereign state. Already by 1925, fears of Idrīsī and the Italians based in Eritrea forging a lasting military and commercial alliance animated British concerns. On news that the Italians were supplying Idrīsī with ammunition in exchange for oil concessions, see PRO, FO, 371/10818, report no. 11740/25, Colonial Office to FO, dated 21 March 1925, and PRO, FO, 371/10818, report no. 16858/25, Colonial Office to FO, response to telegram, dated Aden, 15 April 1925. 2 For details of how Egyptian officials secretly meeting with the Imām’s political enemies built up a momentum towards taking Cairo’s offers of weapons and promises of diplomatic support once a new republic was declared on the radio, see Mutahhar (1990: 110–22). 3 Perhaps the nasty Civil War that pitted ‘royalist’ conservatives (today better known as Zaydīs or tribesmen) against republicans had something to do with the rather subdued rhetoric about unifying with a virtually alien society in the south. There are some fascinating war memoirs published concerning the 1962–7 period, especially among Egyptian commanders and soldiers who clearly did not share Nāṣir’s enthusiasm for the effort; see for example al-Hadīdī (1984) and Aḥmad (1992). 4 The best contemporary report on the events leading up to Ṣāliḥ’s rise to power and the turmoil within the leadership in the south is Halliday (1979).

Notes  175 5 On the economic leverage these communities enjoyed in North Yemen throughout the 1970s and 1980s, see Chaudhry (1997: 139–92). 6 The parallel to Iraq’s strategy is intriguing considering that the links between North Yemen and Iraq were strong and Baghdad had been particularly instrumental in the training of Ṣāliḥ’s personal commando units and elite Republican Guard, who were invaluable assets to his regime throughout the 1990s (Baram 1997). 7 On the 1986 coup discussed later, see Halliday (1986: 37–9). 8 Martha Mundy usefully suggests that, as always, rural politics is not based on contesting groups associated with ‘tribes’ but more along individual lines much as if the ‘shaykhs’ were politicians eager to solicit a broad base of support (Mundy 1995: 203–4). 9 For a profile of Aḥmar since he entered into Yemeni politics in 1959, see Koszinowski (1993). 10 For a useful discussion on how political Islām in the form of ‘Wahhabism’ infiltrated Yemen and its consequences, consult Weir (1997). 11 Aḥmar’s memoirs, published just before his death, have shed light on some of these crucial points of fusion between Iṣlāḥ and the Ṣāliḥ regime at a time when Ṣāliḥ most needed it (al-Aḥmar 2007). 12 Much of this insight is drawn from private conversations held throughout the 2000s in Yemen. Informants are universally to remain anonymous. 13 For details of the build-up to the initial agreement and a general outline of the official narrative that has changed since 9/11 see al-‘Abdalī (1997: 123–50). 14 So effective was he in infiltrating southern constituencies that Ṣāliḥ would actually use military units loyal to ‘Alī Nāṣir Muḥammad, the southern leader overthrown in 1986, to help fight the 1994 war against the south (Warburton 1995). 15 Al-Khalij (Sharjah, UAE), 22 November 1992. 16 For a study into how these waves of displaced migrants impacted Yemen society as a whole, see Van Hear (1994: 18–38). 17 Al-‘Aṭṭās interview in al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 30 May 1992. 18 The media suggested that the main source of opposition to the labour activism came from loyalists to Iṣlāḥ, whose staunch anti-socialist platform seemed to encourage violent opposition to the YSP (al-Majalla, 24 June 1992). 19 Interview with Aḥmar, al-Ḥayāt, 11 January 1993. 20 Some have tried to argue that northern animosity towards southerners arises from some perceived secularist traditions that ‘offended’ their values (Nonneman 1997: 72). 21 Sālim Ṣāliḥ interview in al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 23 August 1993. 22 Bayḍ interview in al-Ḥayāt, 28 August 1993. 23 ‘Umār interview in al-Ḥayāt, 18 May 1993. 24 For a list of these demands, see al-Manār (Ṣan‘ā’ weekly), 22 May 1993. 25 KSA authorities in particular played a duopolistic role in the Civil War, at once offering moral support to the efforts to find a diplomatic solution, while supplying weapons and cash to northern Salafī militias that raided the south. At the same time, as published in a Saudi newspaper, Riyāḍ often communicated to Haydar Abū Bakr al-‘Aṭṭās that KSA was willing to recognize the south’s call for separation (al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ, 28 June 1994). 26 Southern newspapers have been reporting for years the particularly nasty patterns of abduction and rape of women in and around military bases in the south. Often, to add to the anguish and outrage, northern judges would implicate the women for immoral acts, exonerating the northern soldiers. See al-Ayyam, no. 265, dated 16 June 1996. 27 See an important collection of articles that originally appeared in the southern journal al-Ayyam smuggled into Yemen. The articles speak of this sentiment that the south is being colonized by the north (al-Saqqāf 1996: 43–45). 28 Over the years, a group of retired military officers from the south organized increasingly large demonstrations demanding compensation, back-pay lost by their

176  Notes

29 30 31

32 33

34 35

36

systematic dismissal, and pensions. The group has grown and is probably the origin of the new wave of southern activism that started with the series of protests in 2007 (HRW 2009: part IV). For a revealing article listing the large proportion of Ṣāliḥ’s family members in the upper levels of the military, see al-Shūrā (Yemeni weekly), 6 March 1994. For insight into how these groups have been identified as effective counterweights to the regime, see Carapico (1996: 282–316). In a tactic familiar elsewhere in the Arab world, during hostilities in 1994, preachers utilized their assumed authority to excommunicate (takfīr) those who resisted the northern armies, a use of faith that continued for much of the period covered here. See al-Shura (Ṣan‘ā’), 20 November 1994. Dresch speaks of a ‘tribal–military–commercial complex’ that was in part a family business in which ‘high-ranking army officers and a few great merchant families all had their hands in each other’s pockets’ (Dresch 1995: 34). These tactics clearly antagonized old allies such as Aḥmar, who at various points in the late 1990s openly sided with not only his own constituents in Iṣlāḥ or within the Ḥāshid confederacy, but even urban poor who protested the state. See his angry response to attacks levied by state officials against protesters (al-Ḥayāt, 24 June 1998). See Yemen Times, 5 May 1997, for election results. In 1993 the GPC won 123 seats; this share of parliament grew to 187 seats in 1997 and 238 (out of 301) in 2003. There has been a poisoning of relations between Ṣāliḥ’s partners following unification, leading to a permanent split in northern Yemen that has resulted in violent conflict for much of the twenty-first century. For an early analysis of this process, see Haykel (1999). That said, so-called Joint Meeting Parties have brought together scattered members of the Iṣlāḥ party now in opposition to the Ṣāliḥ regime and other opposition groups, including at times the YSP. These alliances actually produced surprising results in the 2006 elections, when a joint platform and a shared candidate actually won 22 per cent of the votes. These ‘successes’ in the polls have done nothing, however, to compel the regime to change its course; the Ṣāliḥ regime continues to use violence against his southern opponents with little public outcry from northerners. For more on these recent coalitions see Browers (2007).

Conclusion

1 For several years the Yemen government has been implying that the Ḥūthī group has more than a fleeting connection with Ḥizbullāh. See most recently in al-Ḥayāt, dated 28 March 2009. By default, the larger academic community and media have apparently concluded that the Ṣa‘dah conflict is part of a larger global Shī‘ī plot for regional hegemony. On the Yemeni government’s claims, see Wedeen (2008: 152–5). Today, equal concern must be given to the attempts to link the Southern Movement with ‘al-Qā‘idah’. This constitutes a crude tactic that seems to have seeped into the mainstream media by way of profitable ‘terrorism monitoring’ companies such as SITE Intelligence to ultimately equate the perfectly legitimate complaints of southerners with ‘global terror’ (Bakier 2009). 2 Throughout the summer of 2009, there were public declarations of support for the largely secular Southern Movement by well-known religious personalities, who in many media sources outside Yemen are associated with ‘al-’Qa’īdah’. Among the most prominent are the previously mentioned Ṭāriq al-Faḍlī and the purported leader of ‘al-’Qa’īdah in the Arabian Peninsula’, Nāṣir al-Wuhayshi. As Bakier (2009) has rightly cautioned, such declarations of support of the South Yemen opposition movement could be a crude attempt to exploit the situation or discredit southern separatists. See also Madayash and ‘Abū-Ḥusayn (2009) and Ali (2009).

Notes  177 3 It is increasingly becoming clear that Yemen is being groomed in the media to be the US’s next overseas adventure. For months the recalibration of some form of ‘al-Qā‘idah’ in Yemen, the hyperbole over ‘Iranian interference’ in the Ṣa‘dah crisis and the connections to an attack in the Fort Hood military base have culminated with a Nigerian student apparently supplied with a failed bomb from Yemen (Shear et al. 2009). As of 30 December 2009, the next logical step from this build-up is some publicly acknowledged series of military operations within Yemen. 4 Among others, a recent intellectual history of the representation of Arabs by Joseph A. Massad (2007) examines how western epistemologies both informed the discourse on Middle East culture, social organization and moral limitations and became almost hegemonic within individual ‘Arab’ intellectuals and elites’ conceptions and representations of themselves and their presumed inferior local other. This latter phenomenon of internalizing the ‘knowledge’ of global capitalist epistemology was at the heart of my concerns with the persistence of tribalism, sectarianism and social hierarchies in literature on Yemen. 5 Among the dozens of recent studies targeting a growing ‘demand’ for accessible explanations of political Islām, see Bergen (2002), Sageman (2004), Hoffman (2006), and Scheuer (2007). Contrast this work with the excellent, careful and respectful scholarship of Laurent Bonnefoy and François Burgat (2009). 6 Indeed, one of the principal supporters of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, could hardly wait for the ink to dry on the story of a Nigerian student’s attempt to ‘bring down a plane over Detroit’ to start the public campaign for a ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Yemen and the compulsory use of full-body scanning machines in every airport servicing American passengers (Stein 2009).

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Index

Abāẓah, Fārūq ‘Uthmān 84, 85, 163n16, 164n21 ‘Abd al-‘Atī, Muḥammad 110 ‘Abdalī 49, 96, 97, 98, 169n24 al-‘Abdalī, Aḥmad Faḍl Muḥsin 54, 175n13 Abhā 10, 46, 70, 72, 174n47; see also ‘Asīr about this book: interpretation of politics of Ṣāliḥ 44–5; monocausation, rejection of 9; outline of chapters 9–12; rationale for new analytical approach 4–9; strategic calculation, effects of 148–9, 149–50; see also scholarship Abu Dhabi 52, 106, 145 Abū Ghānim, Faḍl 86, 168n11 Abu-Lughod, Lila 20 Abukhalil, As’ad 8 Abyan province 12, 14, 55, 82, 83, 128, 169n32 Aden 12, 54, 96, 98–9, 100–101, 150, 165n7; British in 37, 38, 55, 56, 58, 61, 73, 89; highlands of 94, 102; hinterland of 42, 43, 104, 121; politics of 120; strategic port of 19, 48–9, 97; unification of Yemen, effect on 124, 127, 129, 131, 135, 142, 144 Aden-Abyan Islamic Army 82, 83 administration: coadministration of Idrīsī 72–3; colonial administration 27, 73, 97, 100; imperial (Ottoman) administration 20, 37–8, 44, 46, 60–61, 69, 73, 85, 98–101, 168n6; reconfiguration of 89; by Ṣāliḥ regime 56, 81, 125, 126, 148; of Yemen, dynamics of 67–90 Adra, Nora 20 Afghanistan 4, 21, 25, 59, 82, 153, 156, 157

Africa, Horn of 1, 3, 4, 8, 34, 46, 55, 102 agency: agents of history in 151–5; attribution of 16, 39–40, 148–9, 153; autonomy and 150; borders of empire, link between indigenous agency and 104; identification of 39–40; imperial agents, social organization by 19–20; indigenous agency 104; individual agency 28; local agency 65, 94, 115 Aḥmad, Maḥmud ‘Adil 174n3 al-Aḥmadī, Muḥammad 160n13 Aḥmadī areas 103 Aḥmadīyah order 72 al-Aḥmar, ‘Abd Allāh bin Ḥusayn 80, 123–4, 125, 128, 132, 134, 135, 136, 175n11, 176n33 Al-Aḥmar, Major-General ‘Alī Muḥsin 4, 80, 82, 123–4, 125, 128, 132, 134–6 Ahmed, Leila 20 ‘Alī, Ibrāhīm of Egypt 165n7 ‘Alī, Muḥammad of Egypt 165n7; expansions of 48, 49 Ali, Rafid Fadhil 176n2 Allam, Abeer 159–60n9 Althusser, Louis 170–71n2 Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Etienne 170–71n2 Altuğ, Seda and White, Benjamin T. 92 Amīr of Ḍāli‘ 100–101, 103 ‘Amrān province 2, 10, 29, 44, 75, 77, 141, 161n24, 167n33 Anderson, Jon Lee 165n8 anthropologists 20, 23, 24, 25, 27, 31, 52, 58, 163n7, 168n13 al-‘Aqīlī, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad 62, 71, 72, 163n16 Arab News 43, 173–4n45 Arabian Peninsula 39, 40, 176n2; class dynamic on 31–2; dynamism of 57;

196  Index external powers, competition for influence in 10; fluctuating relations within and beyond 89–90; imperial administrations in 21, 44–5; oil-rich economies of 43; period between 1872-1918 on, boundary considerations 95–6; Red Sea prior to World War I 53–62; regional conditions, constant adjustments to 73–4; research on, difficulties of 20–21; social organization of, western view of 19, 23, 34–5; struggle for power on 31 al-‘Arabīyah TV 17 al-Arnā‘wutī, Shaykh Tawfiq 72 al-Asaadi, Muhammad 162n2 al-Asad, Ḥāfaẓ 162n4 Asad, Talal 13, 20, 26, 41, 162–3n6, 162n4 ‘Asim Pasha, Muṣṭafa 70 ‘Asīr 10, 32, 36, 43–4, 46, 54, 59, 68, 69– 70, 72–3, 88, 91, 95, 97, 103–4, 148, 151, 159–60n9; division by boundaries of 93–4; imperial legacy for 69–70, 72–4, 75; militancy in, threat to trade of 56–7; modern Saudi–Yemen border 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114; resistance to Zaydī hegemony 62–3 Assamiee, Mahmoud 165n3 Atif Paşa 59, 70, 166n24 al-‘Attās, Haydar Abū Bakr 130, 134, 135, 175n17, 175n25 authoritarianism: authority and borders 91–2; of Ṣāliḥ, anatomy of 139–42, 144–5; unification of Yemen 118–19 Ayubi, Nazih N. 1, 118, 128, 140 al-Ayyam 175n26 ‘Azīz, Muḥammad ibn 56–7, 59, 166n17 al-Azmeh, Azīz 16 Bāb al-Mandab 8, 34 Bakier, Abdul Hameed 7, 176n1, 176n2 Bakīl 25, 36, 65, 123, 144; confederation, role of 60, 76, 78, 84, 86, 113, 131–2, 173n33; political affiliations 88; tensions between Ḥāshid and 135, 139–40; see also Ḥāshid Bakr, Bāshīr 129, 136 Bang, Anne K. 39, 72, 73, 78, 166n26 Baram, Amatzia 175n6 Basuhī, Muḥammad Yaḥyā 71, 167n4 al-Bayḍ, ‘Alī Salīm 51, 117, 121–2, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, 135, 136, 144 BBC News 159n3 Becker, Felicitas 165n6

Bergen, Peter L. 177n5 Berlin Congress (1878) 94, 95 Blackwater (Xe) 160n17 Bonnefoy, Laurent 16, 50, 51, 81, 144, 147, 177n5 Bonnefoy, Laurent and Cheikh, Fayçal Ibn 142 border 79, 92, 94, 102, 114, 115, 120, 142, 159, 170n1, 171n3; modern Saudi– Yemen border 74–5, 79, 104–13; see also borderlands; frontier borderlands 29, 33, 43, 44, 61, 98, 108, 109, 165n4 Boucek, Christopher 58, 160n10, 161–2n28 du Bouchet, Ludmila 149 boundaries: Arabian Peninsula, period between 1872-1918 on, fronhtiers on 95–6; border as object of state control 92–4; borderland dynamic in modern politics 43–4; borders of empire, link between indigenous agency and 104; conceptual boundaries 36; cultural boundaries 36; fluid boundaries 39, 62; frontier areas, local sway in 61; geopolitical boundaries 62; modernization, frontier creation and 93–4; political boundaries, redrawing of 142–4, 144–5; shaping of new political boundaries 142–4; territorial reconfiguration of 90; tribal sections, physical boundaries of 163–4n18; see also Saudi–Yemen border; state power, frontier as measure of Braun, Ursula 161n23 Britain: in Aden 37, 38, 55, 56, 58, 61, 73, 89; Ḍāli‘, British dealings with Amir of 100–101, 103; designation of areas of influence in South Yemen 102–3; Idrīsī and defections from, on cooling of relations with 169n24; involvement in Red Sea region 48, 53–4, 54–5; legitimacy problem in South Yemen 99–100; Ottoman/British joint commission on South Yemen 101–2; ‘protectorate’ in Yemen 165n7; Red Sea region, involvement in 48, 53–4, 54–5; in South Yemen 97–8; South Yemen, particular approach in 73; Sublime Porte, tensions between Britain and Yemen 38–9; Sulṭān of Laḥj and Britain in South Yemen 98–9 British Empire 54–5, 91, 94, 97, 172n18;

Index  197 approach in South Yemen 73, 165n7; British in Aden 37, 38, 55, 56, 58, 61, 73, 89; Ottoman/British joint commission on South Yemen 101–2 Bromley, Simon 118 Browers, Michaelle 52, 137, 152, 176n36 Bruce, James 106 vom Bruck, Gabriele 31–2, 66 Bujra, A.S. 120 Burgat, François 6, 50, 51, 177n5 Burke, Jason 2 Burrowes, Robert D. 79, 121, 126, 137, 148, 159n4, 161n21, 167n32 Bush administration 6 Byman, Daniel 2 Campbell, David 15, 152, 162n29 Carapico, Sheila 123, 125, 127–8, 131, 132–3, 135, 138, 151, 159n4, 161n19, 166n19, 169n32, 176n30 caravan(s) 47, 48, 97, 101 cartographic space, physical realization of 93 cassette sermons: interlinking through 52; phenomenon of 28, 29 categories: abused categories of abstraction 21; analytical categories 6, 10, 13, 16, 17, 22, 39–40, 41, 53, 88; bankrupt categories 156–7; boundaries between 39; cognitive categories 22; focus on representation of large constituent groups 30–31; generic categories 19, 21; idealized, of the ‘Islamic world’ 22; misuse of, problem of 34; organization categories 20; Ottoman use of 37–8; political categories 62; practices and 27; primordial categories, unreliability of 39; reification of 23; scholarly categories 29; social categories 21, 152; tribal categories 77, 162n5 Caton, Steven C. 22, 23 Central Africa 4, 156, 157 Chaudhry, Kiren Azīz 167n32, 175n5 Civil War (1994) 1, 30, 50, 51, 75, 80, 117, 133, 136–7, 139, 143, 174n3, 175n25; conflicting alliances during 51; modern politics, emergence of 50, 51; process of unification and 117–18, 119; Yemen 75 Clark, Janine A. 50, 125, 127 Codignola, Arturo 54 coercion: institutional strength and 117–18; tactics of, local and imperial

interests’ deployment of 49–50 coffee 47, 96 Cohn, Bernard S. 19 Coker, Margaret 173n42 Cold War 9, 12, 42, 109, 115, 117, 119, 123, 132, 151 Colton, Nora 125, 127 Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John 4 commerce and trade networks 40, 42–3, 47, 48, 49, 53, 66 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 64; see also Young Turks communities: change within 42; community-building, processes of 22, 24–5; relational dynamics within 42; ‘tribe’ and community in Yemen 24 compartmentalization 45, 140 confederacy during World War I 84–9 Connolly, William E. 161n20, 161n26 consociation 140–41; local factors as basis for 59–60 context: emphasis on 21, 23, 24, 27, 31–2, 33–4, 148, 153; historical context of social organization categories 20–21; internal chaos, shaping of relations between Yemenis in context of 120–4; local and regional 41–2; in studies of Yemen, importance of 3, 21, 23–4, 27, 31–2, 33–4, 148, 153 Cooper, Frederick 21 cultural archetypes 23 cultural practices 21–2 Da‘‘ān accord (1911) 63, 64, 68, 73, 77, 78, 84, 85, 169n33 Dahlgren, Susanne 50 Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward 147 Ḍāli‘, British dealings with Amir of 100–1, 103 Darwīsh, Sayyid Maḥmud 168–9n20 Davis, John 22 Davis, Mike 61, 156 Day, Stephen 5, 127 Deeb, Lara 28 Defense Industry Daily 174n48 DeLay, Brian 165n4 Deringil, Selim 13, 34 Detalle, Renaud 6, 124, 133, 134, 136 dhows 47, 56 Dhū Ḥusayn 85, 89 Dhū Muḥammad 23, 63, 85, 88, 163n9 al-Dīn, al-Manṣūr Muḥammad Ḥamīd 10 Dirks, Nicholas 13

198  Index Djibouti 8 Douglas, J. Leigh 108 Dresch, Paul 23, 24, 25, 36, 61, 124, 125, 126, 130, 163n9, 163n14, 166n25, 176n32 Dresch, Paul and Haykel, Bernard 16, 131, 132 Dunbar, Charles 161n23 EADS Company 112 East Africa 40, 53, 120, 157, 165n6 East India Company (EIC) 19, 48–9, 53, 54, 97 Egypt 46, 54, 96, 109, 119, 172n17; active involvement in Yemen 48–9 elections (1993): consequences 133–6; party loyalties 132–3 Elliot, Sir Henry 164n22 al-Enazy, Askar H. 109 Eritrea 12, 38, 53, 54, 56, 57, 72, 73, 165n3, 174n1 Ethiopia 8, 12, 39, 47, 48, 53 Eurocentric perspective 6, 35, 46–7 Europe 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 23, 25, 34, 38, 40, 41, 83, 92, 95, 119, 153; commercial power of 13, 22; expansion in Red Sea region 46–7, 54–5, 56; imperial power of 100, 102; legal codes of 72 European Union (EU) 4, 7, 141, 157; liberal sensibilities of, paradox in 14 Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward Evan 19, 23 extra-judicial assassinations 3, 157 al-Faḍlī, Ṭāriq 82, 132, 176n2 Fahmy, Khaled 48 Farah, Caesar E. 45, 69 Findley, Carter V. 38 Fleishman, Jefferey 2, 160n11 Foucault, Michel 19, 170–1n2 France (and French Empire) 10, 20, 21, 32, 35, 46, 51, 56, 57, 73, 97; commercial interests 53–4; French in Somalia 38; manipulation of smuggling and piracy 56, 102 Fraser, Nancy 36 Freedom House 160n16 frontier 37, 50, 61, 148, 151; as measure of power 91, 93, 94, 96, 101–2, 103, 104, 114, 115, 172n20, 172n24 Gause III, Greg 121, 122, 128 Gavin, R.J. 49, 97, 98, 101 Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha 37, 171n8, 172n19

Gellner, Ernest 20, 22–3, 35, 162–3n6 General People’s Congress (GPC): in process of unification of Yemen 121–2, 125–6, 128–33, 134–6, 137–8, 139–40, 142, 176n34; surveillance apparatus 139–40 geopolitics 62, 155–8 Ghānim, Ṭāriq ‘Abd al ‘Atī 48–9 Gingrich, Andre 23 Gingrich, Andre and Heiss, Johann 173n33 Glaser, Eduard 84 Glosemeyer, Iris 75, 133, 141 Göçek, Fatma Müge 38 Great Power politics 94, 95, 149 Gregory, Derek 171n5 Grewal, Sandeep Singh 162n2 group identity formation 29 Gueyras, Jean and Shehadi, Philip 120 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 6, 11, 12, 42–3, 110, 111, 122, 125, 127, 129, 130, 132 Gulf Today 159n8 al-Habtoor, Khalaf Ahmed 17 al-Hadīdī, Ṣalaḥ al-Dīn 174n3 Ḥaḍramawt 42, 43, 48, 120, 121 Haines, Stafford B. 49, 165n7 Ḥajjah 2, 10, 29, 44, 50, 75, 77, 108, 109 Ḥajjah province 2 Ḥakki Pasha, Ismāīl 70 Halliday, Fred 120, 121, 124, 174n4, 175n7 Hamilton, Lee et al. 5 Hanssen, Jens 34 al-Ḥaqq Party (Truth Party) 75, 168n9 harmonization measures 67–8 al-Ḥasan, Hamza 33, 105 Ḥāshid 25, 64, 65, 113, 123, 132, 144, 164n25; confederation, role of 36, 60, 76, 78, 80, 88, 128, 141; political affiliations 88; tensions between Bakīl and 135, 139–40 Hāshimī rights, predominance in conflict in Ṣa‘dāh 31, 32–3 al-Ḥayāt 82, 131, 175n19, 175n22, 176n1, 176n33 Haykel, Bernard 168n9, 176n35 al-Ḥibshī, ‘Abdullāh b. Muḥammad 54, 77, 163n15 Hida 77 highlands 49, 54–7, 59, 62–4, 69, 71, 74, 76, 77–8, 88–9, 96–7, 99, 100, 101, 163n17; Aden 94; central regions 6; cultivators 24; Ethiopian 48, 53;

Index  199 northern 31, 36, 38, 54, 58, 61, 62, 68, 74, 85, 86, 88, 108, 113; southern 38, 45, 61, 79, 86, 87, 98, 168n6; Ta‘izz 61, 63, 171n7; Zaydī 62, 73, 88, 103 Ḥijāz 32, 46, 48, 95, 105, 106, 148, 173n32 Hill, Ginny 58, 160n10, 161–2n28 Hirschkind, Charles 28 Ḥizb al-Ḥaqq (Truth Party) 75, 168n9 Ho, Engseng 48, 120 Hoffman, Bruce 177n5 Hollander, Issac 16 Horn of Africa 1, 3, 4, 8, 34, 46, 55, 102 hostage taking, practice of 60, 83, 169n30 Howden, Daniel 32 Ḥudaydah region 165n12, 166n17, 168n5, 169n34; strategic priority for Ottomans 71–2 Hudson, Michael 126, 127, 133, 162n30 Ḥujarryyah frontier 94 Human Rights Watch (HRW) 1, 111, 114, 160n13, 175–6n28 Hunter, F.M. and Sealy, C.W.H. 100, 172n18 Hunter, Frederick M. 172n18 Huntington, Samuel P. 157 Ḥusayn, Ṣaddām 7, 122, 123, 127 al-Ḥuthī, Ḥusayn Badr al-Dīn 2, 28, 29–30, 79, 142, 159n5, 163n11 al-Ḥūthī movement 2, 8, 10, 11, 17, 18, 27, 29–30, 31–3, 39, 74–5, 79, 162n3; ideological foundations of 31–2; insurrection and prejudices against 26–7; parallels with Idrīsī movement 44; religious groups funded by Ṣāliḥ regime to counter 51; sayyid rights, fighting for reassertion of 3 Ibb area 61, 86, 87 Ibrāhīm, Fu’ād and al-Ḥasan, Hamzah 163n10 al-Idrīsī, Muḥammad 10, 36, 40, 54, 67–8, 70, 80, 84, 146; access to outside world 64–5; attacks on Ottoman garrisons in Ḥudaydah 71–2; challenge to the Imām Yaḥyā 62–4, 64–6; communication with Red Sea world, opening of channels for 73–4; courts, appointment of loyal judges to 72; criss-crossing alliances and economic interests 76, 78–9; disintegration of Imāmate polities led by, consequences of 77–8; fairness in arbitration, reputation for 78; highland communities joining with 76; Italian

authorities in Eritrea, relationship with 72–3; maritime trade, virtual monopoly in 76; offensive against Ottoman garrisons 71–2; Ottoman partnership with 72, 76; phenomenon of power of 62–3; reaching out to distant communities 70–1; reputation as problem-solver 70–1; spiritual leadership, community clashes over 71; spiritual power struggle 71; temporary alliances 78–9; and Yaḥyā, allies against Ottomans 77 Idrīsīyah 39, 47, 50, 62, 72, 76; and Ḥuthī movements, parallels between 44 illegal immigration 105, 165n5 Imām Yaḥyā 10, 11, 40, 46, 63, 64, 65, 67–8, 71–2, 73–4, 76, 77, 79, 80, 84–6, 167n32; Abu Ra’s execution, effect on 84–6, 87–8; authority of, threats to 170n42; and border struggle with Saudi Arabia 107–8; ‘Confederacy’ of Imāmate allies against 85, 86, 87, 88–9; and Idrīsī, allies against Ottomans 77; Idrīsī’s challenge to 62–4, 64–6 imperialism: inadequacies of empire, Yemen as example of 100–2; legacy in Yemen 3, 69–81, 89; patronage of, value of 57, 58; rivalries and shifting ground of local loyalties 73–4; in Yemen, limits to 34–9 Indian Ocean 46, 53 informal markets 42–3 Ingrams, Harold 99 instability 82; administrative instability 65; caused by trade disputes in Ottoman times 55, 58; expansion of 143; pockets of, post-unification 141; political instability 115, 165n13; regional instability 3, 148; in Ṣan‘ā’ 80; in Saudi Arabia 32; social instability 23 insurgencies in Ottoman Yemen 103–4 interdependence between Ottomans and locals 61–2 internal alliance building 81–4, 84–9, 89–90 International Crisis Group (ICG) 30–1, 33, 58, 113, 132, 142, 154, 168n10 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 58, 60, 80, 143, 156, 157 ‘international order’, values of 15–16 Iran 10, 30, 31, 45, 53, 80, 111, 112, 141; chaos in 143–4; Shah of 7; Sunni–Shī‘ī struggle and 162n2; support for Ḥuthī movement 153; ‘war on terror’ and

200  Index struggle against influence of 12, 17, 112–13, 149 Iraq 4; invasion of Kuwait, effect of 127 Iṣlāḥ Party 6, 75, 79, 80, 81, 152, 156, 175n11, 175n18, 176n33, 176n36; role in unification process 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131–2, 133–8, 140, 142, 144 Islamic law (fiqh) 2 Islamic political activity, institutional foundations of 27–8 ‘Islamic terror’ 3, 9, 83, 138, 149, 156 ‘Islamic world’ 5, 13, 15, 19, 22, 28, 157 Ismā‘īl, Hasan ibn 59 Ismā‘īlī (of Harāz region) 59, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111, 112, 114 Israel 7, 39, 113 Italy (and Italiam Empire) 10, 54, 76, 97, 172n22; Italian authorities in Eritrea, relationship with al-Idrīsī, Muḥammad 72–3; Italian War (1911–12) 77 Izzet Pasha, Marshall Aḥmet 167n1 Jabal Rāziḥ region 163n8 Jacob, Harold 45 James, William 161n26 al-Jamhī, Sa‘id Ubayd 82, 169n31 Jarabani, Ḥusayn 159n6 al-Jazeera TV 17 Jeddah, Treaty of (2000) 108, 111, 113, 173n40 Jizān 10, 32, 46, 70, 71, 78, 104, 107, 109, 150; see also Asīr Joffe, George 50 Johnsen, Gregory 169n26 Joint Meeting Parties 52, 174n46, 176n36 Jones, Clive 119 Joseph, Sarah 104 al-Jurāfī, ‘Abdallāh 54 Katz, Michael 122 Kawkabān 77 Keiser, Klaus 69 Khalaf, Roula 161n27 Khaldun, Ibn 35 Khaleej Times 173–4n45 Al-Khalij, Sharjah 175n15 Khomeni, Ayatollah Ruhollah 28 Khushaywah, Ismā‘īlī spiritual complex in 111 al-Kibsi, Muhammad 113 kidnappings 33, 58, 106, 169n28 Kishk, Muḥammad Jalāl 163n10 Klein, Naomi 156

Knight, Alan 38 Knysh, Alexander 16, 51, 52, 82 Kosovo 59 Koszinowski, Thomas 175n9 Kour, Zaka H. 49, 97 Kühn, Thomas 34, 69, 70, 84, 167n3 Kurşan, Zekeriya 55 labour: activism 58, 131, 135, 175n18; corridor for 110; day-labourers 26; demand for 61–2; Federation of Labour Unions 131; importation of 97, 105–6; labour-intensive agriculture 61; markets 1, 42, 111; migrant labour 60, 123–4, 127, 130, 167n32; mobilization of 127; unrest 130 Laḥj 12, 49, 58, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 121, 171n10 Lancaster, William and Lancaster, Fidelity 22 Landers, Jim 161n21 Landler, Mark and Shanker, Thom 160n12 law (sharī‘a) 27, 84, 162n4 al-Lawjrī, Musṭafā Bādī 82 Lee-Warner, Sir W. 172n23 Lefebvre, Henri 93 legal codes 27, 72 legal tradition in Yemen 27–8, 40 Lejean, Guillaume 165n10 Lenci, Marco 57 The Liberal 172n17 Lichtenthäler, Gerhard 111 Lieberman, Senator Joseph 177n6 Local Development Associations 80 local laws (urf) 24 localism: dynamics within, importance of 11, 19, 55–6, 64, 119, 148, 150; empowerment in colonial era 19–20; interactions with Ottoman state, simplistic assertions about 69–70; local conditions, continuous change in 25–6; local economies 42–3; in Yemen, emergence of 34–9 Los Angeles Times 2 Luciani, Giacomo 118 Lyon, Alistair 174n46 Lyotard, Jean-François 19 McCain, Senator John 2 McGregor, Andrew 7 Madayash, Arafat and ‘Abu-Husayn, Sawsan 176n2 Madīnah 32 al-Majalla 134, 175n18

Index  201 al-Majid, Muhammad 173–4n45 Makkah 32, 72–3; Makkah Treaty (1926) 106; Shārif of 72–3 al-Manār (Ṣan‘ā’ weekly) 175n24 Mandaville, Jon 69 Manea, Elham M. 163n7 al-Manī, ‘Alī b. 99 Mann, Michael 118 ‘marginal societies’ 47 Ma’rib 3, 12, 30, 43, 50, 58, 141, 169n28 Marseilles 53–4 Massad, Joseph A. 177n4 Massawa 47, 54, 56, 165n12 Matthiesen, Toby 33 Mayer, Jane 160n14 Médecins sans Frontières 159n2 media speak: clichéd reasoning 18; colonial-era tropes, invocation of 17–18; failings of 13–14, 17–19; oversimplification in 17; reductive concepts, use of 17, 18; systemic rigidity in 19; western tropes, ubiquitous nature of 18–19 Mehmed Sırrı 55 Mehra, R.N. 76 Meissner, Jeffrey R. 20 Messick, Brinkley 20, 27 Miami Herald 2 al-Midhar, Abū Ḥasan Zayn al-‘Abadīn 169n29 Migdal, Joel S. 136, 137, 143 migrants (and migrant communities) 1, 21, 42, 43, 50, 92, 111, 121, 159, 165n5; migrant labour 60, 123–4, 127, 130, 167n32 Miller, Flagg 28, 52 Mitchell, Timothy 35, 67, 148, 157 modern politics, emergence of 41–66; ‘Asīrī militancy, threat to trade of 56–7; ‘Asīrī resistance to Zaydī hegemony 62–3; autonomous communities in North Yemen 60; borderland dynamic 43–4; British involvement in Red Sea region 48, 53–4, 54–5; cassette tape phenomenon, interlinking through 52; change, foundations of 46–50, 64; Civil War (1994) 50, 51; coercive tactics, local and imperial interests’ deployment of 49–50; commerce and trade networks 42–3, 47, 48; community and change 42; compartmentalization of regional events 45; concept of ‘modern politics’ 41; conflicting alliances during Civil War 51; context, local and

regional 41–2; cooperation in Yemen, local factors as basis for 59–60; daily life, disruptions to 46; East India Company (EIC) in Yemen 48, 53–4; Egypt, active involvement of 48–9; European expansion in Red Sea region 46–7, 54–5; external influences 45–6; frontier areas, local sway in 61; Ḥuthī movement, religious groups funded by Ṣāliḥ regime to counter 51; Idrīsī’s challenge to the Imām Yaḥyā 62–4, 64–6; Idrīsīyah and Ḥuthī movements, parallels between 44; imperial patronage, value of 57, 58; informal markets 42–3; instability caused by trade disputes in Ottoman times 55; interdependence between Ottomans and locals 61–2; local economies 42–3; ‘marginal societies’, interactions of empire and 47; Marseilles trading agencies in Yemen 53–4; Ottoman army, arrival of 46, 57–8; Ottoman expansion in Red Sea region 46–7, 54–5; Ottoman period, parallels with contemporary circumstances 57–61; Ottoman power and leverage of local communities 60; Ottoman strategic alliance with Imām Yaḥyā 63–4; political ascendancy in Red Sea area, struggle for 48; political Islām in Yemen of Ṣāliḥ, reinterpretation of 50–53; political upheavals in neighbouring regions 46; postunification politics, local communities and 50–51; proselytizers in rural Yemen, dynamics concerning 51–2; Red Sea prior to World War I 53–62; regional politics, links with external patrons 53; regional power alliances, imperialist expansion and 45; relational dynamics within communities 42; religious groups, funding by Ṣāliḥ regime 51; reorientation under Ottoman rule 46; Rubattino in 54; rural farming, Ottoman relations with 61; Ṣāliḥ regime, confrontation as default choice for 55–6; Ṣāliḥ regime, diplomatic victories in confronting violence 58; Ṣāliḥ regime, purposeful disruption of local life 44–5; security for trade networks, importance of 47; smuggling 43; Sufī traditions, revival of 52; symbolic authority, imperial designation to individuals

202  Index of 49; temporary local alliances 46; trade networks, fragmentation of 48; traditional markers of local social order, complications of collapse of 52–3, 57; trans-geographic perspective 45; trans-regional connections 45; vested interests, entrenchment of 43; villages, alliances of 47; Yaḥyā, Idrīsī’s challenge to the Imām 62–4, 64–6; Yemeni highlands (1872-3), interactive dynamics between Ottomans and locals in 58–9 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 162n1 Morris, Rob 114 Mubārak, Ḥusnī 7 Muḥammad ‘Ali Muḥammad ‘Alī 165n7; expansions of 48, 49 Muḥammad ibn ‘Azīz 56–7, 59, 166n17 Muḥsin, Sulṭān Faḍl b. 98, 99–100 Muḥtar Pasha, Aḥmed 97 Mukallā 12, 42, 127, 144 Mukhā 47, 54, 61, 168n6, 172n22 al-Mumāyīd, Tariq 162n3 Mundy, Martha 24, 154, 175n8 Munson, Henry 22 Muqbil 103 Muqbil of Nawi’a, Muḥammad Nāṣīr 170n39 Murī, Khalif abd al-‘Azim Sayyid 47 Musa Bey, Miralay 59 ‘Muslim society’ 16; Gellner’s representation of 22–3, 33, 34; subsections of 21–2 Muṣṭafa ‘Asim Pasha 70 Muṭahhar, ‘Abd al-Ghanī 174n2 Mutawakkil dynasty 10, 31, 93, 119, 150, 173n34 Na‘ib, Nāṣir Habkut Ibn Abas 77 Najd 32, 73, 106, 108, 114, 165n11 Najrān area of Saudi Arabia, border problems with Yemen 104–5, 107–8, 109, 110, 114, 173n42 Nāṣir, Gamal Abdel (and Nāṣirism) 28, 29, 109, 119, 120, 123, 134, 174n3 Nasrawi, Salah 43 National Democratic Front (NDF) 79, 80 nationalism 40, 108, 155, 164n1 Nebehay, Stephanie 174n47 Nedim Bey, Mahmud 70 networks: of commerce and trade 40, 42–3, 47, 48, 49, 53, 66; indigenous networks 53; patronage networks

22, 67, 125, 127, 132; political networks 86, 87, 127; power networks 20; regional networks 47, 52; of religious communities 72–3; Ṣāliḥ’s Haḍramī network 128–9; security for trade networks, importance of 47; terrorist networks 64; trade networks, fragmentation of 48; trans-oceanic networks 120 Neukirch, Ralf 160n11 New York Times 18–19, 26, 155, 160n12 Nigerian passenger 2, 153, 177n3 9/11 attacks on US 9, 12, 154; post-9/11 situation 4, 14, 40, 75, 114, 142, 143, 148, 151, 175n13 Nonneman, Gerd 175n20 North Yemen 23, 29, 42, 50, 73, 108, 117, 118–19, 120–21, 159n8, 163n14; autonomous communities in North Yemen 60; diverse population in 69; food protests in 141; government presence, lack in 126–7; leadership in North Yemen, Ṣāliḥ and 60, 128, 135; peripheralization of 89–90; unification process for 120–21, 122–3; Zaydī power brokering in 68 Nu‘mān, Muḥammad Aḥmad 56 Obama administration 2, 160n11 O’Fahey, Robert S. 163n16 oil 1, 8, 12, 43, 80, 105, 111, 121, 123, 137, 141, 142, 143, 151, 174n1; companies 24, 44, 58, 124; production 161n21, 161n22; reserves of 6, 124, 149 orientalism 14, 16, 27 Ottoman Empire: army of, arrival in Yemen of 46, 57–8; decentralization of local politics in era of 57–62, 65; expansion in Red Sea region 46–7, 54–5; military recruitment by Ottomans, local interests and 70; period of, parallels with contemporary circumstances 57–61; and political opportunism in South Yemen 97–8, 99, 103; power and leverage of local communities on 60; reorientation of politics under Ottoman rule 46; rural farming, relations with 61; strategic alliance with Imām Yaḥyā 63–4; territories, concept of 95 Ottoman Yemen 162n5; alliances across cultural boundaries 36–7; analysis of, units for 35; bureaucratic discourse of

Index  203 34; conceptual boundaries, mobility of 36; Eurocentric perspectives 35; forces at play in 35; imperial ambitions 37–8; inclusiveness in 37; partnership, relations of 37–8; political transformations in 35–6; realities of power in, adaptation to 37; regionalism and 36; social transformations in 35–6; state centralization schemes 38–9; strategic importance of 38 Overton, Shaun 30 Owen, Roger 118 Page, Stephen 165n12 Pakistan 50, 82, 153, 156, 157, 160 paradoxes of history 119–24 Paşa, Atif 59 People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) 120, 121, 129, 159n4 Petraeus, General David 160n13 Philby, John 173n34 Phillips, Sarah 55–6, 118, 157, 160–61n18 Pillar, Paul R. 5 policy-makers 4–7, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 35, 39, 45, 52, 154, 155 political Islam 41, 50, 81, 115, 123, 132, 155, 175n10 political Islām: Ṣāliḥ and 50–53, 81–4; in Yemen of Ṣāliḥ, reinterpretation of 50–53 Political Security Office (PSO) 139 politics: ascendancy in Red Sea area, struggle for 48; political alliances varied nature of 76–7; political boundaries, redrawing of 142–4, 144–5; power alliances, imperialist expansion and 45; regional politics, links with external patrons 53; reorientation under Ottoman rule 46; shaping of new political boundaries 142–4; unification of Yemen, political necessity for 117; upheavals in neighbouring regions 46; voluntary acceptance of policies, importance of 118; see also modern politics, emergence of Prophet Muḥammad 30, 31 Public Records Office (PRO), London: FO, 78/373 165n7; FO, 78/2753 165n22; FO, 78/53785 169n24; FO, 84/1813 172n17; FO, 95/163825 167n29; FO, 195/579 165n12; FO, 371/1805 171n3; FO, 371/10818 174n1; FO, 371/21825 170n42; FO, 372/573 171n3; FO, 424/32 171n10, 171n11,

171n12, 171n13, 171n14, 172n16; WO, 95/163825 168n12 Pyenson, Lewis 96 al-Qaḥṭāni, Fahd 32 al-Qā‘idah (Al Qaeda) 2, 7, 13–14, 147, 150, 153, 154, 160n12, 162n3, 169–70n35, 176n1, 177n3; external influence of 45; media speak, failings of 17, 18, 19, 33–4; Ṣāliḥ’s capitalization on western attitudes to 52–3, 141, 143 qāt 2, 29, 43, 47, 96, 105, 165n5 al-Quds al-‘Arabi 112 Quick, Emma and Tuscon, Penelope 107, 173n36 al-Quṭb, ‘Alī b. Muḥammad 62 al-Quṭb, Muḥammad 62 Ra, Abu, execution of 84–6 ‘radical Islam’, issue with 2–3 al-Rasheed, Madawi 32, 148 Rashīdī emirate 32, 148, 173n34 Raşid, Ahmed 59, 61, 166n17, 166n22, 166n23, 167n33, 171n7 Red Sea: communication with Red Sea world, opening of channels for al-Idrīsī, Muḥammad 73–4; European expansion in Red Sea region 46–7, 54–5, 56; Ottoman expansion in Red Sea region 46–7, 54–5; political ascendancy in Red Sea area, struggle for 48; prior to World War I 53–62; region of, British involvement in 48, 53–4, 54–5 regional economy 96, 101, 121, 123; interconnectedness of 164n24 regionalism 1, 32, 36, 39, 145 Republican Yemen 31; see also Yemen Arab Republic resistance 7, 16, 29, 50, 59, 69, 74, 82, 84, 89–90, 111–13, 150 151–2; ‘Asīrī resistance to Zaydī hegemony 62–3; to autocracy of Ṣāliḥ, disparate nature of 138, 141; state authority, mobilization of stereotypes of resistance to 26–7 Rougier, Bernard 125 Rubattino 54 Rüşdi 70 SABA (Yemen’s official news agency) 165n3 Ṣa‘dāh: conflict in, dynamics of 2, 31; conflict in, western explanations of 30–31; Hāshimī rights, predominance

204  Index in conflict in 31, 32–3; media distortion of modern conflict in 105; modern violence in, causes of 92; origins of conflict in, potential for reinterpretation of 32–3; origins of war in 142; unwelcome pressures on inhabitants of 75 sādah (sayyid) 31, 32 Sageman, Marc 177n5 Said, Edward 4, 16, 153, 155, 171n4 Sa‘īd Pasha, General Ḥasan 72 Saif, Ahmed Abdul Kareem 143 Sair, Himām b. 77 Salafists 8, 18, 33, 39, 58, 147 salafīyun 17 Sale, Richard 160n10 Ṣāliḥ, Alī Abdullāh (and regime of) 2–3, 4, 5, 6–7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17–18, 29, 40, 64, 79, 81, 82–3, 85, 121, 132, 148; access to outside world 64–5; ‘Afghan Arabs’, recruitment of 82; chaos as survival strategy for 5–7; confrontation as default choice for 55–6; diplomatic victories in confronting violence 58; disorder, creation of 44–5; domination, appropriation of tools of 16; early years of, sophistication of 80–81, 83–4; micro-politics, reaction to 52–3; Operation Scorched Earth 82; patronage of, local seekers after 56; purposeful disruption of local life 44–5; regional questions, attempts at reconciliation of 74; religious groups, funding by regime of 51; resistance to autocracy of, disparate nature of 138; Saudi alliance with 109–12; Saudi Arabia, strained relationship with 80; threats to regime 4–5; unmanned drones, permission for US to operate 169–70n35; viability of 68–9; ‘war on terror’, intermediary in 6–7; western support for 6 Sālim, Sayyid Muṣṭafā 84, 167n1, 169n33 Salvatore, Armando 5 Ṣan‘ā’ 59, 176n31 al-Ṣan‘ā’nī, ‘Abdallāh 168n8 al-Saqqāf, Abū Bakr 130, 136, 175n27 Sa‘ud, Ibn 11, 106, 107, 173n32 al-Sa‘ud in Najd 73 Saudi Arabia 2, 8–9; burdens on Yemen border area, imposition of 106; dissident voices within 32; domination, appropriation of tools of 16; Imām Yaḥyā and border struggle with 107–8;

Kingdom of (KSA) 2, 8, 10, 12, 121–2, 123–4, 129–30; militarization of border with Yemen 106; Najrān area, border problems with Yemen 104–5, 107–8, 109, 110, 114, 173n42; relocations along Saudi/Yemen border 33; role in destabilization of Yemen 147–8; Ṣāliḥ’s strained relationship with 80; Ṭā’if Treaty (1934) 93, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 113, 173n32; and Yemen, borderland between 74–5 Saudi Press Agency (SPA) 18–19, 161n22 Saudi–Yemen border: burdens on, imposition by Saudis of 106; formalization of, opposition to 112–13; history of trading and commerce over 111–12; militarization of 106; modern border 104–13, 114–15; relocations along 33; Wā’ilah peoples and 105, 107, 109–10, 111, 112–13 al-Sayyāghī, Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad 57, 166n21 Scahill, Jeremy 160n17 Scheuer, Michael 5, 160n17 Schmitz, Chuck 161n23 Schneider, Brigadier-General (British Resident in Aden) 98, 171n11, 171n13, 171n16 Schofield, Richard 106, 107, 170n1, 173n34, 173n35 scholarship: analytical limitation, warning against 148; analytical units, epistemological assumptions of 10–11, 13–14, 15–16, 39–40, 153; archaic, colonial-era categorizations 13–14, 153; categories and contexts of analysis reductionism in 17–18; complexity, reduction of 14; context, emphasis on 3; context, importance of 21, 23, 24, 27, 31–2, 33–4, 148, 153; disciplinary foundations for studies of Arabian Peninsula, problem of 20–21; EuroAmerican liberal sensibility, paradox of 14; false assumptions, misplaced faith in 5; focus of, reorientation of 15–17, 147; imperialist knowledge, distortions of 14; imperialist knowledge, taxonomies of 13; interpretive avenues, opening up of 40; local politics, importance of studying minutia of 113–14; market-oriented studies 5; reductionist tropes 3, 9, 14, 16, 22, 31, 35, 51, 153; simplification, avoidance of 14, 153; social complexities, blindness to 22; social pathologies,

Index  205 embeddedness of 14–15; terminology, problem of 4, 14–15; on Yemen’s imperial era 34 Schwedler, Jillian 56, 123, 126, 129, 138, 151, 161n19 sectarianism 23, 39, 62, 84 security for trade networks, importance of 47 Seni, ‘Abdülgani 168n5 al-Shabāb al Mu’amin (Believing Youth) 106, 108, 168n8 Shāfī‘ī 23, 39, 62, 84, 159 al-Shahārī, Muḥammad ‘Alī 62, 70, 71, 72, 108 Shāj‘i, Shaykh bin, opposition against Saudi border imposition 112 Shapiro, Michael J. 152 Sharī‘a law 27, 84, 162n4 Sharp, Jeremy M. 160n11 al-Sharq al-Awsat 82, 113, 128, 173–4n45, 175n17, 175n21, 175n25 Shaw, Major General D.L.G. 167n29, 168n12 shaykh (shuyūkh) 20, 21, 25, 46, 48, 65, 78, 101, 127, 163n9 Shear, Michael D. et al. 177n3 Shī‘ī 14, 16, 31–3, 59, 75, 94, 105–6, 110–13, 123, 141, 159, 162n2 Shumayrī, ‘Abd al-Walī 129 al-Shūrā 176n29, 176n31 Sirma, Ihsan 68 Ṣirwāḥ region 82, 169n28 slaves and slavery 6, 40, 47, 153 Smith, Neil and Katz, Cindi 91, 93 smuggling 43; weapons smuggling, problem of 101–2 social hierarchies 25; traditional markers of local social order, complications of collapse of 52–3, 57 social organization categories, emergence in colonial-era 20 social policy agendas, clash of 128 Somalia 12, 42, 53, 153, 159n2; French in 38 South Yemen 6; Britain in 73, 97–8, 98–9; designation of areas of influence 102–3; legitimacy problem for Britain in 99–100; Ottoman/British joint commission on 101–2; Ottoman empire and political opportunism in 97–8, 99, 103; territorialization of 97–104, 113–14; violence in, upsurge of (1990–1993) 130–31, 132, 135–6; see also Aden

Soviet Union, ties with 119–20 state: authority, mobilization of stereotypes of resistance to 26–7; centralization schemes 38–9; violence, instability and 3, 15, 33; ‘weak states’ 1, 46, 55, 118, 136, 138, 150, 154, 156; see also state power, frontier as measure of state power, frontier as measure of 91–115; Arabia, 1872-1918 period in 95–6; ‘Asīr, division by boundaries of 93; authority, borders and definition of 91–2; border as object of state control 92–4; borders of empire, link between indigenous agency and 104; Britain in South Yemen 97–8; British and Ottoman joint commission on South Yemen 101–2; British designation of areas of influence in South Yemen 102– 3; British legitimacy problem in South Yemen 99–100; burdens on Yemen– Saudi border area, imposition by Saudis of 106; cartographic space, physical realization of 93; Ḍāli‘, British dealings with Amir of 100–1, 103; Great Power politics 94, 95, 149; Ḥujarryyah frontier 94; Imām Yaḥyā and border struggle with Saudi Arabia 107–8; inadequacies of empire, Yemen as example of 100–2; insurgencies in Ottoman Yemen 103–4; Jeddah, Treaty of (2000) 108, 111, 113, 173n40; militarization of Saudi–Yemen border 106; modern Saudi–Yemen border 104–13, 114–15; modernization, frontier creation and 93–4; Najrān area of Saudi Arabia, border problems with Yemen 104–5, 107–8, 109, 110, 114, 173n42; object of state as subject in history 94–6, 114–15; Ottoman empire and political opportunism in South Yemen 97–8, 99, 103; Ottoman territories, concept of 95; post-imperial era, frontier tensions during 94; Ṣāliḥ regime, Saudi alliance with 109–12; Saudi–Yemen border, history of trading and commerce over 111–12; Saudi–Yemen border formalization, opposition to 112–13; Shāj‘i, Shaykh bin, opposition against Saudi border imposition 112; southern Yemen, territorialization of 97–104, 113–14; Sulṭān of Laḥj and Britain in South Yemen 98–9; Ṭā’if Treaty (1934) 93, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 113, 173n32; Wā’ilah peoples, Saudi–Yemen border

206  Index and 105, 107, 109–10, 111, 112–13; weapons smuggling, problem of 101–2 Stein, Sam 177n6 Steinberg, Guido 165n11 Stevenson, Thomas B. 75, 127 Stiftl, Ludwig 166n19 Stocking Jr., George W. 23 Stocpol, Theda 164–5n2 subaltern groups 40, 96, 153 Sublime Porte 59, 164n25, 171n15; Imām Yaḥyā’s relationship with 74; tensions over 38–9 Sudan 12, 23, 48, 72 Suez Canal 38, 53, 56, 119 Sufism 52; Sufī al-quburīyun 53; Sufī leaders 62, 63; Sufī orders 46, 47, 62, 63, 71, 72; Sufī tarīqah 47; Sufī traditions, revival of 52 Sulṭān Abdül-Hamid II 37–8 Sulṭān of Laḥj and Britain in South Yemen 98–9 Sunni 16, 18, 29, 31, 56, 62, 75, 105, 141, 159n5, 162n2 Ṭā’if Treaty (1934) 93, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 113, 173n32 Ta‘izz area 40, 46, 55, 56, 58, 61–2, 63, 86, 97–9, 100–101, 141 Tajammu’ al-Yamanī līl-Iṣlāḥ (Yemeni Congregation for Reform) 75, 123 Tanin (Ottoman periodical) 164n20 Tapper, Richard 15 Tihāmah 42, 43, 56, 57, 62, 70, 71, 79, 86, 103, 106, 107, 169n24 Tilly, Charles 42 Timor 60 Trablousi, Fawwaz 15 trade: ‘Asīrī militancy, threat to trade of 56–7; disputes in Ottoman times 55; maritime trade 76; networks, fragmentation of 48; networks of commerce and 40, 42–3, 47, 48, 49, 53, 66; security for trade networks, importance of 47 trans-geographic perspective 45 trans-regional connections 45 Tremenheere, Major General C.W. 166n16, 171n10 tribalism 1, 4, 5, 9, 26, 31, 35, 121, 145, 155, 177n4 ‘tribes’: community and ‘tribe’ in 24; ontology of ‘tribal’ Yemen 19–34; physical boundaries of tribal sections 163–4n18; political importance of 123–4; tribal categories 77, 162n5;

tribal confederations 25, 36, 64, 88, 113, 123; tribal Yemen, ontology of 19–34; Zaydīs tribal values 30 Tuan, Yi-Fu 171n5 Tuastad, Dag 38 Turnbull, David 93 unification of Yemen 1, 115, 117–45; ascendency, struggle for 120–24; authoritarianism and 118–19, 139–42, 144–5; Bakri confederation, role of 131–2; bifurcated system of power allocation, rivalries caused by 125–6; coercion, institutional strength and 117–18; compartmentalized politics 140; conditions of 124–33; consociation 140–41; distinct political traditions, integration of 126–8; elections (1993), party loyalties 132–3; elections and consequences 133–6; GPC in process of 121–2, 125–6, 128–33, 134–6, 137–8, 139–40, 142, 176n34; GPC surveillance apparatus 139–40; instability, pockets of 141; internal chaos, shaping of relations between Yemenis in context of 120–4; Iraq invasion of Kuwait, effect of 127; labour unrest 130; paradoxes of history and 119–24; personality clashes 128–9; political boundaries, redrawing of 142– 4, 144–5; political necessity for 117; Political Security Office (PSO) 139; popular grievances, refusal to address legitimacy of 141; post-war situation 136–8, 144–5; process of, Civil War (1994) and 117–18, 119; resistance to Ṣālih’s autocracy, disparate nature of 138; security and Interior Ministry, GPC influence on 128–30; shaping of new political boundaries 142–4; social policy agendas, clash of 128; Soviet Union, ties with 119–20; ‘tribal’ factor in political terms, importance of 123–4; views on future, differences in 135; violence in south, upsurge of (1990–1993) 130–1, 132, 135–6; violence over negotiation, slide towards choice of 141–2; voluntary acceptance of policies, importance of 118; YSP in process of 121–2, 125–33, 134–6, 139, 144, 176n36 United Nations (UN) 156; High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 159n2; Human Development report 159n1; News Service 2, 159n7

Index  207 United States 4, 7, 12, 156; allied with Yemen against ‘radical Islam’ 2–3; Congressional Research Service (CRS) 160n11; liberal sensibilities of, paradox in 14; State Department 3

World War I 10, 11, 50, 63, 76, 84–9, 92, 93, 95, 98, 106, 168n13; confederacy during 84–9; imperialism, limits to 34, 36, 39; Red Sea region prior to 53–62 Worth, Robert F. 18

Van Hear, Nicholas 125, 175n16 Veli Pasha, Mirliva 59 Vickery, William 162n30 Vincent, Joan 96 Vitalis, Robert and al-Rasheed, Madawi 148

Yaḥyā, Aḥmad Ibn 78 Yaḥyā, Dirhām Ibn 78 Yaḥyā, Sayyid ‘Abdallāh 89 Yamani, Mai 32, 148 Yara, Ḥasan Muqbil 78 Yarī, Ḥāshid Dhu 78 Yemen: administration of, dynamics of 67–90; agents of history in 151–5; ascendency in, struggle during unification for 120–4; British approach in South Yemen 73; British ‘protectorate’ 165n7; cassette sermons, phenomenon of 28, 29; Civil War in (1994) 1, 30, 50, 51, 75, 80, 117, 133, 136–7, 139, 143, 174n3, 175n25; classic order of political life 67; collapse of, comprehensive nature of 147; community and ‘tribe’ in 24; community-building, processes of 22, 24–5; confederacy during World War I 84–9; context in studies of, importance of 23–4; cultural archetypes 23; cultural practices, influence in 21–2; Da‘‘ān accord (1911) 63, 64, 68, 73, 77, 78, 84, 85, 169n33; distinct political traditions, unification and integration of 126–8; dynamics and ‘deep politics’ at play in 15; external benefactors, relations with 68; extra-judicial assassinations 3; generalization and distortions in thinking about 9; geopolitical trajectory 155–8; group identity formation 29; harmonization measures, local rivalries and 67–8; highlands of (1872–3), interactive dynamics between Ottomans and locals in 58–9; historical context of social organization categories 20–1; homogenization in studies of, perils of 24; hostage taking, practice of 169n30; Ḥudaydah, strategic priority for Ottomans 71–2; Idrīsī, attacks on Ottoman garrisons in Ḥudaydah 71–2; Idrīsī, criss-crossing alliances and economic interests 76, 78–9; Idrīsī, disintegration of Imāmate polities led by, consequences of 77–8; Idrīsī, Italian authorities in Eritrea, relationship with 72–3; Idrīsī, Ottoman partnership with 72; Idrīsī, reputation

Wahab, Colonel R.A. 102–3, 172–3n29, 172n25, 172n26, 173n31 Wahhābī 17, 32, 33, 75, 163n13 Wā’ilah peoples, Saudi–Yemen border and 105, 107, 109–10, 111, 112–13 ‘war on terror’: Ṣāliḥ as intermediary in 6–7; struggle against influence of Iran and 12, 17, 112–13, 149 Warburton, David 175n14 al-Wasaṭ 130, 163n11, 163n12 Washington Post 159n8 al-Wāsi‘ī, ‘Abd al-Wāsi‘ 63, 85, 167n32, 168n7 al-Watan al-‘Arabī 129 Waterfield, Gordon 49, 171n6 Watkins, Eric 15, 132 ‘weak states’ 1, 46, 55, 118, 136, 138, 150, 154, 156 Wedeen, Lisa 92, 151, 161n19, 161n25, 162n2, 162n5, 164n1, 176n1 Weir, Shelagh 16, 22, 24, 163n8, 175n10 ‘West’ 15, 27, 41, 119, 153–4; conflict in Ṣa‘dāh, western explanations of 30–31; misinformed western policies on Yemen 7–8; Ṣāliḥ’s capitalization on western attitudes to al-Qā‘idah (Al Qaeda) 52–3, 141, 143; social organization of Arabian Peninsula, western view of 19, 23, 34–5; universalism shaping western policies towards, challenge to Yemen 8; western perspective on Yemen 15–16; western support for Ṣāliḥ 6; western tropes, ubiquitous nature of 18–19 Whitaker, Brian 106 White Mythologies (Young, R.J.C.) 161n20 Willis, John M. 20, 73 Wingate, Sir Reginald 168–9n20, 169n18, 170n36, 170n37, 170n39, 170n41, 170n43 World Bank 43, 58, 156, 161n22 World Tribune 174n51

208  Index as problem-solver 70–1; Idrīsī, spiritual power struggle 71; imperial agents, social organization by 19–20; imperial history, observations of 3; imperial legacy 69–81, 89; imperial rivalries and shifting ground of local loyalties 73–4; imperialism in, limits to 34–9; internal alliance building 81–4, 84–9, 89–90; internal debates, misinterpretation of 26; Islamic political activity, institutional foundations of 27–8; Italian War (1911–12) 77; legal tradition in, emphasis on 27–8; lessons of imperial era 69–81, 89; local conditions, continuous change in 25–6; Local Development Associations 80; local dynamics within, importance of 11, 19, 55–6, 64, 119, 148, 150; local empowerment in colonial era 19–20; local interactions with Ottoman state, simplistic assertions about 69–70; localism in, emergence of 34–9; military recruitment by Ottomans, local interests and 70; misinformed western policies on 7–8; ‘Muslim’ community in, context in understanding of 16; ‘Muslim society’, Gellner’s representation of 22–3, 33, 34; ‘Muslim society’, subsections of 21–2; Najrān area of Saudi Arabia, border problems with Yemen 104–5, 107–8, 109, 110, 114, 173n42; National Democratic Front (NDF) 79, 80; nonstate associations in 1; personalization of events in 28–9; political alliances in, immensely varied nature of 76–7; political Islām, Ṣāliḥ and 81–4; proselytizers in rural areas, dynamics concerning 51–2; ‘radical Islam’, issue with 2–3; regional conditions, constant adjustments to 73–4; regional conflicts in 1–2; regional movements in 1; regional questions, Ṣāliḥ’s attempts at reconciliation of 74; relocations along Saudi/Yemen border 33; rural farming, Ottoman relations with 61; Ṣa’dah, unwelcome pressures on inhabitants of 75; Ṣāliḥ regime, viability of 68–9; Saudi Arabia and, borderland between 74–5; Saudi role in destabilization of

147–8; security and Interior Ministry, GPC influence on 128–30; social hierarchies 25; social organization categories, emergence in colonial-era 20; society in highlands 163n17; socio-economic problems 1; state authority, mobilization of stereotypes of resistance to 26–7; state violence, instability and 3, 15, 33; strategic importance of 3–4, 8–9; Sublime Porte, Imām Yaḥyā’s relationship with 74; Sublime Porte, tensions between Britain and 38–9; tribal Yemen, ontology of 19–34; unification of, post Cold War 1, 115, 117–45; universalism shaping western policies towards, challenge to 8; western perspective on 15–16 Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) 79–80, 119–20, 159n4; decentralization of local politics in era of 65 Yemen Observer 173–4n45 Yemen Post 174n46, 174n60 Yemen Socialist Party (YSP) 82, 152, 156; in process of unification 121–2, 125–33, 134–6, 139, 144, 176n36 Yemen Times 110, 112, 113, 141, 166n20, 169n27, 169n28, 173n38, 173n43, 176n34 Yemen Today Net 165n5, 174n49 YemenOnline 174n51 Young, R.J.C. 153, 161n20 Young Turks 67, 71, 72, 168n5 Zabārah, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad 63, 78, 168n13 Zartman, I. Walter 43 Zayd, Amin Abu 163n13 al-Zaydi, Mishari 165n5 Zaydī and Shāfī‘ī sectarian territories 23, 39, 62, 84 Zaydīs (and Zaydīsm) 10, 23, 31, 33, 46, 56–7, 61, 65, 73, 77, 78, 123, 142; polities of 36, 88; sectarian territories 39; strongholds of 30, 62–4, 74, 103; tribal values 30; see also Imām Yaḥyā al-Zindānī, Sheikh ‘Abd al-Majīd 81, 130, 132, 169n26 Zubaida, Sami 20, 33, 118