Writing on the wall for Yemeni president

[abu khaled]

August 2004
Writing on the wall for Yemeni president

Sheikh Badreddin al-Houthi is an eminent scholar of the Zaidi Shiite denomination of Islam. Clerics and believers have long flocked to his home in the mountainous northern Yemeni district of Saada to discuss matters of faith and community affairs. But recently the Sheikh has been inundated with visitors for different reasons. They have been arriving in droves to express their outrage at the military offensive launched by President Ali Abdallah Saleh against the district, and specifically against his son Hussein and his acolytes. Hussein al-Houthi had followed in his father’s footsteps. Over the years he emerged as an influential religious ******, running a network of religious centres and preaching at mosques throughout the northern and central parts of the country. He was also elected to parliament in 1993 and served until 1997. His sermons typically ended with the congregation chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans. Such scenes had gradually become commonplace, notably in the capital Sanaa, without provoking any backlash from the state. Hence the surprise at the president’s sudden change of attitude. This occurred after he returned from the US, where he was one of the Third World ******s invited to attend the G-8 summit. When he got back he faced a barrage of criticism for his behaviour at the summit and mockery over his decision to attend it clad in “traditional” attire. One of the first things he proceeded to do was threaten military action against Houthi and his supporters. It seemed an impetuous move, starkly at odds with the way things are normally done in Yemen.
For months, go-betweens had been interceding between the authorities and Houthi over the latter’s anti-Americanism, which hardly amounted to “incitement” as it reflected the sentiments of many Yemenis outraged at the’ US behaviour in Iraq. Palestine and elsewhere. The real issue appears to have been Houthi’s contention that Saleh is unfit to govern on religious grounds. His Zaidi doctrine, while in some respects closer to Sunni Islam than other strands of Shiism, shares aspects of the Shiite belief in an Imamate vested in descendants of the Prophet Muhammad –- a definition which could be applied to many leading Yemeni tribes but not Saleh’s Sanhan clan. Such a disqualification, even from a minority religious ******, is unhelpful to a president who seized power 26 years ago amid a succession of bloody power-struggles, runs a highly nepotistic regime, and makes little secret of his desire to bequeath his job to his son Col. Ahmad Saleh.

Saleh also seems to have persuaded the Americans that Hussein al-Houthi was part of a plot by the Iranians to spread their brand of Shiism and politics in Yemen, and that Tehran had been arming his followers. The Zaidi ****** is sympathetic to aspects of the Twelver Shiism prevalent in Iran, but ironically it was Saleh himself who first allowed the Islamic Republic to establish medical and cultural centres throughout Yemen and thus seek to spread its political creed. But he appears to have thought it useful to pose as a bastion against Iranian influence, just as he did earlier with regard to al-Qaida. While many Yemenis balked at what they saw as their president’s resort to sectarian incitement, they were equally aghast at his boast that a punitive military assault against Hussein al-Houthi would resolve everything. The campaign turned into fiasco, making a mockery of the state and a hero of the dissident cleric. The Zaidi ******, by no means a warlord, continues to date to hold out. Most of the hundreds of casualties have been on the government side, and the president eventually resorted to hiring and arming tribal irregulars to throw into the battle. One tribe that was recruited for the purpose lost its sheikh in the fighting. Saleh even persuaded a young son of the ****** of Yemen’s largest tribal confederation, Sheikh Abdallah al-Ahmar, to send some of his clansmen to join the campaign. Between 30 and 35 of them were killed. When his father found out, while undergoing medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, he was incandescent. He sent an emissary to rein the boy in pending his return. Many Yemeni tribal and religious ******s can be expected to follow the lead set by Ahmar, who is also speaker of the Yemeni parliament, and demand that the state engage the dissident Zaidi cleric in dialogue. Houthi’s followers had not, after all, initiated any violence, and he had not declared any rebellion. His dissent was verbal and his reasoning religious, and his views about the president were by no means unique.

Indeed, Saleh may have moved against him because he felt he was opening the floodgates to public denunciation of his regime and thus bringing its demise closer. Some regime insiders go further, suggesting that Houthi was brought to centre-stage as part of the fierce rivalry for power and influence between the president’s cousin Ali Muhsin, who commands the northwestern military sector, and his son Ahmad. Ali Muhsin was in charge of planning and carrying out the operation ordered by the president, which was conducted in a manner that risks dragging Yemen into sectarian and tribal conflict. As a reputed Zaidi convert to Wahhabism, Ali Muhsin is considered hostile to all forms of Shiism. They note that he was also the commander who failed spectacularly a few years ago to prevent Eritrea’s seizure of the Hanish islands off the Red Sea coast, amid allegations that he was bribed by the Saudis to facilitate the move in a bid to humiliate Saleh. With Ahmad being groomed for the succession by his father, Ali Muhsin may have seen Houthi’s “rebellion” as a suitable vehicle for his ambitions. Hussein al-Houthi may or may not survive, but his message has certainly been amplified by the campaign against him. It rings true to many Yemenis, and echoes their multiple grievances against the regime. The writing may be on the wall for a president who has held power for a quarter of a century through a combination of nepotism, repression and appeasement of the United States. Could his regime be the next to fall after Saddam Hussein’s? And if so, will the Yemeni people be entitled to some $20 billion stashed away in German and Dutch banks?
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