Issue 808, 30 June 2007

Sanaa strangles Houthi rebellion but may suffer in the longer term from exploiting sectarian tensions

Only Ali Abdullah Saleh could have pulled together Salafist militants, the United States and Saudi Arabia into a coalition of the willing to support his offensive against Al-Houthi rebels, but the episode still carries hidden costs for the government and foreign interests in Yemen.

The assault on rebel towns in Saada province is slowly coming to conclusion, according to GSN’s soundings in Sanaa. Having apparently degraded enough of the Houthi clan’s military power, President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s junta said it may be willing to accept a ceasefire. Another round to Saleh, it seems, in the president’s interminable battles to stay on top of Yemen’s volatile and complex polity.

The third campaign since 2004 against the Houthis and their Al-Shahab Al-Muminoon (Believing Youth) movement – a Zaydi sect rooted in the north-western governorates, who follow a school of Shia Islam distinct from Iran’s Twelver Shiism and the Ismaili sect – was different from its predecessors. The June-September 2004 and March-April 2005 campaigns followed unintentional clashes between government forces and Houthi tribesmen; the war that started in January was apparently preceded by the eviction of 45 Yemeni Jews from their houses in Saada province and an attack on a Saudi company repairing roads near the border. These incidents – which were probably genuine if not necessarily involving the Houthis – provided an ideal opportunity for Saleh to move decisively with a degree of foreign support.

From the outset, the offensive was far more extensive than before. On 17 January, the government placed all Saada’s food, petroleum products and medical supplies under military control; electricity and telecommunications were switched on and off according to military diktat; journalists have been banned from areas in which the military is operating. Major operations, in and around villages occupied by Al-Houthi and the related Bakil tribal confederation, were very bloody. The Houthi leadership asked for a truce in late February, but the generals and other securocrats who underpin Saleh’s rule were determined finally to break northern resistance to government control (see article below).

Careful collation of official and foreign estimates suggests that 700-1,000 government troops have been killed so far in 2007, with over 5,294 wounded (based on the government’s late May estimate). Around 400 government fatalities were reported in the 2004 campaign and around 300 in 2005. There is no accurate figure for rebel or civilian casualties.

Saleh’s domestic aims

The president’s ability to turn the Houthi uprising to his great advantage is perhaps one of Saleh’s more notable achievements. GSN has long noted Saleh’s courting of Hizb Al-Islah (Reform Party) as a means of neutering this potential competitor and shatter the developing Joint Opposition Platform (JOP) – an aim achieved by focusing his fire on Al-Houthi (GSN 799/1).

In taking on the Houthi clan so determinedly, Saleh has managed to please his generals and simultaneously favour his native Hashid tribal confederation, as well as Islah and other Sunni radical movements. Since May, Saleh has successfully raised a number of tribal levies from the Saada region, including some of the Houthi’s own Zaydi. Some Zaydis joined because they came from Saleh’s Hashid, rather than Al-Houthi’s Bakil confederation.

Some Hashid clans (such as the Kharf) refused to fight after their previous military contributions in 2004-05 yielded few benefits and resulted in the death and injury of tribal members without appropriate compensation. But hundreds of other Hashid were recruited from areas such as Uther, Al-Osimat and Habour Dhulimah, with the promise of paid work, plunder and possibly land.

The government has used the distinction between the Zaydi’s beliefs and majority Yemeni adherence to the Shafai school of Sunni Islam to recruit tribesmen from conservative strongholds such as Ibb, Dhamar and Taiz to provide 5,000 levies for the campaign. Sectarian themes have proved an important recruiting tool. Houthi leaders are now warning of this dangerous sectarian element.

Badreddin Al-Houthi has begun to publicise the conflict’s increasingly sectarian nature, pointing to warning signs such as the replacement of Zaydi clerics in mosques in Saada since 2004 with radical Sunnis. He raised the stakes by contacting Shia marjas (‘objects of emulation’ or spiritual leaders) in the Iraqi religious centre Najaf and Iran’s theological capital Qom, drawing stern criticism of government crackdowns from Shia notables such as Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. Badreddin Al-Houthi is a regime insider, who spent two decades seeking to undermine Wahhabi influence from within before finding himself in outright revolt; he became leader when the uprising’s original leader, his son Hussein Badreddin Al-Houthi, was killed in September 2004.

Next steps

Houthi rebels have started to strike back at Sunni representation in Saada, attacking Saudi-sponsored Sunni madrassas (religious schools). Such moves suggest the potential for a dangerous widening of the conflict’s sectarian scope – and thus Saleh will be relieved to begin downscaling military operations in Saada, if the end is indeed in sight.

Although his military has demonstrated staying power, the conflict has been expensive, costing an estimated $600m (not counting indirect effects on tourism and other economic activity, not to mention the impact on families of so many deaths). The government’s announcement that it will now consider a truce is a sign that the military has achieved as much as could be hoped for.

A key determinant of whether any truce will hold is the Houthi’s attitude. Statements issued from his German exile by Yahya Al-Houthi, brother of the rebellion’s operational leader Abdelmalik Al-Houthi, give some impression of Houthi demands. These include a ceasefire followed by a cessation to “all sectarian propaganda campaigns, urgent medical assistance, plus the formation of a committee of tribal sheikhs and religious scholars from different sects to supervise the implementation, and the withdrawal of the troops to their positions before the first war in 2004.” Other demands include a presidential amnesty for fighters, the release of detainees, exchange of bodies (including the movement’s leader HB Al-Houthi, killed in September 2004), national dialogue – to include a newly-formed Al-Houthi political party – and the establishment of a Zaydi university in Saada. But in the field many Houthi fighters may have surprisingly few conditions for a ceasefire, with an estimated 30,000 civilians forced into the hills and the brutal high summer heat approaching; the rebels are likely to accept any government assurance of security plus associated amnesties and prisoner releases.

In the longer term there are worrying indicators that a ceasefire will not hold and that minor incidents could once again spark major uprisings. In particular, Saleh may pay a heavy price for crossing the Rubicon with his sectarian recasting of the conflict. The further empowerment of Sunni radicals may have assisted the military campaign and even fostered political dialogue that could considerably strengthen Saleh and his General People’s Congress (GPC) by co-opting Islah. But it may also have complicated the task of undertaking effective counter-terrorism, further embedding radical Islamist militants within the security structure.

Further uprisings could follow if the eventual settlement is a victor’s justice or anti-Zaydi preaching continues. Conflict would most likely become increasingly asymmetric, migrating towards terrorism affecting Sanaa and other major cities, as opposed to rural battlegrounds which foreign governments and business seem to care little about.

Sanaa (again) cultivates Sunni militants

Sectarian themes have been mobilised as an important recruiting tool in the Yemeni state’s confrontation with Al-Houthi rebels, allowing the government to portray them as heretics committed to the restoration of a Zaydi imamate – although, true to form, the authorities deny a sectarian angle. According to President Ali Abdullah Saleh: “Read Zaydi, Shafai or Hanbali books – we don’t have a problem with that. We aren’t against Shiites or any sect, but we don’t want sedition ignited in Yemen for small and silly details.” But Saleh and his allies have long used Sunni religious militants: throughout the 1990s former Arab-Afghan jihadists and others were enlisted to support Sanaa’s military campaigns against the socialist south and autonomous northern clans. Overall commander of the Saada campaign, General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, spent the 1980s recruiting Yemenis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and has since regularly drawn in local and foreign former jihadists to fight the government’s enemies.

Saleh has used the Houthi rebellion as a means of tightening his ties to conservative Sunnis, and particularly to co-opt potential political opponents such as Al-Islah party ideologue Sheikh Abdelmajeed Al-Zindani and the Islamist party’s powerful chairman, parliamentary speaker Sheikh Abdullah Bin Hussein Al-Ahmar, who is also head of the Hashid tribal confederation. A clash has long been predicted between the Zaydi and hardline Sunni communities, and the Houthi uprising may well expedite such a showdown. Key politicians such as Al-Zindani and Al-Ahmar were central to the destruction of the Zaydi Imamate in the 1960s and have since received Saudi funding to keep the Zaydi and Ismailis under the thumb. Since the early 1980s, Saudi Wahhabi clerics such Muqbil Bin Hadi Al-Wadii (exiled due to his involvement in the 1979 mosque seizure) and Nassir Al-Din Al-Albani have engaged in intense anti-Zaydi preachings in Yemen, even expressing an intent to destroy the tombs of their imams.

A fatwa issued in March by Judge Mohammed Ismail Al-Amrani – publicised by the Ministry of Defence and official media – called on Yemenis to join a recruiting effort to fight the “heretic” Houthi uprising. Many jihadists appear to have been involved in the fighting even before such calls. Open sources have reported that Khalid Abdelnabi – described by the US State Department as a leader of the jihadist Aden-Abyan Islamic Army – joined the jihad in Saada in February.