Analysis

Analysis October 1, 2019 17:31 MIN Seen Only in a Saudi Shadow: Why the US Misunderstands and Missteps in Yemen By Gregory Johnsen The United States does not have a Yemen policy. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: the United States has never had a Yemen policy. What it has – what it has always had – is a Saudi policy that dictates and determines its actions in Yemen. For the US, Yemen is an add-on country, small enough and unimportant enough to be out-sourced. Periodically, of course, there are moments of crisis that demand more focused attention from US policymakers. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, for instance, Yemen was seen primarily as a counterterrorism problem that needed to be solved. More recently it has been seen through the prism of US efforts to counter Iran. But… Continue reading Analysis July 5, 2019 64:49 MIN Yemen’s Al-Mahra: From Isolation to the Eye of a Geopolitical Storm By Yahya al-Sewari Executive Summary Yemen’s most easterly and isolated governorate of al-Mahra, to date spared the horrors of war experienced in much of the rest of the county, now faces destabilization due to a geopolitical struggle for influence involving Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman. Muscat has since the 1970s regarded al-Mahra as a natural extension of its national security sphere; in the decades following Riyadh pursued efforts to build an oil pipeline through the governorate to the Arabian Sea; Abu Dhabi’s interests in al-Mahra have only come to the fore since the beginning of the current Yemen conflict. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have, under the guise of their ongoing military intervention in Yemen, sought to pursue… Continue reading Analysis June 28, 2019 24:45 MIN Yemen’s Role in Moscow’s Mideast Comeback Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia addresses the United Nations Security Council on February 26, 2018, during a session in which Russia vetoed a UK resolution that would have condemned Iran for violating the arms embargo on Yemen // Photo Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe By Mustafa Naji Executive Summary Russia, unlike many Western countries, is in direct contact with all parties to the Yemen war. It accepts the internationally recognized Yemeni government, yet does not condemn the armed Houthi movement. Russian diplomats affirm support for a unified Yemen but are willing to meet with southern separatists. Moscow rejects Saudi accusations that Iran is arming Houthi forces. At the same time, it is increasingly courting Gulf Arab monarchies, deepening its economic and defense… Continue reading Analysis June 26, 2019 10:15 MIN Al-Bayda’s Tribal Dynamics Continue to Elude US Counterterrorism Policy A mountain towers over hilly farmland, where the cash crop is Yemen’s finest qat and rugged dirt roads are precarious not just because of the steep cliffs they skirt. Along the side roads between mountain villages, armed militants often with their faces covered man separate al-Qaeda and Islamic State checkpoints, keeping watch for Houthi rebels, government soldiers or any outsiders. Despite taking the same side against Houthi forces, they have fought each other more than once. Al-Bayda is a vast, well-armed province southeast of Sana’a with a Sunni identity, a place that is proud of its warriors and fond of poetry, where tribal solidarity is paramount. But here, when people join Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the reasons aren’t… Continue reading Analysis June 4, 2019 16:14 MIN The Historic and Systematic Marginalization of Yemen’s Muhamasheen Community By Aisha Al-Warraq Introduction No community in Yemen has suffered the consequences of the current war as harshly as the Muhamasheen (Marginalized), a Yemeni underclass that has experienced centuries of discrimination, exploitation and poverty. The Muhamasheen (sing. Muhamash) are commonly referred to in Yemen as the Akhdam (servants). While there are no official statistics on the size of the community, the UN has reported that there are up to 3.5 million Muhamasheen in Yemen.[1] Prior to the current conflict, social discrimination against the Muhamasheen limited their access to education, healthcare, housing and meaningful work. As this policy brief explores, the war has compounded these vulnerabilities and the existing poverty of this group. Discrimination against the Muhamasheen has also hindered their access to humanitarian… Continue reading Analysis May 20, 2019 06:02 MIN An Unending Fast: What the Failure of the Amman Meetings Means for Yemen After three days of United Nations-mediated meetings in Amman with representatives from Yemen’s divided central bank, the delegations from Sana’a and Aden arrived at no agreement aside from a commitment to meet again. Both before and during the talks, which began on May 14, the Sana’a Center met regularly with both delegations, as well as other Yemeni and international stakeholders. The indication from these discussions is that the meetings were another opportunity missed. A best-case scenario emerging from the talks would have been that hundreds of thousands of civil servants would receive regular salaries for the first time in three years, helping to bring an income to millions of their family members in the midst of the world’s worst humanitarian… Continue reading Analysis May 18, 2019 16:26 MIN The UN and Yemen: The Need for Precisely Guided Diplomacy The conflict in Yemen is now in its fifth year with no end in sight. Like most of the world’s seemingly unsolvable conflicts Yemen has ended up at the United Nations Security Council, the international community’s forum of last resort. The UN, which has limited tools at its disposal, has responded to Yemen the same way it responds to most confusing wars: a special envoy and sanctions. This is the carrot-and-stick approach to conflict resolution. The special envoy shuttles back-and-forth between the various sides, working to convince each to sit down at the negotiating table. Lurking in the background is the other side of the equation, the threat of targeted sanctions, which the UN has imposed on five individuals in… Continue reading Analysis April 17, 2019 27:50 MIN Al-Qaeda’s Strategic Retreat in Yemen By Hussam Radman In 2015, Tanzim al-Qaeda fi Jazirat al-Arab, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), had established de facto rule in Yemen’s fifth largest city Mukalla, held swathes of territory in the east of the country and controlled strategic smuggling points across the country’s eastern coastline. The local franchise of the global militant organization had exploited the chaos instigated by the 2011 uprising in Yemen, the subsequent Houthi (Ansar Allah) insurgency and the entry of the Saudi-led military coalition int0 the conflict in 2015. In terms of territorial control, financial resources and manpower, AQAP had never appeared stronger. There has since been a dramatic reversal of these gains. A United Arab Emirates-led counterterrorism offensive beginning in 2016, buttressed by an escalation… Continue reading Analysis March 26, 2019 13:15 MIN A Grim Anniversary: Yemen After Four Years of the Saudi-led Military Intervention On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a coalition of Arab states in launching a military intervention in Yemen. Dubbed ‘Operation Decisive Storm’, the campaign was meant to quickly push back the military advances of the armed Houthi movement and restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government to power. Four years later, the war rages on. To understand more about why the conflict continues unabated, how the country has changed in that time and what it means for the people who live there, the Sana’a Center asked five experts on Yemen for their insights. Contrary to a dominant assessment that presupposes the existence of a clear agenda of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in… Continue reading Analysis March 1, 2019 23:35 MIN Addressing Social Fragmentation in Yemen By Abdulkareem Ghanem After nearly five years of conflict, Yemen is more fragmented than at any time in recent history. The war has exacerbated long-standing grievances and created new fractures in Yemen’s social fabric. While the origins of the conflict lie in a political struggle for power, fighting has awakened a sectarian narrative, revived calls for secession in the south, and generally eroded Yemen’s social cohesion. These fissures are a legacy of the war and they threaten to destabilize the country long after a political peace settlement is achieved. While the current depth of division in Yemen is unparalleled, the tensions manifesting in the war can be traced to historic frustrations that were never resolved. In Yemen’s north, the formation of the Yemen… Continue reading Analysis February 28, 2019 39:56 MIN Federalism in Yemen: A Catalyst for War, the Present Reality, and the Inevitable Future By Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen The 2014 proposal to partition Yemen into a federal system was one of the major causes of the current conflict. The plan, proposed by President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, was supposedly intended to put the country on the path to a more peaceful future by addressing long standing regional grievances toward the central government. These resentments stem largely from a sense of injustice regarding inequitable development in the country and the monopolization of political, economic and military authority in the capital, Sana’a. However, rather than achieving the goal of ensuring peace and the equitable distribution of resources in the country, the flawed and rushed proposal served to further fragment the country, exacerbate divisions, and harden demands for increased local autonomy.… Continue reading Analysis February 27, 2019 35:48 MIN Trump and Counterterrorism in Yemen: The First Two Years By Gregory D. Johnsen Introduction The United States (US) has traditionally viewed Yemen as both a counterterrorism problem to be managed and as an extension of its policy toward Saudi Arabia. For President Donald Trump’s administration this has meant the continuation and expansion of two separate yet overlapping wars in Yemen, both of which began under previous administrations. In the war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group, or Daesh, the Trump administration came into office determined to reverse what it saw as the tendency of President Barack Obama’s administration to micro-manage and second-guess the military professionals. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump claimed that the Obama administration had “reduced to rubble” the nation’s military leadership.[1] A Trump… Continue reading