Saudi
Arabia is already facing the threat of an Iranian destabilization campaign in
eastern Arabia and has deployed forces to Bahrain in an effort to prevent
Shiite unrest from spreading. With a second front now threatening the Saudi
underbelly, the situation in Yemen is becoming one that the Saudis can no
longer leave on the backburner.
A
crisis in Yemen is rapidly escalating and threatening to flare up a second
front that could destabilize the Saudi Kingdom. Now there are three key factors
in determining President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s stay in
power. Those three factors are: the army, the tribes and the mood of the Saudi
royals.
Yemeni
President Ali Abdullah Saleh's prospects for staying
in power until his current term ends in 2013 are dimming as a number of army
officers, politicians, diplomats and leading tribal figures abandoned him in
support of the "youth revolution" that begin in February.
This
turning point in Yemen occurred yesterday March 18,
after tens of thousands of protestors in the streets calling for Saleh’s ouster came under a heavy crackdown that reportedly
killed at least 39 people and injured around 200. It is unclear whether the shootings
were ordered by Saleh himself, orchestrated by a
member of the Yemeni defense establishment to facilitate Saleh’s
political exit or simply provoked by tensions in the streets, but it does not
really matter. Scores of defections from the ruling party, the prominent Hashid tribe in the north and military old guard followed
the March 18 events, both putting Saleh at risk of
being removed in a coup and putting the already deeply fractious country at
risk of a civil war.
Neither
is the situation in Yemen a replica of the crisis in Egypt, which was not so much
a revolution as it was a very carefully managed
succession by the country’s armed forces. In Egypt, the armed
forces maintained their independence from the unpopular Mubarak regime, thereby
providing the armed forces with the unity in command and effort in using the
street demonstrations to quietly oust Mubarak. In Yemen, a tribal society at
its core, Saleh insured himself by stacking the
security apparatus with members of his family and Sanhan
tribal village. However, Saleh will not be able to
rely on the support of all of his relatives.
Tribal
Opportunism
But
if the army is the first pillar underpinning Saleh’s
regime, the second pillar is the tribe. Yemen, much like Libya, is divided among tribal lines, particularly in the north of the
country. Though Saleh understands the power of the
tribe and has made a concerted effort to maintain his tribal alliances, his
biggest threat within Yemen’s tribal landscape comes from Sheikh Hamid al-Ahmar, one of the sons
to the late Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, who ruled
the Hashid confederation as the most powerful tribal
chieftain in the country. Hamid is a wealthy
businessman and a leader of the conservative Islah
party that leads the Joint Meetings Party (JMP) opposition coalition. He has
obvious political aspirations to become the next leader of Yemen and sees the
current uprising as his chance to bring Saleh down.
In fact, the first wave of resignations from within the ruling General People’s
Congress (GPC) party could be traced back to the al-Ahmar
family tree, as relatives and allies were called on to raise the pressure
against Saleh.
Still,
there are significant arrestors to Hamid’s political
rise. The al-Ahmars, while powerful and wealthy, do
not speak for the entire Hashid confederation. Many
members of both the Hashid and Bakil
tribes have said as much publicly. Tribal sheikhs within the Bakil are especially wary of seeing an archrival Hashid leader assume control of Sanaa.
In short, Saleh and his remaining loyalists still have
some room to maneuver in playing tribal loyalties off each other to preserve
his regime, but that room is narrowing.
The
Saudi Vote
Yemen
has long had to contend with the fact that Saudi Arabia has the money,
influence and tribal links to directly shape Yemeni politics according to its
interests. The Saudis view Yemen as a subordinate power on the heel of the
Arabian Peninsula, one that (if partitioned in a civil war) could potentially
provide Riyadh with direct access to the Arabian Sea, but that if left to
fragment, could also spread instability into the Saudi kingdom. The Saudis have
thus relied primarily on their tribal links in the country to maintain
influence and keep a lid on unrest, thereby keeping the central government in Sanaa weak and dependent on Riyadh for most of its
policies.
Given
Saudi Arabia’s heavy influence in Yemen, the Saudi view on the situation in
Yemen serves as a vital indicator of Saleh’s staying
power. More specifically, defections or pledges of support by Yemeni tribal leaders
on the Saudi payroll can provide clues on the current Saudi mood toward Yemen.
The al-Ahmar family, for example, has extremely close
ties to the Saudi royals, and Hamid al-Ahmar has made a point in his recent interviews to praise
the Saudis and highlight that he has been traveling between Saudi Arabia and
Yemen in recent weeks. At the same time, a number of other prominent tribes
close to the Saudis continue to stand by Saleh.
Throughout much of Yemen’s crisis, the Saudis did not show signs of abandoning Saleh, but they were not fully backing him, either.
This
is likely a reflection of internal Saudi differences as well as limited Saudi
resources to deal effectively with Yemen at this point in time. The three Saudi
royals who deal most closely with Yemen affairs are King Abdullah, Crown Prince
Sultan and Interior Minister and second deputy prime minister
Prince Naif. Prince Naif
and Crown Prince Sultan have had a very rocky relationship with Saleh and would most likely be amenable to his ouster, while
King Abdullah (whose clan rivals the Sudeiri clan, to
which Crown Prince Sultan and Prince Naif both
belong) has maintained a closer relationship with the Yemeni president. The
three often disagree on various facets of Saudi Arabia’s policy toward Yemen.
At the same time, the Saudi government has its hands full in dealing with Iran,
preventing it from devoting considerable attention to Yemen’s political crisis.
Using Bahrain as a flashpoint for sectarian unrest, Iran has been fueling a
destabilization campaign throughout eastern Arabia designed to undermine its
U.S.-allied Sunni Arab rivals.
Yemen,
while ranking much lower on a strategic level than Bahrain, Saudi Arabia or
Kuwait, also is not immune to Iran’s agenda. In the northern Yemeni province of
Saada, the Yemeni state has struggled to suppress a
rebellion by al-Houthis of the Zaydi
sect, considered an offshoot of Shiite Islam and heretical by Wahhabi standards. Riyadh fears al-Houthi
unrest in Yemen’s north will stir unrest in Saudi Arabia’s southern provinces
of Najran and Jizan, which
are home to the Ismailis (also an offshoot of Shiite
Islam). Ismaili unrest in the south could then
embolden Shia in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern
Province, who have already been carrying out
demonstrations against the Saudi monarchy with Iranian backing.
When
Saudi Arabia deployed troops in the al-Houthi-Ismaili borderland between Yemen and Saudi Arabia in late
2009, there were indications that the al-Houthis were
receiving some support from Iran, albeit nothing that was considered a
game-changer in the rebellion. With unrest spreading throughout eastern Arabia
and the Yemeni state falling into a deepening political crisis, the Saudis now
have to worry about Iran exploiting a second front through Yemen to threaten the
Saudi underbelly. This is in addition to all the other “usual” security issues
afflicting Yemen, most notably the threat posed by al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, which uses Yemen as a staging ground for attempts at more strategic
attacks in the Saudi kingdom.
With
distractions mounting in the region and Saleh still
counting on a large network of familial and tribal ties to hold on to power,
Saudi Arabia does not appear to have formed a coherent policy on its southern
neighbor. This likely explains quiet complaints by Yemeni officials that they
have been getting mixed signals from the Saudi kingdom in dealing with the
current crisis. Now that the situation in Yemen has reached a tipping point,
the Saudis will have to make a call on Yemen. The Saudi royals are unlikely to
fend for Saleh at this stage, and even if they did,
they would face enormous difficulty in maintaining lines of supply to its
southern neighbor to quell swelling unrest in the country when the army and
tribal landscape are already split.
Yemen
may border Saudi Arabia, but the geography of this part of the Arabian
Peninsula poses logistical challenges far greater than what exists between
eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Even if Riyadh decided it wanted to deploy
its armed forces to protect Saleh, it would not be as
simple as sending troops across a causeway into Sanaa.
Seen
in a Regional Context
Saleh is
no doubt a political victim of the current wave of Middle East unrest and faces
tougher days ahead in trying to maintain control. But he also finds himself in
a very different situation from than Mubarak’s Egypt or Ben Ali’s Tunisia. Both
Egypt and Tunisia had institutions, most critically the armed forces, able to
stand apart from their unpopular leaders and sacrifice them at the appropriate
time. Though Mubarak and Ben Ali had built patronage networks throughout the
countries’ ruling parties and business sectors, their family names were not
entrenched in the security apparatus, as is Saleh’s.
In
some ways, Saleh’s case is more akin to that of
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi,
who presides over a tribal society split along an east-west axis like Yemen’s
north-south axis. Though Yemen is more advanced politically and institutionally
than Libya, both Gadhafi and Saleh
have insulated their regimes by deliberately preventing the development of
alternative bases of power, relying mostly on complex tribal alliances and
militaries commanded by nepotism to rule. Such regimes take decades to build
and an iron fist to maintain, making the removal of a single leader typically
more trouble than it is worth. Though the system has worked for more than three
decades for Saleh, the president’s carefully managed
support network is now rapidly eroding. Saudi Arabia is now being force to make
a tough call on the future of Yemen at a time when Riyadh cannot afford another
crisis in the Persian Gulf region.