From the beginning of Yemenās political crisis in 2011, and continuing throughout the war that started in 2015, the course of events was determined by an interplay of global, regional, and local dynamics. Prior to 2011, Yemen already faced significant foreign intervention by global and regional powers concerned its government was on the verge of collapse. This happened in January 2010, when Britain initiated the āFriends of Yemenā group with Saudi Arabia as co-chair and participation by other Gulf Arab and Western states, including the US. Throughout the year, the āFriends of Yemenā requested greater action by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in response to deteriorating security conditions, promising greater assistance to his government to cover its financial needs. President Saleh had been in power for more than three decades, ruling from Sanaa primarily through his General Peopleās Congress (GPC) party. But after Yemeni unification in 1990 he relied upon an uneasy coalition with the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), 1990ā1994, and a conservative Islamist party called Islah, āReform,ā 1994ā1997. Salehās power waned in the 2000s as he groomed his eldest son, Ahmed, to replace him as head of state and leader of the GPC.
The immediate cause of intervention by āFriends of Yemenā was the accumulation of evidence in 2009 that individuals associated with al-Qaedaās local branch, known as al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), incited a deadly gun attack at a US army base in Fort Hood, Texas, and then attempted to bomb a trans-Atlantic flight to Detroit, Michigan. There were other signs of trouble that caused members of the āFriends of Yemenā to act. Between 2004 and 2009, Salehās regime fought six rounds of warfare with armed rebels who identified with a martyred leader, named Hussain Badruddin al-Houthi. In 2010, Houthi rebels remained active along Yemenās northern border with Saudi Arabia, where they developed ties with the neighboring kingdomās regional rivals, Iran and Lebanonās Hizbullah party. Beginning in 2007, a mass protest movement called āHirakā arose in southern and eastern regions of Yemen. By 2010 its leaders pursued a separatist agenda. Following a sharp decline in oil production in the mid-2000s, economic stress exposed an already impoverished population of some 25 million to grave risks. For decades, observers warned that Yemen faced a pending environmental disaster due to longstanding water shortages combined with the effects of climate change. In short, a menacing storm of troubles engulfed the country years before 2011.
Among countries impacted by the āArab Springā of 2011, including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, Yemen was clearly in a separate category. Salehās regime not only faced strong domestic opposition prior to 2011 but its vulnerability invited foreign intervention a full year before the overthrow of Tunisian President Ben Ali. Due to prior intervention by āFriends of Yemen,ā once the wave of Arab street protests reached Yemen in early February 2011, Saudi Arabia and other member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC ) were in position to launch a diplomatic initiative designed to shape the outcome of events. Britain and America , as well as other member states of the āFriends of Yemen,ā supported the GCC Initiative because they were happy to let Gulf Arab diplomats take the lead role. The United Nations adopted the same stance, giving the Secretary Generalās Special Envoy, Jamal Benomar, the task of ensuring the GCC Initiativeās success. No country swept up in the Arab worldās year of revolutionary protests was more deeply embedded in dominant global and regional structures of ācrisis managementā than Yemen, yet its internal sources of resistance were no less prepared to fight back.
Once Ali Abdullah Saleh relented to foreign and domestic pressures in November 2011, he was replaced by his Vice President Abdurabbo Mansour Hadi who won a nationwide popular referendum in February 2012. Media around the world hailed the achievement, claiming the GCC Initiative saved the country from the political turmoil and violence seen in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria. In early 2013, UN Special Envoy Benomar and other foreign diplomats helped President Hadi launch a National Dialogue Conference (NDC ) attended by more than 500 delegates with a variety of political affiliations from regions across the country. The purpose of the NDC, which was mandated under terms of the GCC Initiative and supported by UN Security Council resolutions, was to reach a consensus on the constitutional principles of a new government which was supposed to be formed after elections in 2014. Due to disagreements about a newly proposed federal structure of government, the NDCās conclusion was delayed until early 2014. President Hadiās interim role was extended for another year, and the plan to hold new elections was consequently postponed until 2015. Despite the delay, the āYemen Modelā appeared to succeed through the first few months of 2014.
Beneath the surface, however, severe troubles lurked. The Republic of Yemen was constructed barely two decades earlier, following the historic unification of North and South Yemen in May 1990. It was widely assumed that national unification settled internal divisions on a permanent basis, yet numerous divisions persisted. In the middle 2000s, Islah, the YSP, and other political parties formed a strong opposition coalition, known as the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP ). The JMP lacked organizational strength to hold together a national constituency amid fierce political competition over a shrinking pool of economic resources. Several influential regional groups outside the JMP harbored deep grudges from the past. Supporters of Hirak wanted to avenge the loss of southern identity in the 1994 civil war. Hardline rebels of the Houthi movement north of Sanaa also remained outside the JMP. In 2014, they were used by Saleh and his loyalist army commanders to take revenge against leaders of Islah whom Saleh blamed for his downfall in 2011. During the spring and summer of 2014, Houthi leaders launched a parade of violence toward the capital Sanaa, dynamiting the homes of rivals they shared with Saleh. Unlike Saleh, members of the Houthi family bore Zaydi sectarian grudges from the 1960s. In the meantime, they had also adopted the revolutionary agenda of Iran and Hizbullah, thus introducing an element of Shia sectarianism previously unknown in Yemen while fiercely antagonizing Saudi Arabia.
Leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE ), and other GCC member states followed events of the āArab Springā with great unease. In Bahrain, the Saudi National Guard and UAE forces intervened directly as a counter-revolutionary force on March 14, 2011. Likewise, the Saudi and Emirati governments aided counter-revolutionary elements in Egypt during 2013, while simultaneously sending assistance to rebel armed forces in Syria and Libya where Qatarās government was involved as well. The signs of portending disaster in Yemen were everywhere because the entire region was aflame with warfare. It was widely expected that if events in Yemen went against the interests of GCC leaders, the latter were unlikely to remain militarily disengaged. This is what happened in September 2014 when the joint forces of Saleh and Houthi leaders seized and occupied Sanaa. Afterward, everything unraveled. The GCC Initiative transformed into a GCC-led war by March 2015, as Yemenis were not spared the violence seen in other āArab Springā states.
During the fall of 2014, UN Special Envoy Benomar attempted to salvage the āpeaceful Yemen Model.ā President Hadi also tried to advance a new Yemeni constitution derived from the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference. But Houthi leaders objected in January 2015, placing Hadi and other government officials under house arrest. When Hadi announced his resignation the same month (withdrawn in February following his escape to Aden), foreign embassies began closing. The departure of diplomats was an omen of what happened on March 26, 2015, when the first Saudi bombs dropped from the skies over Yemenās capital. A massive war campaign by the GCC coalition, initially called Operation Decisive Storm, proved ill-conceived because there was nothing decisive about it. One month of continuous attacks shattered the city of Sanaa, destroyed the home of Houthis in Saada, knocked out key national infrastructure, while killing and injuring thousands of civilians, yet because Houthi and Saleh forces managed to fight on, the war continued year after year.
The idea for this edited collection, Global, Regional, and Local Dynamics in the Yemen Crisis, originated during the first months of the Saudi-led coalitionās war. It was initially sparked by a conversation with a diplomat who previously worked in Sanaa and was familiar with some of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that attempted to avert warfare in 2015. He was from the region, and when I told him about my 2012 book, Regionalism and Rebellion in Yemen: A Troubled National Union, he noted the titleās double meaning. He pointed out that āregionalismā holds both an international connotation, as in the Arabic āikleemiyya,ā which is used to describe regional organizations like the GCC, and a local connotation like the Arabic āminatiqiyya,ā which was how I used the term in reference to regionalism inside Yemen. His purpose in noting the double meaning was to encourage me to write a second book about regional dynamics surrounding Yemen, particularly among GCC member states. This became my original plan as I began researching the relationship between Yemenās war and GCC politics.
When the armed battles of Yemen dragged on through the remainder of 2015 and then extended into 2016, it became clear that this would not be a short war as happened in the country during the summer of 1994, but rather a long war like Yemen experienced during the 1960s. I then became interested in expanding the bookās subject to include analysis of global powers engaged in Yemenās war, while covering debates at the UN Security Council and regular efforts by the UN Special Envoy to negotiate a peaceful settlement. I increasingly conceived the research project as a way of viewing the Yemen war from a variety of perspectives, both inside-looking-out and outside-looking-in. Other authors rushed books to publication, seeking in the short term to explain events for readers eager for more information. This was true of Sheila Carapico who produced an edited collection, entitled Arabia Incognita: Dispatches from Yemen and the Gulf (2016), which compiled old articles of Middle East Reports stretching back to the 1960s, with a few chapters added to update events in 2015. Its final chapters offered insight into regional dynamics beyond Yemen between 2011 and 2015, yet contributors lacked an opportunity to conduct in-depth research of their subjects.
Sarah Phillipsās book, Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis (2017, reprint of 2011 edition), repackaged old academic research about the countryās domestic politics. Ginny Hill penned a journalistic account in Yemen Endures: Civil War, Saudi Adventurism and the Future of Arabia (2017) b...