NERINT. 1 Undergraduate student in International Relations at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Contact:

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1 The Conflict in Yemen (2015-present): domestic, regional and international characteristics of an unknown war João Paulo Alves 1 e Patrícia Graeff Machry 2 Yemen is structurally affected by its difficulties to constitute a strong central government, and the consequent adversities in the control and unification of its territory. The Yemeni Civil War started in 2015, after Houthis offensives over the capital, having deep historical roots that date back to the poor unification process and the political, regional and religious divisions in the country. The recent actions of the United States and Saudi Arabia show the importance of the country to the regional balance of power.. Introduction In October 12, 2016, the Pentagon announced that the United States of America had launched attacks over Yemen, destroying three coastal radars controlled by the Houthi rebellious movement. The bombings were justified as being a retaliation after the Houthi launched two missiles against North-American warships located at the Red Sea, during the prior weekend. In the light of the presidential debates in the United States, little to nothing was mentioned regarding this involvement in Yemen, and the Press Secretary of the Pentagon affirmed that those were acts conducted for the defense of their personnel, their ships, and their freedom of navigation violated by the Houthis. He also endorsed the speech frequently presented by Saudi Arabia on the involvement of Iran as a supporter of the Houthi group, and invited all parties to go back to the negotiations table and restart the peace talks, interrupted in August 2016, after the break of the cease-fire agreement. Nevertheless, what seems to be omitted from these declarations is the fact that this North-American attack against rebellious positions marks the country s first direct involvement in the Yemen Civil War since its beginning, in Until now, aside from its support for the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen since March 2015, direct North-American actions were mostly limited to the context of the War on Terror, with aerial drone attacks conducted against the Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP). What is, then, the importance of Yemen and the impacts of the civil war currently taking place in the country? What are the motivations that led the great powers such as the United States, and the 1 Undergraduate student in International Relations at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Contact: joaop.ma22@gmail.com 2 Undergraduate student in International Relations at UFRGS. Contact: pgmachry@gmail.com 66

2 regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, to get involved? What are the internal disputes and the domestic interests that feature this conflict? Taking into consideration such relevant questions, the present bulletin has the objective of answering them, contextualizing the historical and geostrategic role of Yemen and clarifying the dynamics and characteristics of the conflict. A brief history of Yemen The Yemeni territory is located in the Southwestern region of the Arab Peninsula. It borders Saudi Arabia and Oman, and is bathed by the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. This is an extremely strategic position in virtue of the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, that connects the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and, consequently, the Mediterranean. Image 1 The Location of Yemen in the Arab Peninsula 67 The biggest part of the Yemeni population is Sunni, following the Shafi school, but there is also a smaller share that follows the Shia Zaydi school, especially in the North. The Zaydi school is a Shia minority that has more similarities with the Sunni branch than with other Shia schools, like the Twelvers found mainly in Iran and Iraq and are only found in Yemen nowadays (Demant 2004; Etheredge 2011). The Yemeni territory was not always unified the way it currently is. By contrast, it was historically divided between countless regional tribes and, since the beginning of the 20th century, between North and South. The division between North and South started when two empires, the British and the Ottoman, aspired to establish themselves on Yemeni territory, in the North and South, respectively, due to the importance of the red Sea. While in the South, the population was mostly Sunni, in the North it was divided between Sunni and Shia Zaydis (Day 2012; Etheredge 2011; Held and Cummings 2014). With the end of World War I, the resulting disaggregation of the Ottoman Empire and withdrawal of its force from Northern Yemen, this region became dominated by Zaydi Imams. This control was contested with the revolution of 1962, when military sectors and opposition organizations deposed the Imam and founded the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) commonly known as Northern Yemen. The revolution of the North inspired the Southern people, still under control of the British, to lead another revolution, this time in the South, in 1963, with socialist orientations and fighting for the decolonization and funding of the People s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). The PDRY started to receive Soviet support, carrying out an agrarian reform, investing in education and healthcare, and defending women s emancipation. The Northern republic, in turn, would remain mostly agrarian, illiterate and divided by tribal leaders disputes, whose power no president would be able to control until the ascension of Ali Abdullah Sale, in Despite the formal division of the territories, the Revolutions that took place in both sides of the frontier spread the

3 ideas of national unity between the Yemeni people, especially due to the influence of Arab nationalisms and Pan-Arab ideologies that affected the region since the 1950s. (Halliday 1990; Etheredge 2011; Day 2012; Visentini et al 2013). With the weakening of the Soviet Union in the final half of the 1980s, the socialist support towards Southern Yemen started to decay. At the same time, oil prospecting on the border region indicated the existence of potential fields located under Southern controlled territories. Having in mind the possible collapse of the PDRY and the advantages of a joint exploration of oil in Yemeni territory, the leaderships of both countries chose to reunite, reaching a conclusion in May 22, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Northern Yemen, became the president of the new Republic of Yemen, with a capital in Sana a (Brehony 2011; Etheredge 2011; Visentini et al 2013). The unification, however, did not erase the differences between both parts. Since the unification, the Southern population started to question its representation on the political organizations, since the Northern population was five times larger than their counterparts and, consequently, held most of the Parliament seats. A war would take place in 1994 between North and South, resulting in a victory of the former, but not ending the discontentment with the situation. In the 2000 s, new forces would emerge to contest the control of Saleh in Yemen: the Zaydi insurgent movement Houthi and the establishment of the Al- -Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda. The Saleh government fought many wars against the Houthis between 2004 and 2010 in Northern Yemen, while it simultaneously became an exemplar ally of the United States in its Global War on Terror, allowing the execution of aerial attacks against Al-Qaeda. In 2011, the protests of the Arab Spring hit Yemen as well, taking the population to the streets against Saleh s government, in power for 33 years. The spread of violence made Saudi Arabia and the United States push Saleh to leave the government, a move that was materialized after negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Elections were held in 2012, taking Saleh s vice-president and the only candidate, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power. Recognizing the difficulties he would have to earn people s trust after the Arab Spring, Hadi maintained its position as an essential ally of the United States, to ensure at least the external support (Visentini 2014). Between 2013 and 2014, Hadi conducted the National Dialogue Conference, a forum comprising all political groups of Yemen, in an attempt to reach a final agreement in the post-saleh Yemen that would fit diverse interests. The final agreements proposed a federative system, but they ended up failing: while some sectors from the South would not cede their separatist ambitions, the people of the North would not agree with leaving certain oil and gas rich regions to the Southern federations (Salisbury 2015). The disagreements heated the tensions between the rebellious Houthis from the North, and the separatists from the South, while Hadi s difficulties to reconcile the territory allowed the growth of Al-Qaeda. The Yemeni Civil War and its domestic dimension The conflict currently taking place in Yemen started in January 2015, when the Houthis seized the presidential palace of Sana a and took the po- 68

4 sitions of the presidential guard. The group, from the region of Saada, was advancing southwards to Sana a since 2014, given the stalemates of the agreements with Hadi over the increase of Houthi s participation in the government and their desired economic and military reforms. (HIS 2015). After the conquest of the capital, the city of Aden blocked all its land, sea and air access, signaling its support for the presidency. The Houthis delivered speeches asking for agreements between Southern parties and for the enhancement of security in the Marib region, to protect its population from the threat of Al Qaeda present in the region in a clear attempt to acquire local sympathizers. On January 22, the president and the prime minister resigned, trying to negotiate the political participation increase with the Houthis, demanding their withdrawal from the capital. The Houthis, however, established an interim government in February, and president Hadi fled to Aden, where he informed the annulment of his initial decision to resign and restated his legitimacy as president. As a result of these events, the ongoing civil war in Yemen is complex in its internal dynamics, since it involves a series of parties disputing with each other, holding fragile alliances. The already mentioned Houthis are an insurgent group with Zaydi orientation, commonly labeled by the international media as a rebellious Shia group or a Shia militia, normally as an attempt to link them with Iran. Nevertheless, the Shia Zaydi school, as was shown above, has little in common with the Shia orientation of the Iranian people, weakening the religious association between the two. The Houthis started to organize as a group of religious studies defending the rebirth of Zaydism in Yemen undermined after the fall of the last Imam in 1962, and feared by most of the Sunni population of the country. The name Houthi started to be 69 used only after a while, in reference to the movement s founder Hussein Badr al-din al-houthi, assassinated by Saleh s forces in 2004, becoming a martyr. The group identifies officially as Ansar Allah, or Partisans of God (HIS 2015; Phillips 2011). The Southern Separatist Movement, or al- -Hirak, also arose in the 2000s as a movement of challenge towards the government of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, considered by the people of the South as corrupt and illegitimate. The Southern movement, however, had a different approach, defending peaceful and unarmed manifestations. The al-hirak organized huge protests in 2008 and 2009, but eventually had to resort to attacks against the government, after repression from Saleh s security forces. Nowadays, the movement has no leaders, thus having a reduced figure in the conflict. Even though they are against the maintenance of Hadi s government, considered by them as an extension of Saleh, they are also opposed to the Houthi movement. The Hadi s government forces, main opponents of the Houthis on the conflict, are defended by the Yemeni army and by a Saudi-led military coalition that acts inside the country since March Internally, however, the armed forces are heavily divided, with many dissidents changing sides, in defense of the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. These dissidents, in an attempt to weaken the president, have supplied and supported the Houthis, in a curious turn of events, considering the fact that, while president, Saleh was also opposed to Ansar Allah. Nonetheless, the conflict is not limited to its borders. Besides these internal actors that fight within Yemen, transnational actors such as the Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are also present in this dispute. The Al-Qaeda is in the country since 2009, through its branch al-qaeda in the Arab Peninsula

5 (AQAP), created in 2002 in Saudi Arabia. The AQAP has control of a significantly large portion of the country, especially its Eastern half, in the cities of around Marib, rich in oil reserves. This section of Al-Qaeda is considered one of its most powerful branches, being responsible for the attacks at the Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, January The Islamic State, on its turn, announced its establishment in Yemen in 2015 and, although its real size and significance is still unknown, speculations point out it may have acquired dissidents from the AQAP in the country (HIS 2014; IISS 2016). Image 2 The Division of Control over the Yemeni Territory The Islamic Republic of Iran has evident strategic interests in the modification of the present status quo and the potential reorientation of the Yemeni policies, in a simultaneous offensive and defensive strategy. On one hand, Tehran takes advantage of the sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia in the country to give ideological and political support to the Houthis gaining access to an important area that could be used as an instrument of pressure against its regional rivalries. On the other hand, there are repeated accusations, coming from Washington and Riad, on the material assistance given to the Yemeni rebels, on the form of significant amounts of money and military equipment s supposedly with the objective of creating retaliatory focuses and expand its deterrence capacity (Juneau 2016). The conflict s international dimension After understanding the domestic dimension of this conflict, we set off to an analysis of its extension on the international level. It is recognized that the Yemeni Civil War is, essentially, the result of internal dynamics and disputes for power as shown in the previous section. Nevertheless, it is also clear that this phenomena attracts the attention of some specific international actors: regionally, it fits a historical and geopolitical dispute involving Iran and Saudi Arabia; and globally, it is inserted in the strategic interests of the United States and Europe in the region. In turn, the Gulf Cooperation Council, especially Saudi Arabia, foresees Yemen as virtually an extension of its domestic concerns, like a strategic backyard in the peninsula. Hence, Riad possesses original interests in the country since the Yemeni independence, having advocated Wahhabism its official branch of Islam as a religious model, and established a patronage system over the internal balance of power. More specifically, the Saudis seek to restrain the strengthening of the rebel group, in order to prevent that Iran can complete its political outflanking. In the current conjuncture, thus, the achievement of their objectives invariably passes through the defense of the Abd Mansur al Hadi government (LSE Middle East Centre 2014). Due to these reasons, and after the Houthi offensives over the Southern part of the country and the resulting conquests of one of the last strongholds of the central government (the city of Aden), the GCC noticed the necessity of defending their interests with the use of force. In the begin- 70

6 ning of 2015, the United Nations Security Council started to strongly criticize the rebellious offensives, approving Resolution 2201 and demanding the withdrawal of the insurgents from the occupied areas. In March, Saudi Arabia organized a coalition of countries formed by Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan to perform a military intervention, and aid the government on the recovery of the lost lands (Reis, Machry and Prates 2015). In this context, the Operation Decisive Storm was launched. During its initial phase, the central goal was to guarantee aerial superiority for the coalition, through the establishment of a no-fly zone, and the reversal of the conflict s situation, by conducting localized airstrikes. This way, coalition air forces started to bomb Houthis military bases, supply lines, anti-air equipment s and ammunition storages in Sana a, Taiz and Aden 3, as shown in Image 1. Furthermore, Saudi and Egyptian war vessels approached the Southern coast and guaranteed reinforcement on the defense of the harbor city. Gradually, the situation was reverted and the troops loyal to the government started a counteroffensive (Mello and Knights 2015). Image 1 Location of the airstrikes of the coalition (Source: Levett et al. 2016) Besides that, conventional forces of the coalition countries were employed on ground battles in Yemen. In this combat effort, we highlight the dispatching of mechanized systems, including main battle tanks, medium armored vehicles, infantry combat vehicles and many transport trucks. Likewise, boots on the ground were eventually send to assist on the skirmishes for regain, with emphasis on the participation of Yemeni troops trained and specialized in Saudi and Emiratis fields, and special operations battalions from Saudi Arabia and the UAE armed with cutting edge weaponry adding around soldiers on the battlefield (Mello and Knights 2015). During the operation s second phase, the disputes reached a stalemate: the conflict became a war of attrition and the movements of both sides were significantly reduced. As a last effort, there was a brief confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis along the wide border dividing both countries, with the engagement of quick-response forces, the exchange of heavy artillery fire and the evacuation of frontier cities. In this context of stagnation, there was a significant increase of the indirect participation of both regional powers, through the provision of support for their respective factions by sending weapons, ammunitions, medical supplies and food (Reis, Machry e Prates 2015). Finally, the coalition launches itself in a new endeavor of war through Operation Restoring Hope, which lasts until the present day in theory, ending the military operations and the airstrikes, and proceeding with diplomatic means 4. Thus, according to the spokespersons of the coalition, they started new operations with major humanitarian goals: re- 3 According to Yemen Data Project, a data collection initiative focused on the ongoing Yemeni Civil War with the objective of making it more accountable, there is wide controversy on the effectiveness of the coalition airstrikes. According to the organization, of the incidents registered, hit military facilities, hit civilian locations, and hit unidentified points. The regions of Saada and Taiz were especially affected by such indiscriminate attacks (Levett et al. 2016). 4 In spite of the official declarations regarding the ceasing of airstrikes, the Saudis have continued to, unrestrictedly, attack Yemeni cities, even destroying the airport of Sana a. 71

7 vive the political dialogue, strengthen the combat towards terrorism, ease the evacuation of nationals and intensify the medical assistance for the civilian population (Banco 2015). Nevertheless, until nowadays, there were no effective and lasting initiatives that pointed to a formal cease-fire between the parts. At the global level, the current situation in Yemen also awakens specific interests particularly of the West regarding the strategic position of the sea line of communication that crosses the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. This channel separates Africa and the Middle East, at the same time that connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and afterwards, the Indian Ocean. Besides, it is of utmost importance to the international economy, being the 4th busiest chokepoint on the planet: annually, approximately ships, with 14% of all global commerce, cross this passage; daily, around 3.8 million barrels of refined oil and by-products take the same path onto the industrialized markets of the West (Rocha et al. 2016). These factors are added to the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which contributes to the attraction of the United States and Europe towards the developing situation in Yemen. The political and economic deterioration and the segregation in opposing combating factions created a fertile ground for the ascension of fundamentalist and terrorist groups, which have been the biggest beneficiaries of this conflict. Hence, there is the Al-Qaeda of the Arab Peninsula and, to some extent, the Islamic State (IS) as other sources of instability and threat to international security either through the traditional attacks all over the globe, or through the militarization of this important maritime passage in the region (Cordesman 2015). Precisely for this reasons, the United States have participated in the war efforts of the coalition. Ini- 72 tially, the country acted indirectly, being responsible for the supply of high-tech military equipment s such as the F15 and F16 used for the Saudi airstrikes and for the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV s) on the logistical and intelligence support. In October 2016, Washington took a more active role in the conflict, using Tomahawk missiles to bomb rebel s radars on the coast of the country, in an alleged act of self-defense, for the protection of its personnel, its vessels, and its freedom of navigation (Ackerman 2016). Final considerations The conflict that started in 2015 in Yemen showed the intense divisions within this young country. Such divisions, however, are not recent, dating back to the period when there was still a split between North and South in the territory, and then were intensified after the unification. They carry strong regional and religious agendas, which, by their turn, are filled with political and strategic intent. Beyond these numerous and complex internal elements at stake, the civil war also comprises regional and international actors. In this sense, it is important to highlight the participation of Saudi Arabia, which has historically exercised its influence over Yemen, before and after the unification, and that currently manifests its importance for stability through a military intervention. The regional contend between Iran and Saudi Arabia manifests itself through their respective supports for the internal factions within the country, even though the actions of the former, considering the given facts, are significantly smaller than those of the latter. The recent active participation of the United States in this war proves the strategic importance of the region, which was already inside Washington scope of interests since the beginning of the Global War on Terror.

8 It is impossible to foresee the unfoldings of this conflict. The peace-talks, stagnated for now, could be restarted at any moment, and their results could range from simple cease-fire to a real pacific political transition agreement. The historical difficulties of reaching a consensus between the Yemeni government and its opposition forces, added to the growing terrorist threat, diminish the hopes of a settlement in the short term. Therefore, it is up to analysts to keep observing the upcoming events and the behavior of the actors involved, recognizing the importance of each of them both domestic and international. 73

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