April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

distinct features. Activists are facing numerous obstacles, straddling
political, social and economic fault lines, even as they gain courage and
inspiration from the momentous events unfolding in the region.
Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, impoverished Yemen has a small middle class
and a large uneducated and illiterate population. Social networking sites
such as Facebook, that helped mobilise the revolutions in Egypt and
Tunisia, are not widely used here. Yemen’s internal security apparatus is
at least as sophisticated and deeply entrenched as in Egypt; the army is
staunchly loyal to Saleh, as are powerful tribes in a country where tribal
allegiance is more significant than national identity. The opposition, while
strong in numbers, is divided in its goals.
"There is a popular movement and a political movement in Yemen," said
Khaled al-Anesi, a lawyer and human rights activist who helped organise
many of the recent protests. "But there is no support from the political
parties for the popular movement, which is not organised. It is still weak
and in the beginning stages".
The president and his backers
President Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power in 1978, first as president of
North Yemen and then as leader of the newly united republic. North
Yemen and the Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen (south), merged in
1990 but fought a nasty civil war in 1994. Saleh has marginalised political
opposition groups and installed relatives and allies to key political, military
and internal security posts maintaining an extensive informal patronage
network of tribal leaders, businessmen and clerics.
At the beginning of January, President Saleh proposed a constitutional
amendment that would allow him to stand for re-election in the next
presidential ballot in two years’ time. However, events in Cairo and
Tunisia made that move temporarily untenable and President Saleh has
promised to stand aside in 2013. (He made a similar promise before the
2006 presidential election, but eventually reversed this position.)
After 30 years in power, he faces widespread anger, complaints of
corruption and the concentration of power within his tribal sub-group, the
Sanhan clan. Large areas of the country are already in open revolt against
his regime, with a breakaway movement in the south, attacks on the
security services by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a defacto
semi-autonomous area under the control of northern rebels. Yemen
has emerged as a new base for al-Qa’ida militants driven out of their
traditional sanctuaries on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Western governments - worried about AQAP activity in Yemen and
reluctant to deploy their own conventional military forces - are providing
money and training to Yemen’s elite security and intelligence units. US
special forces have helped to plan "track and kill" operations with the
Yemeni military and the US has carried out several cruise missile strikes.
President Saleh’s son, Ahmed Ali, and three nephews command these elite
security and intelligence units. The president denies he intends to hand
power to his son, but many Yemenis still believe he favours an eventual
transfer of power within his family.
Al Qaeda
If the simmering insurrection in Yemen boils over, it has potentially dire
consequences for the United States. American officials have worked
closely with Yemeni leaders to stop al Qaeda from turning the country into
the kind of stronghold Afghanistan was before 9/11.Bruce Riedel, a former
CIA analyst who was an adviser to President Obama on the Afghanistan-