Yemen: Another Civil War

The last American troops are being pulled out of Yemen after al-Qaida fighters stormed a city near their base on Friday. Houthi rebels who have already overrun most of the country are closing in on Aden, the last stronghold of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. And on Sunday ISIS sent suicide bombers into two big mosques in the capital, Sanaa, killing 137 people.

The U.S. State Department spokesman put the best possible face on it, saying that “due to the deteriorating security situation in Yemen, the U.S. government has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen.” He even said that the U.S. continued to support the “political transition” in Yemen. But there is no “political transition.” There is a four-sided civil war.

Why would anybody be surprised? There has been no 25-year period since the 7th century AD when there was not a civil war of one sort or another in Yemen. (And the impression that it was less turbulent before that may just be due to poor record-keeping.) But this time it’s actually frightening the neighbors.

Yemen’s current turmoil started in 2011 when the dictator who had ruled the country for 33 years, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, was forced out by nonviolent democratic protesters (and some tribal militias who backed them). Saleh’s deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, took over and even won an election in 2012, but he never managed to establish his authority over the deeply divided country.

Hadi had the backing of the United States and most of the Arab Gulf states (including Yemen’s giant northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia) because he was willing to fight the Islamist extremists who had seized much of southern and eastern Yemen. But his main preoccupation was actually the Houthis, a tribal militia based in the largely Shia north of Yemen.

Angry at the status that the north was being offered in a proposed new federal constitution, the Houthis came south in force and seized Sanaa in September. In February, after months of house arrest, Hadi fled to the great southern port of Aden, his home town and Yemen’s second city, and declared that the capital instead. So the Houthis came south after him.

The third contender for power is al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), whose forces, like the Houthis, are only a half-hour’s drive from Aden. As its fighters closed in on Aden last week, AQAP seized the town next to the airbase where the American forces were living, and Washington ordered them out. The last thing it wants is American military hostages in AQAP’s hands.

It is not yet clear whether AQAP and the Houthis will fight each other first (and then the winner gets to attack Aden), or whether one of them will grab the city and try to defend it from the other. It’s even possible that Hadi can hold Aden – but he probably can’t take back the rest of the country.

And we mustn’t forget the fighters of ISIS, who announced their presence in the country last month. Their sole operation of note so far has been the suicide attacks on two Shia mosques in Sanaa. But as Sunni fanatics in a country that is currently being overrun by its Shia minority, ISIS will not lack for recruits. If it doesn’t qualify as a full fourth force yet, it soon will.

What worries people is the possibility that the jihadis (either al-Qaida or ISIS) could come out of this on top. They are certainly not there yet, but many Sunnis will see them as the best chance to break the hold of the Shias who, despite their internal quarrels, have collectively dominated the country for so long.

Shias are only one-third of Yemen’s population, and the resentment runs deep. The Houthi troops now occupy almost three-quarters of the country’s densely populated areas, but it would be an exaggeration to say that they actually control all that territory. They are spread very thinly, and if they start to lose they could be rolled up very quickly by the jihadis.

That could turn Yemen into a terrorist-ruled “Islamic State” with five times the population of the one that sprang into existence last July on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border. The odds are against it, but after that “July surprise” nobody is ruling it out.

This story was originally published March 25, 2015 at 6:20 PM with the headline "Yemen: Another Civil War."