Tag Archives: yemen

06.10.16
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Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the UN: A Case Study in Power

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Rubble in the beautiful Old City. Image from timesofisrael.

In the civil war that rocked Yemen in the 1960s, regional and international powers choose sides, and used a local conflagration as a breeding ground for proxy battles, most notably between royalism, as led by Saudi Arabia, and republicanism, led by Egypt and Nasser. Needless to say, there were Cold War mechanisms as well, as there were in every conflict around then. The war in Yemen was considered not just a war for Yemen, but one where the right system could prevail. Nasser was beaten and battered. He lost 15,000 men in that conflict, about as many as in the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel combined, and indeed, the drain of Yemen contributed mightily to the humiliating loss in the Six Day War.

That’s not to say Egypt was the big loser. The chaos and savagery of regional hatred made the war in Yemen bitter and more cruel than it had to be, with Egyptian forces using chemical weapons to try to gain back ground they had lost.  Looking at today’s overlapping civil wars in Yemen, where the Saudis, for both historical and immediate reasons, have pummeled the Yemeni people with a hellish barrage, not much has changed.

Saudi outrages against human rights, particularly the rights of children, in their indiscriminate campaign, led to the UN putting the Arab-led coalition on a child right’s blacklist. This was a big deal, a huge diplomatic strike against any moral ground the Saudis might have had. Needless to say, this provoked outrage, and this week the blacklist was lifted.

A damning investigation by Colum Lynch in Foreign Policy claimed that the Saudis threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in UN funding unless they were removed from the list, a blatant act of bribery (though, from the Saudi point of view, it was sheer interest). Needless to say, the Sauds deny this report, saying “We did not use threats or intimidation and we did not talk about funding,” and that the report was changed after the UN had a joint review with the Alliance.

Interestingly, the UN all but admits that this is what happened. Ban Ki Moon said yesterday that he stood by the report, and that this was the most difficult decision he’s ever had to make, but that he “had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would de-fund many UN programmes.”

This, in a way, is correct, and show the tragedy of power. There isn’t much that the UN can do without money, which gives rich nations like Saudi Arabia, and powerful ones like the US and Russia, all the control. These are games played in air-conditioned rooms over millions of lives, over numbers on a spreadsheet. The UN backing down, almost understandably, demonstrates that blackmail works, and that the way the system is set up blackmail can always work, if you have the money to make it happen. Ban, and anyone else who is thinking globally, and not just about their own little corner, have to do a dreadful balancing act.

It’s the tragedy of Yemeni history writ large, but also strangely small. Decisions that impact it aren’t made in Yemen, and they are barely made with Yemen in mind. The battles that take place on its soil almost ignore local conditions, or rather only see local concerns through the prism of power. Saudi Arabia understands Yemen better than any other country in the world, and understands how to work with and manipulate the tribal system, but even they got sucked into the battle partly because of the idea that Iran was supporting the Houthis (who are, lineage-wise, the same people the Saudis supported in the 60s). And now Saudi Arabia, who has always wanted a Yemen that is divided and weak but still stable enough not to be chaotic, is helping to make sure that there is a vast and heavily-populated failed state on its southern border. That the Saudis, like the Egyptians, will suffer for their heavy-handedness is cold comfort to the people ground down, like so many mountains in the implacable progress of erosion, by powerful forces who see their lives worth pennies on the dollar.

05.26.16
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Yemen and the Big War

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Rubble in the beautiful Old City. Image from timesofisrael.

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the war in Syria as being part of the long arc of Ottoman dissolution, impacted as it was by colonialism, Arab nationalism, the rise of extremism, and other factors. This wasn’t meant to be teleological, or to say that anything was inevitable. Decisions made after the modern fall of ancient empire could have diverted the course of history in any number of ways. But I think it is true that certain conditions are set by the past, whether these are the scars of cultural memory, institutional norms, geographical displacement, environmental relocations, and any number of factors that impact how we live. People act under these conditions, and can change them incrementally, but even “great men” are bound by time and place.

That’s the problem with looking at current events (or history) entirely as decisions made by elites in elegant offices. Those do matter, of course. But we have a tendency to look at those without understanding how those decisions are the outcome of the constraints and the possibilites presented.

That brings us to Yemen, where this is- or should have been- more clear than in most places. Yemen, especially in the north, was shaped by tribal customs developed over centuries. This isn’t a matter of “they were living in the past”; it’s just that government was set by cultural norms. (It’s the same thing in America; our devotion to the cult of states, as if these arbitrary riverine borders mean something, is what allows the weird chaos of the nomination process to seem somewhat normal).  These norms meant wheedling and dealing with tribal leaders and other small groups. It was a very personal and transactional style of politics, based on intricate negotiations. Even a 30-yr autocrat like Ali Abdullah Salih spent most of his time personally placating and playing tribal leaders, depending on what the situation called for.

That’s why this recent report by Peter Salisbury for Chatam House is at once so correct, and so infuriating. (Link is the pdf, here’s the summary.) Salisbury outlines how the post-Salih transition process from 2012-2014 focused entirely on elites, the Hadis and the Houthis, especially in the context of the Middle East “cold war” between the Saudis and the Iranians. These are important factors of course, but in doing so, the rifts on the ground were ignored. What was really ignored were the conditions in which Yemeni politics were played. And because that was ignored, Salisbury argues, the end of the “big war” is just the stage for many little wars, or in his evocative phrase “a chaos state.” Local grievances, the maintenance of which was always the key to Yemeni politics, were ignored, and thus can fire up again.

Salisbury argues that we need to focus on ground-up approaches to nation building, and he is absolutely correct. It makes no sense to focus on what will appease the Sauds and the Iranians equally, and divide the country once again among the elites. What makes sense on the ground is the only way to establish even a rough kind of peace, and to try to staunch a bitter humanitarian disaster. It’s a lesson we fail to learn time and time again. Otherwise, it’s just epauletted men shaking hands on an empty stage while the theater burns down around them.

 

04.12.16
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AQAP Still Has Eyes On The Future

On Friday, Yara Bayoumy, Noah Browning and Mohammed Ghobari filed an amazing Reuters investigative report about al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and how they were erecting a true mini-state in the south of Yemen: keeping the peace, collecting taxes, doing the roadwork, punishing the rich for stealing from generations of the poor, and so forth. They were levying tributes from ships, much like a real country. It’s a tremendous read, and a powerful look at how smart terrorist organizations work

AQAP has flown under the radar since the terrifying rise of ISIS, and have even been relegated to the back of Yemeni news thanks to the Huthi rise and the Saudi invasion. But they have never stopped organizing, and most importantly, have never stopped learning lessons.

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Image from Reuters.

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03.08.16
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The Yemeni Nursing Home Massacre and the “Globalization of Indifference”

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Yemen is a country being pulled apart and battered by several different conflicts, internal and external, some a product of its history and some the imposition of global trends. It’s a proxy war for some nations and a Petrie dish for others.  It’s a country where modern violence has become, to the outside world, quotidian and expected, and where it takes a particularly horrific, or at least focused, attack to garner headlines.

Such an attack happened last Friday, in the Southern port town of Aden- once the capital of the secular and socialist south, later the hotbed for a new democratic Yemen, and now the bloody plaything for competing millenarians and indifferent governments. On Friday, at a nursing home, 16 nuns, volunteers from around the globe, were bound and executed with shots to the head.

(This was extreme enough to warrant an immediate disavowal and denunciation by Ansar al-Sharia, who said it wasn’t the way they fight. And it is true- since reforming in the last decade as AQAP, they have avoided the kind of blood-thirsty acts that alienate a local population.)

The global reaction to such a shocking crime was at once justified, but also indicative of how societies come apart at the edge of attention, until all it happens all at once.

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05.23.13
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Live blogging Obama speech

1:59 There is a lot I fault this Admin with regarding terrorism, but I also find the other side completely irrational and self-defeating and willing to do anything to destroy the POTUS.   But these stirring words, even though I agree with them, just ring so hollow after 12 years of this increasingly desperate nonsense.   If something can change now, it will be positive, but so late.  So many wasted lives around the world.  There was a chance after 9/11 to remake the world into something better.  But it was trashed, burnt away by gleeful pyromaniacs and sneering playground bullies.   Its cold and stupid logic persisted, and in some ways was heightened.  I think this Admin is doing a better job, but it is relatively worse, given expectations.  The idea that now, 12 years on, we’re trying to formulate a strategy to met the challenge, and, even worse, that no one really thinks we’ll be able to, is the whole rot of our political and moral culture in one depressing run-on sentence.

More thoughts later, perhaps.  Comments are always open.

1:53 “I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack, because this is worth being passionate about.”  That is excessively well-done.

1:52 I was worried he was going to quote Daniel Tosh.  Phew!

1:50  I love seeing the President be heckled.  It reminds me that we’re all right.  He handled it well.  I also did not expect all the applause.  I couldn’t really understand her, so I don’t know who they were applauding, but it is clear that everyone is on the same page.

1:50 People are going to say this is really partisan, and it is, but absolutely right.  It is crazy that it is suddenly dangerous to try people in courts.

1:47 I like when they point out that we actually have been able to try terrorists with relative ease over the years.

1:45 “I look forward to working with a collection of kill-crazy destructive vandals to help them paint me as a secret Muslim who wants to institute Sharia law”

1:44 It is true that they want to shield for journalism, but just because the law doesn’t exist isn’t a reason not to obey its spirit.   That was just a huge bit of cognitive dissonance, on a level we don’t usually see from this Admin.

1:41 Despite my carping, I’ve liked about 65% of the speech.  Maybe 75%.  But much of this is what I liked in 2007 and hasn’t translated into smarter action.   He came really close to the John Kerry line about how terrorism can be a law enforcement issue.   But not close enough.

1:40 Greg sums it up over on the twitter, which is where the cool kids hang out.

On diplomacy – yes, US has to be active. But US practices risk avoidance not risk management.

1:36 OK, so he got the people who hate the drone strikes and think they are a huge immoral and illegal over-reach angry in the first half-hour.  Now he is talking about foreign aid as a much better investment than military strikes.  Feeding people in Yemen and building wells.   So now everyone else will be angry.

1:35 “We cannot take action everywhere these radical ideologies take root”.   Yes, and yes again!  Too bad that is seen as wimpy.  Hell, we had people want to storm into Chechnya and Dagestan a few weeks ago (and frankly, I would have bought their plane tickets).

1:31 OK, I agree with the idea that in extreme cases citizenship doesn’t really matter.  That has been true in other wars.   I don’t even disagree that al-Awlaki was plotting against the US.  But the huge issue for me, at least, is that we crossed this incredible pass for someone who really wasn’t a major threat.  He was a little more dangerous than John Walker Lindh, perhaps (and doesn’t that seem like such a distant name from a far-off time), but he was not the impossible danger that made it worth taking these steps.

1:30 Nixes any drone strikes on US soil, brings up legal twister of due process.   Not judicial process.

1:28 Congress is briefed on every strike.  Might be over-estimating the popularity of Congress, here.  “Oh, Congress says it is ok?  Well, then I’m on board!”

1:26 As many people have pointed out, the idea that these drone strikes result in less civilian deaths (despite the Franciscan flagellation, which seemed honest, about these deaths) is partly a result of a morally obtuse concept that military-aged males near drone strikes are by definition non-civilian.

1:22 State sovereignty is great, but the question has always been: who is the state?  We deal with governments like Salih’s, whose “the state is me” ideas didn’t really pan out beyond the Yemen version of the Beltway.  (The Jambiya?)

1:20 This is true- America is at war with AQ and others.  It is “affiliated” that is the tricky thing.  We still don’t know who everyone is.  Oh wow- that was the heart of this speech.  “Legal doesn’t make it moral”.   This is what many of us who voted for Obama want to hear- be strong, but don’t over-reach.  We haven’t seen much evidence of this, and that is a disappointment, but maybe this is a turning point.

1:17 That’s great we aren’t triggering firefights with tribesmen with whom we have no beef.   But we sometimes drone the living death out of these self-same tribesmen.   This is saying all the things that I want to hear, but there is a certain dissonance with action.

1:13 Define it not as a boundless war on terror, but specific actors.  This, right here, is what people have been saying for 12 years.   But while this sounds great, working with Pakistanis, Yemenis, the AU to get rid of al-Shabab, it elides the fact that many of these actions are wildly unpopular in the countries that we are acting in.  I believe in partnerships, of course, but working with the wrong actors is almost as bad as going solo, and sometimes worse.

1:12 Bringing up all the other terrorist attacks before him.   Two things here: one, saying that we don’t have to have a national freakout every time something bad happens, and two, saying: really?  You want to impeach me over Benghazi?   Come on!

1:10  McVeigh wasn’t a Muslim!

1:09 I like this analysis of the difference between local operatives, regional affiliates, etc.  Some groups are just collections of names and guns.  We can’t use a blanket approach, and lump everything under the “islamist” umbrella.   But while the rhetoric is there, it still needs to translate to action.

1:07  Brings up James Madison.  Charlie Pierce just sat up straight.   It is also amazing that, in 2013, saying that we need to define the scope of this battle against extremism makes for a big speech.   12 years on.

1:06  I never really liked the “we spent abroad and not here” tactic, but it is undeniable.   It just smacks of isolationism.

1:04 Osama is dead.  If you had that on Speech Bingo, you aren’t terribly creative, are you?   There was nice talk about stopping torture, but that just serves to remind that we did torture people, and no one has been punished.  Just more rhetorical rug-sweeping.

1:03 Brings up Iraq.  Saying that it shifted focus shouldn’t be controversial, but somehow always is.

1:01 Doing the Obama thing where he links our history into the issues of the day- our character, our shared experiences, our “commitment to constitutional principles”.    This is a common trope for him, and for others, of course, but he seems to do it with a special intensity, perhaps because he has always had to try to prove he is “American”.   It sets a tone for a “this isn’t radical what I am about to say”.

OK, so we’re going to be live-blogging the Obama speech.  Haven’t done this in a while.  I know it is more of a twitter thing, but I’m old-fashioned.   The important things to look at in terms of Guantanamo are if they are planning to release anyone, or just shift detainees to federal supermax prisons stateside.