CHAPTER III - WEAKNESSES

In addition to the general weaknesses mentioned in the first chapter, the Middle East has three areas of fragility. The first is Yemen, which occupies a strategic position between the Horn of Africa and East Africa enabling it to control the Bab-el-Mandeb straits . Yemen may not be a failed State yet but is on the way to becoming one. Its president's authority stretches no further than the city limits of Sana'a, the capital. Its people are on the brink of starvation. Its high, steep-sided valleys serve as a refuge for Al Qaeda and its army is facing a tough uprising in the north for the sixth time. The second weak spot is Iraq. Will it remain united after US forces leave? The third is Lebanon, where the pro-Western March 14 Alliance won the June 7, 2009 elections. That victory is a cause for celebration but must not mask the importance of religious divisions and the impossibility of overcoming them.

I. ANARCHY IN YEMEN

Yemen is the sick man of the Arabian Peninsula. This country roughly the size of France is ideally located south of Saudi Arabia west of Oman. With 24 million people, it is the peninsula's most populous country but also its poorest.

Yemen does have some assets: a little oil and gas and a high tourism and cultural potential. The age of its civilization, beauty of its landscapes, charm of its towns and hospitality of its people make Yemen a captivating country and earned it the sobriquet Arabia felix , «happy Arabia», in ancient times .

But Yemen missed the development train and suffers from endemic problems such as corruption, poor administration, lack of water and overconsumption of qat, a drug that anesthetizes people and makes them lethargic.

A. THE SIX PLAGUES OF YEMEN

1. The absence of the State and a failed reunification

People often refer to Yemen as a failed State. Once, there was not one Yemen but two: North Yemen, where high plateaus and tribal rivalries fostered divisions and lent themselves to guerilla wars; and South Yemen, whose capital, Aden, is an Indian Ocean port that had always aspired to independence. South Yemen included Hadramaout, cradle of the bin Laden family, which geographically is an extension of the Saudi Arabian desert.

A historical division is superimposed on this geographical diversity. Northern Yemen was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918. The monarchy, or imam, was abolished there in 1962, when the country took the name Arab Republic of Yemen. Southern Yemen was part of the former British hinterland that gradually formed around the port of Aden starting in 1839. After the British left in 1967, an independent State came into being, which took the name People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and sided with the Soviet camp.

On May 22, 1990 the Arab Republic of Yemen and People's Democratic Republic of Yemen merged to form the Republic of Yemen. Soon afterwards, Yemen backed Iraq in the Gulf War, running afoul of the United States and, especially, Saudi Arabia, which expelled a million Yemeni workers.

Unification was a failure. The northerners abused their power and oppressed the people of the south. In 1994 southern Yemen unsuccessfully tried to secede under the name «Democratic Republic of Yemen" before falling back under the north's control. The scars of that division have not healed yet.

2. Poor administration

Widespread corruption undermines the State apparatus while the elites accumulate assets abroad. However, reforms are under way. A national anti-corruption committee, directly reporting to the head of State, has been set up; the justice system has been reformed and a government contracts law aiming to introduce morality into the management of invitations to tender has been passed. The civil service is less corrupt and a census of functionaries has been made in order to identify those, and apparently there are many, who hold fictional jobs to increase their income. Nothing worked. Most of Yemen is still a huge lawless zone.

3. Lagging development

Yemen lags far behind the rest of the Arabian Peninsula in human development. High fertility (6.8 children per woman in 2005) fuels demographic growth; 30% of men and 71% of women are illiterate. Nearly one-third of the population has no access to safe drinking water. A large proportion is extremely poor: 42% of Yemenis live on less than two dollars a day. Undernourishment, and no longer just malnutrition, as well as endemic diseases are widespread.

4. A weak economy

Yemen's economy is based on three pillars:

- Oil, with 312,000 barrels/day in 2007, accounts for most of the country's revenues. France's Total is the biggest investor through the gas consortium Yemen LNG.

- Agriculture: the total cultivated area is big and of good quality. Unfortunately, 60% of the water is used to grow qat , which accounts for one-third of farm output.

- Money transfers from many Yemeni immigrant workers.

Yemen receives significant amounts of international financial aid, especially in the form of debt rescheduling and cancellation.

5. Insecurity

Yemen has been lax towards Islamic fundamentalist movements, which find logistical support and a safe haven for training camps on its soil. Its mountainous relief, porous border with Saudi Arabia and proximity to Somalia and Sudan make it an ideal refuge.

The West's reactions to rising insecurity have compelled the government to react. The emergence of Al Qaeda, Usama bin Laden's Yemeni roots, September 11, 2001, and the attacks against the destroyer USS Cole on October 12, 2000 and the French oil tanker Limburg on October 6, 2002 in the port of Aden have led President Saleh to shift gears. Under pressure from the West, especially the United States, he has become aware of the need to fight Islamic terrorism more effectively. At the same time, the Yemeni government must avoid ruffling the feathers of a very conservative population sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism.

In June 2004 a serious uprising broke out in the mountainous northern region of Saada. The rebellion was led by a Zaydite (a branch of Shiism) religious leader, Hussein Badr ed-Din al-Houti , who was killed in September 2004 and replaced by his brother Abdelmali al-Houti. Government forces battled the insurgents for two months, resulting in the deaths of nearly 2,000 combatants on both sides. Fresh fighting broke out in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Not only has the central government been unable to restore its authority in the region, but the Houti rebels have also opened new fronts by joining forces with tribes from the Amran, Jawf and Sana'a regions. The conflict is reported to have caused the displacement of approximately 100,000 people.

The Houti movement has tribal roots and reflects a desire to defend Zaydism's specificity against the development by President Saleh's regime of a State Islam perceived as homogenized and dominated by Sunnism (although President Saleh himself is a Zaydite).

6. Isolation from the other Gulf countries

Yemen has paid a high price for its pro-Iraq positions during the 1990 Gulf War and chronic instability since reunification. The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (CCASG) has never agreed to let Yemen join the organization and its relations with Saudi Arabia remain steeped in mistrust.

The outlook improved somewhat after June 2000, when Yemen and Saudi Arabia signed a treaty demarcating their common border. The borderline was not definitively drawn until 2006. For Sana'a that normalization was the condition for regional reinsertion and the payment of subsidies it receives from its powerful neighbor and the Gulf States.

At the 22 nd CCASG summit in 2001 Yemen was admitted to some of the organization's technical cooperation bodies (health, education, labor and social affairs, sport). That decision was fortunate but had a limited impact on Yemen, although it could be seen as an encouraging sign that the Gulf countries have taken an interest in the country. But for the time being, CCASG membership remains an unlikely prospect because of Yemen's insecurity, which its neighbors fear will spread throughout the area.

B. A SOURCE OF INSTABILITY THAT MUST BE HELPED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Yemen is an alarming source of instability on the Arabian Peninsula and, with Somalia, on the other side of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, an economically devastated area tending to lie outside international law.

The steps taken to consolidate the State do not seem to up to the danger.

1. A source of instability

The situation has become much worse since late 2005. Groups of Swiss, German, Italian and South Korean tourists have been held hostage as bargaining chips in negotiations between certain tribes and government officials. Four French tourists were taken hostage in September 2006.

Car bomb attacks targeted oil sites near Marib and Mukalla in September 2006. A July 2007 car bomb suicide attack near Marib killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis. The list has grown longer since then, climaxing with the September 17, 2008 attack on the United States embassy in Sana'a, which killed 16 people. An Al Qaeda cell was broken up in August 2008, when approximately 30 alleged members of the group were arrested. Yemenis make up most of the detainees at Guantanamo: 96 out of 240.

Meanwhile, irredentism is still alive and well in southern Yemen, whose people perceived reunification as an annexation and the northerners' presence as an occupation. Many civil servants and military officers from the south have been dismissed and replaced by others from the north, who are notorious for their corruption. The people of the south consider themselves despoiled of their land and accuse leaders from the north of taking all the revenue from the south's natural resources. Discontent would probably lead to a break-up of the country if the Yemeni security forces did not control, often brutally, Aden and its region.

The combination of these various factors and the resulting insecurity--a weak State, powerful tribe inclined to offer activists refuge in the name of hospitality and high mountains where security forces are reluctant to venture--make Yemen an ideal haven for jihadists. The similarities with Afghanistan are striking.

In March 2009 two of Saudi Arabia's most wanted jihadists were arrested near Taez south of Sana'a. Approximately 100 other Saudi jihadist sympathizers sought by Riyadh's authorities are probably hiding in Yemen.

A rehabilitation program involving nearly 400 Yemeni Al Qaeda sympathizers momentarily neutralized the Islamist threat but some sources 50 ( * ) say its main purpose was to allow the authorities to cut a deal with the jihadists. They would refrain from committing attacks in Yemen if the government turned a blind eye to their activities outside the country. That compromise deeply angered the US authorities, already seething at the 2007 release of one of the militants who masterminded the USS Cole attack.

In January 2009 one of Al Qaeda's branches in Yemen announced that the movement's Saudi and Yemeni branches had merged to create Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

2. How can Yemen be helped?

The West's ability to help Yemen is limited and the Saudis are tired of paying money to such a corrupt regime. The Gulf countries could care less and would rather import labor from Pakistan and India than open up their borders to Yemeni workers. At a November 2006 meeting in London the World Bank's consultative group on Yemen pledged $5.3 billion in aid for the 2007-2010 period, which was confirmed at the follow-up meeting on 4 February 2008. Saudi Arabia pledged a billion dollars, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates 500 million each. The European countries participated in the overall effort. However, the situation is still alarming, prompting a reconsideration of aid policy to Yemen.

If Yemen does not join the CCASG , and there is no indication the organization's members want it to, the Gulf States should open up their borders to Yemeni workers. Western powers could pledge to carry out projects that would consolidate the State, such as building schools and roads and training police officers and civil servants. In return, the donors could try to impose a negotiated solution to the Houti rebellion and send observers to the south in order to guarantee more respect for civil liberties.

Another international conference could be held to implement an overall strategy. Yemen has strong development potential, especially in tourism, but first a minimum of security must be restored.

* 50 See Georges Malbrunot, "Le Yémen, nouvelle base arrière d'Al-Qaïda" Figaro.fr 01/06/2009