Analysis | The Arab Spring Never Ended in Yemen — It Was Buried
Ten years after anti-government protests rocked the Middle East, instability continues to plague Yemen — yet even while the will of the Yemeni people remains largely forgotten, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The Arab Spring left a legacy of change — on society, on government, and on the relationship between the two that is still felt a decade later. But few states experienced as much change as those that were met with the destructive consequences of civil war. In Yemen, the Arab Spring failed to bring about democratic transition — not because the incumbent government quashed the will of the people, but because the people succeeded. A decade later, the legacy of the Arab Spring in Yemen is a multi-layered conflict fed by domestic inequality, national power-brokering, regional ideological rivalries, and global great power conflict.
Yemen’s citizen revolution occurred in the final days of January 2011, shortly after the onset of the Tunisian revolution and alongside the Egyptian revolution, in what was referred to as a “Revolution of Dignity”. Major protests erupted throughout the capital of Sana’a spreading to other major cities — especially in the south — unified by pink bands, banners, and flags. Within the timeline of the Arab Spring as a whole, the early timing of Yemen’s revolution and the relatively aggressive and organized nature of the movement revealed the fervent eagerness with which Yemeni citizens desired a restoration of their dignity within the poorest Arab state.
The revolution which sought to end the country’s rampant corruption, unemployment, and food insecurity many have concluded with the end of then-President Ali Saleh’s 33-year reign, but it also inadvertently brought about the unpopular imposition of his successor, Abdrabbuh Hadi — and the beginning of the splintering of Yemen’s tentative peace. Many Yemenis, however, welcomed the transitional government in a hopeful light, celebrating the fall of the Saleh regime.
However, March 2013’s National Dialogue Conference extinguished much of that hope for change and began brewing resentment. Although its function was seemingly to allow all political parties and factions formed during the protests to assemble and discuss the future of Yemen, it only served as a forum for the old regime elites to dominate the agenda and alienate the rest of the people. The future of Yemen was snatched right out of the hands of those who fought so hard for it throughout the previous year.
The Conference also highlighted an obstacle to stability in Yemen that was disregarded. Although the Revolution, from a wide lens, was a symbol of unity, Yemen suffered from immense political and religious factionalism and heterogeneity, which made structured cooperation incredibly difficult. Although the Conference culminated in a plan for equal control and representation within the country, different political groups competed for control between and within these provinces. President Hadi lacked the charisma, experience, and leadership to exert much control over the government he inherited as his efforts to minimize the effects of Ali Saleh were undermined by Saleh loyalists within every institution. As the economy collapsed and conflict escalated between rival political, tribal, and extremist groups, Yemen was unable to extricate itself from the vicious cycle of instability that both motivated the Revolution and grew as a result of it.
“The ultimate tragedy here is that with foreign intervention, the will of the Yemeni people – the causes of the revolution — have been buried and largely forgotten by the international community. ”
Much conflict in the Middle East is undercut by sectarianism and the case of Yemen is no different; Sunni regional actors such as Saudi Arabia feared the potential religious imbalance of power should the Houthi forces assume control of the Yemeni government. To address this ideological threat, Riyadh fiercely spearheaded a fierce campaign to politically, economically, and militarily suppress Houthi forces and reinstate Hadi’s government. Houthi connections to Iran also turned the Yemeni Houthis into a symbol of Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran, directly at their border. Irrespective of the outcomes of Saudi Arabia’s actions, the decision to intervene in the Yemeni civil war that followed was motivated by a desire to safeguard Saudi national security as much as it was an opportunity to maintain the religious status quo in the region.
Iran, on the other hand, recognized the potential threat to its rival and the opportunity to shift the regional ideological balance in its favor. As the regional Shia power, Iran has steadfastly backed Houthi forces alongside Iraq. The result was sustained ordinance bombardment and ground-force attacks from both Iran-backed forces and Saudi-backed forces, leaving millions of Yemeni citizens caught in the crossfire. With the UAE, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, the United Kingdom, and the United States supporting Saudi Arabia’s proxies, and Iraq, Hezbollah (Lebanon), and Venezuela supporting Iran’s proxies, what began as a civil movement to topple a dictatorship is now a near-global proxy-war.
The ultimate tragedy here is that with foreign intervention, the will of the Yemeni people – the causes of the revolution — have been buried and largely forgotten by the international community. What began with the hopeful spark of democracy exploded into a regional proxy war that has engulfed the entire country, resulting in 30 million civilians suffering from food insecurity or famine and at least 4 million displaced. Little hope for a swift end to the conflict remains, especially as signs of re-escalation emerge following a series of fragile ceasefires in 2020. With over 12,000 civilian casualties and millions more suffering, few would say that Yemen’s Revolution of Dignity has restored any dignity to the ailing nation, but rather pushed its population further into poverty and vulnerability. Global and regional interventions into domestic conflicts rarely consider the political inclinations of the people themselves — even less so the principal issues from which the conflict broke out to resolve in the first place.
While the United Nations' attempts to mediate discussion between the Houthis and external belligerents, it may be prudent to consider the will of the Yemeni people themselves and ensure their representation in negotiations as it will fall to them to restore the stability and wellbeing of Yemeni society regardless of the outcome. Their notable absence in discussions about their own future exemplifies the disregard with which they are treated. However, with their participation, future peace negotiations may find a way to return agency to those bearing the brunt of the cost of war. Any peace process must not only remove or resolve the regional conflict in the Yemeni context, but those that created the conditions for the domestic instability from which the conflict began. That may only be achieved by refocusing the narrative of conflict from that of a layered proxy-war driven by broader ideological and geopolitical rivalries to overcome, to that of a national struggle for the future and stability of civilian lives within a war-torn state.
Presently, the country remains divided between the Houthi-controlled capital and northeast, the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, and pockets of territory controlled by the Hadi government. With President Hadi still in exile in Saudi Arabia, the political divide within Yemen exemplifies the state of conflict itself: narrow survival, indefinite instability, and yet insufficient gains by any side to break the deadlock. Nevertheless, the enduring lesson of the 2013 Conference should be that when a ceasefire is established and the war concludes, there must then be a structured and inclusive process which centers on resolving Yemen’s internal divisions before true peacebuilding, post-conflict governance, and reconciliation can take place.
Instability, a major humanitarian crisis, and civilian vulnerability within a seemingly never-ending civil war define the legacy of Yemen’s part in the Arab Spring. There is, however, a glimmer of hope again. Conflict trackers indicate that conflict events and conflict intensity in Yemen are both trending downwards, in tandem with a decline in coalition airstrikes. Numerous ceasefire attempts mediated by the United Nations have been enacted and subsequently broken over the years, as Saudi Arabia refused to withdraw and Houthi forces refused to halt its advance until it accomplishes a complete takeover of the country and Hadi is turned over for sentencing and possible execution.
Several new developments have slightly altered the parameters of the conflict. As Houthi fighters demonstrated their capacity to launch attacks on Saudi oil facilities throughout 2019 and 2020, Saudi Arabia has begun to re-evaluate the cost of the prolonged conflict. Houthi and Saudi representatives reportedly “positively engaged” with UN proposals for peace negotiations. The new administration in Washington also pulled support for the ongoing conflict, as President Biden took actions in his first week of office to freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, limiting the latter states’ mid-term military capacity.
Despite these developments, on its tenth anniversary, the legacy of the Yemeni Arab Spring is destruction and despair in the darkness of an international community preoccupied by its own problems. Yet light often shines from unexpected quarters. As history unfolds in Yemen, so too can legacies be rewritten in the light of change. Perhaps ten years from now, or sooner still, we may begin to see these events rewritten as the impetus for Yemen to pull itself from the ashes and begin the slow, slow process of healing and reconciliation.
This article was originally published by Raisina House on February 16, 2021.
Edited by: Cameron Vaské
All views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not represent the views of The International Scholar or any other organization.
Photo Credit:
An anti-government protesters outside Sana'a University raise their fingers and fists in the air while chanting for a new Yemen, by AJTalkEng, Flickr,
https://tinyurl.com/2mmpzwtf
