Respuesta de los niños con TEA ante tareas que les resultan frustrantes.

By Larissa Alles

Yemen, as one of the more conservative countries in the Muslim world, is often associated with the al-Qaeda branch al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has found refuge in the country since 2009. Yet Islamism as a form of mass participation in a modern state is a relatively new phenomenon in the country. Hence, it is necessary to see the role of political Islam in Yemen in its context. Yemeni unification in 1990 brought together the socialist South Yemen and the republican North Yemen. Whilst the former had been the only Marxist-socialist state in the Arab World, the latter had a history of being ruled by Zaydi imams before a military coup turned the country into a republic in 1962. Although Islamism did not play any significant role before or after unification, the societal conservatism of North Yemen rapidly captured South Yemen, where religion had previously not played a major role in politics.

However, it is important to note that the conservative interpretation of Islam practised in Yemeni society cannot be equated to an Islamist rule of the country. The first section demonstrates this by introducing the different political players before the 2011 uprising. Individual Islamist groups have played a role in politics in the past two or three decades, but as political tools employed by the ruling elite rather than as genuine oppositional groups. The second section looks at the actors of the 2011 Yemeni uprising and explains who among them had an Islamist agenda or was using Islamist propaganda. The post-2011 transition process appears to enable political Islam to play a new role in Yemen. For the first time many Yemenis actually feel concerned by the phenomenon of Islamism, fearing that it could dominate the political scene in the future.

Islamism in Yemen prior to the uprising

Despite an incumbent regime that ruled the country for thirty-three years, Yemen’s more recent history included some political pluralism. Although Yemen was (and remains) the poorest country in the Middle East, it nonetheless features a multi-party system that has been in place since the unification of North and South Yemen in

1990. However, much of this political pluralism has been either staged or meaningless and without any considerable influence. The country’s politics were monitored through the General People’s Congress (GPC) and Yemen’s long-time president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The party itself lacked any independent power. Whereas military, tribal or personal affiliations were very important if one wished to become part of Saleh’s client network, ideological or other backgrounds did not matter in the process of consideration for membership to the GPC. Instead, the party acted as an umbrella for Islamists, former socialists, and reformers; a reality that has led to ideological incoherence. One of the GPC’s main functions was political mobilisation for the state. Furthermore, the party controlled most of the benefits, which were given to the clients of Saleh.1 Hence, the actual source of the GPC’s power was contained in the fact that it was the party of the president, without any Islamist emphasis on its agenda.

The biggest opposition party has been the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (al-Tajammu al-Yamani li-l-Islah, referred to henceforth as Islah) and contains the top leadership of the tribal confederation of Hashid2 in addition to several religious groups and wealthy merchants who are against socialist ideas. Established as a ‘moderate Islamist’ party, Islah was set up by some of Saleh’s allies as a counterweight to the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) in the year of unification. At the same time, its foundation might also have been “a response to a nation-wide scramble for voice and influence in the immediate aftermath of unification”3

. Despite members of the Muslim Brotherhood holding key positions within the party administration, Islah does not advertise its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of the Brotherhood along with tribal shaykhs and businessmen are all represented in the party. The Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood forms “the party’s organizational and political backbone,”4

while the Salafi groups represented within the party have generally remained critical about political participation. The Muslim Brotherhood, as stated by multiple interviewees, has been part of the regime and the military for about the last two decades.5 However, personal aspirations in Yemen’s power arrangement have always trumped ideological objectives, be they Islamist or other.

It is important to note that the term ‘Islamists’ in a Yemeni context often summarises a wide range of people with a somehow religious background or affiliation, but with a variety of different objectives. They usually include members of the Muslim Brotherhood, returnees from Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, militant Salafis and jihadists, and others who, like the aforementioned, oppose a secular republican

state and demand a constitutional amendment with shariʿa as the sole source of law. As opposed to the centralist position of Saleh’s GPC, Islah was considered as a political pool for Islamists of various colours. The deep Wahhabi stance of one of its founding members, Abdul Majid al-Zindani, supported this impression. While acting as minister for education in the 1990s, he implemented a “conservatively Islamized curriculum” and founded a number of ‘institutes’ teaching Islamic jurisprudence and the principles of faith (fiqh wa-usul al-din).6

Islah has faced the common problem of all Yemeni opposition groups: its ideology remains unclear and it is still far from being a coherent party with a clear programme. Militant Islamism does not have an official status in the party. Islah became the GPC’s coalition partner in government in the 1993 elections for one legislative period. Since 1997, it has been the main opposition party. Yet, the party’s leaders have always been part of Saleh’s patronage network and therefore have been closer to the regime than to the party’s grassroots elements.

Between 2004 and 2010 the government was involved in a civil war in northern Yemen with a Zaydi group that called itself Believing Youth (al-Shabab al- Mummin) and was associated with the Houthi family. This group became more aggressive under its leader Hussein bin Badr al-Din al-Houthi, who promoted Zaydism and defended it against Salafi attacks. The conflict is significantly more sophisticated and multilayered than usually reported, with religion only being a minor factor in comparison to tribal affiliations and patronage-based loyalties. During the wars, different groups with different motivations were subsumed under ‘al-Houthiiyn’ (who refer to themselves as Ansar Allah), which did not defend a common ideology7, but claimed to defend their territory against a regime entrenched by Salafis and tribal opportunists. It is worth mentioning that the Zaydis, a Shiʿi minority in Sunni Yemen, formed the core elite of the Yemeni regime. Yet it must be understood that the president and the regime agenda were situated “in a broader non-sectarian Islamic arena”8

without any particular sectarian or Zaydi influence. Instead, the regime collaborated with Islamists who partly had alleged links to al-Qaeda in their fight against the Houthis.9

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was founded in 2009 when the Saudi Arabian and the Yemeni al-Qaeda branches merged following a major crackdown on the organisation in Saudi Arabia. AQAP attracts recruits by putting an emphasis on the ‘national struggle’, and using jihad predominantly as a response to

local grievances.10It is considered the most active branch of al-Qaeda and is responsible for a number of prominent attacks such as the attempted attack on Saudi prince Mohammed Bin Nayef in 2009, the Christmas Day bomb plot later that same year, the cargo plane bomb plot in 2010, and the attack on Yemeni security personnel in May 2012. One of the group’s latest attempts targeted the Yemeni Ministry of Defence in December 2013.

As in other Arab countries, a group calling itself Ansar al-Sharia appeared in Yemen in 2011. Whilst the ties to AQAP are undoubted, it remains unclear whether Ansar al-Sharia is an Islamic-nationalist insurgency with affiliations to AQAP or a rebranding of AQAP itself.11 The latter assumption is based on a statement by Shaykh Abu Zubayr Adil bin Abdullah al-Abab, a main religious figure of AQAP, in which he says that Ansar al-Sharia is the name under which AQAP introduces itself to the people. This re-naming might have happened in order to serve local purposes. The group became prominent when taking over areas in the southern governorate of Abyan, including the cities of Zinjibar and Jaar in 2011, erecting a form of Islamic emirate there. Whilst controlling those areas they provided basic social services and support for the local residents, which was the reason for a certain degree of acceptance among the population despite the group’s rigorous and very narrow interpretation of shariʿa.12 It was only in early summer 2012 that the Yemeni army could re-gain those areas in Abyan with United States military support.

Islamism in Yemen during and after the uprising

It was mainly young people, highly inspired by the events in Egypt and Tunisia and without any specific affiliations, who led the demonstrations that started in January 2011 in Sanaa’s Change Square and similar places in other Yemeni cities. Yemen’s youth movement was hailed both domestically and outside the country for its absence of partisanship. For the first time, people from different parts of society, from different tribes, from Ansar Allah, and from various leftist groups came together for a common cause, regardless their affiliations. It was only after the first few weeks of protests that Islah, not involved in initiating the demonstrations, supported them through supplying the protestors with tents, blankets and food.

Yet, not long after they began to show support, Islah was accused of co-opting the protest movement and tensions between Islah-affiliated and non-affiliated youths

inside the Square broke out. In retrospect, many of the non-affiliated youth speak about the time when more powerful actors defected from the regime and sided with the protest movement as ‘the end of the revolution’.13

These are first and foremost General Ali Muhsin, the former right hand of Saleh who is often affiliated with conservative Islamism or even Salafism in Yemen, and the Islah-affiliated al-Ahmar family. Many suspected Hamid al-Ahmar of using the protest movement as a “stepping stone to power”14

. Although these actors have a history of affiliation to different kinds of Islamism, it is common knowledge that none of them pursued their careers in the interest of political Islam, but rather pursued them in the interest of personal power gains.

None of the actors during the uprising had an explicit Islamist agenda. Tensions over, for example, the mixing of men and women in the Square and the involvement of women in these public events did exist, but are more accurately ascribed to Yemen’s conservative society than to the assertion of an Islamist agenda. In turn, it was remarkable how little outspoken Islamists such as al-Zindani contributed to the uprising, apart from their rather general statements of opposition towards then-president Saleh.

The turmoil of the protests and the resulting power vacuum in Yemen was used by Ansar al-Sharia in spring 2011 when they invaded the southern towns of Zinjibar and Jaar. The group managed to keep its control of Abyan’s provincial capital and its surroundings after the Yemeni army withdrew from these areas and were dispatched to the ‘change squares’ of the country’s main cities. Ansar al-Sharia implemented a Taliban-style rule until the Yemeni army managed to push them back with US support in May 2012. At the same time, the power vacuum enabled Ansar Allah, i.e. the Houthis, to gain control of most of the area around Sada, stretching as far as neighbouring provinces and campaigning openly even in the capital Sanaa. They seemed to have truly benefited from the political turmoil. However, there have not been any signs of the establishment of a Zaydi religious rule in the areas controlled by them.

The crackdown on the protestors and the defection of major regime figures led to civil war-like circumstances in Sanaa and other Yemeni cities in summer 2011. Both were brought to an end through negotiations between government and opposition representatives, monitored by the Gulf Cooperation Council states and representatives from the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.

As a result, the so-called ‘GCC initiative’ was signed in November 2011 and stipulated, amongst other things, the resignation of president Saleh and a National Dialogue Conference (NDC) that was held over the course of ten months in 2013. The aim of the NDC was to bring together all political groups in Yemen and discuss the country’s most important issues in nine different working groups, not least the Sada issue and the question of the south.

For the first time, representatives from the former ruling GPC, opposition parties like Islah and the YSP, representatives from the Southern Movement (al- Hiraak al-Janubi) and Ansar Allah sat at one table. Unlike before, Ansar Allah could act as a recognised political group. Although the NDC has been highly criticised regarding the choice of representatives as well as the conference’s implementation, it is important to note that the degree of inclusiveness and pluralism in the NDC is unparalleled in the last couple of decades of Yemen’s history.

Different political groups in Yemen have different visions for the future of the country that extend beyond the issues around Sada and the south. Leading members of the Salafist party Rashad Union, founded in 2012, advocated for a conservative reading of Islam during the NDC, particularly with issues surrounding the constitution. Together with actors from the Islamist spectrum of Islah, they have appeared as a major voice of political Islam during the NDC. In August 2013 major discussions about the role of shariʿa in the new constitution erupted at the NDC over whether shariʿa should be one of the sources or the sole source for legislation. Al- Zindani accused those representatives of apostasy (takfir) who opted for the first version. Another question related to this incident is that of whether Islam would be the religion of the people of Yemen or of the state. This illustrates how the transitional period offers space to put Yemen on a route of manifesting a more or less conservative reading of Islam on a political level. Issues that had been (unwritten) social regulations before have now turned into matters discussed on a political level.

Besides the struggle for political and actual space in negotiations and roundtables, it seems that this struggle has taken place even more so on the ground. Yemen’s northern regions witness continued violence in what appears to be an increasing fight between the largely Zaydi group of Ansar Allah and a group of Salafis in the region of Dammaj where a prominent Salafi centre is located. It remains unclear as to how far this is developing into a sectarian fight but both groups claim to face proselytising actions from the other. Ansar Allah accuses Saudi Arabia of

supporting a Salafi expansion in the region that predominantly targets the Zaydis. It is the first time that Yemen has witnessed this degree of sectarian violence, a phenomenon that Yemenis across the country declare as being ‘non-Yemeni’. It appears though that the Salafis of Dammaj remain locally orientated without a wider political goal.

Islah is the main political competitor to the remnants of the regime in the transitional bureaucracy. Although largely viewed by the population as a more religiously oriented party, it does not show any visible dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood and remains heterogeneous in its agenda. Rather than a change of the country’s politics towards a more religious orientation, Islah’s elite seems to pursue goals based on power politics and access to country’s scarce resources.

Ansar Allah has pursued its local political goals violently under the guise of self-defence and established a de facto rule over the north of the country. The influence of and sympathy for the group allegedly reach as far as Taiz,15 and forces of Ansar Allah advanced up to the northern area of Sanaa in early 2014. The group officially denies having nation-wide political goals.16

AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia continue to be active, particularly in the south. Their greater aim, they declare, is to fight the corrupt elite and Western influences. Yet an increasing amount of young Yemeni men, who lack any ideological jihadist background, join AQAP due to a lack of perspectives and appalling living conditions.17 Attacks predominantly target Yemeni security personnel and institutions (military checkpoints, soldiers, officers, the Ministry of Defence), as well as targets associated with the American drone program (MoD). In February 2014 AQAP freed 14 members from a Sanaani prison. This development puts predominantly Yemeni citizens at risk. In the past AQAP has also been involved in kidnappings of foreigners and attacks with targets outside the country. On 29 April 2014, the Yemeni army started a large-scale operation in the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa targeting AQAP strongholds. Officially the army claims major victories in May 2014 and heavy casualties among AQAP fighters.18 But at the same time, the security situation in the country continues to deteriorate, not least in the capital Sanaa, where attacks on checkpoints, military personal or the presidential palace are considered as being retaliation acts of AQAP.19

Conclusion

Despite the use of explicitly Islamist actors in the previous regime, there were no distinct Islamist parties in Yemen prior to the 2011 uprising. The two biggest political parties, GPC and Islah, have had clear political goals and used the inclusion of a religious agenda to appeal to the more conservative strata of the society, but not in order to create an explicitly Islamic state. Instead, the Saleh regime consciously used actors affiliated with al-Qaeda in order to extract international support and external rents within the framework of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

As in Tunisia or Egypt, the 2011 uprising gave more political space to Islamist groups in the country, but ‘Islamists’ did not play a leading role in the protests throughout the country. In contrast, the protests were marked by the ‘non- partisanship’ of the participants. However, since the beginning of the so-called transitional period (February 2012) Yemen has been in political limbo, and this has