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Deconstructing Yemen's Huthi Movement

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Deconstructing Yemen's Huthi Movement Analysis No. 315, April 2017 FROM INSURGENTS TO HYBRID SECURITY ACTORS? DECONSTRUCTING YEMEN’S HUTHI MOVEMENT Eleonora Ardemagni The Huthi movement has been often pictured as an Iranian proxy, overstating existing support by Teheran and the regional Shia networks, while underestimating the weight of Ansarullah’s local insurgency. This paper aims to deconstruct and contextualize the Ansarullah phenomenon before and during Yemen’s regionalized civil war. Husayn Al-Huthi’s movement re-discovered Zaydi tradition, but contextualized it into the politicization of the Shia trend. The paper isolates and addresses the intersected layers which mark the periphery-regime conflict between the Huthis and the government, analyzing why the Sa’da wars (2004-10) represented a general test for the 2015 crisis. The contribution also investigates how the Huthi movement has managed to take advantage from regional and domestic dynamics to enhance its political leverage, transforming the Huthis from local fighters to national challengers inside Yemen’s hybrid political order. Eleonora Ardemagni is Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean Analyst at the NATO Defense College Foundation, regular analyst for ISPI and the Aspen Institute Italy. ©ISPI2017 1 The opinions expressed herein are strictly personal and do not necessarily reflect the position of ISPI. The ISPI online papers are also published with the support of Fondazione Cariplo. 1.1 The local context. Framing the Zaydi Shia movement in Yemen Zaydism (from the name of the fifth imam Zayd b. ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin) is the Yemeni Shia branch. Now, it is predominantly located among Sa’da, Hajja, Sana’a and Dhamar regions, the northern Yemen’s highlands (bilad al-qaba’il, the land of tribes), representing 35-40% of the national population. Zaydi religious élite, the sayyid (pl. sâda) claims direct lineage from the Prophet Muhammad1. The Al-Huthi family is Zaydi Shia: they are sâda, belonging to the Hashemite social stratum. The city of Sa’da has always been their fiefdom; the ancestors of Sa’da’s sâda proceed from Hijaz, Iraq and Iran. Under the banner of the Imamate (imāma, the rule of the Imam), the Zaydi Shia élite ruled North Yemen from 897 till 1962, the year of the republican revolution: Zaydis don’t have an imam since that year. Zaydism has distinct features with respect to other Shia branches, as Jaafarism (Twelver Shiism), mostly spread in Iran, Lebanon and the Gulf. First of all, Zaydis have mixed theological references: syncretism, rather than dogmatism, characterizes their doctrinal elaboration, permeable, in modern times, to socialist and Marxist compatible ideas, as social justice. The Imam must be physically present within the political community and he must be a sayyid. The imamate is a political contract2: hereditary succession is practiced but not institutionalized. Zaydism allows khuruj, the upheaval against a ruler judged as unfair, far from the quietist stance of other Shia sects, as Jaafarism. In 1990, a number of Zaydi ‘ulama signed a manifesto claiming for the abolishment of the imamate, justified by the changed historical context. According to several interpretations, Zaydis claim the primacy of reason above tradition (al-‘aql qabl al-naql), given also their relationship with the Mu’tazila3 thought, promoted and studied by the Zaydiyya, which also allows ijtihad (the hermeneutic effort) as a way to read the holy text. As a result, voices in the Yemeni Zaydi community opened to the Sunna, seeking for possible points of convergence, as the return to the schools of jurisprudence (madahib; sing. madhab) to contest the legal-rational authority of the imam (marja‘iyya). Differently from the Twelvers, Zaydis don’t agree the dissimulation of their faith in case of danger (inkar al-taqiyya), as well as the return of the Mahdi currently hidden, which is the pillar of Jaafarism. 1 Yemen’s sâda are not only Zaydis, since there are also Sunni sâda, especially from the Hadhramaut region. 2 S. Dorlian, La mouvance zaydite dans le Yémen contemporain. Une modernisation avortée, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2013. 3 The Mu’tazila is a philosophical school of Islam which emphasizes the role of rational ©ISPI2017 argument in religious discourse. 2 From a social point of view, the sâda stand at the top of Sa’da’s social hierarchy, followed by the judges (qudât, sing. qadi) and the qabili (tribal men). However, the 1962 revolution altered rooted social balances. During the civil war (1962-70), fought between Imamate’s supporters, backed by Saudi Arabia, and pro-republic revolutionaries, sustained by Egypt, Sa’da’s religious élite opposed the republican forces: but they lost.4 During the civil war, the sâda had apical roles in the imam’s army. The Zaydi Shia majority, including many sâda, then accepted the new republican State. Nevertheless, from 1970 on, the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), in the footsteps of Nasserism, marginalized the sâda, who enjoyed a certain territorial autonomy and developed parallel economic networks with southern Arabia’s tribal clans. On the contrary, the republican regime promoted a policy of neo-patrimonial cooptation towards Sa’da’s qabili, so progressively alienating them from tribal bases. Qadi ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Iryani presidency (1967-74) appointed many northern shuyyukh (tribal chiefs, sing. shaykh), as heads of regular army’s brigades, the so-called “Colonel shaykhs”5. The Ali Abdullah Saleh presidency (1978-2011) continued Al-Iryani’s military politics with regard to northern highlands’ tribes, coupled with the promotion of Sanhani men into the army.6 However, Saleh excluded northern tribal chiefs from the upper ranks of the army, as a coup-proofing strategy: during the six Sa’da wars (2004-10), the “Colonel shaykhs” headed tribal militias which fought alongside the regular army against the Huthis, so highlighting the hybrid security governance pattern shaped by the regime7. Moreover, such a policy encouraged multiple belongings, since many fighters were at the same time Zaydis, soldiers and Sa’da’s inhabitants. Yemen’s reunification, occurred in 1990, fostered Zaydi’s growing involvement in party politics. Given the patronage function of the Yemeni parties, Saleh-led General People Congress (GPC) and Islah, guided by the Al-Ahmar family, encompassed a large number of Zaydis, but only two parties made clear reference to the Zaydi tradition: the Union of Popular Forces (UPF), founded in 1962, and Hizb al-Haqq, where Husayn Al-Huthi organized the Believing Youth (al-Shabab al-Mumin) movement, till the rupture in 1997. 4 M. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971. 5 M. Brandt, “The Irregular of the Sa‘ada War: ˊColonel Sheykhsˋ and ˊTribal Militiasˋ in Yemen’s Huthi conflict”, in H. Lackner (ed.), Why Yemen Matters. A Society in Transition, London, Saqi Books, 2014, chapter 5. 6 From Sanhan, Saleh’s tribal clan, belonging to the Hashid tribal confederation. 7 In hybrid political orders “diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete”, since “the state and its monopoly of violence are contested”. R. Luckham and T. Kirk, “The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research”, ©ISPI2017 Stability: International Journal of Security & Development, 2013. 3 1.2 The Zaydi Shia revival. How Husayn Al-Huthi’s movement re-discovered Zaydi tradition From the Eighties, perceived threats to the Zaydi ˊideological purityˋ were on the rise, so paving the way for Husayn Al-Huthi’s Zaydi revivalist movement. First of all, the brand-new Yemeni state, although not sectarian-biased, needed a shared religious narrative in order to coalesce different interest groups, enhancing the internal legitimacy of the state. For this reason, the regime has tried, since 1990 on, to build a republican discourse able to integrate and, at the same time, to neutralize Zaydi peculiar claims, as the imamate. The Saleh-led regime attempted to assimilate Zaydism in the republican sphere, fostering a process of “modernization from within”. The “Sunnisation” strategy8, aimed to promote identity convergences between Zaydism and Shafeism (Yemen’s Sunni madhab), emphasized Zaydi scholars’ voices opened to the Sunni doctrine. Secondly, Saudi Arabia supported the spread of Salafism in northern Yemen, to counter the Zaydiyya along the Saudi border, financing the opening of Salafi madrasat in the territorial core of Zaydism. Therefore, the traditional sâda-qabili class cleavage frequently became even sectarian, since many tribes adhered to the Salafi thought and, among them, a consistent number of northern brigades’ militaries and government-allied tribal militias. In such a context, Muqbil Al-Waadi (born in 1930 in a Zaydi tribe of Sa’da), the leading Yemeni Salafi scholar, opened the Dar al-Hadith madrasa in Dammaj, at the centre of the Sa’da region9. Denouncing the dilution of the Zaydi identity, Husayn Al-Huthi, born in 1959, Hizb Al-Haqq’s member of the Parliament (1993-97), left the party in 1997, when his political movement, the Believing Youth, was a growing reality. In January 2002, at the dawn of the Ansarullah’s experience10, the Huthis’ slogan appeared for the first time, during a conference held at the Imam Al-Hadi madrasa, in Marran district (Sa’da province): Husayn Al-Huthi invited militants to repeat “God is great!, death to America!, death to Israel!, curse upon the Jews! victory to Islam!”11, which rapidly became the signature mark of the enigmatic Huthi rebellion. 8 L. Bonnefoy, “Les identités religieuse contemporaines au Yémen: convergence, résistance et instrumentalisations”, Revue de mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, no. 121-22, April 2008. 9 L. Bonnefoy, How Salafism Came to Yemen: An Unknown Legacy of Juhayman al-‘Utaybi 30 Years On, Middle East Institute, October 1, 2009. 10 Militants of the Huthi movement refer to themselves as Ansarullah/Ansar Allah (Partisans of God).
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