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What Makes Yemen's CASE ANALYSIS What Makes Yemen’s “Spring” Different? Ahmad Ali al-Ahsab | Febuary 22, 2012 About The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies is an independent research institute and think tank for the study of history and social sciences, with particular emphasis on the applied social sciences. Through its academic and research activities, the Center strives: to foster communication between Arab intellectuals and specialists in the social sciences and humanities in general; to build synergies between them and their societal and national concerns; to network with Arab and international research centers and think tanks. These intellectual exchanges and interactions will be channeled through the process of research and critique, as well as the development of epistemological and conceptual tools and knowledge building mechanisms. Moreover, the Center seeks to deliberate Arab societal concerns which call for further research, and to influence the public sphere. The Center's paramount concern is the advancement of Arab societies and states, their cooperation with one another and issues concerning the Arab nation in general. To that end, it seeks to examine and diagnose the situation in the Arab world - states and communities- to analyze social, economic and cultural policies and to provide political analysis, from an Arab perspective. It deals with the major challenges faced by the nation: citizenship and identity, fragmentation and unity, sovereignty and dependence, as well as scientific and technological stagnation. Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies PO Box 10277 Street No. 826, Zone 66 Doha, Qatar Tel.: +974 44199777 | Fax: +974 44831651 www.dohainstitute.org Ahmad Ali al-Ahsab | Febuary 21, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. All Rights Reserved. Table of contents INTRODUCTION: ................................................................................. 1 THE PROMINENCE OF ORGANIZED POLITICS ........................ 1 A VAST NETWORK OF INTERESTS AND BENEFICIARIES .... 3 THE BALANCE OF POWER ................................................................ 4 DEPENDENCE OF POLITICS ON TRADITIONAL TIES ............ 5 TRIBALISM: A SHIFTING MAP OF ALLIANCES ........................ 7 THE DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONS FOR POLITICAL BIAS ........ 9 URBANIZATION AND CULTURE ................................................... 10 PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT ................................................... 11 CAPABILITY AND FINANCIAL AUTONOMY ............................. 11 GEOGRAPHY ........................................................................................ 11 PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS ........................................................... 12 IMMEDIATE EXPOSURE TO EVENTS .......................................... 12 REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL FACTORS .......................... 13 THE ECONOMY AND POPULATION ............................................. 14 IDEOLOGICAL FEARS, SECURITY, AND AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE ................................................................................................. 16 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 17 WHAT MAKES YEMEN’S “SPRING” DIFFERENT? Introduction: The different cultures, geographies, and societies, the extent of accumulated political circumstances, and the degree to which each people has insisted on change are all dimensions that make the “Arab Spring” different in each of the stations in which its train has stopped. A qualified observer, researcher, or politician must admit that there are differences in each scenario, both those that have ended and those that continue to rage unabated. Knowing the background of the reasons why each situation has differed from its counterparts is crucial in order to explain its development and interactions, to gain a true understanding of events, and to be able to depict realistic projections of future events. Yemen has several elements that distinguish it from the rest of the countries of the Arab Spring. It has been clear from the beginning that the situation in Yemen has been characterized by its persistence and the procrastination of its chief protagonists, the amount of negotiations and political movements within the country, and by a regional and international stance that remains hesitant and has not risen to the level of the positions taken for other situations. This paper attempts to examine the background of the situation in Yemen by simultaneously pinpointing and analyzing the most significant social and political features behind the current situation in Yemen, which in turn distinguish it from the other Arab Spring cases. The Prominence of Organized Politics While the people have generally been at the forefront of events in most other Arab Spring cases, and organized politics (in the form of political parties) has receded, politics has occupied the foreground of the Yemeni protest movement. Politics has dominated the organization and the management of revolutionary action in addition to all revolutionary initiatives, and has also thwarted political discourse and negotiations. The general population has taken a back seat, seemingly surrendering to this reality, even though it had taken the initiative and had been at the forefront of the protests in their initial phase. In truth, this characteristic of the case in Yemen is imposed by the de facto conditions of both sides, and does not at all mean that the Yemeni populace is less revolutionary, nor that it has less momentum than other Arab populations. In fact, civic activities were 1 ARAB CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY STUDIES exceptional in terms of human participation and their geographic spread.1 While the public led the politicians in the other settings of the Arab Spring, the opposition parties in Yemen led the people.2 An observer of the past two decades of political opposition in Yemen would note a populist deficit. While calls for popular protest were repeated on various occasions and in various forms, including strikes and civil dissent, and yet others had called for surges of anger, the results had always been minimal, a political embarrassment for the opposition and an open exposure of their populist failure. Yemen’s political opposition seemed to suffer from an organizational loss. This leads me to the conclusion that political parties in the third world cannot thrive, nor can they have significant political heft or an active role accompanied by robust popular support, unless they have been developed in the shadow of the state and funded by the state. Outside the realms of power, they wilt and fade. Yemen’s opposition parties were historically fortunate to be, in one way or another, in power; however, after the electoral defeat of 1997, they began to lose popular support and suffer from an organizational deficit. Careerists and opportunists began to leave these parties. What remained was the impoverished popular opposition, whose opposition had not been political in the first case, but rather the result of a moral, ideological, or economic stance. Then spring came, igniting popular hopes and ambitions. With this, the stage was set for the development of a mutualistic and symbiotic relationship between the young crowds and the “joint” opposition parties, in which the latter provided the funding for protest sites and offered organizational support, and the revolutionaries endowed the parties with the numbers of supporters they required. Frankly, if not for this mutualistic relationship, the situation could not have endured for so many months, due to the types and size of the obstacles and disappointments faced by the Yemeni revolution.3 1 Laurent Bonnefoy and Marine Poirier, “Au Yémen, l’unité dans la protestation”, Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2011, http://www.monde- diplomatique.fr/2011/06/BONNEFOY/20709 2 Ahmad al-Ahsab, “On Spring Avenue: Hopes for the Current Protest Movement in Yemen”, Madarat Istratijiyya, 9 (2011), pp. 30-37. 3 Ahmad al-Ahsab, “Crossing into the Future: The Yemeni Opposition Faces a Tough Road Ahead on the Path to Renewal”, Madarat Istratijiyya, 7&8 (2011), pp. 46-55. 2 WHAT MAKES YEMEN’S “SPRING” DIFFERENT? A Vast Network of Interests and Beneficiaries The Egyptian and Tunisian presidents relied on a top-down distribution of interests and benefits, and policies that restricted the network of interests and beneficiaries to a tight group immediately surrounding the presidents and their families. On the other hand, since the period in which he was preparing himself to take over power and even from the early days of his presidency, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh relied on a wide circle of benefits and interests which has reached a large group of individuals and groups within Yemeni society. The first beneficiaries of this programmatic network of benefits and interests were influential political and social figures, including tribal sheikhs. Winning over the sheikhs was the tipping point in Yemen’s political game, and Yemenis (both republicans and monarchists) relied on this policy from the start of the September revolution, as did the Egyptians before them and even the British before them, in their dealings with the sultans of the pre-independence protectorates. This policy used various methods to distribute benefits and involve wider tranches of the populations in a web of interests that is primarily linked to – and dependent upon – power and the state treasury. Some forms that these benefit distribution methods have taken are the use of
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