Guerrilla War, Counterinsurgency, and State Formation in Ottoman Yemen

GUERRILLA WAR, COUNTERINSURGENCY, AND STATE FORMATION IN OTTOMAN YEMEN DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Vincent Steven Wilhite, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee Approved By Professor Carter Findley, Adviser Professor Stephen Dale __________________________ Adviser Professor John Guilmartin Department of History i ABSTRACT The Zaydī Imamate of Yemen collapsed in the nineteenth century as a result of inherent conflicts in its structure as a tribal quasi-state, between the Zaydī tribesmen’s culture of honor and the Islamic values of the Imamate. This in turn facilitated the Ottoman conquest of the Yemeni highlands in 1872. The inferior weaponry of the Zaydī tribes and their political fragmentation made it impossible for them to conduct a sustained resistance against the Ottomans. As a result, the Ottomans were able to maintain control in the early years of the occupation by the methods of indirect rule: divide-and-conquer tactics coupled with intermittent punitive expeditions. The presence of the Ottoman state, however, created the political conditions under which the Zaydī tribes would unite to defend themselves. This allowed the Imāms to rebuild the Imamate as a supra-tribal state deriving its authority from Islamic principles, organized to unite the tribes in a long-term jihād against the Ottomans. In turn, this compelled the Ottomans to change their methods of dealing with rebellion in Yemen. Ottoman statesmen sought increasingly to employ the techniques of the bureaucratic nation-state to consolidate their grip on Yemen: police repression, counter-guerrilla tactics, and programs of social and economic development designed to win the support of the population. Such measures failed as a result of the poverty of the Ottoman state and the dictatorial practices of the Hamidian regime. Together with the growing military sophistication of the Zaydīs, however, they did push the conflict in Yemen toward total war. The culmination of this process would come in the rebellion of 1905, characterized by grinding campaigns of attrition and massive social destruction in Yemen. After this rebellion, the Ottomans would realize the futility of a total war policy, and seek a negotiated settlement with the Imām. Such a settlement finally came after the Young Turk era,peace was made with the Imām on the basis of political and cultural autonomy for the Zaydīs. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Dr. Carter Findley, who combined unflagging support with rigorous professional standards, and always pushed me to do my best. I would also like to thank my other dissertation committee members, Dr. John Guilmartin and Dr. Stephen Dale, for generously sharing their knowledge with me, and stimulating my own thinking about war and tribal societies. I am grateful to the American Institute for Yemeni Studies for providing me with a grant to study in Yemen during the summer of 1998. I thank Marta Colburn, then Director of the AIYS office in Ṣan‘ā’, for her hospitality and helpfulness. I wish to thank Sally Mikhail for the illustration on page 29. Finally, a word of thanks to everyone who gave me friendship and encouragement during the difficult process of completing my dissertation: Bob Trube and everyone at CGSA, Brian Davis, Oğuz Kurt, Serkan Tufan, Nikolai Antov, Bud, Trish, and the people at DC, and my mother and father. iii VITA May 9, 1968 . Born-Fresno, California 1992 . .M.A. History, Binghamton University 1994-Present . Graduate Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS 1. Vincent Wilhite, “The Organization of the 1891 Rebellion in Yemen.” Al-Masar, 3, 1 (2002). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Islamic History iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments…………………………………………………… …………………iii Vita......................................................................................................................................iv Chapters: 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 1 2. The Collapse of the Qāsimī Imamate..........................................................................76 3. The Conquest of Yemen and ‘Asīr...........................................................................132 4. Limited Rebellion and “Counterinsurgency,” 1872-1891.................................... ...197 5. The 1891 Rebellion…………………………………………………………….......237 6. Guerrilla War and Counterinsurgency as Total War in Yemen.............................. 303 7. The 1904 Rebellion………………………………………………………………..372 Epilogue and Conclusion……………………………………………………….............413 Glossary of Arabic and Turkish Terms……....................................................................445 Bibliography....................................................................................................................447 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Patterns of Conflict and Allegiance in the Segmentary Lineage System....................................................................................................................28 2. The Transformation of War in Yemen …………………………………………411 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Our study will analyze the development of guerrilla war and counterinsurgency in Ottoman Yemen from 1872 to 1911. We will focus on the gradual escalation of the conflict, from limited toward what we may loosely term total forms of warfare. The term “total war” may seem to be an imposition of concepts from European military history, on a conflict which had nothing to do with what was going on in Europe. We will show, however, that this was not the case. The conflict in Yemen was a war between the expanding Ottoman state and the Zaydīs, the Shi‘ite sect of the northern highlands which had dominated much of Yemen since the seventeenth century. We will see that this conflict was profoundly affected by the currents which gradually drew Europe into World War I: the burgeoning trade in weapons, the intensified rivalry for colonies, and the growing power of the bureaucratic state. Such developments would impact the political self-definition of both Zaydīs and Ottomans, in such a way as to bring them into deep ideological opposition. This opposition, combined with the steadily increasing war- fighting capability of both sides, led them into a protracted conflict. As a military struggle, this conflict had important elements in common with the guerrilla wars of the twentieth century, whose strategy has evolved in such a way that they can be considered 1 as total wars. In this particular context, a closer definition of what we mean by limited and total war will serve to clarify our analysis. Limited war is usually focused on achieving a specific political objective, conducted on a short-term basis between parties having a shared political and military ethos. Such an ethos defines the limits within which violence can take place; and this tends to restrict warfare to armed combat between warriors or professional soldiers, rather than involving the population at large. The aim is the achievement of the objective within the parameters of the political and military “game,” rather than the destruction of the enemy forces. Total war, by contrast, is aimed at the complete military and political destruction of the enemy. Such war is frequently grounded in opposing ideologies on both sides, which make the political and military existence of the enemy unacceptable. Accordingly, total wars may discard the “rules” of warfare implicit in limited war in favor of military expediency. Total war may involve the mobilization of the noncombatant population on a large scale, to provide political and logistical support to non-combatants. The civilian population is also more likely to be subject to attack, as a means of undermining the social and economic base which supports the enemy army. While limited wars are conservative by nature, total wars have the potential for both massive social destruction and large-scale social transformation. The contrast between limited and total war has been developed largely within the context of European military history.1 Can these criteria be applied to the transformation 1 In this regard, a contrast is often made between the limited wars of the eighteenth century and the mass mobilizing, nationalist military conflict that began with the French Revolution. For one discussion of this 2 of war in Yemen? We will argue that they can be, provided that the appropriate qualifications are made, and events situated within their cultural context. We will approach the transformation from limited toward total war from three perspectives: weapons technology, the strategic principles of unconventional war developed in the twentieth century, and the political traditions of the Zaydīs and Ottomans respectively. First, we will outline a “wave” theory of weapons diffusion and state power. This theory attempts to show how revolutions in firepower technology have tended to result in rising internal violence within the state. The state first consolidates its authority by means of new weapons over which it initially possesses a monopoly, and then faces increasingly violent resistance as subjugated populations acquire firearms in their turn. This process played a major role in the emergence of total guerrilla war in the twentieth century, and we will show that a similar process took place in the Ottoman Empire in this period. Second, we will discuss the evolution from limited toward total guerrilla war on the Zaydī

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