Zaydism is a branch of Shia Islam which can look back on a millennium of continuity in the northern parts of Yemen. Since Zaydism is regarded as a particularly tolerant form of Islam, its coexistence with Yemen’s other denominations was historically largely unproblematic. About 25 years ago, however, a development started which substantially undermined the coexistence of denominations in Yemen. The increasing spread of radical Sunnism (Salafism and Wahhabism) in Yemen, funded by neighboring Saudi Arabia, as well as the economic and political neglect of large sections of the Zaydi north by the Salih regime has led to the emergence of a Zaydi revivalism movement which was inspired by a deep sense of peril. As a result, previously unknown divisions and fault lines between Sunni and Shiite denominations began to arise in Yemen.
In 2001 a group known as Ansar Allah or Huthis, taking their name from the family of a noted Zaydi scholar, splintered off the nascent Zaydi revival movement by schism. In 2004 the Salih regime entered into a brutal six-year war against the Huthis, creating a martyr with the killing of Husayn al-Huthi, a prominent critic of Salih’s regime. After the resignation of President Salih in 2012, the Huthis were able to conquer large parts of northern Yemen including the capital Sana’a which they seized in 2014 with the assistance of army troops still loyal to Salih. The military campaign against the Huthis carried out by a Saudi-led international alliance of Sunni states, which began in 2015, has eventually turned Yemen into a central crisis zone and humanitarian disaster in today’s globalizing world. Although very much a proxy war in the expanding sectarian rhetoric between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the ongoing war has turned Yemen into an internal struggle for power between numerous groups and ideologies.
The panel aims at elucidating historical roots and current aspects of both Zaydi revivalism and Huthi expansionism by the means and tools of a number of scholarly disciplines (religious studies, social anthropology, political science, and strategic studies). The panel focuses on Huthi struggles to demarcate a Zaydi identity in the Modern Middle East; the impact of the so called “Sa’dah Wars” which the Yemeni state waged against the Huthis from 2004 to 2010; Huthi politics of political alliances since 2011; and strategic aspects of Huthi expansionist ambitions in Yemen. Through considering this wide array of aspects, the panel aims to shed light on the often opaque transformations and developments of previous years and decades and thus to achieve a better understanding of current conflict in Yemen.
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Dr. David B. Hollenberg
This paper considers two questions: what are the fields, genres, and specific works that comprise the curriculum of Zaydi ‘ulama’ in the Yemeni highlands for the current generation of scholars; and second, who were the most influential sources of knowledge; that is, the most prominent teachers, along with their scholarly lineages. To answer these questions, I turn to three sources. First, I will consult an unpublished set of some fifty brief autobiographies of contemporary Zaydi scholars compiled by the Imam Zaid bin Ali Cultural Foundation in 2008; second, I interviewed fourteen scholars between 2006 and 2008 on these questions; and third, I consider a spreadsheet with catalog information of some 6,000 manuscript codices that have been digitized and catalogued by the Imam Zaid bin Ali Cultural Foundation from 1995 to 2008. More specifically, I will compare the contents of the reports as stated by scholars themselves, with the manuscript record to see if the latter confirms, or departs from, the former. I will also trace the prominent teachers who were named by the scholars to determine who have been the most influential in their view.
As the Zaydi community is, as I write this abstract, under relentless saturation bombing from the Gulf Cooperation Council led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I consider this paper an example of “engaged scholarship,” a small attempt to bear witness to an embattled scholarly community under siege from an external threat.
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Dr. Marieke Brandt
Over the past decade we could observe the expansion of Yemen’s Huthi conflict. The Huthi conflict began in 2004 as a police operation against the Zaydi scholar and activist Husayn al-Huthi in a small village in Yemen’s northernmost Sa‘dah province and gradually evolved into a full-blown rebellion. Between 2004 and 2010, the Yemeni government led six intermittent military campaigns against the Huthis, the so-called Sa‘dah Wars, which – rather than ceasing the rebellion – led to a steady expansion of the war zone. Since 2011 the period of turmoil and failed political transition following the “Arab Spring” finally enabled the Huthis to conquer large parts of northern Yemen including the capital Sana’a, which they seized in 2014. The Operation Decisive Storm against the Huthis carried out by a Saudi-led international alliance of Sunni states, which commenced in 2015, has eventually internationalized the Huthi conflict and placed it in the limelight of global security concerns.
This paper traces the continuous expansion of the Huthi conflict during the Sa‘dah Wars (2004-2010). As conventional approaches such as the Saudi-Iranian proxy war narrative fail to explain the conflict’s dynamics on the ground, the reasons for the expansion of the conflict rather must be sought in its very local and domestic dynamics. The Sa‘dah Wars are a particularly good case study for highlighting the shaping power of local dynamics which have plunged vast areas of Yemen’s north into the depths of war and dragged it into vicious circles of retaliation actions and tribal feuding. The dynamics which led to a steady deterioration and expansion of the conflict, however, bore little resemblance to the causes of the initial outbreak of fighting in 2004. During the Sa‘dah Wars the Huthi conflict rather became a kind of “hybrid” war; an ever changing amalgam of political, ideological, military, tribal, sectarian, and personal motivations and calculations which had the potential to drag Yemen into endless struggles.
Based on years of fieldwork expertise and social anthropological bottom-up approach, this paper offers a detailed account of the local dynamics of the Sa‘dah Wars 2004-2010 and the reasons for their territorial expansion, underscoring the absolute imperative of understanding the highly local, personal, and non-ideological nature of internal conflict in Yemen.
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Mr. Peter Salisbury
In September 2014 the Houthis, a revivalist movement for the Zaydi Shia form of Islam largely unique to north Yemen that metastasized into a powerful and effective militia during six wars with the Yemeni state between 2004 and 2010, seized control of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. Many in Yemen questioned not just how they had been able not just to break out of the borders of their home province of Sa’dah but how they had taken on, and beaten, some of the country’s most powerful tribal militias and military units.
With time it became clear that Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s ousted president, had played key role in the Houthis’ march to Sana’a, pushing loyalist tribes and military units towards cooperation with the northern fighters. As the Houthi-Saleh alliance became increasingly overt, a narrative emerged of a formal deal between the Houthis and Saleh that had been brokered some years in advance.
Drawing on the author’s research and experiences on the ground during the Houthi takeover of Sana’a, this paper would problematise this overly simplistic narrative. The paper would argue that the alliance evolved over a period of months and was born of the Houthis’ strategy of outreach to tribes, playing on local grievances and antiauthoritarianism on the one hand; and Saleh’s light-footprint approach to manipulation and coercion. Saleh, the author argues, convinced tribes to either cooperate with or agree nonaggression pacts with the Houthis, easing their path southwards. Members of his immediate family convinced senior members of the military institutions they still effectively controlled to open lines of dialogue with the Houthis.
This approach both allowed the Houthis - despite their suspicions - to maintain the illusion that their antiauthoritarian message, or indeed their ‘divine’ mission, was the driving force behind their rapid expansion; and for Saleh’s role to remain sufficiently hidden so as to avoid domestic or international sanction until such a time as he had restored his dominant position at the center of Yemen’s hard power dynamics.
By laying out the evolution of the Houthi-Saleh relationship, the author would build towards a better understanding of the nature, and limits, of their current alliance.
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Mr. Adam Seitz
A historical commercial and migrant intersection, Yemen’s strategic location at the mouth of the Red Sea and crossroad of three continents have contributed greatly to regional and international interest in Yemen’s internal security. Renewed regional and international geopolitical competition, continued efforts to combat the threat of international terrorism and Islamic extremism emanating from the region, and changes to the flow of oil resources due to other regional security concerns have only increased Yemen’s strategic importance to the global economy and a priority in the national security agendas of regional and international actors alike. Such considerations have not been lost on Yemen’s domestic incumbent and insurgent political, tribal and military elites, contributing, in part, to domestic political and military strategies meant to perpetuate a perception of internal insecurity that threaten the strategic interests of external regional and international stakeholders.
The paper examines Huthi expansionism in the broader context of a domestic elite strategic culture that promotes perpetual insecurity and internal war, and namely how strategic considerations of regional and international actors influence the policies and actions of Yemen’s domestic elites, both incumbents (elites within the system) and insurgents (elites excluded from or opposed to the system), through comparison of three periods of the internal war in the Yemen (1994, 2004-2011, 2015-present).
The history of internal war in Yemen has shown that conflict creates unlikely alliances and strange bedfellows, and the current conflict is no different, owing to a strategic logic of perpetuating conflict and creating/exacerbating divisions in an effort to consolidate/seize power. The paper utilizes theoretical and comparative approaches as a tool for analyzing the strategic factors and decision making that have contributed to perpetual insecurity punctuated by periods internal war in Yemen, with a particular emphasis in understanding the strategic dynamics driving Huthi expansionism and domestic, regional and international responses to it.
