The imbalance in the vision for a “new Yemen” following the 2011 revolution was, in a sense, a result of a contradictory reality in which youth aspirations and elitist ambitions clashed and yielded to foreign interventions and inorganic dictations of state-building. The most mobilizing factor for such foreign interventions was similar to the one guiding the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign since 2015, i.e., a sense of urgency to intervene in Yemeni politics and save the country from violence and chaos. Diplomatic and militarized interventions compromised Yemeni sovereignty for the promise of local, regional, and even global security. This compromise was predicated on the presumption that security was contingent on a perception of peace beholden to the fragile nature of state power. The prospect of a deeply fractured state through military division, sectarian unrest, tribal conflict, regional disunity, and partisan polarization seemed too chaotic and destabilizing. And so interventions were justified in the name of rescuing the “failing state” of Yemen with a promise of security and development. This paper examines the paradox of urgency and intervention in Yemen, which has compromised the country’s sovereignty for security and, ironically, has contributed to conditions that have disrupted both (i.e., sovereignty and security), ever more violently since 2015. The paper locates this paradox at the crossroads of a post-9/11 US-led “war-on-terror” campaign in Yemen and post-2011 competing narratives surrounding Yemenis’ future at the interplay of domestic needs and foreign plans. While the post-9/11 context provided the grounds for developing a narrative of concern about Yemen’s instability and a security fetish carried through the US’s drone program, I argue, the post-2011 context capitalized on such a narrative more disruptively in a post-Arab Spring context of struggle to shape a new Middle East regional order. The outcome in both contexts is a Yemeni society whose struggle to attain a sense of sovereignty has been constantly checked by a morally justified discourse of intervention that has further entrenched the country into violence and chaos. Equally important, the paper contrasts this intervention discourse with Yemeni modes of resistance, further complicating narrations of Yemeni national identity. The paper’s analysis will draw from mediated statements and protests around its area of inquiry. The significance of this study lies in its synthesis of 9/11, 2011, and 2015 as the backdrop of a continuum of Yemeni struggle for a national sense of identity, constantly challenged by a disruptive foreign intervention discourse.

The zamil (plural: zawamil­) boasts a long history in Yemen and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. According to legend, Yemenis first encountered this poetry genre in the third century when a group of tribesmen heard the jinn chanting as they battled one another. The sound of the poetry prompted the tribesmen to emerge from a cave, where they were hiding from Roman warriors, to resume their fight. Yemenis have composed their own zawamil ever since (al-Baraduni 1998; Harithi 2004). Regardless of the truth in this legend, the presence of this story among Yemenis indicates that they understand the zawamil as a long-held tradition. In the context of the current conflicts in Yemen, the zawamil flourish. Zawamil have gone viral on social media, with some boasting over a million views on YouTube. They are part of the daily soundscape in Sanaa, heard in the marketplace, at military checkpoints, and at tribal events; children sing them while at play. Some listen to zawamil on MP3s at home, and many play the zawamil from their cell phones. Previous scholarship characterizes the zamil as persuasive rhetoric, a powerful weapon in times of war, particularly in the context of tribal disputes (Caton 1990; Miller 2007; Harithi 2004). This paper analyzes conversations with a Yemeni family living in Sanaa about their daily experiences with the Houthi zawamil, not so much to disprove the idea that the zamil is a kind of persuasive rhetoric, but to explicate how individuals experience the phenomenon of persuasion and what kind of action it inspires. Taking cues from this Yemeni family, this paper is a phenomenological account of the zamil as a nationalist practice; as a cultural form that is congruent with (yunasib) the listener; and as an affective force. Through these three lenses, the paper traces how the zamil interacts with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (1972) to animate a myriad of embodied practices. The varied responses this family claims the zamil inspires, with some rushing to join the Houthi army, and others simply humming along to it while they do their daily tasks, speaks to the flexibility of habitus and the ways in which cultural forms work productively in relationship with it. By examining the dissonances in one Yemeni family’s experience of the zamil, this paper offers a novel approach to Yemeni poetry, its force in everyday life and the current political landscape.

Following their takeover of Sana’a in 2014-15, forces aligned with the Houthis (or Ansar Allah) began seizing all state-run media outlets. Newspapers, websites, and TV and radio stations abruptly transitioned from pro-government platforms to Houthi-operated mouthpieces. At the same time, the Houthis worked to develop their very own media machine, which would grow rapidly over six years to span everything from frontline footage and war poetry to radio dramas and hidden camera prank shows. While popular analysis of the Houthis tends to focus on the group’s military capabilities and proxy status, a wealth of information about the group’s internal ideological battles can be found in its public messaging and propaganda. This paper argues that an examination of Houthi-produced media reflects a pivotal struggle for the group’s identity, one that sees the Houthis straddling two divergent, but equally important, self-representations. On one side is the group’s sacred founding narrative, which is informed both by the divisive rhetoric of the group’s forefather, Hussein al-Houthi, and its former status as a marginalized social movement. On the other side is the Houthis’ need to appeal broadly to Yemenis and international actors alike, and to assert their legitimacy as representatives of a united Yemeni state. The survival of a distinctive Houthi identity depends on the group’s ability to balance both of these narratives in local Yemeni media and international messaging. To better understand contemporary Houthi identity, this paper will evaluate the group’s media output (including their Beirut-based satellite channel Al-Masirah, various social media platforms, radio stations, and news sites) with the following questions in mind: What do the Houthis want Yemenis, and the world, to know about them? Has their messaging changed over time and in response to the conflict, and have these messages changed the movement itself? Most importantly, what can we learn from these platforms about the group’s shifting identity/identities? In addition to these primary sources, broader studies of the Houthi movement, such as Marieke Brandt’s Tribes and Politics in Yemen: A History of the Houthi Conflict, and reports by the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, among others, will also be referred to.