Since 9/11 Yemen, a small nation at the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula has been widely viewed as a hot spot in the war on terror. Among other incidents, it was the scene of the bombing of the USS Cole. People considered by the US government to have links to Al-Qeada are hold up in the rugged interior. The US has had a long standing alliance with the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh that has enabled them to conduct various assaults on the people they believe to be terrorists, including the use of unmanned drones.
On paper Yemen is the only republic on the Arabian peninsula with all of its neighbors operating as monarchies. However, Saleh has been the continuously "elected" president since 1990 when he managed to end a civil war and combine North Yemen and South Yemen into a single country. Demonstrations against his authoritarian rule began in January with the other regional upheavals and have continued steadily since then. While the Obama administration has encouraged the departure of other autocrats such as Mubarak and Qaddafi, it had until recently continued to support its ally Saleh. That posture now appears to be changing.
U.S. Shifts to Seek Removal of Yemen’s Leader, an Ally
The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president, even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office, according to American and Yemeni officials.
The Obama administration had maintained its support of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in private and refrained from directly criticizing him in public, even as his supporters fired on peaceful demonstrators, because he was considered a critical ally in fighting the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda. This position has fueled criticism of the United States in some quarters for hypocrisy for rushing to oust a repressive autocrat in Libya but not in strategic allies like Yemen and Bahrain.
That position began to shift in the past week, administration officials said. While American officials have not publicly pressed Mr. Saleh to go, they have told allies that they now view his hold on office as untenable, and they believe he should leave.
While it is clear that Yemen is becoming an increasingly unstable and untenable situation, very little is clear about possible paths to stability. The country is divided into multiple political and tribal fractions. The army has become seriously fractured with little possibility that it could provide a center of interim control as has happened in Tunisia and Egypt. Like many other autocratic governments Saleh held the country together by repression that never provided the opportunity for the building of a common polity.
Antipathy for Saleh is not the same as a national identity
Since unification, the two main threats to the country have appeared to be the Houthi rebel movement in the north and the persistent secessionist forces in the south. In the former case, which broke out into armed confrontation with Sana'a in August 2009, both Saudi Arabia and Iran became involved, but the state and society worked together to prevent the country from becoming a pawn in a game between regional powers.
The second dilemma, the southern secessionist movement, has gained momentum over the past five years because of Mr Saleh's repressive countermeasures. Economic privation has also fed this force as the south has been starved of development funds, although most of the country's dwindling oil reserves are in the south.
One faction of protesters is supporting a proposal that Saleh turn over control to an interim government to be led by his deputy Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi. However, other groups are saying that the leadership of anyone associated with the present regime is unacceptable. This raises the prospect of open civil war if Saleh is ousted with a power vacuum coming after him. That is a situation that Yemen has known in the past.
That leaves Washington with some serious quandaries. In addition to the terrorism issues, Yemen is in a strategic location which controls access to the narrow entrance to the Red Sea and in turn to the Suez Canal. It has a porous border with Saudi Arabia. Serious instability and conflict there could easily trigger more problems in the immediate region which is a major global tender box.