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Yemen’s President Said to Reach Deal With Houthi Rebels Besieging Capital Yemen at Risk of Fragmenting, Posing Challenge for U.S.
(about 5 hours later)
SANA, Yemen — President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen appeared to bow on Wednesday to the demands made by the Houthi movement, whose militiamen have besieged his presidential palace and residence for days. His accession to the group’s demands defused a violent standoff in the capital that raised fears about the stability of Yemen’s government. WASHINGTON — Only months ago, American officials were still referring to Yemen’s negotiated transition from autocracy to an elected president as a model for post–revolutionary Arab states.
The agreement between Mr. Hadi and the Houthis was announced by Yemen’s official news agency on Wednesday evening. It calls for the Houthis to withdraw fighters from several parts of Sana, the capital, including the presidential palace, and to immediately release an aide to Mr. Hadi who was abducted on Saturday, in exchange for a list of concessions from the president. Now, after days of factional gun battles in the Yemeni capital that left the president a puppet figure confined to his residence, the country appears to be at risk of fragmenting in ways that could provide greater opportunities both for Iran and for Al Qaeda, whose Yemeni branch claimed responsibility for the Paris terror attack earlier this month.
The deal represented a significant victory for the Houthis, a former rebel group that took over parts of Sana in September. The latest Yemen crisis raises the prospect of yet another Arab country where the United States faces rising dangers but no strong partners amid a landscape of sectarian violence. Although the Houthi rebels who now effectively control the state are at war with Al Qaeda, they are also allied with Iran and with Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Houthis’ rise to a dominant position may set off local conflicts in ways that would give more breathing room to Al Qaeda’s local branch, which has repeatedly struck at the United States. Yemen’s elected president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is a stalwart American ally but has almost no domestic support.
After days of heavy clashes in the city, a calm fell over the streets on Wednesday as residents awaited the Houthis’ next move. Mr. Hadi remained in his residence; he has not been seen in public for days. “The Yemeni state has always been weak, but now there’s a real danger of economic meltdown, and of the kind of fragmentation that could ultimately make Yemen almost ungovernable,” said April Alley, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that works to resolve conflicts.
In a speech late Tuesday, the 33-year-old leader of the group, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, delivered a lengthy ultimatum to Mr. Hadi, demanding his cooperation on several contested political issues, including amending a draft constitution. The Houthi takeover — which began in September and was reinforced in recent days — has deepened sectarian and regional divisions in a desperately poor country that has long been a sanctuary for jihadists. And though the latest round of fighting appeared to end Wednesday when Mr. Hadi conceded to the Houthis’ political demands, the underlying crisis will continue to fester, analysts say.
Mr. Houthi stopped short of announcing a takeover of the government, but analysts and diplomats said on Wednesday that the Houthis had become Yemen’s de facto ruling power. No military units, except perhaps Mr. Hadi’s scattered guards, appeared to be contesting the Houthis’ dominance, the analysts and diplomats said. The deal announced Wednesday addressed a number of the Houthis’ grievances, including a lack of representation in government bodies and complaints about provisions in a draft constitution. In return, the Houthis agreed to withdraw fighters from the presidential palace and other parts of Sana and to release an aide to Mr. Hadi who was kidnapped by Houthi gunmen on Saturday. But there was little doubt that the Houthis, who have threatened repeatedly in recent months to use force to win political concessions, remain in control.
There were concerns that conflict might break out in southern Yemen, where militiamen, including some loyal to Mr. Hadi, moved to close the Aden airport and seal off areas along the former border between southern and northern Yemen, according to witnesses. The Houthis’ public humiliation of Mr. Hadi — a southerner — prompted southern rebels to close the country’s chief port in Aden and shut the border between the north and south earlier this week, raising the specter of actual secession. Armed tribesmen have cut off oil exports in three southern provinces. And Saudi Arabia, which sees the Houthis as a proxy of its regional rival, Iran, has shut off almost all aid to the Yemeni government, leaving it virtually penniless and unable to pay salaries.
Reacting to the turmoil, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was president of Yemen before Mr. Hadi, released a statement on Wednesday calling for early elections, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades and left power as part of a negotiated deal after an uprising against his rule in 2011, has remained a powerful and often disruptive force in Yemeni politics. He was widely suspected of backing the Houthis as they moved into the capital in September. The Saudis, who have long been Yemen’s economic lifeline, pumping in more than $4 billion since 2012, say they would rather allow the Houthis to take the blame for the approaching economic collapse than provide aid to an Iranian client, according to a Yemeni official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol. Other Persian Gulf countries are likely to follow the Saudi lead.
In November, the United States imposed financial sanctions on Mr. Saleh, accusing him of supporting the violence committed by the Houthis during their advance into Sana. In recent months, Mr. Saleh’s supporters have actively promoted the idea that Mr. Saleh’s eldest son, Ahmed Ali Saleh, should run in elections to replace Mr. Hadi as president. In another ominous sign, the Houthis appear to be gearing up for a major battle with their Sunni Islamist rivals in Marib Province, to the east of the capital, where much of Yemen’s oil infrastructure is. That could prove devastating to Yemen’s government and economy, which is deeply dependent on oil. It could also exacerbate sectarian tensions in a country that was almost entirely free of them until recently. The Houthis belong to the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam, and Saudi Arabia — whose leaders see all Shiites as heretics — has been providing aid to Sunni tribes in Marib, diplomats say, fueling another proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Some of the tribes refer to the Houthis as an occupying force, undermining their claim to represent a broad-based national movement.
In Washington, military and intelligence officials expressed grave concerns on Wednesday about the violence in Sana, and the impact any further deterioration could have on one of the Obama administration’s staunchest counterterrorism partners. Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s top intelligence policy official, said analysts were still trying to determine the Houthis’ ultimate goal.
The meteoric rise of the Houthis has drawn global attention to an insurgent group that was almost unknown outside Yemen a decade ago, and whose agenda is still opaque to many people both inside and outside the country. Their leader, a charismatic guerrilla fighter in his early 30s named Abdel Malik al-Houthi, inherited his mantle from his father and his older brother Hussein, who founded the movement in the 1990s and was killed in the first of a series of wars against the Yemeni state that ended in 2010. Mr. Houthi’s speeches focus on fighting corruption and fulfilling the agreements reached in a series of “national dialogue” sessions that ended last year. Those demands have helped bolster public support for the Houthis — which remains strong — in a country where corruption has gutted the state and appears to have worsened since Mr. Hadi became president following the uprising of 2011.
But the Houthis are often seen through the lens of their identity as revivalist Zaydis, a group that was dominant in Yemen’s government for centuries and was then marginalized in recent decades. They modeled themselves in important ways on Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, and though their ideology and leadership are distinct an unmistakably Yemeni, they are allied with Iran, which has provided them with weapons, training, and money, especially since 2011.
The Houthis’ ongoing and bloody battle with Al Qaeda has led some in the West to see them as potential partners, despite the trademark Houthi slogan, “God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel.”
Under Yemen’s former president, Mr. Saleh, “the formula was to milk the U.S.A. for support in the fight against Al Qaeda, which was a recipe for more drones and more radicalization,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively on Yemen. “The Houthis actually want to fight Al Qaeda, which could be more effective.”
But the Houthis are also allied with Mr. Saleh, who remains a powerful figure in Yemen and is bent on revenge on those who engineered his ouster during the turmoil of 2011. If the Houthis succeed in consolidating power, many in Yemen expect a bloody power struggle between them and Mr. Saleh’s loyalists in the military and the tribes.
The Houthis long benefited from a reputation for honesty and discipline, much like their mentor group, Hezbollah. But the arrogant behavior of the Houthi gunmen who descended on the Yemeni capital in September, bullying government ministers and their ideological opponents, has spent some of that good will. The conflict between the Houthis and their mostly Sunni rivals has led some Yemenis to give up on the state.
In Taiz, Yemen’s third largest city, the local governor has taken over the military and intelligence quarters, and is effectively governing a city-state. In southern Yemen, which was a separate country from 1970 until 1990 and fought a brief civil war against the north in 1994, many have similarly seized on the Houthi ascendancy as an opportunity to break away. Those aspirations have fueled fears of a wider breakdown that could benefit Al Qaeda, which ejected government officials across a wide swath of the south in mid-2011 and declared an Islamic emirate that lasted about a year.