I’ve been dealing with Yemen long enough to know that anything drone related will eventually prove to be a lightening rod for attention, so I guess its not surprising. But looking at some of the discussion of this small excerpt of the report, the question remains: what, if anything, does page 32 of the latest YPC report tell us about the perceptions of US drone strikes in Yemen.

On a superficial level, the result could be used to suggest that Yemenis don’t really care about the strikes; only .8% listed drones as the greatest threat to their personal security. It may be worth noting that, ironically, that is a greater percentage than those who answered the same question with “Al Qaeda;” still, it isn’t difficult to imagine how some would seize upon such an interpretation to legitimize certain policies or cast aspersions on certain assertions.

Of course, the results to the query come with two significant caveats—it was an open question and only a single response was recorded. It wasn’t, ultimately, a question aiming to divine anything specifically related to Yemenis thoughts on drones. That being said, it is rather troubling that, according to the survey, there are over 100,000 Yemenis who see American airstrikes in Yemen as the greatest threat to their personal security.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is rather foolish to see these results as significant evidence of anything one way or another on Yemenis’ perceptions of drone strikes. Respondents were unable to offer more than one answer—to state the obvious, seeing financial matters as the greatest threat to one’s personal safety, for example, doesn’t preclude a person from seeing drone strikes as a danger as well, especially considering the areas where drone strikes tend to occur are quite poor and underdeveloped. It is also important to remember that strikes are largely concentrated in certain parts of the country. The majority of Yemenis live in provinces where drone strikes have never taken place; it would be difficult to imagine that a Yemeni living in, say, Taiz or Hudayda, would see drones as a threat to their personal safety—regardless of how they feel about them on an abstract level. That itself is another key aspect: a Yemeni from the province of Taiz, where a drone strike has never occurred, can still vociferously condemn drones as a violation of Yemen’s sovereignty even if they feel that they present no personal threat to their own safety.

In the end Yemeni perceptions of drone strikes are a complicated issue that can’t be covered in a single question—especially a question in a report that’s devoted to a completely different topic.  The YPC has put out a useful report on an important subject. The temptation to use said report to attempt to derive answers to a question it wasn’t asking is probably one that’s best avoided.

1. Cab driver from Sanhan, diverging as he answered a question regarding his thoughts on yesterday’s military decrees:

You know, as a people, we’re tired. But every Yemeni knows what’s possible. We’re sitting in one of the world’s oldest cities in a country that is the birthplace of the Arab people. Drive through the countryside—whether to the north or to the south: where else is nature that incredible? Walk through the old city: have you ever seen buildings that beautiful? We’re tired, yes, but we’re capable of so much. And within every Yemeni is the ability to make this country into something that would fill Saudi Arabia and the Emirates with envy.

The situation is completely different here, and the reason has nothing to do with the (GCC) initiative or the international community. People say we’re backwards, that Yemenis are violent, that the country is filled with guns. They have no idea what they’re talking about. There’s poverty, yes, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of illiteracy and a low level of education. Still, look at 2011—any other country would have fallen into civil war a thousand times. But even when the bombs were exploding and people were dying, I didn’t think it would happen. Maybe its our culture, or something we’ve learned from everything we’ve had to put up with in our history. But within nearly Yemeni is this real wisdom. And that’s why what’s happening in Syria, God willing, could never happen here.

Photo is of a poster in my favorite dessert place. Text is a remark said to have been made by the prophet Mohamed (PBUH). “الايمان يمان و الحكمة يمانية:” faith is Yemeni and wisdom is Yemeni.”

Two and a half decades after the merger of the former Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), (“north” and “south” Yemen, respectively), the Colonel’s words arguably come off as a tragic joke.

“ يا وحدة الشعب حلم السنين (Oh, the unity of the people, dream of the years),” reads a line from a famous Yemeni poem that was adapted into one of my favorite Yemeni songs. In 1990, the fulfillment of this collective longing for the unification of greater Yemen fueled a collective burst of celebration across the newly formed country. In light of the events that followed, its rather depressing to think back to the unfulfilled hopes of that particular moment in the recent past.

The bulk of Yemenis may have been blinded by a collective sense of optimism at the time, but regardless of whether it marked the fulfillment of the country’s historical destiny, its not hard to make the case that Yemen’s unity was doomed from the start. As the two Yemens’ leaders ostensibly shared power at the top, with longtime YAR president Ali Abdullah Saleh heading the newly unified country with the PDRY’s Haider Abu Bakr al-Attas and Ali Salem al-Beidh as his Prime Minister and deputy, respectively, the merger of governments was arguably aesthetic. Parliamentary elections in 1993 underlined the far less populous south’s new position. The Socialist party, which has previously controlled the PDRY, was unable to make significant gains outside of the south, fueling fears that it was doomed to a position as a permanent minority. Political conflict reached a boiling point months later, and despite attempts to defuse the situation, civil war erupted in 1994. The merger of the two Yemens’ armies had yet to occur.

By mid-summer, the south’s attempt at secession was defeated in a rout. Unity was preserved. But any pretense of power sharing, many southerners balk, was replaced with northern domination or, as unifications most vocal southern detractors cast it, “northern occupation.”

In 2007, lingering grievances birthed Yemen’s Southern Movement; the events of the following years only served to convince greater numbers of southerners that unity–at least in its current form–was untenable. At least at their nascence, there was some hope 2011′s anti-government protests would spawn some new order.  Heading to Aden in the wake of a recent outbreak of unrest, it was hard not to see those hopes as misplaced.

In the minds of most of those affiliated with the Southern Movement, the end of Saleh’s rule hasn’t to lead to any amelioration of their plight. The current president and prime minister may both be southerners, they’ll acknowledge, but power remains concentrated in the hands of a small number of northern elites. Even many Sanaa-based politicians will privately note that the post-Saleh government could have done a far batter job of reaching out to southerners.

The solution, many–especially international diplomats–say, will come through the National Dialogue Conference, which ostensibly starts in less than two weeks. Many southerners emphatically disagree. This dialogue, they argue, is simply the latest iteration of the empty words of years past, a new marathon of political theater that will, at best, yield only aesthetic change. Regardless of whether one agrees with such sentiments, the key facts of the current situation in the former PDRY are, in my opinion, rather uncontroversial: pessimism is pervasive, the disconnect with Sanaa is palpable, and tensions continue to simmer.

Its something of a cliche to describe “simmering tensions” in south Yemen. They were simmering before 2011 and they were simmering before 2007; as some see it, they’ve been simmering since 1992. Still, to continue the metaphor, even if the pot has been on the stovetop for more than a decade, it has yet to boil over. However, the question of whether things will eventually reach a breaking point increasingly seems less a matter of “if” and more a matter of “when.”

Articles from my recent trip down south:

The South (of Yemen) will rise again (VICE)

(الجنوب ينتهض من جديد (نفس المقالة بالغة العربية

In some parts of Yemen, the “Free South Lives” (CSM)

(في اجزاء من اليمن “يعيش الجنوب الحر” (نفس المقالة بالغة العربية

This time last year, success for newly inaugurated president Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi was roughly defined as mere survival. Few knew much about the man many mocked as  ”عبدربه مركوز.” He’d stood silently by Ali Abdullah Saleh as his Vice President for well over a decade, but it was easy for skeptics to joke that his accomplishments were largely limited to presiding over ribbon-cutting ceremonies as Saleh’s stand in.

12 months later, Hadi’s been able to hold his own, proving many pessimists wrong. Still, true leadership requires more than just (barely) holding Yemen together. Giving a positive review of Hadi’s first spate of reforms last Spring, one Yemeni political analyst added a key caveat, stressing that the president “has yet to prove that he’s the state builder that Yemen so desperately needs.” His words, arguably, are just as true today.

Full article reflecting on Hadi at one year for the Christian Science Monitor

و نفس المقالة بالغة العربية

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Its unfortunate for a number of reasons, but sporadic violence in rural areas of Yemen often risks fading into a blur. Regardless, here–or anywhere, for that matter– clashes are almost never just “clashes;” regardless of catalyst, events cannot be divorced from the environment in which they occur. And while recent events in al-Dhale may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, the violence touches on issues that reverberate far beyond the south Yemeni countryside.

As is inevitably the case, context is key. People in the area where the fighting took place have long harbored a fierce independent streak. During the 1960s, the area of Radfan–now split between the Lahj and al-Dhale–saw intense fighting amidst the struggle against British occupation; somewhat ironically, the clashes featured attacks on British military convoys in the area. Half a century later, many southerners claim that the Sanaa-based government’s rule is ultimately just another form of ‘foreign’ domination. Its a viewpoint that seems to hold particularly wide currency in al-Dhale; the member of parliament who (technically) represents the provincial capital, Saleh Shanfara, has been an outspoken secessionist for years and, far from coincidentally, Mansoura, a neighborhood that’s heavily populated by people originally from al-Dhale, is a locus of secessionist activity in the former southern capital of Aden. In such a climate, its far from surprising that a Yemeni military presence in al-Dhale would fuel tenses and risk sparking violence. The most recent clashes are far from the first that have to have occurred between the Yemeni Army and secessionist locals in the province; they’ve been happening sporadically for years.

The extent of the militarization of southern secessionists remains hotly debated, and ultimately, the fact that the villagers of Jaleela have taken arms against soldiers doesn’t seem to be the evidence it may appear to be. Even by Yemeni standards, men in al-Dhale are heavily armed; an activist friend from the area–a former PDRY diplomats daughter, interestingly enough–once jokingly told me that, rather than the gunfire common elsewhere weddings in her village often end in the celebratory launching of RPG shells (regardless of how serious she was, the point was made). And as events in other parts of the country have demonstrated, easy access to weapons means civilians can transform into ‘tribal fighters’ rather quickly if they feel they’ve been given reason to do so.

On a larger level, events in al-Dhale have, not surprisingly, proven to have political legs. Many southern leaders have seized on the clashes, characterizing them as the result of blatant “northern aggression.”  For separatist hardliners, they serve vindication for their rejection of the national dialogue process; vivid proof, they claim, that that claims of inclusive aims are ultimately empty rhetoric.

However, its not just about the Southern Issue. Its been the case for some time that the question of which part of the Yemeni military is involved in a conflict is nearly as important as that of whether the Yemeni Armed Forces are involved at all. The soldiers involved in the clashes in al-Dhale belonged to the Republican Guards, an elite branch of the military lead by the former president’s son; the specific brigade is commanded by Abdullah Daaban, who was previously involved in last fall’s devastating clashes in the city of Taiz. Much of the reaction in Sanaa has focused on these two men. In the eyes of many activists, the fighting is an indictment of a stillborn process of military restructuring; figures like Abdullah Daaban and Ahmed Ali, they argue, should have been sacked long ago and must be removed from their positions if Yemen is to move forward.

Still, particularly amidst the focus on the upcoming national dialogue conference, the violence in al-Dhale seems distant from the Yemeni capital. But nothing takes place in a vacuum, and moving forward, events like this maintain the ability to echo far beyond where they take place. It may sound like an overwrought invocation of the ‘butterfly effect,’ but in the context of Yemen’s current instability, even ‘minor’ incidents have the ability to escalate into something with far-reaching effects. At the risk of sounding alarmist, in the current climate, its almost misleading to refer to ‘localized’ events. Clashes in a rural village can easily ripple nationwide.

Postscript (since I can’t add footnotes, apparently):

-For a different take on al-Dhale see Salma Samar Damluji’s incredible book on the traditional architecture of South Yemen.

-Most in depth piece I’ve seen regarding the recent clashes in al-Dhale in English is this story from the Yemen Times.

-While the town of al-Dhale is ancient, the province of al-Dhale is a relatively recent creation, formed out of parts of the southern province of Lahj and the “northern” provinces of Ibb and Taiz in 1998. Before the Yemens were unified in 1990, the areas that became al-Dhale were separated by an international border and were the scene of a decent amount of cross-border fighting and, regardless of its administrative unity, the pre-unification line still seems to divide al-Dhale. The north of the province shares broad political and social similarities with the rest of what is often referred to as “middle Yemen.” The rest of al-Dhale–including Jaleela,where the recent violence took place–is a hotbed of secessionist sentiment.

-The symbolic meaning of the accession of Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was born in the southern province of Abyan, takes a different hue in al-Dhale due to historical tensions between the two regions. Its a mistake to simplify southern politics to the division between the Zumra (mostly from Abyan and Shabwa) and the Tughma (mostly from Lahj and al-Dhale). But the hostility sown by events like the bloody 1986 Civil War means the factional division continues to resonate, particularly amidst quiet accusations that Hadi has favored fellow Zumra in appointments he has made since taking office.

-For a take on some of the issues involved in tensions up north, see this piece I filed from Amran about two months ago

Sitting in a posh Beirut apartment complex, it was surprisingly easy to forget I was meeting with a man who is ultimately a historical figure. Up until July of 1994, of course, Ali Salem al-Beidh was in the center of it all–from unification and its aftermath to the almost incomparably bloody 1986 Civil War. As he sat across from me in the flesh, Ali Salem seemed almost separate from “Ali Salem:” the ability to maintain an astoundingly low key face to face presence, I’ve noticed, is a skill many Yemeni politicians seem to share.

There’s heavy competition, but Beidh’s political career still rivals that of even his most notorious colleagues. Emerging on top amidst a violent power struggle that killed many of his allies–in addition to thousands of others–Ali Salem found himself in the unenviable position of taking the helm of a Soviet client state as the USSR neared collapse, a detail that likely went a ways towards jumpstarting long-stagnant talks aimed at unifying North and South Yemen. The marriage, it seemed, was doomed from the start, and four years after he became Yemen’s first vice president, Beidh found himself in the middle of his second civil war in less than a decade–this time, on the losing side. He could be forgiven for using his subsequent exile as an excuse for a quiet retirement, but as is usually the case for men like Ali Salem, fading into obscurity just wasn’t an option.

As he reentered the public sphere to stake a claim for the position of secessionist par excellence, the former VP, not surprisingly, was met with a far from enthusiastic welcome in many quarters. The diwan’s of Sanaa-based politicians–and the offices of Sanaa-based diplomats–often seem to fill with derision when Ali Salem is brought up. Its not just his motives that are questioned, but often his sanity as well. That being said, such sentiments are far from universal, as the list of Yemeni politicians and tribal leaders who instructed me to send their regards to Ali Salem upon meeting him would suggest.

Beidh, of course, appeared more than in control of his mental facilities, speaking with the defiant confidence of a true believer. Its something that echoes what his former comrades have told me; its quite common, for example, to hear comparisons made between the ‘emotional’ Beidh and the ‘cerebral’ Attas. And while he may be miles away in Beirut, his uncompromising stance certainly resonates with many in the south, where festering grievances have fueled fierce opposition to continued unity even among many who are too young to remember life under the PDRY. In the end, Ali Salem is just one of a number of key figures fighting for influence in a divided movement. But while many may seek to sideline him, its hard to imagine the outspoken exile will be retreating from the public sphere any time soon.

Story, for McClatchy newspapers, is here