ISD Cap: Rebuilding Yemen

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Always impoverished and fragile, Yemen is a microcosm of the forces that have battered the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Those forces took hold with the Arab Spring of 2011 and continue today. Poor governance, embedded corruption, lack of basic services, and external meddling from within or beyond the region are shared factors. Prior to the collapse of the state in 2014, Yemen was water, food, and fuel insecure, with barely adequate levels of health care, sanitation, education and other basic services, coupled with a demographic explosion. Its governing structure was rudimentary. It is an ancient nation but not fully a state. From the Arab Spring through to the Houthi takeover of Sanaa, its transitional government functioned not at all. Yemen looked to be one of the few success stories coming out of the Arab Spring – a negotiated transfer of power, a laudable if flawed and incomplete National Dialogue process, and strong political and respectable financial support from the international community. The Houthi, a “non-kinship affinity group,” waged a 10-year insurgency against the government of the late Ali Abdullah Saleh, and then constructively participated in the Change Square movement and the National Dialogue. Frustrated by the lack of change, in the autumn of 2014 they rolled into Sana’a and forced a National Partnership Plan and a technocratic cabinet on the transitional government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. Whether coup or not, it looked as if the “always almost failing state” would muddle through again. It didn’t. The collapse was swift and violent. As the Houthi rolled south to Aden and west to Hodeidah, Hadi was forced into exile in Riyadh. An imminent civil war was internationalized by the Saudis and the Emiratis in March 2015 with the support of the US, the UK and, in April, the UNSC. While Aden was quickly retaken by the Emirate ground forces in July 2015, the battle lines have barely shifted, and the coalition – now without the Emirati forces – cannot defeat, dislodge or dissuade the anti-Hadi forces. It is a stalemate if not a quagmire. This course is not a search for definitive answers on how to end the war, but an examination of what questions need to be asked on how this country, as a case study, can be repaired, reconciled and rebuilt, so that peace is sustainable. What are the roles and responsibilities of the belligerent, the regional players, and the international community? How does Yemen’s history, culture and political players shape the answers and the outcome? What lessons, good and bad, from elsewhere are applicable? How best can political, economic, social and security structures be reconstituted? Is a unified state still possible, still optimal? What are the implications if a sustainable state does not emerge from the rubble? This is a look at the Day After.