Yemen Humanitarian Crisis Part I – The history

 The world will be entering 2018 with some serious humanitarian crisis. The civil war in Syria, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, the Catalan crisis in Spain, the refugee offshore detention centre crisis in Australia and the unrest in the Kashmir valley to name a few, but none seem to be more grave than the one in Yemen. The crisis has disturbed me to the extent that I am struggling to stop myself from thinking about it. I will try to give a quick narrative of the complete story. I want to write about it in two parts. The first part is the history of the events and a high-level view of the situation. The second part covering the details of the horror.

Brief history of Yemen

In order to understand the current struggle, it is important to understand the history of Yemen. The present capital of Yemen is Sana’a. It is considered one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world with civilisation records dating the 15th century BCE. Greek geographer Ptolemy described Yemen a fortunate Arabia (Arabia Felix) as against the rest desert Arabia (Arabia Deserta). According to Wikipedia, Yemenis had developed the South Arabian alphabet by the 12th to 8th centuries BCE, which explains why most historians date all of the ancient Yemeni kingdoms to that era. Yemen was the first country to also produce commercial coffee.

Islam spread rapidly in Yemen in the 7th Century CE. By the 9th century CE, the northern Yemen predominantly belonged to the Zaydi sect, an Iraqi based Shia sect. There were few other Shiite sects but they were minorities. The southern and western Yemen were mainly controlled by different Sunni factions, the Ayyūbids,  the Rasūlids,  and later the Sufis. But for a part of Northern Yemen, the rest of the country came under the Ottoman Empire and continued to remain that way till their fall at the end of the Great War in 1918.

At the fall the Ottoman Empire, the Northern Yemen became part of the United Arab States. North Yemen gains independence and is ruled by Imam Yahya, a leader from the Zaydi community. He was succeeded by his son Imam Ahmad. In the mid-1960s, Imam Ahmad’s son Badr took the reins after his father’s death. He was deposed in a coup détat by the army official resulting in the formation of the Yemen Arab Republic with Sana’a as its capital.

South Yemen has been under some British influence from the 1830s. After the fall of the empire, South and East Yemen were ruled as part of the British Yemen until 1937. In 1967, the tribal states united to form the People’s Republic of Yemen, comprising Aden and former Protectorate of South Arabia. However, in two years the Marxist National Liberation Front (NLF) took over power and the British troops were fully removed from the country.  By 1970, they officially formed the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) with Aden as it’s capital. It was a secular government till they merged with the North.

North and South Yemen, didn’t have any open conflict but there were always discussions on merging. In May 1988, the two governments created a demilitarized zone at their border. In May 1990, they agreed on a draft unity constitution, which was ultimately approved by referendum in May 1991. The Republic of Yemen was officially declared on May 22, 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh who is from the Zaydi community became the first president of the united Yemen, which he was until the Arab Springs of 2011.

Lead up to the Revolution

Yemen has been in a political turmoil for the last century. Civil unrests have been quite common. In the last couple of decades, they have seen ideological and political clashes between a violent Shiite faction called Houthis and the Arabia Al-Qaeda. However, what is happening now is of a magnitude never seen before. What is worse, it is a crisis which hasn’t remotely got the coverage it deserves. Here is the quick rundown of events which has resulted in today’s state.

BBC timeline of Yemen will give a decent account of the events which has led to the present situation.

Key Stats about Yemen

(from http://www.cso-yemen.org & http://www.centralbank.gov.ye)

Demographics (as of 2016)
Population: 27 million (approx)
Sex distribution: 50.62% male 49.38% female
Age breakdown: 41% (under 15years) , 54.8% (between 15-60 years) and rest over 60 years
Religious affiliation: 65% Sunni 35% Shia
Literacy: 70.1%; males literate 85.1%; females literate 55.0%.

Government (officially recognised by the international body)
Form of government: multiparty republic with two legislative houses
Head of state: President
Head of government: Prime Minister
Capital: Sanaa.
Official language: Arabic.

Yemen Civil War

1. Saleh was not happy to have relinquished the power after 33 years at the helm. He mustered enough support in the Yemeni army to build a base for himself.
2. Yemenese revolutionaries including people like Tawakkol Karman, who were fighting peacefully to put Yemen on the path of development were disappointed. The country moved from one dictator to another and there wasn’t any development in sight.
3. The Houthis, Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula(AQAP), ISIL started to use the anxiety in the nation to drive their annexure plans
4. Saudi Arabia and Iran were looking for avenues to get into the country to drive their sectarian agenda