Marisa L. Porgeswrites that there “remains a small but rapidly closing window of opportunity to rescue Yemen and, in the process, address pressing security concerns.” Noting the various economic and environmental challenges the country faces, including running out of water and oil, Porges says “[w]hat makes this dire situation all the more tragic is that Yemen was lauded as a model emerging democracy only a few years ago.” Pointing to a National Democratic Institute (NDI) report that called Yemen’s elections in 2006 “not a typical Middle Eastern ’showpiece,’” she argues that Yemen has a diverse political culture that has been “stalled” since 2007 with the renewal of hostilities between the government and rebels in the north, along with a growing al-Qaeda presence. “With threats on all sides, the regime moved to curtail political freedoms and civil liberties and began relying more heavily on tribes and patronage to hold the country together,” Porges writes. She contends that “Washington must balance near-term counterterrorism efforts with political reform and development initiatives,” including “plac[ing] consistent, coordinated pressure on (President) Saleh to advance the reform agenda.”
Update: Brian O’Neillresponds: “I am not sold on political reconciliation. I think it is important, and would be ideal, but I don’t know if you can fully reconcile the country to a central government, at least not in the short term […] I think that trying to mold San’a into Washington ignores a lot of Yemeni history and culture […] We need to work within that system, which is in its own way considerably more democratic and egalitarian than Salih’s rule.”
Oliver Holmes writes at Al Jazeera that counterterrorism dollars for Yemen are missing “the crux of the problem – Yemen’s struggling economy.” By focusing their efforts on terrorism, rather than development, leaders in Washington risk ignoring the country’s worsening economic situation. The troubled economy arguably poses a bigger threat and risks “drawing [Yemenis] towards radicalization and militancy,” according to a recent Chatham House report. As Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Middle East Program points out, “unemployment, subsidies, the failure to plan for a post-oil economy and corruption…are the biggest challenges.” As such, interventions to improve security must be balanced with efforts to improve Yemen’s political and economic development. According to one official: “The economy is highly mismanaged due to the ineffectiveness of the government,” which exacerbates frustration among the population and worsens security problems. U.S. air strikes “won’t solve anything,” notes Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen – rather, firm commitments in development aid are needed.
The Carnegie Endowment’s Christopher Boucek writes in the Financial Times that the recent discovery of a bomb plot originating in Yemen has generated considerable debate over how the U.S. and others should respond. While many have called for increased counterterrorism and military efforts in the country, Boucek argues that “a new, expensive and singular focus on hard security will make matters worse.” Since Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and other terrorist groups “thrive…on Yemen’s internal disarray,” he suggests that it would be more productive to focus attention on its economic situation, governance problems, and resource (mainly water) scarcities. Rather than military assistance, Boucek calls for additional humanitarian aid and capacity building projects to improve Yemen’s legal infrastructure, police forces, land reform, and education, as well as to fight corruption.
Transparency International (TI) released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index today. In the Middle East, little changed over the past year. Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Iran and Libya continued to experience dangerous levels of corruption all scoring 2.2 or under on TI’s 10 point scale (10 being “very clean” and 3, “very corrupt”). Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Israel once again led the region in transparency, all scoring above 6.
Abdulwahab Alkebsi, theCenter for International Private Enterprise’s Regional Director for the Middle East and Africa, and the Carnegie Endowment’s Christopher Boucek have a new article at Real Clear World discussing the troubles facing Yemen. The authors identify numerous areas of concern: “The country faces an astonishing confluence of unprecedented challenges: violent extremism, economic collapse, a looming water shortage and a growing secessionist movement. Any one of these challenges, if left unaddressed, could overwhelm any government.” And the situation will only deteriorate when Yemen’s oil and water resources begin to fail. The root issue is systemic corruption, the authors argue, adding that ”30 percent of government revenue” fails to reach government coffers. Alkebsi and Boucek conclude that any true reform initiative in Yemen must include ”simplifying economic regulations and eliminating contradictions between laws, reforming and simplifying the tax system, clearly defining the authorities of civil servants by specifying their duties by law, ensuring enforcement of contracts and property rights, and enhancing the rule of law to protect individual rights and rights of the business community.”
On Friday, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a viewing and discussion of “Destructive Beast,” a documentary on corruption in Yemen created by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. Abdulwahab Alkebsi, the Regional Director for Africa and MENA at CIPE, gave a response to the film and Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Carnegie Middle East Program, moderated the discussion.
(To read the full event summary, continue below or click here for the pdf.)
Brian O’Neill at Always Judged Guilty brings toour attention two recent articles in the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journalon developments in Yemen. The Atlantic article deals with the recent ceasefire between the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels in the north of the country. As O’Neill points out, “…the divisions are not cut-and-dried. This doesn’t fit the normal Sunni-Shi’ite clash we like to read about.” The WSJ article describes a growing gap between military assistance and civilian development assistance that one U.S. official describes as, “… tend(ing) to encourage a negative perspective in Yemen that all we care about is U.S. security.”O’Neill backs up this concern: “This seems on the face to be exactly what many are warning against- pumping in a flood of money to enhance the security services while leaving the massive underpinning structural issues untouched.” He goes on to define the “frustrating paradox of nation-building policies” as, “you can’t build a well while being shot, and the shooting won’t stop until there’s a well.”
On a more hopeful note, the National Democratic Institute has an article out describing their program to bring Yemeni youth together to teach them conflict resolution techniques. According to NDI, “With almost half of Yemen’s population under age 15 and another one-third aged 15 to 29, a significant percentage of the population is growing acclimated to violence as the primary means to address or resolve conflict.” The program focuses specifically the resolution of tribal conflicts and has already seen some success at the local level.
Amnesty International issued a statement today arguing that “the Yemeni authorities must stop sacrificing human rights in the name of security.” Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, commented that “an extremely worrying trend has developed where the Yemeni authorities, under pressure from the USA and others to fight al-Qa’ida, and Saudi Arabia to deal with the Huthis, have been citing national security as a pretext to deal with opposition and stifle all criticism.” The statement notes a pattern in Yemen of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, forced disappearances, and unfair trials of those accused of involvement in Al-Qaeda, Zaidi Shi’a rebels in the north, and Southern Movement activists. The Amnesty document also observes an uptick both in the use of the death penalty as punishment, as well as the use of the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) to try critical journalists and political activists. The statement concludes, “It is particularly worrying that states such as Saudi Arabia and the USA are directly or indirectly aiding the Yemeni government in a downward spiral away from previously improving human rights record.”
A study released recently by the Aswan Centre for Social and Legal Studies and Researches in Sana’a found that disenchantment with Yemen’s political parties may be turning women away from greater participation in the electoral system. According to the survey– which polled 500 Yemeni women from across the country –only 18.2% of respondents expressed confidence in Yemen’s political parties, while 17.7% said they believed that the parties view women’s issues merely as propaganda tools. At the same time, the study notes that only 18.7% of key positions among the 4 parties in parliament are held by women; that between 1990 and 2010, the number of seats in the legislature held by women has dropped from 11 to only 1; and that from 1993 to 2003, the number of women competing in parliamentary elections fell from 42 to 11. Respondents to the survey attributed these failures to a variety of factors, including a “lack of societal encouragement for [women] to engage in politics” (14.9%), and the “lack of financial support political parties give women running for office (10%). The study argues that “these findings mean that the relationship of political parties with women from their perspective is based on exploitation in which women issues and their votes are manipulated [by political parties] without a serious and sincere adoption of their concerns,” concluding that “it is necessary to build a bridge of confidence between the political parties and women.”
Writingat The Middle East Channel, Steven C. Caton argues that pronouncements by analysts that Yemen is collapsing due to the weakness of the state and the “lawlessness of its tribal population” constitute a major misconception. While many in the West call Yemen a weak state, Caton poses the question of what a weak state means in contemporary Yemen. According to Caton, Yemeni administration has come a long way since 1978 when Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power, arguing that institutions such as “paved roads, state-run or sponsored schools, clinics, and hospitals” extend even into remote areas and represent an important “aspect of state power and legitimacy.” Regarding tribes in Yemen, Caton explains that many of the institutions in the country are infiltrated by tribesmen, including the parliament and the military apparatus. For most in the West this dual relationship between state and tribes seem “puzzling,” he says. However, he goes on to say that Yemen currently has three types of systems of law: tribal, shari’a, and civil law, adding that separately they are autonomous and do not compete with each other, so long as the tribal and civil law abide by the overarching shari’a principles. Caton compares this reality to the relationship between American federal and state laws, concluding that “it is hard to know what someone means when they assert that ‘there is no rule of law’ in the largely tribal regions of the country.”
The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing yesterday to consider nominees for ambassadorial positions in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Turkey. Many of the questions posed by the Committee focused on democratization, human rights, governance, and institution building. The Committee—headed by Chairman Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and ranking Committee member Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-IN) —requested the testimony of four nominees. The first panel consisted of James Franklin Jeffrey, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Iraq, while the second panel included Maura Connelly, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Lebanon; Gerald M. Feierstein, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen; The Honorable Francis Joseph Ricciardone Jr.,to be Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey.
The ruling party in Yemen, the General People’s Congress, and opposition groups have signed the minutes of an agreement to pursue national dialogue.The memorandum came after President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s proposal in May for a national unity government in which he called for “responsible national dialogue, within the framework of the constitutional institutions.” More than 400 northern rebels have been freed as part of the agreement. Also, President Saleh declared that parliamentary elections will be held as scheduled in April 2011.
In a very interesting piece in the Arab Reform Bulletin, Ginny Hill argues that despite the 20th anniversary of Yemen’s unification last month, “Yemen’s democracy is on hold.” The ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), opposed by the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) which is a coalition of opposition groups, decided that the last round of parliamentary elections that were supposed to be held in April 2009, were to be delayed for two years. With rising tensions between the separatists in the south and the Saada “rebels,” President Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to initiate a national dialogue to discuss the issues, yet little has happened and the talks remain “elusive.” While both parties are continuously pushing for a national dialogue, many perceive them as stalling the process, Hill explains. As the GPC faces many challenges over its economic and security issues and the balance of power, “opposition leaders might well fear that they have little to gain and much to lose by joining a coalition cabinet.” Yet, without timely negotiations, Yemen’s democracy might be at risk, Hill argues. The opposition views political reforms as a precondition to dealing with the macro-economic issues, yet some in the administration argue that Yemen cannot afford to hold an election in the midst of the current economic crisis, while the political class is worried that “flawed elections” could be worse than having no elections at all, since they could leave people disillusioned with the political process. Meanwhile, international donors, such as the European Union, are hesitant to implement election monitoring if there is no commitment to constitutional reforms.
Earlier today, Freedom House and the Project on Middle East Democracy co-hosted an event at the Capitol Visitor Center to explore the effects of President Obama’s new approach to the Arab World, the current challenges for democracy and human rights in the region, and the prospects for changes in U.S. policy to bring about a lasting impact. Tamara Wittes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, provided remarks on how the president’s Cairo speech has shaped the last year of Middle East policy. Deputy Director of Freedom House Thomas. O Melia then moderated a group of 3 panelists: Dina Guirguis, Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Andrew Albertson, Executive Director of POMED; and Stephen Grand, Director of the U.S. Relations with the Islamic World project at the Brookings Institution.
Click here for POMED’s notes in PDF, or continue reading below the fold.
Earlier today, Freedom House officially released the latest edition of “Countries at a Crossroads,” a report which assesses democratic governance and “provides a clear diagnosis of the factors that separate stronger performers from those that continue to stagnate or backslide in ways that threaten essential rights and freedoms.” As the report’s managing editor, Jake Dizard, explains at FP’s Middle East Channel, “the Middle Eastern states included in the 2010 edition — Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen –demonstrate a range of strengths and weaknesses regarding institutional quality and respect for basic freedoms, but generally lag behind their counterparts elsewhere.” While Lebanon, which achieved a comparatively high score, has done well to foster political pluralism, its system’s “rigidity limits the prospects for progress in critical areas, including judicial reform and anticorruption efforts.” Meanwhile, citizen rights are still “tightly circumscribed” in Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, Jordan, and Yemen each experienced mild to significant drops in political progress and civil liberties.
The entire Middle East, Dizard says, “consistently lag[s] behind those in other regions in a variety of the Crossroads subcategories, including minority rights, women’s rights, and accountable government.” He adds that regional governments utilize a broad range of tactics to “suppress basic freedoms, ranging from legal harassment to physical attacks to the use of patronage networks to ensure the political loyalty of individuals at key institutions.”
On Thursday, the State Department released its 2009 Human Rights Report which explores trends and developments in 194 countries, and provides a thorough accounting of “a year in which ethnic, racial, and religious tensions led to violent conflicts and serious human rights violations and fueled or exacerbated more than 30 wars or internal armed conflicts.” 2009 was also a landmark year for the proliferation of information and connection technology, which, while serving as a positive facilitator for the transmission of democratic ideas worldwide, also prompted governments to “infringe on the personal privacy rights of those who used these rapidly evolving technologies.” Multiple Near East and North Africa country reports focused upon a similar collection of distressing themes, including judicial misconduct, fraudulent or rigged electoral systems, a disregard for basic human freedoms, and general malfeasance by public officials. Below are some highlights from particular MENA countries of concern:
In a hearing on the administration’s recently released budget request, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs invited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to give testimony on particular budgetary items relating to U.S. diplomatic and development efforts abroad. Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) opened the hearing with an affirmation of the value of investing in international diplomacy; not only to promote American values, but also as a method of prevention in order to mitigate the forces that cause international instability. Berman pledged to work with his colleagues to maintain or even increase the overall level of funding – approximately 1 percent of the entire Fiscal Year 2011 federal budget request – but ranking Republican committee member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) disagreed, using the poor economic environment as the basis to call for “selective freezes.” In particular, she questioned the wisdom of unconditionally funding the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), both of which she accuses of stealing hundreds of millions in foreign aid.
Click here for POMED’s notes in PDF, or continue reading below.
Committee to Protect Journalists reports that human rights reporting in the Arab media has seen an increase despite efforts to curtail such coverage by repressive Arab regimes. The release provides a good overview of the development of human rights reporting in Arab countries, noting key contributions from Al Jazeera, online journalism, and blogging. Developments have been particularly crucial in this region “where dictatorships far outnumber democracies.” Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, and Robert Mahone, CPJ’s deputy director argue that, “In the past year or so, [Arab] governments have pushed back against independent reporters and bloggers, but journalists believe that in the long run technology will make it impossible for all but the most authoritarian regimes to stem the tide of information.”
They cite Egyptian bloggers like Mohamed Khaled and Wael Abbas for having opened up human rights reporting in Egypt when they began posting video clips of police brutality in 2006. “Once people saw the footage, they had to know more,” Khaled told CPJ. “The story became so big that much of the broadcast and print media eventually covered it.”
Deyam and Mahone point to challenges many bloggers face from governments that have been putting up a counterattack to halt open reporting on human rights issues. “Egypt Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, among others, have at times suspended the operations of satellite news channels, particularly Al Jazeera, for highlighting sensitive human rights, political, or religious issues.”
Interestingly enough, the House recently passed a bill designed to prevent Arab satellite networks from broadcasting any material deemed to incite violence against Americans. NPR’s On The Media recently interviewedMarc Lynch about the bill,who criticized what he believes are provisions that would essentially outlaw Arab journalism. “Arab governments really don’t like Al Jazeera. They don’t like media freedoms and they want to control the media. They score some political points by telling the United States to back off, but I don’t believe for a second that they would be sad to see Al Jazeera muzzled,” he argues. “The strange thing is that the United States would put itself on the side of the muzzlers.”
Lynch has blogged that the bill runs counter to the principles Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted in her speech on Internet freedom last month.
The Project on Middle East Democracy and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) hosted an event to examine the current state of human rights in the Arab world. Last month, CIHRS released a report stating that human rights in the Arab region have deteriorated compared to 2008. The report, which features 12 country studies by regional authors, paints a detailed picture of trends and developments over the past year that have threatened personal freedoms and regional progress towards improved human rights standards. These trends include the persistence of “widespread impunity and flagrant lack of accountability” in addition to a variety of repressive legal measures regimes have taken to undermine basic liberties, such as emergency and anti-terrorism laws. The report also takes a closer look at the state of women’s rights at a time when Arab governments have actively engaged on that issue. Finally, it reviews the behavior of Arab governments in regional and international organizations. To examine and discuss the report, Andrew Albertson, Executive Director of POMED, moderated a panel of three experts in Middle Eastern studies: Nathan Brown, Nonresident Senior Associate for the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Bahey Eldin Hassan, General Director of CIHRS; and Radwan Ziadeh, Director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies.
Click here for POMED’s notes in PDF. Otherwise, continue below the fold.
The Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing today entitled “Yemen on the Brink: Implications for U.S. Policy,” in which two State Department officials briefed the committee on the U.S. government’s current progress in Yemen.
Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-CA) made opening remarks mentioning the Fort Hood shooting and the failed Christmas Day attack, followed by a brief overview on the current conditions in Yemen. Ranking member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) also made some remarks, focusing on al-Qaeda’s presence in Yemen. “It is no accident that al-Qaeda has found a home in Yemen.” Ros-Lehtinen said that a small group controls much of Yemen’s wealth, which relies on oil revenues, and that “al-Qaeda is now targeting the Yemeni state.” Her main question for the State Department officials was whether or not the Yemeni government has really changed its attitude toward al-Qaeda and whether the U.S. now truly has a partner in the Yemeni government.
Click here for POMED’s full notes on the hearing as a pdf, or continue reading below.
