September 24, 2013
On Sunday, September 8, members of
the Southern Separatist Movement (Hirak) returned to Yemen’s National Dialogue
Conference (NDC) following a month-long boycott. Their return—following a
series of meetings with Jamal Benomar, the UN Envoy to Yemen, about the
possibility of a separate north-south dialogue conference to be held after the
NDC and to involve other separatist factions (not all of whom are party to the
dialogue)—shows that Yemen’s NDC has overcome its latest hurdle. The dialogue’s
success is still far from assured; its failure, however, is all but guaranteed
to plunge the country into war.
As of Monday, all NDC sessions have
resumed their work, with Hirak in attendance. Hirak, which had boycotted the
conference in an attempt to guarantee their legal demands against the dominance
of northern forces, had no viable option but to return to the conference, said
Munir Mawari, a Washington DC-based Yemeni writer and political analyst:
"No party at all would dare to stand with Hirak, in fear of international
threats.” The movement came under pressure from the international community to
reengage: Mohammed Ali Ahmed, the head of the National Southern Conference
(representing the separatist groups involved in the NDC), returned from London
to Sanaa last week after pressure from British officials. Before leaving the
UK, Mohammed Ali Ahmed said in a letter to
President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi during the boycott that they now want to enter
into direct negotiations with the North, to be held in a neutral country,
aiming at the successful formation of a federal state. He told reporters,
"We returned to the dialogue to restore the independent state of the
south." Although he and the other separatists were able to present this promise
of continued dialogue as the reason for ending their boycott, in fact the
existing domestic and international pressures on them to return to the
negotiating table would have brought them back anyway. Furthermore, those
southerners who most fiercely advocate a separate state were not involved in
the NDC nor have they supported it—the petition to start separate negotiations
for the issue may have been a way for southern NDC attendees to appease those
southerners who favor separation over dialogue.
The 565 participants in the six-month-long NDC, supposed to end
on September 18, were divided into nine commissions to cover the nine main
issues of the dialogue. During Hirak’s boycott, at least half of the NDC’s
representatives were absent. Sessions were only operating nominally, making
little progress on the key issues. Now that Hirak has ended their boycott,
little time is left for the conference to finish discussing these nine issues. Bilqis Lahabi, the deputy chairwoman of the group on the southern
issue, indicated that there is a chance the NDC’s mandate could be extended:
"I think we may extend one month at least only for finishing the three
most important and controversial issues: Hirak, Saada, and building up the
state."
The issue of US drone strikes in
Yemen has further impaired the already complicated dialogue process. Over the
period of July 28 to August 10, 2013, Yemen witnessed anunprecedented series of drone attacks on moving cars suspected of carrying al-Qaeda members, resulting
in 42 deaths, including those of Saudi nationals. Several of these attacks
targeted Saudi national Ibrahim al-Rubaish, the deputy head of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who had topped the Yemeni government’s list of
25 terrorists responsible for security and military assassinations and terror
threats. If his death is confirmed, this could be a significant success for
these recent drone attacks.
In the meantime, these attacks have
not only increased sympathy for al-Qaeda—which always benefits from these strikes
to recruit more—but also generated opposition to the president and his
government for allowing the U.S. to kill Yemenis and violate Yemeni
sovereignty. For instance, on August 18, 2013, armed tribesmen from Ma’arib
province organized a demonstration against drones, holding
al-Qaeda flags. Earlier that week, members of Ansar Allah, the military branch
of the Houthi movement, held a similar anti-drone demonstration in Sanaa,
chanting, “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, and victory
to Islam.” The issue of drones has been used by separatists as another excuse
to boycott, and NDC members have used strong anti-drone rhetoric (they’ve
also proposed passing a law to ban
drones, an idea that’s unlikely to go far with the current government) to
absorb popular anger about the issue.
Ultimately, average Yemenis do not
expect much from the dialogue, but they feel that if NDC members fail, the
alternative will only be a return to pre-transition armed conflicts and
insecurity. "We want the dialogue people to finish their work, we do not
want them to return to wars, this is all what we want," said Mohammed Ameen,
a fruit vendor. "I am not expecting them to improve my living at all,
[but] war is even worse." However, outside the possibility of an
extension, a successful end to the dialogue at this point could mean at least a
partial resolution to the issues previously outlined. As the dialogue winds
down, the next hurdle for Yemen is likely to be the issue of presidential
elections and whether Hadi’s mandate should be extended. This issue is sure to
put the two main political players at odds again, with the Islamist Islah Party
favoring an extension of Hadi’s term while the ruling General People’s Congress
opposes it.
This article is reprinted with permission from Sada. It can be accessed online at:
http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2013/09/10/no-alternative-but-success/gmph
Nasser Arrabyee is a Yemeni
journalist based in Sanaa and a regular contributor to Sada.