In Yemen rebellion, snakes have bitten
By Daniel Martin Varisco, Special to CNN
March 22, 2011 -- Updated 1327 GMT (2127 HKT)
tzleft.varisco.daniel.courtesy.jpg
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Daniel Martin Varisco: Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime appears to be near its
end in Yemen
Varisco says unemployed rebels have little to lose, but Saleh has many
enemies from years of rule
He says Saleh facing civil war, tribal rebellions and has lost loyalty of
military commanders
Varisco: In end, war on terror aided dictators, but will of hopeful
citizens will rout them
Editor's note: Daniel Martin Varisco is a professor of anthropology at Hofstra
University and has visited Yemen more than a dozen times for development
consulting and research since 1978. He moderates Tabsir, an academic blog on
Islam and the Middle East.
(CNN) -- While the world focuses on bombing raids in Libya, a different
scenario has been unfolding in Yemen, which would be the first country outside
of North Africa in this recent era of uprisings to lose its long-term
strongman, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Saleh has been a clever politician, coming to power in 1978 a decade after a
protracted civil war ended in North Yemen. His two predecessors were
assassinated. It is not surprising that Saleh has observed that being in charge
of Yemen's diverse population is like dancing on the heads of snakes.
His dance is almost over. The snakes have bitten.
Taking their cue from the unemployed young people in the streets of North
Africa, students feel that they have nothing to lose since there are so few
jobs available after graduation.
But their protests are garden-variety compared with the major enemies Saleh has
created during his three decades of autocratic rule. Since the 1994 civil war
that allowed northern hegemony over the former socialist South Yemen, the
growing unrest there has resulted in repeated calls for secession.
Near the border with Saudi Arabia, a tribal rebellion has festered openly for
more than six years. Recently several powerful tribal sheikhs joined the
resistance, as have all the religious parties. Now even Saleh's top military
commanders are calling for his resignation.
Regime change is coming to Yemen. As a scholar who has lived and conducted
research in Yemen since 1978, I argued in earlier commentaries that Yemen's
president would probably weather the storm of protests. After all, he had a
well-equipped army and security apparatus in a country no one faction can
easily control.
Dozens dead in Yemen clashes
State of emergency in the Middle East
Yemen's youth and social media
RELATED TOPICS
Yemen
War and Conflict
Protests and Demonstrations
Middle East Politics
North African Politics
But now all bets are off. Pundits, like me, have trusted conventional wisdom
over the sheer willpower of ordinary people to overthrow repression. The Middle
East is emerging from the cocoon of dictatorial fatalism, and no current regime
can avoid the impact, even those that survive.
Our global war on terror, announced after the tragedy of 9/11, gave dictators
in the region an extra life. All of them claimed to be the bulwark against the
threat of Islamic rule. And both the Bush and Obama administrations took the
bait. We poured out millions of dollars in military aid to help Saleh fight al
Qaeda. But no one seemed to realize that doling out weapons to dictators was
like adding gasoline to a fire.
Al Qaeda served the interests of his regime by its continued presence. Futile
attempts such as that of the suspected "underwear bomber" show the weakness of
self-styled Islamists that we foolishly took for strength.
There are several lessons to be learned by the surge of political protests that
started this year in Tunisia. One of the major ones is that liberation from
oppressive dictators inspires ordinary people far more than the preaching of
religious fanatics. It is our ignorance of the diversity of views in the Middle
East that makes these protests seem so surprising.
Saleh argued that only he could keep Yemen from stumbling back into tribal
bedlam and an Islamic kingdom. But the tribal dynamics I first saw in rural
Yemen during the late 1970s were far more democratic and fair than the
self-serving "peoples" party of the president and his cronies. In fact, the
tribes have represented civil society in much of Yemen in the absence of a
strong and sincere national government.
In Yemen there is no monolithic anti-Western brand of Islam. Yemen has its
outrageous clerics, as we do in America, but there will be no Iranian-style
"Islamic revolution" here.
I once quoted Saleh's remark that Yemen was not Tunisia. Neither is Yemen
Egypt, nor Libya, nor Bahrain. Yemen is Yemen, a terra incognita for most
Americans. Of all the countries with protests, Yemen is the poorest. Once a
bread basket of the Arabian Peninsula, it can no longer feed its growing
population of 23 million people.
Water for consumption and irrigation is running out as wells must be dug deeper
and deeper. There is no easy fix for the development problems facing Yemen. But
the Yemeni people are resilient. Their country, however it is shaped
politically in the coming months, will be a breeding ground for hope, not a
staging area for terrorism.
Saleh was wrong. What he should fear are not the fangs of snakes, but the
mouths of the hungry, and the angry fists of those who have been shut out of a
future. Spring has come to Yemen, and there is dancing in the streets.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Daniel Martin
Varisco.
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