Anger and fragmentation in Yemen
Yemeni protesters burn French, American and Israeli flags Friday during a demonstration in Sanaa in support of the Houthi Shiite rebels who seized the capital earlier in the week. The rebels faced mounting pressure as signs of internal divisions emerged after U.S.-backed President Abed Rabbo Hadi and his Cabinet resigned rather than submit to rebel demands for greater power.
SANAA, Yemen — Yemen’s Shiite rebels faced mounting pressures and signs of internal divisions Friday after the U.S.-backed president and his Cabinet resigned rather than submit at gunpoint to their increasing demands for greater power.
Thousands of protesters demonstrated Friday across Yemen, some supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels who seized the capital and others demanding the country’s south secede.
Rebel gunmen manned checkpoints throughout the capital and continued besieging the houses of government ministers, but they made no public attempt to fill the vacuum created by the Thursday resignations of President Abed Rabbo Hadi and his prime minister and Cabinet.
Yemeni law dictates that the parliament speaker — Yahia al-Rai, a close ally of former autocratic ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh — will now assume the presidency. Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 a year after widespread street protests, still wields considerable power and is believed to be allied with the Houthis.
However, there were signs that the parliament could reject the resignations of Hadi and his ministers when it meets Sunday.
A statement from the Houthi militia said Hadi’s resignation needed to be approved by a parliamentary majority before it was valid.
“As this has not happened, the resignation remains pending,” the statement said.
The statement may reflect the militants’ reluctance to assume complete power in the face of criticism of their actions by political leaders throughout the country, especially in the resource-rich east and south.
Hadi, a U.S. ally in its campaign against Yemen’s local al-Qaida branch, stepped down as president along with his Cabinet days after gunbattles began rocking the capital. The Houthis had taken over the presidential palace and positioned their fighters at the doorsteps of Hadi’s house.
While in the Houthis’ captivity, Hadi signed a deal by which he pledged political concessions to the rebels in return for their withdrawal from his house and presidential palace and the release of his top aide, whom they’d abducted. The deal was not put into effect, and the Houthis demanded more concessions, including top posts in the government, according to Hadi’s aides.
In his latest speech, rebel leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi vowed to keep up the pressure until the government meets all his demands, including greater representation in government ministries and in a committee to rewrite the country’s constitution.
He stressed his group’s opposition to dividing the country into six regions — a measure in the draft constitution that would diminish the resources under the Houthis’ control.
Meanwhile, the Houthis were confronted with dissent from within their own ranks: Ali al-Bukhaiti, a prominent member of the group’s political arm, resigned Friday.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page, al-Bukhaiti said the Houthis had become “the official authority” in the country. He said he wanted to work as a mediator to “lessen the political polarization which is transforming into a regional and sectarian polarization that threatens the whole nation with fragmentation.”
Even before the Houthis’ recent ascendance, a powerful movement in southern Yemen was demanding autonomy or a return to the full independence the region enjoyed from 1967 to 1990. Southerners reject rule by the Houthis, whose power base is in the north.
On Friday, thousands of demonstrators in the southern city of Aden raised the former flag of Southern Yemen over the local airport and security headquarters building, witnesses said. Top officials in Aden and the southern province of Shabwa both announced that they would no longer follow orders from the capital.
Thousands more protested against the Houthis’ actions, which they called a “coup,” in several other cities, including Taiz, Ibb and Houdida.
But tens of thousands also turned out in the capital, Sanaa, in support of the Houthis, converging on the airport road. They raised green flags and banners proclaiming their slogan — “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam” — a variation of a popular Iranian slogan often chanted by Shiite militants in Iraq and supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The fast-moving events have fanned fears of a sectarian conflict that the U.S. worries could fuel support for al-Qaida, a Sunni movement that has links to some of the country’s tribes and is at war with both the Shiites and Hadi’s forces.
U.S. officials said the developments have forced President Barack Obama’s administration to suspend certain counterterrorism operations with Yemen, a move that eases pressure on what they call al-Qaida’s most dangerous franchise.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris this month and for previous failed attacks in the U.S.
Armed drones operated by the CIA and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command remain deployed for now over southern Yemen, where the al-Qaida group is based, officials said. But some officials said the Yemeni security services that provided much of the intelligence that sustained the air campaign against the militants are now controlled by the Houthi rebels.
Some observers also are raising the specter of a proxy battle in Yemen between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran, a Shiite country believed to fund the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia, which has long been Yemen’s economic lifeline, cut most of its financial aid to this country after the Houthis seized the capital in September. The Houthis are Zaydis, a Shiite Muslim minority sect that makes up about a third of Yemen’s population; the rest of Yemen is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, as are the Saudis.
The political turmoil and loss of Saudi funding threatened a humanitarian crisis. The international aid group Oxfam, which has been working in Yemen for more than 30 years, warned Friday that the country is on “the brink of humanitarian disaster with millions of lives at risk.”
Half of the country’s population is in need of aid, and nearly a million Yemeni children suffer malnourishment, the report said. The group urged other countries to help end the conflict.