Some Context

une 28, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -   Remember the “Arab Spring,” that misleading, Euro-centric term used to characterize a period of dramatic political change in the Middle East? It began in late 2010 in Tunisia when an impoverished fruit and vegetable vendor set himself on fire in front of a government building. The young man— Mohamed Bouazizi—was the sole provider for his widowed mother and six siblings. The local police wanted to see his vendor’s permit; he didn’t have one. So they attempted to confiscate his cart. Mr. Bouazizi resisted; the cart was his sole means of earning a living. His refusal supposedly prompted a policewoman to slap him. This act of public humiliation was possibly the last straw for Mr. Bouazizi. Desperately poor and with no other means of support than his cart, the young man took his own life as a form of resistance to an otherwise hopeless situation in which the government and its various servants blocked all the exits to a life lived with dignity.  

His death sparked a wave of protests across the country. Pro-democratic voices demanded that Tunisia’s iron-fisted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his regime relinquish power. He got the message and one month later closed shop and scurried out of town. And so it began—a wildfire that rapidly spread across Middle Eastern and North African countries in which the people rose up against their despotic overlords. There was nothing spring-like in these uprisings. Nor did they represent the sudden awakening of the Arab masses to the splendors of democracy and capitalism. Rather, the protests and demonstrations shared a unifying call for revolution, dignity, and the restoration of basic human rights—what generations of oppressive regimes had denied them. (The Arabic terms, transliterated, are thawra, karama, and haqooq.) In some cases, large-scale protests led to peaceful, though temporary transfers of power and a short-lived period of greater cultural and political freedom. In Syria and Yemen, protests met with a government crackdown and the emergence of warring factions that were all too soon embroiled in civil war.

Yemen: The Fuse is Lit

Powerful tribal and military leaders side with pro-democracy protestors calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s resignation. Protests erupt for the first time in January of 2011. The failure of negotiations between loyalists and members of the opposition leads to fighting in the city of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. In November, ten months later, President Saleh hands over power to his vice president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Hadi assumes power after an election in which he is the only candidate. During the ensuing national dialogue, warring sides attempt to reconcile their differences. By 2014, the talks have failed. Angered by President Hadi’s failure to include Houthi representatives in his government, Houthi fighters from the north of the country take control of the capital. (Houthis belong to the Zaidi religious minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam. The Houthi resistance movement, or Ansar Allah, is named after Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi who founded the movement in the 1990s partly in response to the growing influence of Saudi Arabia’s Salafist Sunni ideology in Yemen.)