By Catherine Shakdam
When Abdel-Malek Al Houthi, the charismatic leader of the Houthis movement announced last week that Yemen’ s real revolution had succeeded following months of a violent arm struggle to bring down the deep state, thus heralding a new era for the impoverished nation, Yemenis across the country came together to rejoice.
For the first time since its unification (1994), Yemenis experienced a real sense of togetherness and solidarity, having found in the Houthis a deep echo to their calls for social justice, freedom and equality.
Having tasted state oppression and repression, this formerly obscure group of northern Sa’ada managed to reinvent itself the vessel of Yemen’s discontent, the symbol of a nation’s yearning for meaningful democratic changes.
But if Yemenis caught themselves dreaming that the Houthis would eventually materialize their hopes of political emancipation by imposing popular will on state officials; they failed to grasp the extent of politicians’ treachery and their desire to put their own selfish interests before that of the people. Just as Yemen’s 2011 uprising was high-jacked by Al Islah – Sunni radical faction backed by Saudi Arabia – as a tool to eliminate all opposition and ultimately engineer the rise of radical Islamists over republican values, this second revolutionary coming stands as well to fall prey to nefarious forces.
Only a week after President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi called on his security apparatus to welcome Houthi militants as the “friends of the police and the state”, urging all officials to cooperate with the group in view of re-establishing order in the capital, Sana’a, politicians have reverted to propaganda and slander to push their agenda, regardless of what it could do to Yemen institutional stability.
As the wheels of anti-Houthi proselytism are spinning once more, Yemen stands to be engulfed in terror and bloodshed, a reality which so far seems to have completely eluded President Hadi, so blinded he has been with asserting his stamp on power.
Political Deceit
Even though the Houthis held true to their words following their arrival into Sana’a – re-establishing order and security, state officials lost no time in turning their smiles and welcoming gestures into bitter sneers as they sought to exploit the vacuum left by Al Islah’s political fall from grace and Abdel-Malek al Houthi’s willingness to broker a power partnership.
While Al Houthi could very well have taken out the coalition government, putting a definite end to Yemen’ so-called transition of power, he chose instead to break away from a long-standing tradition of violence by making room for political collaboration, thus offering the Yemeni nation a real chance to carve its own institutional fate, in keeping with revolutionaries’ aspirations. Yet, such political selflessness was understood by Yemen’s leading class as yet another opportunity to renege on an already formulated agreement.
The hand which Al Houthi extended in good faith was to be bitten by the state.
A week after President Hadi inked a truce with Al Houthi, the former has yet to honour the terms of the agreement by nominating a technocrat government.
If such betrayal was in hindsight to be expected – leopards cannot after all change their spots - it is the risk politicians have opened Yemen to which remains difficult to fathom, let alone understand. As Yemen stands at a dangerous institutional and political crossroads, Al Qaeda and their takfiri legions have threatened to throw this poorest nation of the Arabian Peninsula into the abyss of war.
Interestingly it is at such a time when Al Islah has bitten the dust that Al Qaeda has chosen to rise a terror titan over Yemen, as if to revenge from its loss of political standing.
In less than a week Al Qaeda militants have claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks against Houthi operatives as well as the targeting of the US Embassy in Sana’a. If anything this resurgence of violence should come to reinforce the idea that Al Islah and al Qaeda are but an extension of one another. As it happens Yemenis should have heeded former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s warnings when back in 2011 he dubbed the so-called “Arab Spring” a terror takeover.
While politicians bicker over state positions, takfiris are gnawing away at Yemen, working to ignite sectarian-based hatred to carry their nefarious agenda.
Against all logic and fairness, it is the very men who continue to stand for Yemen and all Yemenis who are being dragged in the mud, subjected to media slander to please unforgiving western powers.
Fighting off Islamists and corruption
Regardless of how western media have portrayed the Houthis, realities on the ground cannot be ignored. In spite of everything, Ansar Allah’s goals remain the same – defeat Islamists and end state corruption.
Those men the press have been so keen to portray as evil-doers have but worked to return Yemen’s looted funds and dismantle Islamists’ political, tribal and economic networks, cutting one at a time the tentacle of Al Islah.
It is uncanny how Yemen’s very own Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Tawakkul Kamran, herself an Islahi party member, had no qualms in categorizing Abdel-Malek Al Houthi’s efforts to render justice by returning stolen lands to their rightful owners as “looting” while she has built her career on denouncing corruption. For an activist who has relentlessly called for the trial of former President Saleh on account he unlawfully profited from his position, she seems bent on not only denying her own faction’s abuses of power and acts of banditry, but defame the Houthis to deflect from her own laggings.
If indeed properties and lands were seized by the Houthis, a closer look will reveal that the group only targeted those in league with Al Islah, the very men who for decades have used and abused Yemen’s riches to build dizzying fortunes.
When the Houthis could have exerted revenge on a state which only a decade ago laid waste their villages and people, they all have instead chosen to stand guard for all Yemenis and act a barrage to tyranny. How else to describe the Houthis but as the liberators of a nation gripped by injustice.
One can only hope that Yemenis will be wise enough to recognize that the only real foe which endures is actually radicalism.
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