For months activists have been calling for sweeping political reform and for Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s president, to step down from power after more than thirty years. The regime has responded with a typically heavy-handed crackdown expected from an autocratic leader, which is then followed by apologies for the deaths that have occurred. Saleh has been attempting to make negotiations with opposition leaders and has even claimed to not seek re-election, but we have seen this before, with several other Arab presidents including Mubarak.
What makes Saleh different is that he has been bringing his own supporters onto the streets. Their presence in the streets of Sana’a, Taiz, and other major cities is supposed to send a message that not everyone from Yemen wants the sweeping political changes that the opposition is demanding. Especially in a time when the country has been on the brink of civil war multiple times due to rebellions in the South and it is fighting al-Qaeda across the country. Saleh, who has warned of civil war and the break-up of Yemen if he is forced out before organising an orderly transition, urged the opposition on Friday to reconsider their refusal to, once again, join talks to resolve the crisis.
So far in my research I have been trying to tackle the issue of understanding Saleh’s popular support in Yemen, a country that is on the brink of being a failed state with over 40% unemployment, issues of Southern secession, and a growing al-Qaeda influence. This has inevitably brought me to tribal leadership as a critical aspect of my understanding the rationale behind the Saleh’s supporters. Therefore, I am reading A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen by Shelagh Weir for my book review.
Paige,
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding the supporters of the old regimes is a very necessary part of understanding the larger dynamic of revolution and transition. This is even more true for the more complicated and more contested cases, like Yemen and Syria.
There's at least two levels where this is important. The first is sheer numbers. In most cases the active participants of the demonstrations, even when they include very large numbers, are still less than majorities of the full population. Regime supporters, as well as those that are ambivalent to the movements, are often very large portions of the population. The second is that by paying attention to both protesters and supporters you'll get a much better picture of what the contest is about in the local context. For outsiders, the "Arab Spring" appears as a series of movements of popular mobilization for democratization. The dynamic is either for democracy or against. For the actual participants, the dynamic may be very different. By examining the positions of the supporters of the regimes, as well as the protesters the local parameters of contestation will become much clearer.