By Iona Craig - USA Today
Wednesday Mar 21, 2012
AL-KHAMISAIN, Yemen — Yaseen Sultan’s dark brown eyes welled up when he
recounted the moment before he and his family fled their home.
Bullets were flying through the house, shells exploding in the street as
Shiite Muslim rebels battled Sunni tribesmen in Yemen’s remote northern
highlands. The 14-year-old boy was so scared, he says, he threw up.
Yemen is beset by three insurgencies, two in the south and one in the
north, which borders Saudi Arabia. U.S. counterterrorism efforts have been
centered in the south, where al-Qaida’s presence has grown and secessionist
groups still launch attacks.
But the United States believes the north may be the latest place where
another adversary is seeking to influence events.
“We see Iranian efforts to
increase their activities and take advantage of the political upheaval and
build up their own presence,” Gerald Feierstein, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, said
in a recent interview.
The Yemeni military has fought several wars in the north in recent years
against a rebellion named for its founding commander, Hussein Badr Eddin
al-Houthi, who was killed by Yemeni forces in 2004.
The movement’s grievances include the corruption and cronyism of the
33-year dictatorship of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who recently agreed to
leave office. But his family and longtime regime members remain in power in the
capital, Sanaa.
The political unrest has created opportunities for Yemen’s rebellions to
gain power. They have been met largely by violence from a military controlled
by Saleh’s eldest son and other relatives.
In the north, hundreds of thousands are being made homeless. The United
Nations said last week that the number of those displaced during the past three
months of fighting in Hajjah province is 52,000, adding to the more than
300,000 people from the neighboring province of Sa’ada already left homeless by
wars over the past eight years.
Some believe the violence may be hurting chances for a negotiated
settlement that meets grievances and ends extremist influence from outside.
“Without adequately addressing
the grievances of the Houthis and the Southern movement, Yemen won’t be able to
function as a state that controls all of the territory within its borders,”
said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen specialist at Princeton University. “There is no
military solution to either the Houthi conflict or the brewing one in the
south. Both are political problems that require political solutions.”
Yemen’s northern conflict has remained largely hidden from the outside
world. Saleh restricted humanitarian access and journalists were banned from
the war zone.
In 2009, Saudi Arabia became involved in the conflict as clashes spread
across their border. The Saudi air force joined in airstrikes by Saleh’s air
force. Saleh responded to concerns about the conflict by insisting the Houthis
were pro-Hezbollah and sponsored by Iran. The Houthi motto is “God is great,
death to America, death to Israel.”
The Houthis say their goal is autonomy and protection for their Zaydi
Shiite religious practices. Iran is a nation of largely Shiites; Saudi Arabia
is largely Sunni Muslim. The Houthis were fighting Yemen troops into 2010, and
since have been battling various tribes backed by a Sunni political party. Thus
far, the Houthis have gained control over most of the province of Sa’ada and
are fighting in adjacent provinces.
The Houthis have not been made part of Yemen’s new period of political
transition that began with the inauguration of Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour
Hadi as the country’s new leader, having boycotted his unopposed election.
Under the terms of the U.N.-sponsored transition deal agreed to by
Saleh, a period of national dialogue is to take place to address multiple
grievances including those of the Houthis. But the fighting persists and an
increasing number of Yemenis are becoming reliant on foreign aid for food,
water and shelter.
“The government has no authority
in the area,” says Taklu Nagga, head of the Hajjah office for the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees. “It’s a battleground for tribesmen, and the situation
is deteriorating.”
Two months after they fled their homes, Yaseen and sister Asmar are in
their first day of school in al-Khamisain district, where hundreds of families
now live in tents pitched under the shade of thorny trees along a dry riverbed.
Pupils are packed in a cinder-block classroom of about 40 children, more than
half of whom have fled the sectarian clashes in Yemen’s province of Hajjah.
Women and children ride donkeys through the wadi to collect precious
water, trucked in by aid agencies. The Houthi have shut the mountain passes,
the main access route for water supply trucks.
“I was loading up my car to leave
when three bombs hit my house right behind me,” said Yahiya Abdullah, a father
of nine.
Abdullah fled, and now his goats and cattle wander through the sand,
munching at gorse bushes between the guide ropes of tents supplied by
humanitarian organizations.
“We have nothing,” Abdullah says.
“Not enough food, not enough tents, not even a mat to sleep on. No person can
live like this with children who are going hungry.”
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