The Arab Spring in Yemen

Yemen : No Going Back

John Peace

It's YouTube. In a city street, a loose group of open-handed young men advance on a heavy water-cannon truck. They chant, "The people – want – the system's fall!" A powerful water jet strikes out. They scatter. Across the street, there's a locked-up shop emblazoned with graffiti art: keys and four-foot-high Arabic words. I recognise that wall, that shop. I used to get my keys cut there.

Of course, the Arab Spring caught us all by surprise. I lived amongst the Arab people for fifteen years and thought I understood how people felt. They seemed resigned to their fate, when in fact they were dry kindling waiting for a spark.

And now, more sparks fly: President Saleh has returned to Yemen. Who can say what will happen next? A ceasefire or a civil war? Even if he finally resigns, which civil body has enough integrity and public trust to oversee fair elections? And what steps can any new government take? In an interview, Ali Abdullah Saleh is famously reported as saying that governing the turbulent Yemeni people is like 'dancing on snakes' heads' (Ibrahim Al-Hajjri, School for Conflict Analysis & Resolution, April 2011). Al-Hajjri continues, 'Saleh’s dance might be over, but the other performers are staying, and so will the corruption, disorder, and qat  ... Be wary of applauding those dancers shimmying onto the bandwagon.  We have seen their moves before and it’s time for a new boogie.' 

It's well past time. Frustration in a human soul can mount only so high before it results in violent rage, mental instability or resignation. Wandering the streets of Yemen live ragged lunatics, driven over the edge by money problems and endless disappointments. The vast majority of people shrug and say that God created them poor, and they will stay that way. End of story. Some list Yemen's woes and express a token desire for something better. But now the pot of frustration has boiled over, and this generation has developed a hunger for change. Now we watch determined men and women filling the streets, and scratch our heads. In the Western media, some have difficulty comprehending the existence of terrorists and peaceful demonstrators in the same country. There is little real support for the genuine Yemeni protest movement. At least, that's how it feels to them as they confront tear gas and rooftop snipers.

The story has only just begun. There's no going back to the old fatalism, even if the old dance steps remain. I wonder how much I'll recognise when I visit Yemen next time.

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The Women Of Yemen Who Won't Give Up

John Peace

Sahar is a woman with a tenacious grip on life. She lives in a hot and dusty town in a rural area, near the Red Sea. All around the town stretch flat fields that grow startlingly green after the fickle rains finally fall. Her ambition is to set up a computer training school in her town, even though most would rather flee their poverty to find work elsewhere. She herself was taking some computer courses in the city when this year's unrest began, and the marches and roadblocks prevented her from attending.

Once, she invited my family and I to visit their town. I sat with the males in one room while my wife and the women sat in another lounge. That's the Yemeni way. We were fed with the best that they had, and were made to feel like VIPs. Our children migrated between us.

To get this far, coming from a conservative town with customs that limit women's education and social freedoms, is a great achievement for Sahar. However, she is not alone in this. Mona, her relative in the city, has been struggling to open her own business for some time, after studying marketing at a private institute. She wanted to learn to drive and use a car in her business plan, but the cost of lessons and car defeated her. Then she set up a small catering business from home, where she lives with her parents and siblings, but her main customers – foreigners, including us - have mostly left the country because of the unrest. At least she has supportive parents. Her father lost his job as a driver and struggles to find any work at all; her mother, a cheerful woman who never learned to read and doesn't much care to, has had to feed and clothe five daughters and two sons, a few of whom have now married and left home. The mother's few goats and chickens all grew sick and died, one by one.

Both Sahar and Mona and their families were already living from one small crisis to the next, trying to keep alive their hopes for betterment, when the unrest began. Now after months with extreme shortages of cooking gas and vehicle fuel, increased power cuts and the resulting painful inflation, what prospects can they possibly see ahead? Wouldn't they rather that the protests had never started?

If you look up http://notesbynoon.blogspot.com/ you'll find the frank opinion of another Yemeni woman named Noon, albeit a much more privileged one. She writes: 'Despite the continuous crackdown by security and military forces they continue to march peacefully demanding a regime change and hoping for a better future.' And there's one astounding video on Noon's blog which shows one of Sanaa's four-lane highways crammed with people, all chanting for their desire for an end to the past corrupt rule. At first it looks as though the feeder lane is in shade somehow, but then it hits you: that's the women's section. This, too, is the Yemeni way. There were several thousand women clad in black, defying a violent regime in order to demand a future for their children. I found myself blinking back tears.

It may surprise some to learn that women in Yemen have the right to vote – and to be elected to most positions in government. Meanwhile, women like Mona and Sahar simply want to get on with their lives and build their small businesses into reality. Of course, a country free from corruption and wrenched from the control of a particular tribe would be wonderful, but they know from experience that you can't always get everything you want.

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Troubled Holiday Season for Yemen

 John Peace

Imagine a Christmas in which the average Canadian family couldn't afford a turkey dinner and even if they could, they wouldn't drive to the mall for fear of gunfire.

"Most people are afraid to go outside." On the phone on Friday, a teacher and father of four in Taiz, Yemen, described daily life through the country's worst crisis for decades. Amazingly, he still manages to send his children to school some days when there is no gunfire outside. People continue heroically with their routines, despite the government shelling in some districts.

The Feast of Sacrifice, or Eid Al-Adha, was not a happy one for many in the city last Sunday. Government forces mounted an armed attack the day before. Merciless inflation and shortages have squeezed every household. Normally the atmosphere's comparable to a Canadian Christmas. During the Eid each family buys a sheep or goat or at least a chicken and family gathers together for several days of meals and celebrations, especially weddings, when the groom must pay a large dowry to the bride's family. It's customary to outfit one's children in smart new clothes too. This year few managed to have a normal Eid.

However, people had been seen buying their Eid livestock at the markets and leading them home. One darkly ironic comment was that many families are "selling off their daughters" to finance their Eids. Who can afford to buy? Well, the crisis has brought the bride price a little lower now, so perhaps more people are getting married this year than normal, judging by the amount of wedding dance music blasting through rented loudspeakers and the volleys of fireworks at night.

A businessman in the capital, Sanaa, bemoaned the terrible security situation and the economic crisis. He admits many people are leaving to sit out the crisis in their ancestral village homes. "There's no business," he said, "no customers, and no money. But I have to stay here to safeguard my business."

Meanwhile, the Gulf Cooperation Council, backed by the European Union, the USA and the UN, is growing impatient with President Ali Abdullah Saleh's promise-breaking (Shathi Al-Harazi, Yemen Times, November 2^nd). The GCC has been pushing him to sign a resignation deal with the Opposition, but he keeps sliding away from it, despite the UN's recent resolution. Many ordinary people dismiss Saleh's words with contempt, saying he is obviously clinging to power.

On Friday a huge pro-democracy crowd in the capital completed a 1500-metre long letter to the UN Secretary-General, calling for international assistance in their peaceful struggle against the regime (Yemen Post, November 4^th).

Yemeni pro-democracy activist Ms Tawakul Karman, joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last month, called for Yemen's President to be tried at the International Criminal Court for crimes against his own people. This is highly unlikely at this point: there's little at stake for the West except for the question of terrorism. Yemen doesn't have huge oil reserves as Libya and Iraq do. Perhaps the appeals of ordinary people will fall on deaf ears.