Yemen: Protesters Face Violence

Posted on October 14th, 2007 Andrew G. Mandelbaum 1 comment  Print This Post

For transitions theorists, Yemen is an interesting case that features a united opposition.  A couple years ago 5 opposition parties, led by the Islamist Islah Party and the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), created the Joint Meeting Parties and signed onto a shared political program (Arabic).  I challenge any Arab political party members, particularly those in Morocco, to give me a good reason for why his or her organization cannot team up with other opposition parties to draw together a pact of a similar nature.  Islah and the YSP were lethal enemies during the civil war that raged from 1994-97; no other political parties in the region come from such a violent past.  In the most recent elections, the 5 parties even agreed upon a candidate to challenge President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The Joint Meeting Parties’ platform, to which I have linked above, is an excellent example of the type of game that other political organizations that participate in elections in autocratic states can learn from.  Rather than focusing on the ‘big issues’ that Islamists and Leftists may never see eye-to-eye on, this document is geared towards finding common ground on more technical and/or basic issues.  In other words, much of this document is about things that nearly anyone could agree upon; combating corruption, reforming the bloated bureaucracy, the need to foster economic growth, etc.  Despite how simple some of the amendments are, the platform has allowed for an impressive amount of coordination among the signatories and has provided a foundation for the building of trust and even friendship to take place across ideologies.  I had the opportunity to meet the leaders of the Islamist and Leftist parliamentary blocs at a conference in May and their mutual admiration was on display as they held hands (a sign of friendship in the Arab world) on their way to grabbing a pre-dinner snack.

I raise this now because I’ve been meaning to and because of an interesting development over in Yemen.  On Saturday, at least 4 people were killed as police officers clashed with protesters on the anniversary of the 44th anniversary of Yemen’s 14 October Revolution.  Al-Jazeera is reporting that the Saleh regime has threatened to close down the sattelite network’s Yemeni office if it broadcasts pictures of the event (sorry, it was only printed on the Arabic site).  Interestingly, Reuters has reported that “unidentified gunmen” were responsible for the incident and not the police.  But I guess that’s the type of news you get when you take the word of the police in an autocratic country.  I can’t say definitively that Al-Jazeera is right and Reuters is wrong, but Saleh doesn’t have much credibility… He’s like an Arab Dick Cheney.  On the Yemeni president’s website, Saleh is quoted as having said that “dialogue is open with all except those who trying to damage unification, stability and security of the nation.”  The principle underscoring this statement is one that Cheney and other right-wing American demagogues know well: when your position is unjustifiable, invoke the ‘national interest.’