The latest military restructuring announced by Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi has brought much-needed relief to an anxious nation. Beyond establishing new regional commands to increase the Defence Ministry's centralisation, Hadi's decrees have finally terminated the employment of several high-ranking relatives of former president Ali Abdallah Saleh, namely his son Ahmed and nephew Yehia. Yemenis had demanded their dismissal from Saleh's personal “counter-terrorism” units since launching their revolution in January 2011, both men having assumed instrumental roles in spearheading Saleh's vicious crackdown on peaceful demonstrators. Gone, too, is the Yemeni First Armoured Division commanded by rogue General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, who defected from Saleh's government in March 2011 to escape punishment and pursue his own interests. His division and Ahmed Saleh's Republican Guard now count themselves as part of Yemen's Special Operations Command and Strategic Reserve Forces and thus theoretically fall under President Hadi's personal authority. This news was lauded by John Brennan, the Obama administration's counter-terrorism coordinator. “Brennan extended President Obama's congratulations to President Hadi for the decrees issued yesterday to further restructure the Yemeni armed forces, advancing the goal of a unified, professional military that serves the Yemeni people,” a statement said. Unfortunately, the jubilant air soon cleared, and Yemen's situation has tumbled back downhill in the days since. Following their “removal”, the normally resistant Salehs welcomed Hadi's announcement and pledged to cooperate fully, triggering immediate suspicion of their payoffs. Mohsen greeted Hadi's orders as though they had nothing to do with him. Reports then surfaced to explain their reactions — new military appointments — and these were half-confirmed by the spokesman of Yemen's embassy in Washington, when Mohamed Al-Basha announced on 23 December that “there are no restrictions to their reappointments in the Ministry of Defence.” Subsequent reports predicted that Hadi's decrees could take six months to implement, and that Ahmed Saleh and Mohsen will continue to oversee their positions until then. If they do receive new regional commands, they can thank their ongoing survival for the immunity granted by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and UN Security Council. These actions serve private interests more than they do Yemen's people, beginning with Hadi's interim government and the foreign powers that secured his promotion. Although he has admirably stepped up to fill the void left by Saleh after serving nearly two decades as his vice president, Hadi remains a controllable instrument of the GCC deal's true brokers, Riyadh and Washington. That leaves Yemen's revolutionaries — the country's future — at the bottom of national and international priorities at a time when they have enough interference to deal with at home. Out-resourced by the opposition Islah Party, which dips its hands into most of Yemen's political movements, the country's civil parties have already been isolated in the UN-sponsored National Dialogue, with few seats relative to the whole (youth and women received 60 seats combined out of a total of 565). They could easily be squashed by Saleh's own General People's Congress (GPC) and the 112 delegates they plan to sit in it, the most of any bloc. For the moment, the Islah-dominated Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), in addition to the youth, is refusing to participate in the event that Saleh represents his party (another “medical leave” is being planned by Riyadh and Washington, but both rumour and reality are fraught with uncertainty). Conversely, Islah has interfered with efforts to organise an independent youth conference, a phenomenal idea to advance a democratic Yemen, while Mohsen's loyalists have “protected” the youth by militarising their part of Sanaa University. The general recently agreed to withdraw his forces following persistent demonstrations against their presence, but only after months of physical altercations with the youth camps. Yemen's youth and women are viewed as groups that can be appeased with scraps, not sources of national power to nurture and cooperate with. They have found few allies inside or outside the country due to their independent agenda, and they cannot turn to the United States in their hour of need. The second incarnation of Yemen's Life March, a mobile demonstration travelling from the revolutionary hub of Taizz in December 2011 en route to Sana'a, recently arrived in the capital to remind Hadi and his foreign backers that they won't back down either. With no action taken by their transitional government or the UN Security Council, Yemenis have once again marched to advocate their standing demands: the “dismissal of all military leaders who worked with Saleh, headed by Ahmed Ali Saleh, Ali Mohsen Saleh, Ghalib Al-Gamesh and fully dismissing them, not reshuffling their positions in the new appointments, whatever the circumstances”. The march ended when government forces blocked its path and violently dispersed protesters with tear gas, eroding another piece of the goodwill initially earned by Hadi's military shakeup. US influence is hardly responsible for all of Yemen's political dilemmas and the tribal knots created by Saleh's nepotism. However, the sheer gravity of America's counter-terrorism is warping Yemen's political and military reforms. The Obama administration no longer has practical use for Saleh and company, but they possess too much incriminating evidence on Saudi and US actions in Yemen to be cast away completely. Instead, Saleh has been kept close, travelling to America twice since the revolution began, and silent under the GCC's immunity package. Potential sanctions against “spoilers” — the always unnamed Saleh — remain a manipulative tool to avoid accountability. In the meantime, US drones continue to strike at suspected targets of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), accumulating enough collateral damage to produce a bombshell report by The Washington Post. Hadi has opened a wider door than his predecessor in exchange for US and Saudi support, approving the Obama administration's covert activities and moving to kill inquiries into civilian casualties. This relationship-building and the preservation of mutual interests is more responsible for Hadi's decrees than any genuine effort to uproot Saleh's regime from Yemen's political equation. Ultimately, Ali Abdallah Saleh cannot be held accountable for the decades of misrule in Yemen because the US and Yemen's power-sharing government are working outside the bounds of accountability. The fact that Washington and Riyadh have exhausted their operational need for his regime is far from stabilising, and it poses an enhanced threat to Yemen's democratic growth. One can reasonably assume that Washington will possess greater influence over Hadi's Special Operations Command than it did over Saleh's US-trained units. Counter-terrorism activities are being established in systematic fashion — land, sea and air forces surround the Arabian Peninsula nation — but US policy as a whole represents counter-insurgency at its worse: deep hostility and mistrust of the local population. The Obama administration cannot realistically expect to defeat AQAP with its current strategy, and the same power that lifted Hadi to his current position is weighing him down with his own people. “The main problem is not only with the US administration — extrajudicial killings in Yemen of ‘suspected' targets, killing and terrorising civilians and creating animosity towards the US — but rather with our government's position approving those drone strikes,” said Noon Arabia, a Yemeni-Egyptian blogger who maintains her anonymity for personal and security reasons. “Former president Saleh with all his shortcomings tried to hide his role in allowing the US drones to strike in Yemen, before being exposed by Wikileaks. However, Hadi has not only publicly endorsed them, he has even argued regarding their accuracy. Drone strikes in Pakistan decreased by 41 per cent in 2011 and another 40 per cent in 2012 because the Pakistani government publicly condemned and disapproved of them. Yet in Yemen they have increased by 240 per cent in 2011 and another 250 per cent in 2012, and most likely they will increase further in 2013 thanks to our puppet government.” Yemen's revolutionaries are marching, bleeding and dying for a better future than what is currently being forced on them. The US would be wise to begin a new era of engagement and vanquish the same fear that is normally reserved for Al-Qaeda. The writer is a political scientist and counter-insurgency analyst.
