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II. Background

Yemen is a country of 22 million people slightly larger than France, on the southwestern corner of the Arabian peninsula across the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa. The World Bank estimated Yemen’s annual per capita gross domestic product at US$520 in 2003. That year, Yemen ranked 151^st out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index.¹ Three quarters of Yemenis live in rural areas.

In 1962, an army coup ended the rule of the Zaidi imamate, establishing a republican regime (Yemen Arab Republic, or YAR) in what was known as North Yemen. A civil war in the 1960s drew in Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the republican and imamate sides respectively. What was then South Yemen had been a British protectorate until it achieved independence as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in November 1967. The two Yemens united as the Republic of Yemen in 1990.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power in the YAR in 1978, and continued as president of the Republic of Yemen after unification. A civil war that broke out between forces of the former north and south from May to July 1994 ended with the victory of the north. Despite the turmoil, democratic development, the emergence of civil society and legal reform continued throughout the 1990s. Yemen is due to hold its fourth parliamentary elections since unification in April 2009. A presidential election in 2006 gave Saleh another seven years in office, making him one of the world’s longest-ruling leaders.

Since siding with the United States in its counter-terrorism efforts after September 11, 2001, Yemen’s gains in respect for the rule of law and civil rights have eroded. Arrests without charge of suspected al Qaeda members since 2002, and arrests and suppression of labor unrest and free speech in the south increased after 2006.

The war

Armed conflict between Huthi rebels and government forces has erupted into sustained clashes on five occasions between 2004 and 2008.² The government reportedly has used fighter jets, tanks, and artillery to attack rebel hideouts in the mountains as well as in some towns. Rebels are said to have used heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Most fighting has taken place in the countryside, but escalated into urban areas during the fifth period in 2008.³ The clashes have primarily occurred in the northern Sa’da governorate, bordering Saudi Arabia, but spread to ‘Amran and Hajja governorates, even reaching Bani Hushaish on the outskirts of San’a in June 2008.

In July 2008, an estimated 17,000 to 20,000 persons displaced by the war lived in seven camps around Sa’da city, and an estimated further 40,000 persons lived with relatives inside the town. In August 2008, the UN humanitarian affairs agency reported a total of 130,000 persons displaced as a result of conflict in Sa’da governorate.⁴

Since 2004, the government has initiated five mediation committees, staffed by important personalities, representatives of political parties, and government officials in an effort to come to a negotiated solution to the conflict. These committees have at times achieved ceasefire agreements, but at various times the government has also arrested mediators who were critical of the government. In 2007 the government of Qatar offered its mediation services; the parties reached a verbal agreement in June 2007, which was finalized and signed in February 2008. However, in May 2008 a bomb explosion in a mosque in Sa’da planted by unknown parties prompted renewed heavy fighting that ended when President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced a halt to hostilities on July 17, 2008.

The government imposed an information blackout during the fighting in 2007 and 2008, and in 2008 blocked the movement of people and goods into and out of Sa’da governorate. Huthi rebels and local tribes fighting with the government also imposed their own checkpoints granting selective access. The actions of all sides have restricted humanitarian access.

Sa’da Governorate and the Huthis

The conflict mainly takes place in Sa’da governorate, but fighting has also occurred in other northern areas. Northern governorates are populated predominantly by adherents of the Zaidi strand of Shi’a Islam whose leaders (imams) ruled Yemen for a millennium until a military-led revolution deposed them in 1962. The Sa’da, ‘Amran and Hajja governorates are also home to powerful tribes, especially the Hashid and Bakil, who also adhere to the Zaidi sect. Disaffected Zaidi tribesmen also participated in the revolution of 1962. Tribesmen traditionally carry arms, and central governments have never had a significant military or law enforcement presence in these tribal areas.

Sunnis following the Shafi’i school of thought are a majority in Yemen, living mostly in the southern and central parts and the Red Sea coast; Zaidi Shi’a are a large minority, living mostly in the northern highlands.⁵

Although Zaidis are largely reconciled with a republican state, strict Zaidi doctrine holds that the imam, the religious and secular leader, has to be a Hashemite, a term used for the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.⁶ Yemeni Hashemites are bound by family rather than tribe, setting them apart from Zaidi tribes. During the time of the Zaidi imamate, Hashemites formed the religious and governing elite.

Political and religious developments underlie the tensions that eventually led to the current conflict. For one, Yemenis (often Zaidis) returning to Sa’da from working in Saudi Arabia brought with them Sunni Wahhabi religious leanings. Muqbil al-Wadi’i, originally a Zaidi, opened the Dammaj school in Sa’da, in the Zaidi heartland, in the early 1980s to propogate Wahhabi thought, a puritanical interpretation of Islam regarding daily conduct of Muslims that prevails in neighboring Saudi Arabia and is typically hostile to Shi’a doctrines. Furthermore, the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood movement in Yemen established Scientific Institutes under the Ministry of Education that reached many Yemenis before the authorities closed them in the late 1990s. After the unification of north and south Yemen in 1990 and the advent of multi-party elections, the Islah Party, which represents the political interests of the Muslim Brotherhood but also includes some tribal and Zaidi interests, emerged as the largest opposition party.⁷

To counter encroaching Sunni ideological currents and a steady weakening of Zaidi religious and Hashmite social influence, in the 1990s Zaidis began to set up their own religious schools and to revive the tradition of Zaidi religious study at mosques and study centers in the area. Unlike the Scientific Institutes, these schools were not part of the government education system. Wary of the growing Sunni influence in Yemen’s Zaidi areas, the government in the 1990s reportedly began to financially support Husain al-Huthi and his Believing Youth movement, dedicated to Zaidi religious revivalism. Badr al-Din al-Huthi, the father of Husain, is considered one of three most influential Zaidi scholars in Yemen.⁸

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, followed by the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in July-August 2006 and growing tension between Iran and the US, boosted perceptions of Shi’ism as a powerful political force. Starting in 2003, the Huthis began to raise slogans of “Death to Israel, death to America” in demonstrations following Friday prayers at the Great Mosque in San’a’s old city center, and the government arrested up to 640 demonstrators in June 2004 with the army pursuing the capture of Husain al-Huthi.⁹

The Security forces

There are several security agencies in Yemen, answering to different parts of the government. Their powers and remits overlap, leading to public uncertainty about which agency might be responsible for a particular human rights violation.

A 1980 presidential order established Central Security, tasking the agency with responsibilities ranging from ensuring the safety of property and persons to border patrolling and counter-terrorism.¹⁰ Central Security is under the Minister of Interior’s direct authority.¹¹

Also under the Interior Ministry are the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) responsible for non-political crimes and a counter-terrorism unit. However, both the CID and the counter-terrorism unit have carried out arrests of journalists, mosque preachers, and others for alleged political offenses.

Political Security is Yemen’s domestic intelligence agency established by decree 121 in 1992 under the name Central Agency for Political Security. Its powers of arrest and detention are by decree and not spelled out in law, and its detention facilities do not fall within the declared places of detention, as required by the Yemeni constitution.¹² The agency reports directly to President Saleh.

National Security, an agency established by decree 262 in 2002, mainly prepares analyses and provides advice to the government. A dispute over competency and authority between it and Political Security led National Security to establish its own detention centers, also undeclared and therefore outside the framework of Yemeni law. Its powers of arrest and detention are similarly by decree and not spelled out in law.¹³

Yemen’s judiciary provides no effective oversight over the legality of arrests and detentions. National Security and Political Security in particular do not abide by legal requirements that officials conduct arrests only pursuant to a judicial warrant, present suspects for charge within 24 hours of arrest, and release prisoners whose sentences have expired.

The Specialized Criminal Court, established by law in 1999 to try crimes defined in the Quran and included in the penal code, such as highway robbery (حرابة), and other statutory offenses, including abduction of foreigners, harming oil installations, theft by armed groups of means of transportation, membership in an armed group seeking to attack public property or citizens, and attacking members of the judiciary or abducting officials or their family members. In 2004, a new law broadened the court’s jurisdiction to include vague crimes against national security.¹⁴ The court is not independent and its trials do not meet international standards of fairness.