Yemen war may lead to permanent divisions

Al Houthi militia is ‘an enemy that doesn’t want any solution’

The camp did not feel like a refuge, in a parched patch of nowhere by a bare, black hill. There was nothing in the way of distractions for the displaced people sheltering in tents here, like a playground, a store, a cafe; nothing to prevent thoughts drifting to the war and the dead.

Three years had passed since his father was killed by the Al Houthi militia, but Azzam Shalif seethed at a memory still fresh. They had snatched his father, a teacher, from in front of his house. There had been long and tortured negotiations to reclaim the body. Then there was disbelief when his father, disfigured beyond recognition, was finally brought home.

Now Shalif, who fled to a government-controlled area, referred to the parts of Yemen dominated by Al Houthis as “enemy” — a classification that included his hometown and even his own relatives who had joined the militia. “The enemy doesn’t understand the word dialogue,” he said when asked how the war might end.

“We have an enemy that doesn’t want any solution.”

Such resentments have pooled in Marib, a pocket of relative, if uneasy, stability that has received tens of thousands of people fleeing battlefields across Yemen during more than three years of civil conflict.

The war has been defined by terrible violence. The strains on Yemeni society have been less apparent — the divisions and antipathies that will make it difficult for people to live together again even if the armies stop.

A trip to Marib for journalists this month was organised by the Saudi military, which hoped to showcase what the Saudi government says are its effort to provide aid and financial assistance to Yemen.

A building boom is underway in Marib city, the capital of Marib province, and there is regular electricity and plenty of fuel. Restaurants have opened and classes are full at the local university. A well-stocked hospital is one of the few able to operate normally in the entire country.

Abd Rabbo Moftah, the deputy governor, said Marib had benefited as Yemenis, including business executives, had flocked to the city and invested there. Others who were displaced found jobs in construction. Together, “they feel they are part of the city,” he said.

But the calm could be deceptive.

Rockets still fall on the city, fired from static front lines a few dozen miles away. The pressures weighing on Marib’s new arrivals were unmistakable: the wrenching separation from families and homes and the hardening animus towards fellow Yemenis who happened to be on the other side of the conflict.

The war has been defined by terrible violence. The strains on Yemeni society have been less apparent — the divisions and antipathies that will make it difficult for people to live together again even if the armies stop.

Gratitude

In Marib, there were frequent expressions of gratitude to the Saudi government, which has long been a financial benefactor to the province and its tribes.

There were appeals for unity, too, but they were more fleeting. “We are all Yemenis,” people were fond of saying, before insisting that the Al Houthis were “animals” who regarded their enemies as terrorists.

Many have concluded that a division of Yemen, perhaps into federal states, is inevitable, even preferable, to resolve its competing grievances. In southern Yemen, there are renewed calls for secession from northern rulers accused of decades of repression and neglect. North and South Yemen were separate states until 1990, and four years later, fought a brief civil war.

But even formal division requires some sort of national agreement. And over the past three years, a lengthening tally of perceived wrongs had made such agreement more elusive than ever before.

The greatest fear is that religious sectarianism between Sunnis and Shiites — the kind of acrimony that has ravaged Iraq — could take hold.

The worries accumulate with each assassination, air strike, carbomb explosion or kidnapping.

“When this fighting takes on religious aspects, it cannot be solved,” said Mohammad Al Sabry, a professor of English at the local university who is originally from Taiz in western Yemen.

Lately, he had encouraged his students to talk about the conflict. “They are worried about their relatives ... They are worried about home,” he said. He also taught George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which seemed to resonate among pupils fed up with the failures of Yemen’s politicians, many of whom reside comfortably in villas overseas.

Some of his despairing students have given up hope. “They replaced our dreams, and everything is destroyed,” said Mohammad Mohsin, 24.

“Nothing is as it was,” he said. “There was no advantage to this war.”