SANAA — The protests in
Egypt have not only ignited unrest in
Cairo, they've unleashed a flurry of debate across the rest of the region. It's
not just about where things are heading in Egypt, the most populous country in
the
Arab world, or what the current uncertainty means about the country's
post-Mubarak transition. It's about their resonance in the whole of the Arabic-speaking
world and the potential spillover effects. From Sanaa, all that's truly clear
at the moment is that Yemenis are watching a nearly absurd amount of Egypt
coverage on TV..
Local
Muslim Brothers and sympathizers watch Al Jazeera with
trepidation. Politicians from former president Ali Abdullah Saleh's General
People's Congress (GPC) party watch Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya with a newly
awakened revolutionary fervor. Leftists watch al-Mayadeen, the year-old
Beirut-based "alternative" to Gulf-funded channels, wondering aloud whether the
tide may have shifted against political Islam.
It can feel at times like they are looking at Egypt for cues
for where things in Yemen could be heading; over the course of the past two and
a half years, events in Cairo have tended to feel a few steps ahead of those Sanaa.
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While large-scale protests aimed at the Yemeni dictator's ouster
began almost immediately after Mubarak's toppling, Saleh didn't formally cede
power until the following February. Demonstrators stayed in the streets in
months-long protest encampments across the country, but the voices of Yemen's
revolutionary youth were soon eclipsed. The military split between supporting
the government and the protestors, and Sanaa erupted into urban warfare on two
separate occasions. Al Qaeda-linked militants seized control of a series of
towns in the south, and, all the while, opposition politicians engaged in a
series of on-again, off-again negotiations with Saleh and his allies. In November
2011, the two sides finally reached an agreement, inking the so-called Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) Initiative, an internationally backed power transfer
deal granting Saleh immunity in exchange for his ouster. The deal set Yemen on
a two-year long "transitional period" presided over by longtime Vice President
Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and formed a compromise government split between the
GPC and the opposition. Presidential and parliamentary elections are
tentatively slated for early 2014.
There's plenty of heady talk about the building of a "new
Yemen," but in Sanaa it often feels as if things are paused. Some things have
moved forward elsewhere in the country: Once the target of a series of
devastating wars, the Houthi movement has carved out a virtual
state-within-a-state in their base in the far north, while rising secessionist
sentiment has made it seem almost as if the only thing preventing the south
from regaining its independence is a series of brittle divisions among the
separatist leadership. The ongoing Conference of National Dialogue may have forced
politicians in the capital to recognize the Houthis as a legitimate political
force, while providing for a comparatively open forum for the discussion of
southerners' grievances, but its deliberations often feel like rehashing
long-running factional squabbles.
Even if new parties have been formed, the post-2011
political map often feels indistinguishable from the old one. Discussions in
Sanaa tend to devolve into debates over the divide between the GPC and the
Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), an ideologically fractious coalition of leftist
and Islamist factions dominated by the Islah Party, which incorporates the bulk
of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood, and the Socialist and Nasserist parties. In
that sense, there's been little change since 2005, when the JMP was initially
formed.
The activists who spurred the former president's ouster -- and,
for that matter, many politicians here -- have been open about their misgivings
about the shape of Yemen's post-Saleh transition. But it has generally been
accepted as the only option aside from further violence and instability.
Gathered around watching news coverage with activists on
June 30 and July 1, however, it seemed the scenes in Cairo and other Egyptian
cities had provided a potential course of action.
For a few brief days, there was talk about building a Yemeni
Tamarod (or rebels, as the Cairo protestors called themselves). There were
unofficial discussions between activists from across the political spectrum;
the date for massive protests aimed at "correcting the course of the
revolution" was tentatively set for July 7. Even at the speculative stage,
though, disagreements about everything from demands to acceptable protest
slogans foreshadowed that things would eventually come to naught. July 7 came
and went with only street protests in the south, as secessionists marked the
anniversary of their defeat in Yemen's 1994 civil war. The closest thing I
witnessed to an outburst of discontent came a few days prior. Driving with a
friend past the home of Yemen's embattled prime minister, Mohamed Basindowa, he
rolled down his car window, stopped briefly, and shouted "Leave, Uncle
Mohamed!"
The absence of Egypt-style protests hardly means people here
are happy with the way things are going. Hoped-for improvements in the stagnant
economy and the tenuous security situation remain largely elusive: kidnappings
of foreigners have increased in frequency, while security officials continue to
be targeted in a string of assassinations. The recurring sabotage of power
lines has left even residents of the capital at the mercy of disgruntled
tribesmen. Even if Hadi has held on to much of his tenuous public support, Yemenis
from across the political spectrum have condemned the unity government as a
failure.
Still, it seems, no one is willing to make a move. Chewing
qat with a collection of GPC politicians on July 2, their enthusiasm for the
protests against Morsy was palpable; Yahya Mohamed Saleh, the former Yemeni
president's nephew, had already
stopped by
Cairo's Tahrir Square to show his solidarity with the "revolution against the
Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood]." They watched as revolutionaries and remnants of
the Mubarak regime joined together against a common foe, and I wondered if they
thought they felt they could pull off a similar feat here, capitalizing on the
longstanding misgivings many Saleh opponents hold regarding the Islah Party.
"The question is no longer ‘with the revolution or against
it,'" an activist had told me a few days before. "The stage has changed. What
matters now is who is truly for or against building the state."
Comments like that are music to the GPC's ears. But that
enthusiasm among revolutionaries and the regime's old guard seems distant from
the current political reality.
Complaints over Islah's increased influence in post-Saleh
Yemen notwithstanding, the power the party currently holds is in no way
comparable to that of Morsy's Freedom and Justice Party. In the event of any
possible shakeup, all parties would almost inevitably be affected; while plenty
may raise issue with the current balance of power, few seem willing to take the
risk of upsetting it.
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Perhaps, however, it's the way things have gone in Egypt
that has ultimately doomed any real aftereffects here. The violence and
uncertainty since the July 3 coup has led many to quiet their misgivings about Yemen's
own post-Arab Spring transition. It may be far from perfect, the argument goes,
but things could certainly be worse.
There were certainly plenty of Yemenis who celebrated the
military's overthrow of Morsy; plenty of others cast it as a far from ideal,
but necessary step. But even many Yemenis with little sympathy for the Muslim
Brotherhood have expressed a deep discomfort as events have unfolded, wondering
if it's all a message about the fragility of the tentative gains made in the
wake of the Arab Spring.
"I don't like Morsy, but it's hard not to see the army
overthrowing an elected president as a negative step -- a step backwards," an
activist told me. "It makes me nervous about where Yemen is heading: Wherever
Egypt was [before June 30], it was far ahead of where we are now."
