Yemen, like many other Arab countries, is in tatters. The Shia Houthis having succeeded in getting a power sharing deal in the new government are now faced with threats from al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist organizations. The wave of sectarian violence engulfing the Middle East, involving Shias and Sunnis, did not spare Yemen that had long seethed with rivalry between the Sunni majority and Shia minority. Al Qaeda posted a video online showing the abduction and killing of 14 Yemeni soldiers from the Shia sect. On Thursday two powerful suicide bombings killed 67 people and injured 75 in Sanaa and Buroom. The targets were a rally of the Houthis and an army outpost. There were no claims of responsibility for the attacks but their mode and pattern indicated it to be the work of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Al Qaeda has been targeting state institutions in Yemen and they view the minority Zaydi sect of Shia Islam, to which the Houthis belong, as heretics.
Whatever is happening in the Middle East or places where the war against terror has been started is the result of interventions, direct and indirect, by the US-led west and their Arab allies. Since the end of colonialism and the remaking of the Arab countries under new mandates headed by western-backed monarchs or other heads of state, a general animosity against the US, reflected repeatedly in nationalist movements, has kept the region in turmoil. The sectarian schism had been part of normal life in most of these Arab states. In the past they lived together without descending into the kind of sectarian bloodbath we see today. The process of elimination of al Qaeda and the Taliban that began in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia after 9/11 has in fact rejuvenated these organizations. The pattern is that the more they are attacked, the more their influence spreads. The sum total of US-led western intervention in the countries impacted by the Arab Spring has turned out to be the descent into chaos of the region, which will not change unless they are left alone to reconfigure their own solutions according to their own political, cultural, religious and social complexities. Yemen has been the target of the US drone programme like Pakistan and Somalia. And in revulsion at the drones, one of the slogans of the Houthis has been: “Death to America”. This strain could be seen across the Arab world and with ISIS breaking new ground and advancing in spite of US aerial bombing, the omens for the US and its allies do not seem promising. *