Not in the media about Yemen

“In Yemen today, the US embassy is closed to the public. Officials are telling CNN that there is credible information of a threat against Western interests there,” a CNN news anchor read the news bulletin on May 8.

This is CNN’s Yemen. It is a Yemen that seems to exist for one single purpose and nothing else: maintain Western, and by extension US, interests in that part of the world. Only when these interests are threatened does Yemen matter.

Every reference in that specially tailored discourse serves a purpose. It is as if Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) exists to justify US military intervention and unending drone war.

Last April, 63 Yemenis were reportedly killed in US drone strikes allegedly targeting Al Qaeda. No credible verification of that claim is available, and none of the victims has been identified.

“Signature” drone strikes do not require identification, we are told. It could take months, if not years, before rights groups shed light on the April killings, which are a continuation of a protracted drone war. 

The Western narrative of Yemen is unmistakable. It is driven by interests and little else. It is ultimately about control of strategic areas.

Yemen’s massive border with Saudi Arabia and access to major waterways — the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea — and its close proximity to Africa and Somalia in particular point to the unrivalled significance of Yemen to the US and other Western powers.

In this narrative, Yemen is about oil and security. It is about the kind of “stability” that guarantees that the Western interests remain intact. 

Little was known about Yemen in the West before October 2000, when US naval vessel USS Cole was damaged in a suicide attack, killing 17 US military men. The attack was later blamed on Al Qaeda, paving the way for the opportune narrative which continues to define US involvement in Yemen until this day.

The US’ “war on terror” had in fact reached Yemen even before the war in Iraq was unleashed a few years later. Thousands of people were killed, tens of thousands were displaced. The people of that poor, divided, corruption-laden country were punished severely for crimes they did not commit.

The reason that the “war in Yemen” has never morphed into a “war on Yemen” is that the ruling class there found a way to coexist with the ever prevalent US interests, including their violent dimensions.

Just as the US began its military push against Yemen, then president Ali Abdullah Saleh introduced a referendum to modify the constitution in order to boost his (and his family’s) political power and extend his mandate.

Many Yemenis lost their lives protesting Saleh’s move. Washington, however, did not seem to mind. Saleh knew the price expected of him to ensure the barter.

In November 2001, he made a highly choreographed visit to then-US president George Bush in Washington, declaring that Yemen had officially joined the US war on terror.

The war in Yemen carried on for years, without mass protests in London and New York demanding an end to that war, as was the case with Iraq.

Despite the military hardware, the military strikes, the drone attacks and the piled bodies of rarely identified victims, the war simply did not exist, although the facts prove otherwise.

But intersecting with that Yemen, there is a Yemen that is poor, a Yemen that is rebellious and proud, and a Yemen that is mired in a civil war and seemingly endless division.

The popular consciousness of Yemen is simply astounding. How could a people of a country so poor and so divided command a level of mass mobilisation that is hardly parallelled anywhere else?

This is the dissident and spirited Yemen. Its youth has turned political organisation into a form of art. When they amassed their popular, non-violent forces in major Yemeni cities in January 2011, there seemed to be no force, however lethal, capable of removing them from the squares.

Indeed, Saleh wholeheartedly tried, but the more he killed, the more committed to their non-violent resistance the Yemenis became, and the quicker their numbers multiplied.

This politically conscious Yemen overlaps with another one, a Yemen of shocking statistics. It is a country of 25 million, where 54 per cent live below the poverty line and where unemployment among youth exceeds 60 per cent (general unemployment stands at 40 per cent, according to recent government reports cited by Al Monitor).

Millions of Yemenis are malnourished. Malnutrition levels are the second highest in the world. Of the total population, 4.5 million are food insecure. Nearly half of the country’s children suffer from stunted growth.

Revolutionary Yemen feeds on and is inspired by the poor, oppressed Yemen, which is exploited for political reasons by those who, on January 2010, designated themselves as “Friends of Yemen”. 

Yemen’s “friends” pledged billions, little of which has been delivered, and only a portion of what is delivered is spent in ways that are transparent or helpful.

There is little evidence that Yemen’s donors are making much of a difference in reversing the vicious cycle of entrenched poverty, rising unemployment and continued deterioration of the economy.

The “Friends of Yemen” behave as if the US war were not a major component of Yemen’s crisis. Yemen’s problems and failures are discussed based on other variables: corruption, poor governance and such.

Millions of people have been displaced by this war. They are hungry, desperate and frightened by the complete lack of security. Isn’t it strange that somehow the US war is not an item on their agenda?

The official Yemeni discourse is even more curious. Formed in November 2011, after Saleh handed powers to his deputy, now President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, the Yemeni government continues to speak of dialogue and reforms.

The National Dialogue Conference concluded in January 2014 after 10 months of intense discussions. In February, a governmental committee approved the recommendation to turn Yemen into a federation of six regions. This is meant to be the first practical step towards a lasting political transition, but it is likely to create further divides, with some southern parties vying for complete secession from the north and now organising to defeat the government initiative.

But why are we too hesitant to tell the Yemeni story as it is, with all its complexities and details? Are we intimidated by the sheer intricacy of the story? Or is it because we remember Yemen whenever it is convenient to do so?

Western media know Yemen whenever Al Qaeda threatens Western interests, or when angry tribesmen blow up an oil pipeline.

Throughout much of 2011, Arab media covered Yemen around the clock, promoting an indiscriminate “Arab Spring” narrative, with little regard for the distinctiveness of the Yemeni story.

When the spring did not deliver what it promised, Yemen was disowned and forgotten.

The odd thing is that there is only one Yemen and one Yemeni story. Until we realise this, Yemen shall continue to be divided into mini-stories and numerous narratives that hardly overlap in our news broadcasts, despite the fact that they always really do.

The writer, managing editor of Middle East Eye, is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London). He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.