Trying to understand Yemen or understanding the Republic of Yemen

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Notice the title and read it again... An attempt to understand “Yemen” versus “Understanding the Republic of Yemen.” Trying to understand the first leads to circular results outside of history that repeat the same mistakes to reproduce the same results (reproducing fanaticism, murderous identities, dynasties, and traditional structures), while trying to understand the second leads to a linear history that goes beyond what came before it. By the second, I mean here the attempt to understand “the Republic of Yemen” (the modern state, institutions, social contract, and republican legitimacy).

What dominates the scene is that almost everyone is busy reading the “Yemeni” situation, oblivious to the mechanisms and necessities of looking at the “republican situation in Yemen.”

Reading the “Yemeni” situation is easy, convenient, and open to interpretation and interpretation. I can say, for example: Yemen is an ancient cultural and scientific center that has known cultural exchange for hundreds of years. The most clear of these examples is the settlement there of Majd al-Din al-Shirazi al-Fayrouzabadi (born in Persia in the year 729 AH). He moved in pursuit of knowledge from Iraq to Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, and others, until he settled in Zabid, Yemen (and died there in the year 817 AH). The owner of the “Al-Muhit Dictionary” found in all our Arabic libraries.

On the political level, we will read the “Yemeni” situation through an easy technique that takes us back to the tools of Ibn Khaldun (died 808 AH) in “Assadism and the Claim of Religion.” Assadism, as we see, lies in the lineage within the tribe, and the claim of religion lies in the Houthis, and here the traditional equation is complete, which lacks organizational tools that the Khomeini revolution learned from the leftist organizations of the old Soviet school, those tools that were made by “Khomeini himself,” who has no administrative experience even in managing Hawza, in addition to running a country the size of Iran, is a leader who possesses a talent that has been at the heart of politics since the first human gathering, and by that I mean “the ability to engineer human power at the moment of historical transformation.” That is why he chose the most qualified, even at the expense of loyalty... until he was dispensed with.

Khomeini adopted a strategy of balance of power and phased liquidations, by exploiting the technocrats first with the popular mobilization of the “oppressed.” He mobilized the poor masses in the name of religion to be his shield against any movement of the educated elite. Then he got rid of the allies as soon as the resurgence of the religious institutions affiliated with him, such as the Revolutionary Guards and the revolutionary courts, intensified. He excluded and liquidated the liberal and leftist technocratic movement, so that the clergy would have absolute power.

In other words: He used the liberal and nationalist technocrats in his transitional phase, forming the first interim government to absorb the shock and run the state. Among the most prominent of them are: Mehdi Bazargan, the first prime minister after the revolution, and during the days of the Shah he was the head of the engineering department at the University of Tehran, and a graduate in engineering from France, and Abolhassan Banisadr, the first president of the Iranian Republic, who was also a graduate of the Sorbonne in France, and Mustafa Chamran, a graduate of the University of Berkeley in America with distinction in the field of energy, and he received the ministry. Defense, and his network of relationships from 1963 until his death in the Iran-Iraq war in 1981, makes Qassem Soleimani next to him just a student.

In short, the “Yemeni” situation can be read through fanaticism and religion, and here the Houthi phenomenon is evident with an organizational apparatus that can be talked about with the “Achilles’ heel” of this Houthi organization, and I mean the “Achilles’ heel” with all its baggage that indicates “killings” and I mean the “network of doctrinal cultural supervisors/preventive security.” Targeting them and tracking them intelligence-wise immediately leads to the paralysis of the state institutions affiliated with them, because the traditional technocratic employees will refuse to obey. Without the presence of the direct Houthi stick above their heads, represented by these supervisors.

Of course, I coordinated talking about the Iranian experience at the beginning of the article, explaining Khomeini’s adherence to the technocrats at first and then his coup against them. Do “those loyal to the Republic of Yemen” wish for the same fate? Because the conclusion of the article will address the leaders and cadres of the General People’s Congress Party, especially those residing in Cairo, along with the leaders and cadres of other parties, knowing that Al-Houthi does not have a “state” like Khomeini to re-engineer, but rather is trying to build an apparatus above the state, repeating the Hezbollah model in the “Lebanese Republic” and its example in the “Republic of Iraq.”

Because we talked about the “Yemeni” situation, what about the situation of the “Republic of Yemen”? Here I cannot absolve the General People's Congress Party and other organized parties from blaming and blaming the old leaders and cadres residing in Cairo. I know - with my intuition and my knowledge of the Yemeni personality - that the General People's Congress Party, whose number of cadres has reached more than 6 million, will not all be ideologues who believe in the values of the Yemeni revolution in its red flag, which symbolizes the blood of the martyrs for the sake of freedom, and the white color, which symbolizes purity. The principles of the revolution and the bright future of the Republic, and the black symbolizes the era of darkness and tyranny that was removed with the victory of the revolution, making the blood boil in the hearts with faith and jealousy for the values of the September 26 Revolution from the siege of the seventies until today.

I say: I know that this number contains within it opportunistic technocratic cadres who tend where the wind blows, but on the other hand there are ancient political cadres that are authentic in their belief in their republic, abandoning the methods of the late Ali Saleh of dancing on the heads of snakes with the blood of his people in his “smart” war against Al-Qaeda and after that the Houthis, ending with his burning, and he did not learn to abandon the “smartness” all the way to his head, to be some of the current leaders. It is clever in its attempt to dance on the heads of countries with the blood of its people as well. What a shame.

This is not a call to return to the past, but rather a call to understand that reading “Yemen” reproduces the circle, while reading “The Republic of Yemen” alone opens the way towards a linear history that goes beyond what came before it. The republic is not just geography or memory, but rather a state project, and the state project is not restored by neutrality or waiting, but by political action and field work.

I apologize for the harshness, but blaming some of you on the Yemeni cadres working in Riyadh - because they work in a way that some of you may not like - does not exempt you from censure, because you decided to be passively neutral, which made me go on to narrate Khomeini’s game of eliminating opponents after international recognition of him, knowing that ruling Yemen in a dynastic sense - if it were to arise in controversy - will not put the Houthis ahead of the Mutawakkilite dynasty from the Hamid al-Din family, as it has historical royal legitimacy based on Previous files of international law, with the conflicts this opens within many branches of the dynasty in Yemen.

Finally: Do the leaders of the General People’s Congress Party, and other parties with them that share the same concern and real and sincere concern for the “Republic,” hope that history will record their inability to act politically, even with a sincere opinion, in order to restore the “Republic of Yemen”? Or does “Yemen” be left to the deceit of history in which you decided to be mere “writers of memoirs of the glories of a bygone republic,” God forbid?