The Theory of Nomadic Revolution

The U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria held last week ended without a clear resolution. However, the talks of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had an important outcome. According to Russian diplomats, their American colleagues made it clear that a key challenge for the United States in the coming months will not be Syria but Iran. During the presidential race in the United States, Barack Obama cannot afford to lose the support of the influential Jewish lobby and should therefore respond to the demands of Israel. And Tel Aviv requires just one thing: to solve the Iranian nuclear issue one way or another by the end of the year.

In these circumstances, the situation in Syria, which Washington considered a top priority in the Middle East last year, now takes a back seat. “For the U.S. it is now important to get out of the Syrian situation in the most decent way possible. Americans understand that Israel will strike Iran. Two wars in the region are too many,” the newspaper Kommersant was confidently told by one of the Russian participants in the negotiations of the Security Council. Therefore, diplomats point out, instead of using the Libyan model, implying a military operation against the dictatorial regime, Washington may find it more acceptable to use a softer form of regime change — for example, the one that was tested last year in Yemen.

Yemen is one of the poorest Arab countries in which the northern and southern provinces are in constant conflict with the capital. Yemen’s economic prosperity depends on the production and exportation of its oil (70 percent of budget revenues), but its reserves are declining while the population is growing at 3 percent per year. Yemen’s level of per capita income is 173rd in the world, but the average age here is 18 years. That youth was the driving force behind the revolution that swept the country. A principal object of their displeasure was Yemen’s president, Ali Saleh, who had ruled unchallenged for 32 years.

Shortly after the successful revolution in Tunis, President Saleh began to promise change. For example, he said that he would not put forth his candidacy for the presidential elections in 2013 and would not transfer power to his eldest son, Ahmed. However, the opposition demanded the immediate resignation of the president. Saleh then changed his tactics and directed his supporters, as well as soldiers and undercover police officers, all armed with clubs, knives and firearms, against demonstrators. The conflict reached its climax on March 18 of last year, when Saleh’s supporters opened fire on demonstrators, killing over 50 people.

The shooting of demonstrators became the Yemen president’s fatal mistake. Even his closest allies turned away from him. Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, the leader of the largest tribal alliance, Hashid, to which Saleh himself belongs, announced that the president should listen to the people and peacefully leave his post. Even grimmer news came for the president on March 21. One of his closest associates, Brigadier General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, brought his 1st Armored Division to the streets of Sanaa, took positions at key points of the city (including the presidential palace) and stated that he would protect the civilian population. Two other generals and dozens of officers across the country announced their support for the protesters. Supporters from the military were joined by diplomats: Yemen’s ambassadors sent a letter from nine European and Arab countries in which they condemned the shooting. Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations and its Human Rights minister both resigned.

Three days later, a block of opposition parties called “The Face of Moshtarak” demanded the immediate resignation of Saleh and the transfer of power to the Interim Governing Council. The key role in this block was perhaps played by billionaire Hamid al-Ahmar, the brother of Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar. Sheikh al-Ahmar is the owner of the key mobile [phone network] operator Sabafon and one of the largest Islamic banks, Saba. According to U.S. diplomatic dispatches attained by WikiLeaks and published by the Washington Post, as early as August 2009, the tycoon shared with the U.S. Embassy plans to organize a “color revolution” against President Saleh in 2011. At that time, however, the embassy did not pay any attention to this plan.

Following the March events, President Saleh spent a few more months trying to cling to power. For two months he attempted to negotiate the conditions of his resignation with the opposition through Arab countries and Western governments. On May 23, foreign diplomats gathered at the United Arab Emirates embassy in the capital of Yemen to go together to the presidential palace and sign the agreement. However, the embassy was suddenly besieged by a crowd of armed supporters of the president, who blocked all the exits from the building.

The next morning, police special forces attempted to storm Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar’s house. The battle lasted approximately six hours — three people were killed and 25 were injured. Leaders of other Yemen tribes began to gather in the capital in an attempt to resolve the conflict. They gathered in Sheikh al-Ahmar’s house and asked the president to cease fire. However, during the meeting the house got shelled. Several well-known sheikhs were killed. (It is worth noting that Ali Saleh had done this before — in 1979 as a military district commander of Taiz, he gathered all the influential sheikhs of the province for a meeting, and then bombed them in cold blood.)

However, this time Saleh was not able to destroy his enemies with one blow. The sheikhs unanimously declared war on the president. On May 27 tribal troops seized a military camp of the Republican Guard 60 kilometers north of the capital. Armed forces of the tribes began to penetrate the capital, and on June 3 missile strikes were launched against the presidential palace. Ali Saleh was wounded and sent to Saudi Arabia for treatment. He returned from there only after he signed a plan put together by the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf, under which he had to resign within a month after the formation of a government of national unity.

However, Ali Saleh would not be himself if he ceased to bargain and back out of his promises. In the end, he enabled his eldest son to retain command of the Republican Guard at the Ministry of Interior and made sure that the sole and uncontested candidate for the new presidential election in February would be his vice president, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Nevertheless, after nearly a year of bloody clashes, regime change still occurred in Yemen, and without foreign military intervention.

Russian diplomats aren’t hiding the fact that Moscow likes the Yemen model of authoritarian regime change in the Arab world, because, in contrast to the Libyan model, it does not include humanitarian intervention. Protection against outside intervention and assertion of the sovereignty of governments have become two of Russia’s main foreign policy goals. The only deviation was made in Libya, where Russia helped pass the U.N. Security Council resolution that imposed a “no-fly zone” on the country and let NATO overthrow Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. According to the “power” interlocutors, everyone in Moscow in Russia’s government and Foreign Ministry now regards that vote as a mistake that should not be repeated.

The second characteristic of the Yemen model that appeals to the Kremlin is basically the exclusion of revolution — namely, the overthrow of the regime by street mobs under the slogans of the struggle for democracy and the holding of “fair elections.” Removal of Ali Saleh was not so much the result of a conflict between the authoritarian regime and the people, but a consequence of disorder within the Yemeni tribal elite, which attracted and involved the street. As it happens in such cases, everything was resolved with internal agreements among the elites, and not with a true democratic revolution victory.

Finally, Moscow likes the fact that, in the case of Yemen, a key role in resolving the political crisis was played not so much by the West, led by the United States, but rather by the Arab countries. The main players were the Gulf Co-operation Council, the tone of which is set by the oil monarchies led by Saudi Arabia, and the Arab League.

The reasons that members of the GCC did not insist on a complete surrender of Saleh and even helped him to retain influence in the country were rooted in a long history of co-operation of the Yemen dictator with the neighboring monarchies. During the Cold War, Ali Saleh fought shoulder to shoulder with the Saudis against the communist regime in South Yemen, which supported the USSR. Saleh has had a smooth working relationship with the Saudi royal family — as opposed to the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who at one time even plotted to assassinate King Abdullah. That is why when the frightened Ali Saleh asked Riyadh for help, he, unlike Gadhafi, was given a second chance.

Under these conditions, the Yemen model is the formula for Russia that Moscow is ready to apply in Syria. Taking into account the U.S. mood, the Arab League partners also seem to lean toward this approach. Back in late February at a meeting of “Friends of Syria,” Tunisia’s interim president Moncef Marzouki called on the international community “to seek a political solution.” “We see the possibility of developments by the Yemen scenario — a guarantee of immunity to the Syrian president and his family. Russia could provide him with shelter,” he said. Thus, Moscow could play the same intermediary role in Syria played by Riyadh in Yemen. If successful, this would allow Moscow to save face and not completely lose its influence in Syria and the Middle East, even after the resignation of Bashar Assad.