Don't look to Yemen model for solutions in Iraq
US President Barack Obama and others have referred to the “Yemen model” as an option to transition power from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and restore order in Iraq, but Yemen's own results have been disastrous.
At a May 19 press conference in Washington, US President Barack Obama had expressed concerns about the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the Islamic State's (IS) control over Iraqi cities. As a solution to that political and security crisis, he suggested the possibility of what has become known as the Yemen model, which stems from the transition of power from President Ali Abdullah Saleh to his deputy, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The process also included a plan to restructure the army, launch an inclusive national dialogue and for all participating parties to put down their weapons.
Obama is not the only one to praise the Yemen model, which is laid out in the road map of the Gulf Initiative. In discussions with Al-Monitor, various diplomats and international envoys have also praised this model of international intervention in Yemen, an Arab Spring country. In fact, however, the Yemen model about which Obama and international reports speak — a model efficient at both the security and political levels — has nothing to do with the current reality.
A key point missed by Obama and others is that IS has been inspired by the Yemen model — that is, in seeking to follow the model of insurgency and state-building of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, the Islamic State’s control over Iraqi cities has followed the experience of Yemen’s al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia, which has taken control of some Yemeni cities and imposed its strict version of Sharia. For a time during 2011-12, the Yemeni provinces of Abyan and Shabwa were under the control of al-Qaeda, the group the United States still considers most threatening to its national security.
The Yemen model has also been held up at international forums and in diplomatic and media circles as a potential solution for Syria, as a model for state-building, a peaceful transition of power, the elimination of armed groups and an end to civil war. Such a comparison between Yemen and Syria, however, is premature. The number of embassies operating in Sanaa, for example, is less than those in Damascus. While the Syrian government has made Damascus secure enough for foreign embassies to operate, despite being in a state of war, the Yemeni government has failed to secure its own capital, a reflection of the government’s failure to build state institutions and establish security.
