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The world's next failed state?

A beleaguered president is taking brutal measures to hold his country together
SOLDIERS mostly aim better with bullets than with words, but Yemen's army can claim unwonted accuracy in its latest offensive, Operation Scorched Earth. Judging from reports of MiG fighter aircraft, helicopter gunships, tanks and Katyusha rockets churning up the spectacular mountainscapes of the country's rugged north-west, the description is fitting.

The UN says at least 50,000 people have fled since fighting began in August. Thousands more may be trapped in remoter parts of the war zone, which spreads across an area the size of Wales that borders Saudi Arabia and protrudes south to within 50km (30 miles) of Sana'a, Yemen's capital. With reporters banned and aid workers severely restricted, the overall casualty count is unknown. What is certain is that the latest batch of refugees must be added to the 150,000 civilians already uprooted during five previous rounds of the conflict, which started in 2004.

The clashes pit regular government troops, backed by lighter-armed tribal allies, against tribesmen loyal to the Houthi family, a powerful northern clan. The Houthis style themselves mujahideen, in the manner of the guerrillas who chased the Russians out of Afghanistan. Their slogan--"Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse upon the Jews! Victory to Islam!"--would suggest a link to global jihadists. But most of their adherents belong to the Zaydi sect, a normally quietist branch of Shia Islam that is unique to Yemen and which most Sunnis regard as quaintly schismatic.

Zaydis make up a third of Yemen's 30m people, and for centuries formed the ruling elite in its mountain heartlands. They remain well represented in government; President Ali Abdullah Saleh is one. But some provincial Zaydis resent the republic that overthrew Yemen's last Zaydi monarch in 1962, and which Mr Saleh, a former tank commander and relative commoner, has run since seizing power in 1978.

Friction has mounted owing to pervasive corruption that favours Mr Saleh's own clan, to his craftiness at playing Yemen's numerous gun-toting tribes against one another, and to his perceived cravenness towards Saudi Arabia. Many Yemenis, pointing to a surge in religiosity among their own Sunni majority, see their rich, radically conservative Sunni neighbour as a pernicious cultural influence. Yet, as in a family feud, Yemenis struggle to explain what started the Houthis' quarrel with the government. Its roots go back to the early 1990s, when Saudi Arabia expelled nearly a million Yemeni workers to punish Mr Saleh for backing Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the first Gulf war in 1991. This influx drew recruits into a radical Zaydi cult, known as the Believing Youth, that had been launched by a charismatic member of the Houthi family. Building on perceived government neglect of the north, a deprived region where the lucrative smuggling trade was badly hit by the squabble with Saudi Arabia, and acting on the Zaydi doctrine of legitimate resistance to inept rule, the group soon found itself in opposition to the government in Sana'a.

In a country awash with guns where central authority has always been weak, such tensions tend to be expressed violently. In the first round of open warfare in 2004, government forces killed or captured much of the Houthi leadership. Yet, despite their small number, the Houthis have not only survived repeated batterings, but thrived.

Much of the reason for their success lies with the army itself. Its aerial bombing and artillery fire have proved better at enraging locals than at subduing bands of guerrillas; and its induction of tribal allies has pushed their traditional rivals into the Houthis' arms. The army's need to man fixed positions in remote areas and to mount convoys on main roads has provided plum targets. Most of the Houthis' heavy equipment is captured booty, though they have bought more from corrupt officers or in the market in Saada, the region's capital. With such things as rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns on open display, Saada is said to boast the best-stocked arms bazaar west of Pakistan's Peshawar.

After the last round of clashes sputtered out in July 2008, Houthi forces quietly regained possession of much of the country around Saada, positioning themselves to block the few roads that give access to the rest of the country. Despite the ferocity of the present onslaught, they do not appear to have been dislodged. The government claims advances but Houthi videos posted on YouTube show captured army tanks and soldiers. Each side accuses the other of atrocities and of acting as a cat's-paw for foreign powers. The government says the Houthis are fighting for Iran. The rebels say the government truckles to the Saudis.

Such reasoning comforts Yemenis, many of whom prefer to blame their troubles on regional power games. But although there is no proof of Iranian involvement, Saudi Arabia does have a legitimate interest in helping Yemen's government control its side of their mutual border. The kingdom is, in fact, a reluctant ally of Mr Saleh, as are the Western donors whose aid has long propped up his regime. But with even more perilous potential threats to Yemen looming, such as growing unrest in the once-separate south and menacing signs of a resurgence by affiliates of al-Qaeda, Mr Saleh can still plausibly pose as the only man stopping the country from becoming the world's next failed state.

© The Economist 2009