Yemeni Jews face growing sectarian troubles
Shiite rebels, entagled in a fight with the government, drove members of the country's small Jewish community from their remote village.
from the April 4, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
An ongoing rebellion
Just days after Mousa and his group fled from Salem at the end of January, a series of skirmishes broke out between Yemeni security forces and the rebels. Fighting has escalated over the past two months, with hundreds dead and aid agencies warning of a humanitarian crisis. Journalists are banned from the conflict zone.
The rebels belong to an organization known as the Youthful Believers, a group that was initially established to spread Zaydi Shiite doctrine in the Saada region. They are loyal to the charismatic Houthi family, led by 20-something Abdul-Malik, and they have repeatedly taken up arms against the state. Abdul-Malik's elder brother, Hussein, was killed in the first insurgency in 2004 and his father fled to exile in Germany in 2005 at the end of the second bout of fighting.
"The Houthi family are sayyids who claim descent from the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and her husband, Ali," says Australian academic Sarah Phillips, an expert on political reform in Yemen. "They are strident critics of President Saleh's alliance with President Bush on counter-terrorism, and are increasing their rhetoric against the president's personal power and position."
The Houthis are rumored to dispute the legitimacy of the Yemeni republic, which replaced the northern Imamate after the 1962 revolution. They allegedly regard Mr. Saleh, who hails from a Zaydi background, but is not a sayyid, as an illegitimate head of state.
But the family says they are simply fighting for religious tolerance and freedom of speech.
Connections to Iran?
Yemen's Zaydis take their name from their fifth Imam, Zayd ibn Ali. They are doctrinally distinct from the Twelvers, the dominant branch of Shiite Islam in Iran and Lebanon. Twelver Shiites believe that the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, has been hidden by Allah and will reappear on earth as the savior of mankind.
But Yemen's Shiite-dominated government has been quick to frame the conflict in the regional context of growing Iranian influence. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi has spoken of "external support for the rebellion, which aims at pushing Yemen toward sectarian conflict."
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