The Rada'a Solution (Updated)

A very Yemeni thing happened yesterday.  A group of tribal mediators injected itself into a troubled situation and managed to work out a solution that avoided the loss of life.

The tribal mediators were attempting to resolve the brewing conflict in Rada'a, which I wrote about two days ago, and which was threatening to erupt into open fighting with the government sending tanks and troops south.

In a lengthy meeting with Tariq al-Dahahb, a leading figure from the local tribe al-Qayfah, the tribal mediators worked out a deal.  From the way the deal has been described in this al-Masdar piece, it was basically the same deal Tariq proposed a week ago that the Yemeni government rejected.

There are, as I read it, three main parts to the deal.

1.  15 militant (and/or al-Qaeda suspects, including Tariq's brother Nabil) are to be released from prison in Sanaa.  The names of the 15 are here.

2.  The implementation of Islamic law.

3.  That three representatives from every district in al-Baydha will be selected, and who then in turn will select new officials to run the governorate, in the process firing the current officials.

In exchange for this Tariq and his militants, who are identifying themselves as members of Ansar al-Shariah have agreed to withdraw from Rada'a.

As I mentioned above this was the same deal Tariq initially put on the table that the Yemeni government said it wouldn't agree to, but it apparently has now, so why the change?

It is unclear, at least to me, who is calling the shots in Sanaa.

But someone has released the prisoners, as Nabil and five others are already free and the rest of the men are on their way south.  (This is not, as this foolish headline has it, tribes driving al-Qaeda out of the town.)  A much better English version of the events is this one from Reuters.

The Reuters piece also gets at the fiction that allowed both sides to agree to the deal - that of Islamic law and its implementation in Yemen.  The term, as forests of academic works have shown, is a vague and ambiguous one.  But what allowed the deal to progress is that Tariq and his men had one idea of what Islamic law is and how it should be implemented, while the tribal mediators were willing to agree to it, and get the government to at least tacitly accept the deal, because Yemen claims that its laws are based on Islamic law.

Obviously, Tariq and Ansar al-Shariah don't believe this to be the case, and indeed Tariq was very clear in warning the mediators that he and his men would return to Rada'a if the government didn't abide by the agreement.  Releasing 15 prisoners is one thing, implementing Islamic law as Ansar al-Shariah understands it is something else entirely.  (Mareb Press has a photo of Ansar al-Shariah's three demands, which they posted in the beautifully restored mosque and school in downtown Rada'a.)   

There are a number of things about the deal that still aren't clear, no timeline was agreed upon for the implementation of the deal, or at least reported.  And it is unclear whether Tariq is negotiating from a position of strength or weakness.  He got his brother and the others released is that enough?  Did Ansar al-Shariah encounter more resistance than they expected from the tribes and citizens in Rada'a and thus the deal offers them a face-saving exit, and they don't plan on returning (Tariq's strong words aside) even if Islamic law as they understand it isn't implemented?

My guess on the last question would be no.  Again, the deal Tariq agreed to is the one he has been saying he would agree to for a number of days.

So what does this tell us?

I think Ansar al-Shariah came off fairly well in this whole exchange.  It got its men released, it acted within the accept norms of behavior in Yemen - taking control of something to right a perceived injustice - and it once again brought attention (in a very dramatic way) to its key issue: that Yemen is a corrupt, miserable place for its people because the country isn't being run by Islamic law.

There is also, I think, a dangerous precedent here that not many people are talking about, and that is now that Ansar al-Shariah has shown it can get what it wants by a display of force in an urban area is this something that we can expect more of in the future?

The Yemeni government, such as it exists, is obviously overwhelmed as the country continues its slow fragmentation, but once it opens door to negotiating with and acquiescing to Ansar al-Shariah's demands its hard to close it again.  Of course, the other option it contemplated, a military assault to free the town would have been a disaster, as it continues to be in Zanjubar.

Another interesting point, I doubt this deal would have been possible if Tariq's men had been calling themselves AQAP instead of Ansar al-Shariah.  Even though the men they wanted released from prison were AQAP suspects, calling themselves Ansar al-Shariah was, in this case, another useful fiction.


Update: CNN is reporting that only 4 prisoners were released, at least according to VP Hadi's office.  This differs from what Reuters and others have reported, as well as what Tariq al-Dhahab requested.