Off the Coast of Yemen

Shot While Fleeing

Last Monday, soldiers of the German Bundeswehr made their first victim at the Horn of Africa. The victim was a passenger in a boat, which the frigate "Brandenburg" attempted to halt in the vicinity of Yemen's port city, Al Mukalla. The German military suspected the five men in the boat of wanting to engage in piracy. When the suspects fled and refused to heed warning shots, the Bundeswehr fired on the boat, killing one and taking the others prisoner. Observers suspect that they, like other real or supposed pirates before them, will be brought to court in Kenya. It appears out of the question that there will be repercussions for the German soldiers due to the fact that, according to reports, deadly fire was opened, though no concrete threat was posed to anyone.

Civil War

A civil war that, for some time had been sweltering, is escalating In Yemen, off whose shores German naval vessels have been patrolling for years. In the province of Saada, in the north of the country, the so-called Huthi Movement has been waging armed combat against the central government in Sanaá since 2004. Whereas the Huthi claim only to be struggling against discrimination of their specific faith - they are Zaidis - the central government asserts that the movement is struggling for the re-establishment of a theocratic regime. A Zaidi imamate was overthrown in 1962. The conflict has escalated dramatically, creating at least 150,000 refugees. Large areas of Northern Yemen are engulfed in this civil war. The Yemeni president has announced massive measures of rearmament.

Proxy Conflict

German interests are jeopardized, when adamant anti-western forces come into power through the Huthi Movement. Recently the international crisis group, one of the most influential western think tanks, pointed to anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic agitation of the Huthi Movement. The movement struggles particularly against the Sanaá government's cooperation with Washington, writes the Crisis Group.[1] This also applies to Berlin, which has been engaged in close cooperation with Yemen (german-foreign-policy.com reported [2]). But the west is particularly alarmed by reports that the Huthi Movement is receiving a substantial amount of aid from Teheran.[3] This affects foremost Saudi Arabia, the dominant power on the Arabian Peninsular, which has traditional rivalry with Iran and now must confront Iran's influence on its southern border. The west is also indirectly affected, for whom this feudal aristocracy has been a trustworthy cooperation partner for decades, which is why Riad is being supported against Teheran. The Yemeni civil war has therefore developed into a proxy conflict between pro- and anti-western forces.

War on Terror

In addition, the weakening of the central government in Sanaá through the war is creating maneuvering space for Islamist structures, turning Yemen into a staging area and a base of retreat for terrorist activities in Saudi Arabia. Washington is applying massive pressure on Sanaá to bear down harder on the Islamists and is itself becoming active accordingly. Berlin is also engaged. For several years, German police have been cooperating with their Yemeni counterparts. The German Office of Criminal Investigation maintains a "liaison officer" in the Yemeni capital.[4] The German government is also using "development aid" projects to weaken insurgent Islamists. According to the German press, Islamists, when confronted with moderate local Islamic traditions, as an obstacle to recruitment of new followers, set out to destroy these historical structures. Berlin, on the other hand, is reinforcing these structures and has dispatched, for example, the German Association for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) development agency to the Yemeni city of Shibam to restore the traditional historic district. In the dissention that this has provoked with the Islamists, it was possible to win over a large portion of the conservative population, it was reported. The strengthening of moderate traditions has an obvious "dampening effect on the spread of fundamentalism."[5]

Military Advisors

In addition, Germany, for years, has been supplying the Yemeni military with weapons, particularly since the beginning of the civil war in 2004. German all-terrain-vehicles and parachutes alongside small arms and munitions as well as, since 2006, armored carriers can be used by Sanaá to put down the Huthi Movement in the north of the country and restrict the Islamists' maneuvering space. Berlin is also maintaining a Bundeswehr "group of advisors" in Yemen, who are primarily handling basic medical needs of the Yemeni armed forces. Yemeni soldiers are, for the most part, being nursed back to a state of deployability with German medical technology.[6]

Control

The Bundeswehr is also seeking cooperation with the Yemeni Navy. The Bundeswehr has deployed its warships off the Yemeni coast, since early 2002, within the framework of the US-led "War on Terror" and, in the meantime, also of the EU's anti-piracy campaign. These measures have placed the coastal waters under western control, thereby making not only piracy more difficult but continuing to thwart an illicit arms trade, for example to reinforce the anti-Sanaá insurgents. In light of the escalation of the civil war in Yemen, the German Navy, which has now made its first victim, is taking on the role of stabilizing pro-western forces. This no longer corresponds to the official motive of its mission.

[1] International Crisis Group: Yemen: Defusing the Saada Time Bomb; Middle East Report N°86, 27 May 2009
[2] see also Enge Beziehungen
[3] Foreign states blamed in Yemen war; Al Jazeera 07.09.2009
[4] see also Enge Beziehungen
[5] Das stolze Erbe wider die Eiferer; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 23.05.2009
[6] Festschrift zum 40. Jubiläum der Wiederaufnahme der diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Jemen; Botschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Jemen, 2009