The Deterioration of the State Building in Yemen

Author(s): Sherif Heikal, Asaad Abdulkareem Qahtan

Full Text: PDF

Published: 2023-04-10

Abstract:

This article aimed to identify whether the politicized Yemeni tribes after the unification played a negative role in transforming the building of the unified Yemeni state into a failed state during the rule of late President Saleh's period. Although the peoples of Yemen in the north and south were eager to achieve Yemeni unity and get Yemen out of the focus of conflict and strive towards a more stable reality in which law prevails within the modern Yemeni state, the unity failed. Tribal and political leaders were part of the patronage network that weakened the unified state and its institutions, also creating an unstable culture and obscuring the concept of Yemeni unity, especially in southern Yemen after the summer war of 1994. The Yemeni scene today comes to confirm that Yemeni unity was based on politicized tribal pillars, and therefore the status quo cannot be resolved in the absence of the modern Yemeni state and the continuity of politicized tribal forces. So, this study discusses the Yemeni reality and the accumulations that led it to consider a failed state by highlighting the political stability in the light of the Yemeni institutional capacities.