Page 108 - What Kind of Yemen ?

What Kind of Yemen?

A similar state of affairs applies in Yemen. Despite President

Hadi's suggestions for the Houthis to end their protests, the Houthis'
demand for five ministries in a new Cabinet to be established is yet
another example of this desire. The demand for different identities to
be equally represented in the administration is a legitimate one,
although it is wrong to seek to make this a tool for conflict and seek to
achieve legitimate democratic demands through undemocratic means.
People who engage in politics of identity prefer to live in a rela-

tively weakened state as a community based on one single characteris-
tic rather than joining forces under different identities. That difference
in perspective means that policies of identity that have multiplied
since the years of the Cold War have constantly created fresh spheres
of conflict. For example, the Serbs in Bosnia, the Basques in Spain and
the PKK in Turkey represent the main figures in the conflicts taking
place.
It is in fact impossible for identity politics to fully achieve their
aims, because human societies are not made up of indistinguishable

individuals like the atoms in a table. The Southeast of Turkey is not
entirely Kurdish: Arabs and Turks also constitute a major part of the
population in the region and all of them lived together for centuries,
and ethnic divisions disappeared. The same thing applies to Yemen.
Many Sunni Arabs live in those areas where Houthis are in the major-
ity. Even if people living in a region have the same ethnic or sectarian
make-up, this does not mean that these differences have been eliminat-

ed. The great majority of people living in Southeast Turkey do not sup-
port the separatist Marxist Kurds, and those who do support them only
tend do so at gunpoint; likewise, it is also not possible to say that all
the Zaidis in Yemen support the Houthi movement.
As we have seen, it is unrealistic to promise peace or tranquility to
a region by concentrating on ethnic or sectarian characteristics. Con-
flicts engaged in for regional divisions simply and inevitably cause fur-
ther conflicts once separation has taken place.
Countries frequently enter into conflict with separatist forces for

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