For 13 years, the month of February has brought us great symbolism to recall one of the most prominent political changes in the contemporary history of Yemen, when society’s craving for change reached its maximum extent, after the political, economic, and security tensions reached the state before the huge eruption.
As for the eleventh of February - the date on which the first protest tent was erected in front of the eastern gate of New Sana’a University, and its repercussions in the surrounding area later became known as the Change Square - was not the result of its moment. Rather, it was the natural extension of the movement of protests and mass stops that the cities witnessed and was initiated since the 2006 presidential elections. In addition, the cycles of peaceful protests that took place in the southern governorates through the Southern Movement, leading to the student marches that roamed the streets of the capital, Sanaa, were in solidarity with the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions which reached their peak in 2011.
What was clearly observed before February 11 was the regime's preoccupation with the sustainability and inheritance of power, through two influential machines: corruption and crisis management. As a result, peaceful, spontaneous, popular protests broke out, making their way into the heart of society, so that these demonstrations were steps ahead of the parties’ maneuvers and pragmatic calculations. However, given that the revolution was still in its labor stage, and its leadership had not emerged from the heart of the protests; the political parties/powers were preparing to attack them and confiscate their great moral project. In fact, organization, financial capabilities, and regional coordination played a decisive role in shifting the revolution project in favor of the parties, especially the religious movement, which appeared more systematized and have influential mobilization and media experience.
Saleh’s regime was completely faltering, especially after his excessive use of force and the killing of protesters on March 18, 2011 (Friday of Dignity), so some of its powerful officials found in the protest movement a great opportunity to purify themselves and escape from a shipwrecked ship towards national resurrection.
Thus, the street movement became dependent on the policies and calculations of the parties, so it was able to outbid the slogans of change, and went to a settlement to share power through a political initiative known as the Gulf Initiative, which granted protection to the structure of the ruling system and its sustainability, and re-divided the benefits between the formal parties.
Given the chaos, corruption, dismantling of institutions, restructuring the army, and the formulation of alliances on non-national bases, the transitional period - the formal transfer of power from the president to the vice president - enabled the Houthi militias and extremist trends to occupy the country, north and south, within three years. The Houthi forces were able to control all the isolated villages and districts of Sa'ada and then to its administrative center, passing through Ammran Governorate, which resisted the Houthi hordes for a short period, all the way to Sanaa, without the slightest resistance, after the civil and military state institutions were handed over to them with the incomprehensible complicity of powers within the regime and outside.
In contrast, extremist organizations (Al-Qaeda and its descendants) were expanding from Al-Baidha to Abyan and Hadramout, and establishing their own religious emirates and persecution courts.
Beforehand, the National Dialogue Conference was trying to restore some hope by drawing rosy dreams for the Yemenis, but the dismantling plan was proceeding smoothly, with local tools, regional sponsorship, and international blessings. The war was the culmination of this carefully engineered plan, to plunge Yemen and its people into a real hell, from which, for nearly a decade, the parties to the war, which built their de facto authorities in the four regions of the country, benefited from it. These powers today are the ones who benefit and trade, not only with the country’s resources, but also with the blood and livelihood of the Yemenis.
