CONFLICTED CONFLICTED by MH

The state of Yemen in 2023 is precarious. After the Arab Spring revolution descended into civil war, the Houthis have cemented their power over large swathes of Northern Yemen, while the traditional ruling parties have fractured and, in many cases, disintegrated. In this final episode of our mammoth exploration of the history of Yemen - and indeed season 4 of Conflicted - we bring things up to the modern day, stepping back from historical narrative to try and make sense of what has happened and what it means for the country and the region.

Over the course of this season, we've taken listeners through all the historical antecedents to modern Salafi Jihadism from Ahmad Bin Hanbal in the eighth century to Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s. We've looked at the Muslim Brotherhood, President Erdogan of Turkey, Iran, and their proxies across the region like Hezbollah. And now, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza continues, we can see so many of the themes and ideas that we've talked about this series playing out in real time.

This final episode, which sees us joined for the final time by Yemeni political activist Baraa Shaiban, attempts to make sense of current events in Yemen and beyond in the context of 
Salafi and Shia jihadism. We ask what the future holds for the Middle East, and what we can learn from the tumultuous history of the region as the world attempts to bring peace to the geopolitical situation of today.

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The Arab Spring of 2011 may have brought with it hope for a new dawn in Yemen, one of democracy and liberal reforms outside the rule of strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh. But the years that followed saw this quickly undone. The GCC Initiative brokered by Gulf States quickly broke down due to an intense culture of mistrust between all the parties within it. And with the insurgent Houthis growing ever more confident in the north, their malign influence ensured that this move for democracy was doomed to failure.

In this penultimate episode of our Yemen series, and indeed season 4 of Conflicted, we look at Yemen’s road from revolution to civil war. It’s something that our returning guest, Yemeni political activist Baraa Shaiban, witnessed first hand as a member of the GCC initiative. He tells us about the role he played in trying to keep the peace as his country fell into conflict, and how the delicate art of Yemeni politics - dancing on the heads of snakes - was one which soon became too difficult for all involved.

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2011 was a pivotal year for Yemen, and indeed the entire Middle East. After years of wars against the insurgent Houthis in the North, and with years of protests against President Ali Abdullah Selah’s attempts at radical constitutional changes, the Arab Spring which engulfed so many Muslim countries came to Yemen, too. It saw a bottom up revolution take hold in Sanaa, quickly filtering out across the country. It was a cry for democracy from a people fed up with their strongman ruler’s increasingly authoritarian rule. But would it lead to a new constitution for the Yemeni people, or political chaos which radical groups could exploit for their own gains?

In this episode of Conflicted, the third part of our series on Yemen, we welcome back Yemeni journalist and political activist, Baraa Shaiban. He wasn’t just there during the Arab Spring, he played a really significant part in leading it. He tells us his story of leading protests in Sanaa, and all the hope he and his fellow liberal activists had for a new dawn in their country. But was it a dream that could ever be fulfilled? Or would the many other complex factions in Yemeni politics have other ideas?

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Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen from 1990 - 2012, described the process of governing Yemen as akin to “Dancing on the heads of snakes”. Such were the profound splits in Yemeni society, and with other strongmen, tribes and insurgent groups vying for their own power, Saleh knew that to keep his newly unified country together from the 1990s onwards would take a dance of real precision.

In this second episode of our five part series on the history of Yemen, we find out if Saleh was nimble enough to hold onto power as the vipers beneath him began to show their force. From the civil war of the 1990s to the rise of the insurgent Houthis in the 2000s, we cover the period from 1990-2010, to see how these divisions in Yemeni society would ultimately lead to the civil war which continues to ravage the country today.

And to help us on our way, we welcome back our first ever guest Baraa Shaiban, a Yemeni journalist and political activist, who this week tells us about his extraordinary first hand account of growing up alongside the growing Houthi insurgency in northern Yemen.

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Ask anyone from the Middle East about Yemen, that country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, and they’ll tell you tales about the Queen of Sheba, Frankincense and Myrrh. It’s a place steeped in ancient history and paints a vivid picture in the imagination. But it’s also a place currently riven by conflict, engulfed in a civil war which has now been raging since 2014. But how did it get there? And what can the country’s history tell us about the bleak current state of affairs? For the next five episodes, Conflicted tells the country’s story.

We begin in the 20th century, with two Yemeni states - one in the North and one in the South - at odds with each other. With chaos caused by interventions from Nasser in the North, and the British Empire usurped by a Marxist regime in the South, for decades it seemed they could never be united. But with the rise of a certain strongman, Ali Abdullah Saleh, by the late 20th century this seemed possible.

To help Thomas and Aimen find out more about this quest for unification, today Conflicted welcomes our first ever guest, Baraa Shaiban. Baraa is a Yemeni journalist and political activist who was previously the advisor to the Yemeni Embassy London and has done some amazing work in bringing the crisis of the past decade to the world. He’ll be bringing his extraordinary first hand account of many of the recent events in Yemen’s political history to the table as we seek to unwrap this riddle of a country.

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In the last episode of Conflicted, we saw Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia terror group, grow in power in the midst of the brutal Lebanese civil war of the 1980s. But after a precarious peace came to the country, an Israeli occupation of the south remained throughout the 1990s. This allowed Hezbollah to remain an active and armed militia, a fact which would come to haunt the country over the following decades until today.

In this second part of our two episode exploration of Hezbollah, we look at the destabilising effect the group have had on the politics of Lebanon and the security of their southern neighbour, Israel. We’ll see how Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, has held the country to ransom in the never ending game of political poker Lebanon is stuck playing. And with Hezbollah now poised to join the 2023 Israel-Gaza conflict from the north, we’ll take you through what their long term motivations for such a move would be, and why their Iranian puppet masters would be keen for them to do so.

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