Guerrilla War, Counterinsurgency, and State Formation in Ottoman Yemen

The Zaydī Imamate of Yemen collapsed in the 19th century as a result of inherent conflicts in its structure as a tribal quasi-state, between the Zaydī tribesmen's culture of honor and the Islamic values of the Imamate. This in turn facilitated the Ottoman conquest of the Yemeni highlands in 1872. The inferior weaponry of the Zaydī tribes and their political fragmentation made it impossible for them to conduct a sustained resistance against the Ottomans. As a result, the Ottomans were able to maintain control in the early years of the occupation by the methods of indirect rule: divide-and-conquer tactics coupled with intermittent punitive expeditions. The presence of the Ottoman state, however, created the political conditions under which the Zaydī tribes would unite to defend themselves. This allowed the Imāms to rebuild the Imamate as a supra-tribal state deriving its authority from Islamic principles, organized to unite the tribes in a long-term jihād against the Ottomans. In turn, this compelled the Ottomans to change their methods of dealing with rebellion in Yemen. Ottoman statesmen sought increasingly to employ the techniques of the bureaucratic nation-state to consolidate their grip on Yemen: police repression, counter-guerrilla tactics, and programs of social and economic development designed to win the support of the population. Such measures failed as a result of the poverty of the Ottoman state and the dictatorial practices of the Hamidian regime. Together with the growing military sophistication of the Zaydīs, however, they did push the conflict in Yemen toward total war. The culmination of this process would come in the rebellion of 1905, characterized by grinding campaigns of attrition and massive social destruction in Yemen. After this rebellion, the Ottomans would realize the futility of a total war policy, and seek a negotiated settlement with the Imām. Such a settlement finally came after the Young Turk era,peace was made with the Imām on the basis of political and cultural autonomy for the Zaydīs.