Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Yemen's Multilayered War: The Houthi Rebellion

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Anant Jani

Article Title

Yemen's Multilayered War: The Houthi Rebellion

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

August 4, 2020

URL

https://globalviews360.webflow.io/articles/yemens-multilayered-war-the-houthi-rebellion?fec94e1b_page=16
Houthi rebels protesting the airstrike in Sana

Houthi rebels protesting the airstrike in Sana | Source: Henry Ridgwell (VOA) via Wikimedia

This is the 3rd part of a short explainer article series on the current crisis in Yemen.

To read the 1st part of the series click on the link.

To read the 2nd part of the series click on the link.

After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1968,  Yemen existed as two countries — North Yemen and South Yemen.  These two countries united in 1990, after several years of conflict with one another.

This unity could not remain for long and the North-South divide resurfaced which led to the first civil war of unified Yemen. This civil war was short-lived and ended in 1994 after the decisive victory of the pro-unification governing faction over the Southern saperatist faction.

On the other hand a major dissatisfaction with the central government was simmering in the region dominated by a local branch of Shia Muslims known as Zaidi. They are the decendent of Prophet Muhamma and believe that Muslims should be ruled only by a descendant of Prophet Muhammad whom they call an Imam. They have ruled Yemen for more than 1,000 years which ended in 1962.

Zaidis are a minority sect in Yemen but have much ideological affinity with the Sunni Shafi'i majority. They lived together harmoniously and prayed in the same mosques for hundreds of years.

A new element was also getting added to the dangerous mix of sub-nationalism, intra religious division, and tribal loyalty in Yemen. The Yemeni veterans of Soviet-Afghan war who fought with the mujahideen were battle hardened and well versed in guerilla warfare. They started a low level insurgency and also tried to impose a hardline interpretation of Islamic religious and social practices in Yemen.

In order to counter the socio-economic and political marginalization by the central government as well as the growing influence of Salafism in their northern heartland, the Houthis formed a movement named Ansar Allah. President Saleh however accused them of attempting to overthrow the government and of seeking to revive the rule of the imamate in Yemen.

The Houthi Rebellion (also known as the Shia Insurgency):

The Houthi Movement in its current militant form began in 2004 by Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, religious, political and military leader, as well as former member of the Yemeni parliament between 1993 and 1997. Though he was killed in the action of very early in his fight with the government forces, his brother who took over the movement leadership made it politically and militarily a formidable force in Yemen.

Zaidis have had historical grievances against the Wahhabi, the dominant Sunni sect in Saudi Arabia, who assisted North Yemen in the First Yemen Civil War. The Zaidi fear they still have too much say in Yemeni politics. They have also fought against the Salafis, whom they accuse of implementing the hardline interpretation of Islamic religious and social practices in Yemen. In order to counter these forces, Houthis destroyed the schools run by them in Saada, Dar al Hadith in Dammaj and its sister school in Kitaf, claiming them to be “feeder schools”, for al-Qaeda.

It was the 2011 Yemeni Uprising (or Intifada), which catapulted Hauthis to the centre of Yemen politics. They sided with the common citizens of the country in demanding the resignation of President Saleh whom they charged with corruption and for being a lackey of Saudi Arabia and the USA. A Nesweek photo-essay reported that Houthis are fighting "for things that all Yemenis crave: government accountability, the end to corruption, regular utilities, fair fuel prices, job opportunities for ordinary Yemenis and the end of Western influence."

Later in 2011, President Saleh resigned, as per the Houthi terms, letting Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi step in as the President in exchange for immunity from prosecution. However the Houthis pressed on with their power grab which started resentment among other players.

In an ironic act, ex-President Saleh who was overthrown in an Houthi led public uprising, threw his weight behind Houthis in the power struggle. In 2015 he publicly announced his formal alliance with the Houthis, and hoped for ceasefires with the Arab Coalition.

In 2015, Hadi, the President of Yemen was placed under house arrest by the Houthis and forced to resign. He managed to flee to Aden, and rescinded his resignation. He fled to Saudi Arabia, and returned in September with the Arab Coalition at his support. Ever since, he has used Aden as his governing base.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia imposed severe restrictions on import, including air and sea blockades in Yemen, resulting in the shortages of food and medicine. Given the fact that Yemen is dependent on imports for food supply and medicine, it is no surprise that the blockades have led to a famine situation, compounded by an outbreak of cholera since 2016 caused by and worsened due to the air-strike bombed healthcare infrastructure.

After aligning with Houthis for many years, Saleh once again took an about turn in 2017 by publicly ending this alliance and stated his openness to talk with the Saudi-led coalition. Al Jazeera reported this was because the Saudi Prince had decided that Saleh, rather than Hadi, would help to win the war. However, the same year, Saleh was assassinated.

In September 2019, the Houthis claimed responsibility for drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's eastern oil fields of Abqaiq and Khurais, disrupting nearly half the kingdom's oil production.

In January 2020, the Houthi Special Criminal Court found Hadi guilty and sentenced him to death, for “high treason...and looting the country’s treasury”, over other things,

It is important to note that Saudi Arabia and the USA have also seen this war as a Sunni Saudi pitted against a Shi’ite Iran. This has been shown to be inaccurate - both nations likely intending it as an excuse for using extreme military might and sanctions that Saudi has engaged in with the backing of both, the Obama and Trump administration, to use Yemen for strategic purposes.

It is this war, between Saudi-backed Hadi at Aden and the Iran-led Houthis at Sana’a, that has prolonged for 5 years and displaced millions, prompting the UN to call it the worst man-made humanitarian disaster.


To read the 4th part of the series click on the link.

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February 4, 2021 5:22 PM

Automated Facial Recognition System of India and its Implications

On 28th of June 2019, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) opened bids and invited Turnkey Solution providers to implement a centralized Automated Facial Recognition System, or AFRS, in India. As the name suggests, AFRS is a facial recognition system which was proposed by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, geared towards modernizing the police force and to identify and track criminals using Facial Recognition Technology, or FRT.

The aforementioned technology uses databases of photos collected from criminal records, CCTV cameras, newspapers and media, driver’s license and government identities to collect facial data of people. FRT then identifies the people and uses their biometrics to map facial features and geometry of the face. The software then creates a “facial signature” based on the information collected. A mathematical formula is associated with each facial signature and it is subsequently compared to a database of known faces.

This article explores the implications of implementing Automated Facial Recognition technology in India.

Facial recognition software has become widely popular in the past decade. Several countries have been trying to establish efficient Facial Recognition systems for tackling crime and assembling an efficient criminal tracking system. Although there are a few potential benefits of using the technology, those benefits seem to be insignificant when compared to the several concerns about privacy and safety of people that the technology poses.

Images of every person captured by CCTV cameras and other sources will be regarded as images of potential criminals and will be matched against the Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems database (CCTNS) by the FRT. This implies that all of us will be treated as potential criminals when we walk past a CCTV camera. As a consequence, the assumption of “innocent until proven guilty” will be turned on its head.

You wouldn’t be surprised to know that China has installed the largest centralized FRT system in the world. In China, data can be collected and analyzed from over 200 million CCTVs that the country owns. Additionally, there are 20 million specialized facial recognition cameras which continuously collect data for analysis. These systems are currently used by China to track and manipulate the behavior of ethnic Uyghur minorities in the camps set up in Xinjiang region. FRT was also used by China during democracy protests of Hong Kong to profile protestors to identify them. These steps raised concerns worldwide about putting an end to a person’s freedom of expression, right to privacy and basic dignity.

It is very likely that the same consequences will be faced by Indians if AFRS is established across the country.

There are several underlying concerns about implementing AFRS.

Firstly, this system has proven to be inefficient in several instances. In August 2018, Delhi police used a facial recognition system which was reported to have an accuracy rate of 2%. The FRT software used by the UK's Metropolitan Police returned more than a staggering 98% of false positives. Another instance was when American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) used Amazon’s face recognition software known as “Rekognition” to compare the images of the legislative members of American Congress with a database of criminal mugshots. To Amazon’s embarrassment, the results included 28 incorrect matches.. Another significant evidence of inefficiency was the outcome of an experiment performed by McAfee.  Here is what they did. The researchers used an algorithm known as CycleGAN which is used for image translation. CycleGAN is a software expert at morphing photographs. One can use the software to change horses into zebras and paintings into photographs. McAfee used the software to misdirect the Facial recognition algorithm. The team used 1500 photos of two members and fed them into CycleGAN which morphed them into one another and kept feeding the resulting images into different facial recognition algorithms to check who it recognized. After generating hundreds of such images, CycleGAN eventually generated a fake image which looked like person ‘A’ to the naked eye but managed to trick the FRT into thinking that it was person ‘B’. Owing to the dissatisfactory results, researchers expressed their concern about the inefficiency of FRTs. In fact mere eye-makeup can fool the FRT into allowing a person on a no-flight list to board the flight. This trend of inefficiency in the technology was noticed worldwide.

Secondly, facial recognition systems use machine learning technology. It is concerning and uncomfortable to note that FRT has often reflected the biases deployed in the society. Consequently, leading to several facial mismatches. A study by MIT shows that FRT routinely misidentifies people of color, women and young people. While the error rate was 8.1% for men, it was 20.6% for women. The error for women of color was 34%. The error values in the “supervised study” in a laboratory setting for a sample population is itself simply unacceptable. In the abovementioned American Civil Liberties Union study, the false matches were disproportionately African American and people of color. In India, 55% of prisoners undertrial are either Dalits, Adivasis, or Muslims although the combined population of all three just amounts to 39% of the total population (2011 census). If AFRS is trained on these records, it would definitely deploy the same socially held prejudices against the minority communities. Therefore, displaying inaccurate matches. The tender issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs had no indication of eliminating these biases nor did it have any mention of human-verifiable results. Using a system embedded with societal bias to replace biased human judgement defeats claims of technological neutrality. Deploying FRT systems in law enforcement will be ineffective at best and disastrous at worst.

Thirdly, the concerns of invasion of privacy and mass surveillance hasn’t been addressed satisfactorily. Facial Recognition makes data protection almost impossible as publicly available information is collected but they are analyzed to a point of intimacy. India does not have a well established data protection law given that “Personal data Protection Bill” is yet to be enforced. Implementing AFRS in the absence of a safeguard is a potential threat to our personal data. Moreover, police and other law enforcement agencies will have a great degree of discretion over our data which can lead to a mission creep. To add on to the list of privacy concerns, the bidder of AFRS will be largely responsible for maintaining confidentiality and integrity of data which will be stored apart from the established ISO standard. Additionally, the tender has no preference to “Make in India'' and shows absolutely no objections to foreign bidders and even to those having their headquarters in China, the hub of data breach .The is no governing system or legal limitations and restrictions to the technology. There is no legal standard set to ensure proportional use and protection to those who non-consensually interact with the system. Furthermore, the tender does not mention the definition of a “criminal”. Is a person considered a criminal when a charge sheet is filed against them? Or is it when the person is arrested? Or is it an individual convicted by the Court? Or is it any person who is a suspect? Since the word “criminal” isn’t definitely defined in the tender, the law enforcement agencies will ultimately be able to track a larger number of people than required.

The notion that AFRS will lead to greater efficacy must be critically questioned. San Francisco imposed a total ban on police use of facial recognition in May, 2019. Police departments in London are pressurized to put a stop to the use of FRT after several instances of discrimination and inefficiency. It would do well to India to learn from the mistakes of other countries rather than committing the same.

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