Traffic policeman (de facto authorities) in Sanaa, Yemen. Photo: Peter Salisbury
4. Power: When Legitimacy Meets Capability
In an idealized ‘orderly’ state, power is achieved through the synchronization of the executive (the legitimate government or authority), the formal bureaucracy (technocrats with the skills and know-how to develop policy) and the ‘doers’ of the de facto authorities (such as soldiers and workers). In an orderly state, the latter two actors essentially operate in the same realm and in pursuit of more or less common policy goals.
Yet, as this paper has argued, in hybrid political orders such as Iraq and Yemen, the synchronization between different types of actors is tenuous to non-existent, with disunity and lack of coordination between the formal bureaucracy and the de facto authorities causing particular problems. De facto authorities wield power that becomes greater than or equal to that of the formal bureaucracy. This non-linear, complex network is subject to constant competition and disruption, giving the impression of chaos. But there is always order of sorts within the network, in the form of fragmented and/or improvised systems that emerge or pervade despite the diminishment of the central governing node.
This analysis is problematic to conventional policy models, as it implies that power does not naturally accrue to the ‘state’. In both Iraq and Yemen, power is often in the hands of multiple, rival de facto authorities seeking to consolidate power by competing with or subsuming one another. At times, the de facto authorities compete with or seek to subsume the formal bureaucracy and formal executive, and hence the institutions of state. At other times, they build parallel structures that are more effective and powerful than the nominal ‘state’, and as such very difficult for a weak and ineffective central government to displace.
International policymakers seeking to help build, rebuild or stabilize political orders in countries such as Iraq and Yemen must, we have argued thus far, move beyond the binary distinction between state and non-state actors, and better understand the reality of where power lies and how it is achieved. A pillar of this understanding necessarily involves an assessment of the different types of power on which state and non-state actors draw. For the purposes of this analysis, the concept of ‘power’ can be defined as an ability to get others to do things they otherwise would not. Power is exercised in different ways: it can be coercive (i.e. involving the use or threat of violence), legal-institutional (drawing on the role of institutions), or persuasive (leveraging cultural, social or symbolic capital).
Coercive power
Coercion is central to the Weberian notions of statehood that guide Western state-building. This paper argues that coercive power directed at a group’s rivals can be categorized as ‘horizontal coercion’, while coercive power directed towards the population living in the areas controlled by a given group constitutes ‘vertical coercion’. Armed actors compete with one other (and with state actors) horizontally by using force (or the threat of force) to get their way. In terms of vertical dynamics, armed actors maintain influence by silencing local dissent and weakening potential rivals. Armed groups’ coercive capabilities are derived from their ability to form a military and intelligence services, use or threaten force effectively, and generate revenues.
In countries in the midst of fragmentary and stalled transitions, such as Iraq and Yemen, coercive capabilities are rarely confined to the executive or formal bureaucracy. Instead, they often lie in the hands of the de facto authorities, which use coercive power to defend themselves, weaken rivals, capture state institutions and build parallel institutions of their own.
Iraq
Figure 7: Networks and capabilities of main PMU groups
— Note: These groups are the primary groups in each locality controlling territory, such as the Badr Organization; Asaeb ahl al-Haq; Kataib Hezbollah; Saraya al-Salam; Turkman Hashd; Shabak Hashd; and Sunni Hashd.
Figure 7: Networks and capabilities of main PMU groups
Figure 8: Networks and capabilities of main Kurdish groups, 2019
Figure 8: Networks and capabilities of main Kurdish groups, 2019
Figure 9: Networks and capabilities of ISF
Figure 9: Networks and capabilities of ISF
In Iraq, during the fight against ISIS, the PMU won considerable legitimacy and capability. This demonstrated its relative coercive power (and also gave it persuasive power). When the main fight against ISIS ended, the PMU’s de facto leader, Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis, began to exercise coercive power to both gain influence over state institutions and maintain a parallel military and economic structure. The PMU has its own de facto police force, which has been used to detain potential rivals or internal threats, including Aws al-Khafaji, a PMU commander who was arrested in February 2019. In a number of Iraqi districts, the local police are too weak to compete with the PMU or limit its abuses.84 The PMU is also attempting, through the use of coercive power, to transition from being only a de facto authority to a de jure actor as well. As discussed, in 2004 the Badr Organization took control of the MOI. However, these forces remained loyal to Badr rather than to the central government. In this example, the coercive capabilities of Badr allowed it to capture a major government ministry, which it continues to hold, and effectively to become part of the formal bureaucracy.
The PMU also uses vertical coercion to silence dissent. During protests in Basra in 2018, disillusioned citizens called for an end to what they saw as a corrupt and ineffective elite. Demonstrators attacked the major political party headquarters in Basra, and stormed the local Iranian consulate. Protesters and civil society activists in Basra claimed that PMU groups responded with force, restricting their movements.85 The PMU’s actions to a large extent silenced the protest movement. Months later, protesters argued that their fear of a similar response may limit their activities in the future.
Yemen
In Yemen, coercive practices have long been employed as part of a suite of techniques that include legal-institutional and persuasive power. The country has a long tradition of referring disputes to tribal judges and mediating sheikhs, who have complemented the state’s role as an arbitrator.86 Indeed, the Yemeni state was long seen as an ‘arbitrative’ state rather than a centralized power capable of authoritarianism, and the Saleh regime for many years operated a mix of coercion and co-option with its rivals.
The 1994 north–south civil war marked a shift, with northern forces practicing a form of total war aimed at completely defeating the southern military, which had fired Scud missiles at Sanaa at the beginning of the conflict.87 In the early 2000s, the Saleh regime began to use such practices in the north, launching a campaign against the Houthis that Marieke Brandt, a leading scholar of the movement, described as a process of brutalization that ultimately saw the Houthis abandon traditional tribal norms of conflict.88
Figure 10: Networks and capabilities of Government of Yemen/Yemen National Army forces
Figure 10: Networks and capabilities of Government of Yemen/Yemen National Army forces
Figure 11: Networks and capabilities of Ansar Allah authorities, associated armed forces
Figure 11: Networks and capabilities of Ansar Allah authorities, associated armed forces
Figure 12: Networks and capabilities of Southern Transitional Forces/UAE-backed forces
Figure 12: Networks and capabilities of Southern Transitional Forces/UAE-backed forces
The Saleh regime also moved to build a more traditional police state, using the intelligence services, police and judiciary to crack down on purported terrorists and internal dissent. The US-led ‘war on terror’ likely enhanced this approach, with Washington funding the creation of new counterterrorism and security services from around 2003 onwards.89 When protesters took to the streets of Sanaa and Taiz in 2011, Saleh-affiliated forces opened fire on them, leading to a split within the Saleh regime. Rival military units and tribal militias battled one another in Sanaa and Taiz for control of the streets. Elsewhere in the country, extrajudicial killings, assassinations and arbitrary detentions remained common in daily life.
Currently, several different groups have extensive horizontal and vertical coercive power: the Houthis, the UAE-backed southern groups known as the SRF, and the YNA (see the ‘Capabilities’ chapter for more details). Each of these groups sees itself as legitimate. In practice, the YNA is legitimized by international support for the government, while the SRF is attempting to build legitimacy by creating southern Yemeni ‘state’ institutions. The Houthis are not internationally recognized, but control most of the pre-war institutions of state. Under the current status quo, each of the above groups is to a greater or lesser extent the dominant vertical power in the area that it controls. In horizontal terms, the war has been fought to a stalemate despite huge external support for the YNA from Saudi Arabia and for the SRF from the UAE.
The rivalry between southern secessionists and the Hadi government, however, could change this balance of power. The present situation has required the SRF and the YNA to counterbalance the Houthis, but if these two groups were to fight each other – as happened in January 2018 and then in August 2019 – both would likely be weakened and the Houthis’ position would improve. In the north and the south, the Houthis and the SRF are moving to use their coercive power to develop legal-rational legitimacy – to either absorb or become the bureaucrats and executive networks in their areas. In the event of a peace deal between the internationally recognized government and the Houthis, the Houthis would be in a privileged position and would be afforded some legitimacy and, in turn, greater legal-rational justification for their control of the northern highlands. If southern actors affiliated with the SRF were not included in a peace agreement, they would likely use their coercive power to either force a new deal, start a new conflict or commence outright secession, in effect divorcing their networks from the national level and conferring legitimacy and control over the bureaucracy to their internal elite.
Legal-institutional power
Despite the weakening of legal processes and the bureaucracy, and the absence of the rule of law, political and security actors in Iraq and Yemen still use legal institutions to gain influence over their opponents. Part of this process entails capturing or gaining influence over state institutions. This ‘legal-institutional’ power is based on a mixture of legal-rational legitimacy and military and economic capabilities.
Iraq
Most armed actors in Iraq have sought institutional recognition to exert power over their opponents. Since 2003, the Iraqi elite has used mechanisms such as ‘de-Baathification’, counterterrorism and anti-corruption initiatives as institutional means of targeting opponents both vertically and horizontally. In 2010, the then-prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, prevented some of his Sunni opponents from competing in elections by using the de-Baathification law. During his second term, from 2010 to 2014, Maliki used counterterrorism laws as the basis for the issue of arrest warrants against his Sunni opponents in government, including forcing Vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi and Finance Minister Rafa al-Issawi to flee the country. He also used counterterrorism policies to quash protest movements, such as the harak al-shaabi, which emerged in Mosul in 2011. As this illustrates, the use of arrest warrants becomes an important way for leaders to maintain power via coercion. Finally, Maliki used anti-corruption measures and his dominance of the 2014–18 parliament to target opponents such as Khalid al-Obeidi, the defence minister, and Hoshyar Zebari, the finance minister, both of whom were impeached on charges of corruption.
During his second term, from 2010 to 2014, Maliki used counterterrorism laws as the basis for the issue of arrest warrants against his Sunni opponents in government, including forcing Vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi and Finance Minister Rafa al-Issawi to flee the country.
In addition, following the fight against ISIS, the PMU has sought to gain further control over the prime minister’s office. Its allies include Faleh al-Fayadh, the chairman of the National Security Council (NSC) and a senior member of the PMU’s al-Binaa parliamentary bloc. The PMU is also close to Mohammad (Abu Jihad) al-Hashim, who serves as the prime minister’s chief of staff. A July 2019 prime ministerial decree on integrating the PMU into the prime minister’s office was in fact influenced by Abu Jihad with the consent of the PMU. The PMU’s de facto leader, Muhandis, is seeking to use this decree to consolidate his organization’s power.
Yemen
International and local legal-institutional competition has played a key role in the internal power struggle in Yemen. The Hadi government regularly cites the so-called ‘three references’: the legal agreements and international resolutions that it believes support its position. These consist of the 2011 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative that brought Hadi into power through a one-man election in February 2012; the outcomes of the 2013–14 National Dialogue Conference (part of the GCC initiative); and UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which reaffirmed Hadi’s status as the ‘legitimate’ president of Yemen.90 Thus, the government hopes to leverage international support – in and of itself a form of power – to force the Houthis into capitulation.
The Houthis, meanwhile, cite several legal factors as legimitizing their role: the Peace and National Partnership Agreement which they signed with Hadi after their takeover of Sanaa in September 2014; Hadi’s January 2015 resignation announcement; and their own February 2015 ‘constitutional declaration’ which led to the establishment of a Transitional National Council (to replace parliament), a five-member presidential council and the Supreme Revolutionary Council to act as the de facto executive authority of Yemen.91 Through these measures the Houthis were attempting to institutionalize their rule over Yemen: by establishing an executive with the right to oversee the bureaucracy (which they had in effect encircled, with their implementers physically controlling the institutions of state), and by using legal procedure to formalize the de facto takeover of the state which they had achieved several months earlier. Following their takeover of capital, the Houthis ordered banks to freeze the assets of their rivals from the Sunni Islamist Islah party, alleging corruption. They also tried Hadi in absentia for treason. The Houthis have used their control of the intelligence services and court system to impose authority on the areas they hold, often through the jailing and arbitrary disappearance of rivals (although similar practices have also taken place in south Yemen and YNA-controlled areas).
A core concern for the internationally recognized Hadi government, meanwhile, is that any political process and peace deal involving some form of power-sharing arrangement would legitimize the Houthis. In many ways, the government’s main sources of power are its status as the internationally recognized government and its technical control over legal-institutional networks. Any weakening of its status, and improvement in that of the Houthis, would naturally shift the overall balance of power, which already favours the rebels.
Persuasive power
A final form of power is the art of persuasion, as actors often use symbols and social networks to maintain influence and persuade others to follow them. Again, persuasion requires a mix of legitimacy and capability.
Iraq
Following the swift rise of ISIS in 2014, most Iraqis who volunteered to fight the Salafi-jihadi group and win back territory decided to join paramilitary groups and militias such as those of the PMU rather than the state’s armed forces. In part, this was due to a lack of perceived legitimacy on the part of the Iraqi state, whose armed forces had lost most of its territory, including the second-largest city, Mosul, to just a few thousand ISIS fighters. The Iraqi army had been defined since 2003 by an inability to serve its primary function. As a consequence, unofficial armed groups that did not have the same professional training or technical superiority used symbols and identity to persuade their constituents. For instance, several paramilitary groups recruited Shia fighters by making reference in speeches, posters and other media outlets to the June 2014 Camp Speicher massacre, in which ISIS executed 1,566 Shia Iraqi Air Force recruits.
More generally, in post-2003 Iraq, armed actors employed symbolic capital to seek power. The use of ethnic and sectarian discourse became a way to bring down opponents, particularly during the civil war (2006–08), when elites instrumentalized and militarized identities.92 Leaders used arguments based on symbolism – often linked to sectarian identity – to fight their opponents. Having stronger legitimacy and capability meant that armed groups linked not to the state but to political organizations such as the PMU or the Peshmerga were better able to recruit volunteers in the fight against ISIS.
One way in which various actors have sought persuasive power in Iraq has been through patronage networks. As Toby Dodge argues, social capital in post-2003 Iraq came from the network of proxies that political and armed actors inserted into all government institutions to ensure leverage by using persuasion at multiple levels, though primarily at director general and deputy minister level.93 Moreover, the wikala system, as it became known, was effectively a way for parties to gain power by influencing each ministry and government post. The state became hostage to this system. Even if a new minister was appointed, a political party could maintain power by keeping its proxies in that ministry. These proxies occupied acting positions, and thus operated in a grey area that was facilitated by the conditions of fragmentary state transformation. More critically, the proxies helped serve the de facto authorities by allowing them to either capture the state or develop structures in parallel to it.
Yemen
In Yemen, over the past two decades, the ‘othering’ of rival groups has become commonplace. The trend has been catalysed by the civil war. The Houthis, for example, routinely accuse their rivals of belonging to Al-Qaeda or ISIS. Public discourse in Houthi media channels revolves around the claim that the current civil war is between the ‘Axis of Resistance’ and a bloc of Middle Eastern states, led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the US. This bloc’s main goal, the Houthis claim, is to support Israel and engage in the suppression of Palestine. The Houthis also claim that Saudi Arabia and the US hope to make Yemen subservient to Saudi interests. The Houthis use civilian deaths as a particularly potent propaganda symbol, especially when Western-made munitions are used (as is often the case with Saudi airstrikes). Abdulmalek al-Houthi, the Houthi leader, also employs religious symbolism, invoking the prophet Mohammed and Hussayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet and a crucial figure in Shia and Zaydi thought.
Southern secessionists often frame the conflict as one between a brutal, tribal ‘northern’ polity and the civilized people of the south. They do not differentiate between the Houthis and the Houthis’ rivals, painting them as a single group whose main aim is to invade the south.
At the same time, the Houthis are presented by their rivals both as a reactionary group (whose main aim is to return to the governing patterns of the Zaydi imamate of the past) and as a puppet of Iran. Anti-Houthi rhetoric from Yemeni and Saudi-aligned media outlets claims that members of the Houthi leadership – Sayyids descended from the prophet Mohammed – believe they have the ‘divine right’ to rule under the Zaydi systems of the past. Simultaneously, these claims assert that the Houthis have adopted the Twelver Shia practised by Iran, and that they hope to turn Yemen into a satellite of Iran. President Hadi has repeatedly claimed that the Yemeni army will ‘remove the Iranian flag’ from Marran – the Houthis’ home area – and replace it with the Yemeni national flag. At times, this discourse goes so far as to present the Houthis as a largely alien entity, despite the fact that Zaydi culture is firmly rooted in Yemen. Both Al-Qaeda and Salafist (not necessarily Salafi-jihadi) groups employ heavily sectarianized language that describes the Houthis as Rawafid, or ‘rejectionists’, a term often used by hyper-conservative Sunnis in reference to Shia groups. Southern secessionists often frame the conflict as one between a brutal, tribal ‘northern’ polity and the civilized people of the south. They do not differentiate between the Houthis and the Houthis’ rivals, painting them as a single group whose main aim is to invade the south.
These different claims have an impact on the capabilities of different actors, in particular to the extent that morale among fighters is affected. The Houthi, the STC and other secessionists, and Salafist groups would appear to be the most capable of converting the persuasive power of their narratives into battlefield morale. Abdulmalek al-Houthi has gained an increasingly revered position among religiously inclined followers. Aydrous al-Zubaidi, the leader of the STC, is often described by his followers as the ‘president’ of southern Yemen. Hadi’s persuasive appeal is largely built around his symbolic status, as a kind of receptacle for state legitimacy that many Yemenis hope will return. But the exact meaning of that legitimacy is complex and contested. It also makes reintegration of the different networks in Yemen more difficult in the short to medium term.
84 Interviews in Basra, Diyala, Baghdad and Mosul, 2018.
85 Author interviews in Basra, February 2019.
86 See, for example, Dawsari, N. (2012), Tribal Governance and Stability in Yemen, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/04/24/tribal-governance-and-stability-in-yemen-pub-47838.
87 Rizvi, S. (1994), ‘Scud attack on Sanaa kills 20’, UPI, 11 May 1994, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/05/11/Scud-attack-on-Sanaa-kills-20/9472768628800/.
88 Brandt, M. (2014), ‘The Irregulars of the Ṣa‘dah War: ‘Colonel Shaykhs’ and ‘Tribal Militias’ in Yemen’s Ḥūthī Conflict (2004–2010)’, Why Yemen Matters: a Society in Transition, SOAS Middle East Issues, July 2014.
89 Sharp, J. M. (2015), Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations, Congressional Research Service, 11 February 2015.
90 Asharq al-Awsat (2019), ‘Hadi Confirms Yemen’s Adherence to Three Terms of References’, 17 June 2019, https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1771611/hadi-confirms-yemen%E2%80%99s-adherence-three-terms-references.
91 Schwedler, J. (2019), ‘Yemeni Parliamentarians Vote to Form a New Government’, Atlantic Council, 17 August 2019,
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/yemeni-parliamentarians-vote-to-form-a-new-government.
92 Haddad, F. (2011), Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity, New York: Columbia. University Press.
93 Dodge, T. (forthcoming), ‘Muhasasa Ta’ifia and its others; domination and contestation in Iraq’s political field’, Project on Middle East Political Science.