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The Arab Spring left virtually no country in the Middle East and North Africa untouched by mass protests. It arrived in Yemen on January 27, 2011, when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, demanding a change of leadership, whereby the removal of President Saleh as the head of the Yemeni government was a central and non-negotiable theme. Such removal, pro-change protesters demanded, needed to be immediate. While President Saleh is generally acknowledged to have been consistently democratically elected within the country, this demand for his immediate resignation stemmed not only from a popular desire for political change, but also from a consistent loss of faith in the Yemeni democratic system, accentuated by a history of unrepresentative politics, allegations of multi-level corruption, and growing public suspicions that the President would institute a policy of hereditary rule in light of his ailing health, passing leadership of the country down to his son.

The issue of President Saleh's immediate departure, however, proved extremely contentious, with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Qatar especially, striving to broker a deal for a phased transfer of power. Though the deal has now been signed, President Saleh has been reluctant to leave office entirely, his family retains important control over governmental and military structures and he and key members of the Yemeni Government have been granted immunity from prosecution in the International Criminal Court, despite the use of hugely oppressive tactics to disband and punish protesters. The agreement itself has therefore lacked severely in legitimacy for a number of reasons, including that the deal has been negotiated between the Yemeni state and the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), who are not considered to be representative of the majority of demonstrators.

The Arab Spring began in Yemen as a youth movement, with university students and graduates playing a central role in organizing and mobilizing protesters. However, they were soon joined by various other factions as demonstrations gained in momentum. In particular, the Arab Spring represented the opportunity for various actors who had been in conflict with the Government for the past decade to advance their own individual agendas. In the far North of Yemen, insecurity generated by protests across the country offered the chance for the Houthi rebel movement to reorganize and secure an operational stronghold, establishing a virtually self-contained and separate governance system in the Sa'ada area that may have begun to spread its influence into neighboring governorates. Likewise, the Arab Spring and its explicit call for a change of leadership and therefore a change in the structures of government also reinvigorated the Southern Separatist Movement, who have used protests to vocalize their own grievances. At the same time, the diversion of security forces towards containing public demonstrations has led to the escalation of Al Qaeda's activities in the country, with rumors of AQAP seizing control of important cities and strongholds in the South.

From April of 2011 onwards, the Arab Spring in Yemen began to take on a notably different character, as high ranking members of the existing political system began to adopt more overtly anti-Government stances along with popular protesters. In particular, the JMP, with Islah and the Yemeni Socialist Party as two of its foundational sub-structures, began increasingly to appoint themselves as the official spokesmen for the pro-change movement, despite the clear cultural, religious and ideological divisions between different groups that had joined in demonstrations. The JMP's critics, have sighted the group’s strong financial and political ties to the existing leadership as a cause for major concern, though the party have nevertheless been treated as the voice of the Arab Spring in negotiations organized by the GCC. Some of these political connections have been severed through the mass resignation of JMP officials from the Yemeni Government out of protest against the state's use of military violence against demonstrators in 2011. However, personal and financial connections remain for many of the JMP's members. Cynical observers of the situation might conclude that the JMP's actions of late indicate, if anything, only a last bit attempt to distance themselves from a collapsing state in order to ensure their own survival. Regardless of their motivations, a recent deal brokered by the GCC has ensured the JMP’s continued involvement in Yemeni politics.

Similar concerns have been voiced about some of Saleh's previous supporters, who have included powerful tribal leaders and military stakeholders. Chief among these have been the Al-Ahmar Family (heads of the Hashid tribal federation)and General Ali Al Mohsen, who defected from the military along with several of his units in March of 2011, allegedly to protect protesters from state violence. The Hashid and Bakil Federations have previously acted as a major support structure for the Yemeni state and have therefore maintained a vested interest in the state's survival. These allegiances, supported by financial stipends, function to all effects and purposes as a shadow state, which has been a central motivating factor of general unrest in Yemen for several years, as well as a thematic element of the early 2011 protests. It is a system that various tribal groupings are said to have a direct vested interest in maintaining. Yet in May of 2011, the al-Ahmar family, headed by Sheik Sadiq al-Ahmar, openly ended its alliance with President Saleh, representing a break of the Hashid Federation from the government for reasons that are largely unknown. In June, the Government of Yemen began a direct military campaign against the al-Ahmar family in Sana'a, sparking what historians might refer to as a second Yemeni civil war.

Of primary concern here is that the struggle between these elite stakeholders has overshadowed the youth movement that began the Arab Spring in Yemen, leading to the strong possibility that their grievances will once again be overlooked in any negotiated peace settlements in the country. Of further concern here, however, is the issue that little media attention has been paid to Yemen’s year long spring in light of similar events in Egypt, Lybia and Syria. This has meant that the protests in Yemen have been read by the media largely as the product of a bursting of the flood gates in Tunisia, rather than as a new manifestation of old conflicts, which may not be resolved by the simple removal of one man from a seat of highly contested and questionable power.

Alexandra Lewis is a researcher and doctoral student at the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York, where her focus is on violent young offending in Yemen.