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April Longley Alley is the senior Arabian Peninsula analyst for the International Crisis Group. She holds an M.A. in Arab studies and a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University. A former Fulbright fellow, Dr. Alley has written extensively on Yemen for a variety of publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, PS: Political Science and Politics,The Middle East Journal, the Journal of Democracy, and The National. She has conducted fieldwork in Yemen since 2004 and currently resides in Dubai.
Once touted as a relative success story among Arab uprisings, the internationally backed transition process in Yemen has unravelled in the wake of the September 21 Houthi takeover of Sana. Nominally there is still a political process in place, but events on the ground are moving in a different direction and the country appears poised for yet another round of upheaval, possibly more transformative than the events of 2011.
This project was originally imagined as a multi-authored consideration of Yemen’s April 2009 parliamentary process — its lead-up, outcomes, and likely consequences. Following the postponement of these elections, the authors have instead sought to examine not only the stated and implicit reasons for the delay, but also Yemen’s increasing political unrest — turmoil which the regime has helped foster and to which it has begun to overreact. For the authors, the key question is less whether the elections will be held in 2011, but whether the country will remain intact until then.
