Ancient Yemen, Iran, Cairo, Saudi Arabia and the Struggle for Modernity in the Arabian Peninsula Niccolo Caldararo * Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University, USA * Corresponding author: Niccolo Caldararo, Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University, USA, Tel: 1415 338 1111; E-mail: cald@sfsu.edu Rec date: July 05, 2016, Acc date: September 28, 2016, Pub date: September 30, 2016 Copyright: © 2016 Caldararo N. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract War in Yemen involves old enemies yet has roots in contemporary global tensions. The focus is on a tribal group, the Houthis and news media have distorted the history and motives of this group. Considerable cultural understanding and background are necessary to have a clear picture of the war and the local as well as international players. History of the Saudis rise to power and their religious association with the Wahhabi movement and Saudi support for its proselytizing activities abroad and especially is a central element to understand the conflict. Also important is the history of imperialism in the area, especially the Ottoman and British invasions. Keywords: Houthis; Saudi Arabia; Wahhabism; Iran; Sunni; Shia; Water; Oil Introduction While we hear much today about the Silk Road and its importance in the past to trade and cultural exchange, we fnd little reference to the Spice Road that blossomed across Africa and Asia more than 3,000 years ago [1]. Tis means of exchange of products and ideas had signifcant efects on the civilizations and peoples it connected. For Korotayev [2] it was largely maintained and originated by the autonomous communities of the Sabaeans. Te descendants of these democratic communities can be found in contemporary Yemen. While western philosophers worship the idea of the brief democracy of Athenian slaveowners, few recognize the role or the achievements of the Sabaeans, whose eforts touched worlds far and beyond those of the Greeks and resonate today in the confict between the old colonial powers of Europe and the peoples of the Middle East. Today the news is focused on the war in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and the idea of an opposition of geographic frontlines between Shia and Sunni populations. Tis ignores the fact that these populations are spread out over the Middle East and the north of Africa and southern parts of Eurasia unevenly and in most areas are intermixed. A simple view of this distribution (leaving out immigration to Europe and the Americas) is shown in Figure 1. Arguments of Saudi and Iranian confrontations take place outside of reality as the Shia are already in Saudi Arabia as there are Sunni in Iran. Te threat from Yemen is not that the Houthi might drive from Sana’a to Mecca (about the distance from Los Angeles to Portland, given an indirect road system) but that the Saudi regime might collapse both due to outside pressure and internal stress. Tomas Hegghammer [3] has given a concise analysis why this is unlikely though possible, yet past threats were blunted by the Saudis calling in the Egyptian military as they have done now. Hegghammer [3] reviews the history of Saudi repression and it is chilling how the kingdom has maintained a brutal silence over the past near 100 years. Nevertheless, while a moderately secular Iraq became a substantial threat to Saudi rule under the Baathist Party as it did Iran [4,5], revolutionary Iran posed a combined threat of Shia sect and democratic change. Saudi continuity and hegemony depend substantially on western power and the implication that no change to its existence or authority will be tolerated by the west. Figure 1: Dark green nominal Shia, light green basically Sunni. Te continued resistance of the Houthis to Saudi hegemony is seen by the west in almost black and white Sunni-Shia opposition, mixing the Iranian threat with fundamentalism. A more wrong-headed conception is hard to imagine, yet western fantasies about the Middle East have been so consistently devoid of fact, as Edward Said noted [6,7], one should not be surprised. Te way the Saudis and other Sunni governments see this threat in Yemen can be gauged not only by the amount of resources the Saudis are allocating to crushing the Houthis [8,9], but by the involvement of other Sunni state forces and recently Columbian mercenaries hired by the United Arab Emirates [10]. But an opposite trend has also occurred within this readjustment. For example, in the case of Saudi Arabia, where its internal tensions from the process of modernization were defused at home (which peaked with the repression of the November 20 th , 1979 attacks on Mecca and Medina by Juhaiman) [11]. But they were successfully projected onto other points of the region by geopolitical events as in the creation of the jihadis for resistance of the Soviets in Afghanistan and the struggle against ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia [3]. Te success of the Saudis in this projection continues today in Syria, Libya, Chechnya, Iraq, Somalia and Central Africa, India, Pakistan and Indonesia and the Philippines. Te uprisings against Saudi rule, as in the Arab Spring, were quickly repressed and redirected. Tis genius of Anthropology Caldararo, Anthropol 2016, 4:3 DOI: 10.4172/2332-0915.1000171 Review Article Open Access Anthropol, an open access journal ISSN: 2332-0915 Volume 4 • Issue 3 • 1000171