'One blood and one destiny?' Yemen's relations with the Gulf Co-operation Council

For years Yemen has been the poor, neglected relation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Long-promised aid commitments from the GCC have not materialized because of concerns over Yemeni absorption capacity. However, Yemen's 'Arab Spring' protests and political crisis pushed the GCC member-states to grant an unprecedented foreign policy role to the GCC Secretariat. GCC representatives came up with a credible transition plan for Yemen which eventually saw the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the holding of parliamentary elections at the beginning of 2012. But Yemen's crisis has also highlighted a more long-term malaise in its relations with the GCC, namely an unwillingness to fulfil a commitment made in 2006 to extend GCC membership to Yemen. Despite the good work of the GCC in 2010 and 2011 to lessen tensions, Yemen's political crisis may return with a vengeance if governance and the economic outlook of the country are not improved. Indifference is no longer viable; extremist and insurgent groups capitalising upon and exacerbating weak governance in Yemen are a growing threat to the security of the Gulf. This report argues that Yemen must be given a realistic route to eventual accession to the GCC, not out of a sense of altruism on the part of the current member-states, but as a policy of enlightened self-interest.