SUMMARY
The Yemeni Congregation for Reform (at-Tajammu’u al-Yamanī lil-Iṣlāḥ), commonly called Islah, was the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch. It was a key part of the Forces of Hadi (later renamed Forces of the Presidential Leadership Council) and had several members in the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) that was the internationally recognized government of Yemen.
Islah was formed on 13 September 1990 under the leadership of Abdullah Bin Hussein Al-Ahmar, the sheikh of the powerful Hashid tribal confederation. Even as it grew into Yemen’s largest opposition party, it remained mostly loyal to the authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Al-Ahmar had close personal ties to Saleh, himself a member of the Hashid tribal confederation, as well as al-Ahmar's Sanhan clan, which meant Islah mainly backed the government up until the death of al-Ahmar in 2007. Al-Ahmar was considered the second most powerful man in Yemen under the Saleh regime, whose influence among Yemen's tribes gave him the epitome of 'Sheikh of Sheikhs'. The Islah party was however internally divided, having been formed as a coalition between the Hashid tribal confederation, a network of Salafi preachers and the Muslim Brotherhood’s local chapter. Without al-Ahmar to unite the factions it began to drift away from the government. In 2009, Islah began pressuring Saleh towards democratic political reforms, causing relations to steadily deteriorate as Saleh began a campaign to vilify Islah. Whilst al-Ahmar had brought in significant tribal participation in the movement, by default making Islah one of the largest military formations in Yemen, his death cost it the inclusion of the full Hashid tribal confederation, as the new Hashid sheikh, Sadiq al-Ahmar, chose to forge his own path even as he remained a key Islah ally.
The January 2011 Arab Spring protests that began in Tunisia, and quickly spread to Egypt and Libya, soon took hold in Yemen. Islah rather belatedly joined the protest movement, having first tried to negotiate with Saleh for his peaceful departure from power. After a particularly brutal crackdown on protesters by Saleh’s security forces (see Government of Yemen – Civilians) on March 18, several key figures supporting the regime and allied with Islah turned against Saleh. As Saleh left the country to receive treatment abroad after an assassination attempt, Islah made clear its intention to use force to hinder his return, marking the start of their state-based conflict with the Saleh government. The conflict immediately became active as Islah-aligned militias drove government forces out of Taizz, Yemen's third largest city. In July, Islah's allies in the Hashid tribal confederation formed a new formally organized group, the Alliance of Yemeni Tribes, which immediately became part of the conflict over government in Yemen. General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, a key Islah ally and Hashid tribesman, defected along with his unit in March, forming the Free Yemeni Army, and in September declared that he would use force to hinder Saleh's return. These defections played a key role in ultimately forcing Saleh from power, and the installment of his vice-president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi as the new president, and Islah-ally Mohammed Basindawa as Prime Minister.
The year-long campaign to force Saleh to resign seriously destabilized Yemen as Saleh's security forces divided against themselves. In the power-vacuum both Ansarallah and AQAP began taking control of large swathes of Yemen, sparking armed clashes between Ansarallah and Islah's tribal militias in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Islah itself also took control of large swathes of land, often through defections of governors or tribes away from the Saleh regime. In the post-Saleh aftermath, the Yemeni government had little de facto control over much of the country, as local powerbrokers were more aligned with various partisan groups. The clashes with Ansarallah, which over three years killed at least 900 people, were tied both to Ansarallah's territorial expansion and Ansarallah's siege of Islah's ally, the Dar al-Hadith movement in Dammaj.
The situation got significantly worse for Islah when the Ansarallah movement used its forces in the capital to force key Islah allies, including Muhsin and Basindawa, to resign from the government and flee the capital in September 2014. Ansarallah completed the coup in January 2015, by taking full control of the capital, thus becoming the Government of Yemen, and forcing President Hadi to flee to Aden. Islah became a key ally to Hadi as part of the Forces of Hadi, with Ali Muhsin as vice-president, as the civil war broke out in 2015. It controlled several governorates and military units that fought on the side of the pro-Hadi coalition against the Ansarallah government of Yemen.
It had adversarial relationships with many other factions within the pro-Hadi coalition, especially forces backed by the United Arab Emirates, which was suspicious of Islah's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. This resulted in Islah engaging in repeated instances of non-state fighting against rival factions within the coalition. Due to Islah being such a core part of the Forces of Hadi, it has generally been able to count on backing from the groups formal institutions in these disputes, making it often appear in the data as part of the Forces of Hadi even in non-state conflicts (such as Forces of Hadi - STC). Hadi’s resignation, along with that of vice-president Muhsin, in 2022 changed these dynamics, as the new PLC lacked the same pro-Islah central authority, making Islah appear in the data on its own as part of an intra-PLC fight against Giants Brigade and STC. Without the strong support it had received from the Hadi administration, Islah suffered a string of defeats in July and August 2022 as the UAE-backed Giants Brigade and STC violently drove Islah out of Shabwah and removed the Islah-aligned governor of Hadramaut. Islah has remained an important faction in the PLC since, if significantly diminished from its heyday as the most powerful opposition movement in Yemen.
Islah has been active in the intrastate and non-state category of violence. It has also participated in intrastate violence as a part of the Forces of the Presidential Leadership Council.
