its small population.76 However, in rushing through the reunification process a number of important issues including the role of religion, education policy, women’s rights and the details of post-unity relations were not adequately addressed. And, whilst it may be true that to try to resolve these issues before reunification would have further delayed the process, resolving these central policy matters placed tremendous pressure on the interim government and even impeded economic prosperity and political harmony because of pervasive pre-unity political and ideological differences.77
The Gulf crisis of the early 1990s, precipitated by the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990, became a turning point in the history of modern Arabia. For just as the Suez War of 1956 stimulated the rise of Arab nationalism and solidarity, the Gulf War had direct reverse military and economic consequences on the relative unity of the Arab world.78 In particular, the impact of the war on the political ideology and realpolitik of the Arab states resulted in a complete discrediting of Arab nationalism. The deep divisions created by the breaking of perceived Arab solidarity in favour of a Western-dominated alliance and security brought into question the validity of any inter-Arab solidarity based on forms of joint Arab security.79 The retrogressive development of religious extremism propagated through Islamic fundamentalism, which had ironically originated from the austere scriptural literalism of Saudi-backed Salafiyyah and Wahhābiyyah movements, was becoming a threatening force to pro-Western Arab leaders. When the new Yemeni Republic refused to support the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein, its oil-rich Gulf Arab sponsors and neighbours were angered by the Yemeni position, which they interpreted as ingratitude. The Yemen was precariously placed as the only Arab state among the 15 members of the UN Security Council at the outbreak of the Iraqi invasion and, whilst there was a unified condemnation from the other Council members, the Yemeni position was one of abstention.80 As a result of its perceived pro-Iraqi stance, which in reality had been one of neutrality, virtually all aid to the Yemen by foreign donors was either suspended or drastically cut.81 For example, US aid was cut from $23 million to three million and in addition to punitive measures by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who curbed billions of dollars of aid to the Yemen, the Saudi government revoked all the special privileges of Yemeni workers in the Kingdom in October 1990. The Saudis also began making arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture and general harassment of Yemenis living and working in the Kingdom.82 The resultant mass exodus of some 800,000 enforced returnees to the Yemen was something the new government could ill afford.83 Reliance on the remittances of migrant workers was a significant economic factor and its sudden curtailment would have further serious repercussions on the domestic economy. Furthermore, returnees from both Saudi and Kuwait brought back with them only what they could carry or salvage from the sale of their belongings, properties and businesses, rendering many of them virtually bankrupt. One deportee, Gadri Salih, described to me in some detail, briefly outlined in the Prologue, the trauma of leaving Riyadh during the first Gulf War, where he had lived as a boy after his original migration from the Yemeni community in Eccles, Greater Manchester, where he was born. After spending more than 10 years in Saudi Arabia, the contrast between his life there and the relative poverty of his father’s native village forced yet another migration just two years after his return to the Yemen when his father had died. Using both his, and his mother’s British nationality, he was forced to migrate back to Britain.84 The Yemeni government lost further export revenues to Kuwait and Iraq estimated to be worth around $100,000 million.85 The first Gulf War had a crippling effect on both the economy and international relations of the new Republic of Yemen, and reconciling itself with the major Gulf donors and the US became a political imperative for Salih. Paradoxically, the Yemeni display of Arab solidarity during the Gulf War would have probably manifested itself differently if it were not for the reunification. The PDRY had not traditionally warmed to Saddam’s regime and it had remained consistently neutral during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). However, under Ali Abdullah Salih’s leadership, the YAR had idealized Saddam’s dictatorship. Salih was personally impressed by Saddam’s Baathist rule in Iraq and he emulated a ‘Republican Guard’ and a nepotistic bureaucracy monopolized by kinship and tribal influence.86
After much protest and dissent from amongst certain sectors of the Northern shaykhdoms and questions concerning how the oil revenues were directed or, rather, misdirected, matters eventually came to a head and resulted in armed conflict. By March 1992, pro-GPC government troops and anti-government Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) forces began to occupy strategic positions throughout the Yemen.87 For some time, there was a stand-off as the ruling elite promised political concessions and economic reforms. However, for many these promises were simply political rhetoric and delaying tactics. In April 1994, fighting flared up again and the President’s forces moved swiftly to crush the YSP militias.88 Most of the conflict occurred in the north and the Islamists were also active in the fighting, justifying their involvement as a jihād against the YSP kuffār (lit., ‘unbelievers’) ideologies and forces. As the joint government and Islamic forces took control, local power amongst tribal shaykhs and political parties shifted. Aden was sacked and looted and although the war was not between the North and the South, but between political parties, Dresch notes that ‘the effect was felt by Southerners to be a Northern invasion’.89 As influential Northerners began to lay claims to land and real estate in and around Aden, it did appear to be a ‘colonisation’ of the South by the North. Further, the Islamists, largely Wahhābīs known to be backed by Saudi Arabia,90 desecrated some of the tombs of Sufi saints buried in Aden and around Ḥaḍramawt.91 The tomb chamber of Sayyidah Ḥurrah, the ancient Ṣulayḥid Ismā˓īlī Queen, was also partially destroyed in 1993 by extremist Salafīs who deemed the established practice of religious visits and pilgrimages to the site to be heretical.92 The increased power of the Islamists had also inhibited progressive steps towards the implementation of women’s rights in political participation and education. Protests against social reforms were usually led by female Islamists whose very public demonstrations were, ironically, to demand that women remain in the private domain. In addition, Islamic banking and the increasing numbers of Islamic madāris (plural of madrasah, meaning, ‘school’) augmented the Islamists’ influence throughout the Yemen.93 In the presidential kinship circles, inter-family and tribal marriages ensured a dynastic government prevailed in Sana’a, whilst, at the same time, the President and some of his close family members pursued control over many of Yemen’s best known commercial and industrial companies. Other business ventures included multinational property magnates with interests in London, Paris and New York.94
As far as the national economy is concerned, ‘the country is extremely poor, but how poor the [Salih] government may be is hard to judge and those attached to government seem extremely prosperous’.95 The contemporary global concerns of market economy capitalism, modernity, terrorism and religious extremism, particularly the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or what is now more obscurely described as ‘Islamism’,96 have in recent times appeared as ‘flashpoints’ in the developing new Yemen.97 But the Yemen with its combined ancient biblical history and recent political struggles leading to reunification and the creation of the new Republic of Yemen is far more politically progressive and modern than many other Gulf States. In relation to the eventual outcome of its recent turbulent history, it is almost as if the dramatic events between the periods of Imām Yahya and former President Ali Abdullah Salih had never happened. But the hopes amongst some Yemenis of a revival of the Zaydī Imāmate tradition may have been dashed with the recent death of Al-Hassan Hamid al-Din (1908–2003), who died in his sleep whilst in exile in Jeddah on 13 June 2003.98 He was the oldest son of Imām Yahya and was exiled in 1954 and spent most of his time between living in America and Saudi Arabia. During the 1962 revolution, the ‘Prince’ fought with ‘royalist’ forces in the far north based around Sa˓dah which was occupied by the republican army. But his failing health saw him withdraw from the conflict in 1968.99 A year later, his son was shot dead on his way to Friday prayers at the Hādī Mosque in Sa˓dah. Al-Hassan Hamid al-Din had wanted to be buried next to his father’s grave
