Yemen Arab Republic

Yemen Arab Republic, former country in northwestern Yemen from 1962, when the Zaydī Shiʿi Mutawakkilite imamate was overthrown, to 1990, when the republic joined with South Yemen to form a united Yemen. The government, whose capital was in Sanaa, took charge with the support of Egypt and had a notably Pan-Arabist orientation. Its takeover of North Yemen stabilized only during the presidency of Ali Abdullah Saleh (1978–90), whose consolidation of power allowed him to pursue unification and serve as president of Yemen until 2012.

Independence of the Mutawakkilite imamate (1918–62)

North Yemen became independent at the end of World War I in 1918, with the departure of the Ottoman forces; the imam of the Zaydīs, Yahya Muhammad al-Mutawakkil, became the de facto ruler in the north by virtue of his lengthy campaign against the Ottoman presence in Yemen. In the 1920s Imam Yahya sought to consolidate his hold on the country by working to bring the Shafiʿi areas under his administrative jurisdiction and by suppressing much of the intertribal feuding and tribal opposition to the imamate. In an effort to enhance the effectiveness of his campaigns against the tribes and other fractious elements, the imam sent a group of Yemeni youth to Iraq in the mid-1930s to learn modern military techniques and weaponry. These students would eventually become the kernel of domestic opposition to Yahya and his policies, culminating in his assassination in 1948. Much to the consternation of the plotters, however, Yahya’s son Ahmad succeeded in bringing together many of the tribal elements of the north, overthrew the new government, and installed himself as imam. In 1958 he formed a confederation with the United Arab Republic, led by the Pan-Arabist Gamal Abdel Nasser, known as the United Arab States, but it ended after the dissolution of the United Arab Republic. Ahmad died of natural causes in September 1962, and his son Muhammad al-Badr became imam.

Birth of the Yemen Arab Republic (1962) and the North Yemen civil war (1962–70)

Within a week of the new imam’s accession, elements of the military, supported by a variety of political organizations, staged a coup and declared the foundation of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen). The young imam escaped from his battered palace, fled into the northern highlands, and began the traditional process of rallying the tribes to his cause. The new republic called upon Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt for assistance, and Egyptian troops and equipment arrived almost immediately to defend the new regime of Abdullah al-Sallal, the nominal leader of the 1962 revolution and the first president of North Yemen. Nearly as quickly, Saudi Arabia provided aid and sanctuary to the imam and his largely tribal royalist forces.

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The conflict between the imam’s royalist forces and the republicans escalated into a full-blown civil war that continued fitfully and tragically until 1970. Participation, however, was not limited to the Yemenis: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Jordan supported the royalists, whereas Egypt and the Soviet Union and other Eastern-bloc states supported the republicans. Britain and the United States, as well as the United Nations, also eventually became major players, even if only at the diplomatic level.

Compromise of 1970

By the late 1960s, however, the Yemenis decided that the only logical outcome of the conflict was a compromise, which would have as its most important side effect the departure of the various foreign forces. Sallal’s pro-Egyptian regime was ousted in a bloodless coup in late 1967 and replaced by a nominally civilian one headed by Pres. Abdul Rahman al-Eryani. More than two years later—with the blessing of the two major foreign participants, Egypt and Saudi Arabia—the leaders of North Yemen agreed upon the Compromise of 1970, which established a republican government in which some major positions were assigned to members of the royalist faction. It was agreed that the imam and his family were not to return to Yemen or to play any role whatsoever in the new state; accordingly, the imam went into exile in Britain and died there in the late 1990s. The compromise led to an erosion of the role of the tribal aristocracy, however, and the growing impact of Saudi hegemony in the country stirred a backlash in the decades ahead, most notably in the form of a Zaydī revivalist movement—the seed of the Houthi rebellion that began in the 21st century.

Rise of military government and Ali Abdullah Saleh

The compromise government embarked haltingly upon a program of political and economic development, with few resources and even fewer skilled personnel to implement the desired changes. Impatient, the military and some tribal elements dismissed the civilian cabinet in 1974 and replaced it with a military-led Command Council headed by Ibrahim al-Hamdi, who appointed a cabinet largely composed of technocrats. That government slowly but surely began to build a set of more modern institutions and to implement the beginnings of a program of development—at the local as well as the national level. Not all sectors of the population, however, accepted the government’s new powers and influence over traditional political, economic, and social relationships. A clear indication of this discontent was the assassination of two presidents in rapid succession (Hamdi in 1977 and, only eight months later, Ahmad al-Ghashmi in 1978). The People’s Constituent Assembly, which had been created somewhat earlier, selected Col. Ali Abdullah Saleh as Ghashmi’s successor. Despite early public skepticism and a serious coup attempt in late 1978, Saleh managed to conciliate most factions, to improve relations with Yemen’s neighbors, and to resume various programs of economic and political development and institutionalization. More firmly in power in the 1980s, he created the political organization that was to become known as his party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), and steered Yemen into the age of oil.

Unification with South Yemen

The Mutawakkilite imamate had resuscitated Zaydī claims to “historic Yemen,” which included Aden and other areas of South Yemen, as well as an area farther north (including the region of Asir and areas around the Najrān oasis and Jizan [Jazan] that Saudi Arabia annexed in 1934). The idea was carried over into the republic, encouraged by the Pan-Arabism of its leaders and an attempt by the Egyptians to spur a Nasserist revolt in South Yemen. The independence of South Yemen from the British protectorate raised expectations in both states for unification, but the drastic divergence of political and socioeconomic orientations of the Nasserist North Yemen and Marxist South Yemen made the prospect increasingly remote in the 1960s and 1970s. A brief border war took place in 1972 and again in 1979, both ending with short-lived agreements to unify.

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In the 1980s, as Saleh consolidated authority in North Yemen—by extending services and job opportunities into villages while also co-opting or undermining the Zaydī aristocracy—he opened new room to maneuver in negotiations with South Yemen. At the same time the impending collapse of Soviet support for South Yemen placed pressure on that government to reconcile with North Yemen. Further motivation for the countries to unify was the discovery of oil and natural gas in both countries at roughly the same time and in roughly the same geographic region (from Maʾrib to Shabwah). On November 30, 1989, Saleh made a historic visit to Aden, where he was greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd. That day he and Ali Salem al-Beidh, the leader of South Yemen, signed the Aden Accord to unify the country. The merger took place on May 22, 1990, with Saleh as president.