Yemen in Crisis by Helen Lackner

Author:Helen Lackner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: URN:978-0-863-56188-7
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc.
Published: 2017-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Unification and the 1994 War

The euphoria which greeted Yemeni unification in 1990 was all too short-lived and different aspects have been covered in Chapter 3. Yemeni unity had been the most popular state slogan for the previous two decades throughout Yemen and there are many reasons why unification was so welcome. In brief, they include the following:

– Most Yemenis from one part of the country had relatives in another through common tribal origin, migration or mixed marriages.

– The prospect of freedom of movement within the country as a whole was a major incentive.

– Hopes for better economic conditions: Southerners often believed that economic conditions were better in the YAR; they were soon disillusioned once unification happened.

– The recently discovered oil fields were along their common borders and the realisation that the alternative to sharing them within a single state would have been to fight over them.

– For people with nationalist feelings, the prospect of a stronger Yemeni republic in the Arab world and beyond held a strong appeal.

In the early months, the South experienced positive changes which were perceived as side-effects of unification: the broadening of personal and political freedoms with the multiplication of newspapers and journals, the creation of any number of political parties and the open discussions which were taking place throughout the country in qat sessions and elsewhere. Some negative features also appeared in the earliest days: deterioration of living conditions due to the changes in currency and rapid price rises, the liberalisation of trade, and mainly the ending of a basic basket of subsidised food. With the transfer of many senior politicians and officials to Sana‘a immediately after unification, Aden soon lost its political and administrative importance, which in turn led to economic decline. Many deplored two immediate changes: the spread of the Northern qat, and family laws to the whole country. Until the 1994 watershed, the administrative system in the Southern governorates remained largely unchanged from the socialist period, with middle- and low-level administrators staying in place, whether they were politically aligned or independent. The fundamental changes included the re-privatisation of agricultural land and housing, industrial assets, and anything else around. All these contributed to the increasing alienation of the population of the former PDRY from the new regime.

In addition to these early disappointments, worse features started emerging as early as 1991 with a series of actual and attempted assassinations of senior political figures opposed to Saleh, within both the YSP and other parties, and mostly targeted at Southerners.2 These attacks increased in number and intensity until the 1994 short civil war. The 1993 elections brought a major change, as they ended the YSP’s strong position in government and accelerated the transformation of the regime in what was, by then, known as the Southern Governorates. At those elections, although it came second to the GPC with 18.5 percent of votes, the YSP only took 56 seats while Islah with 17 percent of the votes took 62. The fifty/fifty sharing agreement of the unification deal came to an end as Islah with more seats joined the coalition with Saleh’s GPC, alongside the YSP.

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