Yemen into the Twenty-First Century by Mahdi Kamil;Wurth Anna;Lackner Helen;

Author:Mahdi, Kamil;Wurth, Anna;Lackner, Helen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Garnet Publishing (UK) Ltd

Implications for national unity

The unification of Yemen is an unarguable fact. Whatever difficulties may exist and despite the considerable stresses suffered by people in the Southern Governorates, the populations of these areas have no desire to challenge the unity of the country. The vast majority of Yemenis have supported unification and believed in the existence of a ‘Yemeni nation’ for many decades. This is why the slogan of ‘Yemeni Unity’ was popular throughout Yemen in the 1970s and 1980s, regardless of the political differences then existing between the two regimes. Population movements in Yemen over the centuries and in particular in the last half century mean that almost all Yemenis have relatives elsewhere within the country, frequently in more than one distant governorate. Although this creates some tensions it also strengthens the cultural bonds and the identity of the people as Yemenis.

Within this context the current debates and challenges to state authority in the land redistribution process are no more than elements in the overall process of the country’s political development. Those who challenge the state’s right to land do so on the basis that they claim it as individuals or tribes, but these debates take place within the accepted premise that the country is one. These are struggles for local power and private control of resources; they are not in any way challenges to the state as a united entity. If anything they are a challenge to state ownership to the benefit of private property.

This fieldwork was carried out over six years following the short civil conflict of 1994 during which the Yemeni Socialist Party was defeated and effectively exiled. Its members remaining in the country, who opposed the ‘secession’, were not rewarded by the regime, which continued to repress the party’s activities. Perception in the areas where this work was carried out was that those who were supposed to receive state lands (the dispossessed) were supporters of the YSP, while those who claimed the land and/or denied the existence of state lands were opponents of the YSP and supporters either of the GPC or the Islah, which at that time were in alliance. There is no doubt that all the groups involved in the land issues discussed in this chapter considered that the outcome would be determined according to political rather than any other criteria, whether legal or historical. Insofar as the poor and landless found – and to some extent still find – their political voice in the YSP and given that this party is effectively powerless, it is not surprising that by 2004, when the World Bank-financed project to allocate lands to the dispossessed farmers was reaching its end, the total area distributed was 850 feddans to 190 families, by comparison with the originally designed 9,300 feddans to 1,950 families.

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