PROFILE
Region: The Middle East
Climate: Arid, hot desert
Leader(s): Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, since 2015 (at time of writing), leadership disputed
Population: 25,408,000
Capital: Sana'a, Aden (sort of)
Largest City: Sana'a
Currency: Yemeni Rial
Languages: Arabic
Currency: Yemeni Rial
Languages: Arabic
Independence: North Yemen - 1918 from the Ottoman Empire, South Yemen - 1967 from the United Kingdom, Unified in 1990
Territories or Colonies: None
http://www.cfr.org/yemen/yemen-crisis/p36488
Territories or Colonies: None
THE FACTS
Yemen, officially The Republic of Yemen, (the most popular official name for a country: the Republic of ___) is a country in the middle east at the far southwest of both the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and Asia in general.
Yemen is relatively arid in the eastern and less populated part of the country, but in the more heavily populated west it has some vegetation.
The country is important in trade as it lies on the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the gateway from Africa, Asia and Australia to Europe via the Suez Canal.
Along with Somalia and Djibouti, Yemen has problems with pirates that prey on ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait.
ANCIENT HISTORY (????-650s)
Now, the Middle East as a region, as vast and diverse as it is, is often associated with Islam. All of the countries in the region except Israel are muslim and many of them are theocracies ruled by a muslim monarch.
Nations in this region are very conservative, with laws against drinking, public displays of affection or homosexuality.
It’s a common misconception that the Middle East is home to all or most of the world’s muslims. There are huge populations of Muslims in the Caucasus Region, the Balkans, Kazakhstan, India and Indonesia among other places.
Islam is an important factor in the history of Yemen, but it doesn’t really come into play until the 700s. Islam, despite what many would like you to believe is very closely related to both Christianity and Judaism. They are sort of three branches from the same tree, or maybe Judaism is the trunk and Christianity and Islam are the branches. Whatever way you decide to look at it, these religions are very closely related.
The main differences between these religions is age. Judaism is a good 3,500 years old, christianity is about 1,900 years old and Islam is a measly 1,450 years old. Which is REALLY old, but not nearly as old as Judaism and Christianity, which means there was a long portion of time when Yemen was well connected, but not a Muslim state.
The reason Yemen was so well connected was because of its perfect position. Yemen is located in the middle east, which really was the middle back in the old days. The world was believed to be just Afro-Eurasia until the late 1400s when the New World was re-discovered and even later when Antarctica and Australia were discovered.
If you look on a map the Middle East is the midpoint between Africa, Europe and East and Central Asia. Yemen was in close proximity to the Roman Empire’s outposts in Arabia, Northern Arabia, Egypt, Central Asia and other areas in Southeastern Africa.
Now, what did Yemen trade? Their primary goods were spices and incense, like Frankincense and Myrrh, both resins from trees that can be used to make perfume and other things like that and they both fetched top dollar. Frankincense and Myrrh might seem familiar if you’re familiar with the nativity story where the three wise men each bring Frankincense, Myrrh & Gold, the first two I’m guessing were not as popular as Mr. Gold. It seems kind of rude to bring gold like that. The Wise Men should have agreed on a price limit so nobody looked stingy.
But Frankincense and Myrrh aren’t cheap, they were highly coveted products in the ancient world.
Before the rise of Islam several kingdoms ruled the area known today as Yemen. They all capitalized on the dolla dolla billz (which back then was salt) that could be gained from selling spices and incense.
In around 150 B.C.E. the Romans came to Egypt. You probably know the story, Shakespeare did, Mark Antony and Cleopatra were in a pretty intense relationship that ended when Mark Antony left for Rome and some other things happened. I’m not here to recap Antony and Cleopatra, but it was set in this time period and I will go into this more in the Egypt post (which will be a long and complex post, I foresee).
Anyway, the Romans show up in Egypt and add it to their increasingly ridiculously large list of “Places We Want”. The Romans flex their colonizing muscles and reroute much of the incense and spice trade away from the land routes favored by the Yemeni rulers (they favored them because that’s the only way they made money) and rerouted them through the red sea and across Egypt (which Rome owned) to the mediterranean and up to Rome (which Rome also owned) or maybe to Greece or Spain (both places Rome owned).
This obviously crippled the economy because like in Zambia (where they put all their chips on “copper”) putting all your chips on one easily disruptable industry is a really bad idea (looking at you Modern Arabian Nations with your oil dependent economies. Let’s hope this isn’t a retread of Ancient Yemen).
The smaller kingdoms who oversaw trade slowly dwindled down into nothingness and from their ashes arose newer kingdoms that were at the disadvantage of not having any money.
These kingdoms weren’t prosperous in any sense of the word and in the late 400s Ethiopia, at this point known as Abyssinia showed up and occupied many of the weakened city states and kingdoms that were once powerful spice barons.
An interesting side-note that will show up again in the Ethiopia post (one that I’m really looking forward to) is that Ethiopia unlike many of the other African nations wasn’t made christian when missionaries arrived, they had been Christian for a really long time and even today Ethiopia is home to one of the oldest branches of Christianity: Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.
The Ethiopians were lead by Abraha. an Abyssinian leader. Abraha was known for his massacre of Jews in Abyssinia and Yemen. After the conquest he stayed in Yemen to rule it and expand the Abyssinian Colonial Empire. Abraha sent a war party north to Mecca to try and capture it but failed.
As you would expect of a group that’s being controlled by a crazy war-monger like Abraha, Yemeni people weren’t thrilled and looked for any way they could of overthrowing the Abyssinians, but their military superiority prevented that from happening alone, so the people of Yemen went to the Persian Sassanids for help. The Sassanids overthrew the Abyssinians, but the Sassanids instead of leaving started to occupy the land again.
The Yemeni people just traded one group of colonial occupiers for another, but by 628 Islam had taken hold in the region as the dominant monotheistic religion, which before was Judaism.
The Sassanian leadership could sense the religious landscape was changing. The majority of the populace of Yemen at this point were muslim, but the ruling Sassanids were either Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian (one of the first monotheistic religions).
The Sassanids’ control of the region became less and less secure and finally it was completely relinquished in the mid 600s.
ISLAM SPREADS (650s-1538)
Islam reached the region in the early 600s, and spread reaaaaaaally fast. The Yemeni people (at this point still a disparate group of tribes and city states, not one national identity) had experienced a period of about two hundred years under oppressive colonial regimes, with little economic freedom or prosperity and were looking for answers. This is one reason why Islam spread so quickly. It was a religious alternative to Christianity or Judaism, which the Yemeni people were wary of because of how the Christian Abyssinians and predominantly Christian and Jewish Sassanians treated them.
Another factor for Islam’s quick spread was its close proximity. Mecca was about 500 kilometers away from Yemen and Arabian soldiers from Mecca often passed through Yemen en route to Africa.
In 632, Yemen was unified with the rest of Arabia under Muhammad’s successor Abu Bakr, but broke off. (DISCLAIMER: I know that Abu Bakr is a really incendiary topic for some muslims and forms the main difference between Shia and Sunni muslims, so I’m not really going to discuss him in great detail.)
Abu Bakr had trouble unifying the peninsula. He would often send representatives who would just never come back and be like “chillin’ in Yemen now Abu Bakr, sorry”.
At this time (the early 800s to 1538) Yemen was still a muslim area, but not under the control of the unified Arabia (not as unified as one would hope I guess) and instead went back to its status as a land of many small kingdoms and city-states ruled by various dynasties like the Salayhids, Fatimids, Ayyubids and Rasulids. (Side note the Fatimid flag and Ayyubid flags are terrible, solid green and solid yellow, respectively. It’s almost as bad as Libya’s flag.)
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| Former Libyan Flag... *Comic Book Guy Voice* Worst... Flag... Ever |
After the control of these various dynasties started to die out, the opportunists over in Portugal saw an opening. They were busy with their entrance into Indian Ocean trade, colonizing Mozambique and other southern African states. The Portuguese took control of the Yemeni Island of Socotra (home to some of the coolest trees ever) but they failed at securing the mainland. The Mamelukes tried to secure the mainland, but failed too, and finally the Ottomans, in 1538, took control of Yemen after their crushing defeat of Egypt in 1517.
Now, why was everybody from Europe to Africa trying to gain control of Yemen? The obvious answer is that the various dynasties weren’t in any way united and you would think that defeating an army that is splintered into many groups would be easy (except for Portugal), but the real reason for wanting to capture the land was the hot (literally) new bean that was taking the world by storm in the early 1500s: Coffee. Coffee was becoming the new beverage of choice for Europeans after tea and beer, but it could only be grown in the coffee belt, which Europe was too far north to be in the coffee belt which meant that all of their coffee had to be imported, and Yemen was in a pretty convenient location, being on the entrance to the red sea, so since coffee was such a prized commodity, and Yemen was a good place to grow it, everybody was fighting over it.
Interesting side fact, the word mocha, comes from the Yemeni town of Al Mukha, a coffee trading port in the highlands of Yemen.
TWO YEMENS AND UNIFICATION (1538-PRESENT)
As the Ottomans did, they didn’t like letting go and didn’t until the early 1900s. Well, it’s not this simple. The British at the time were expanding their empire into the middle east and they captured the lands in the south setting up their government in Aden, Yemen’s second largest city and expanding their territory to southern Yemen. The Ottomans remained with North Yemen, setting their territory’s capital in Sana’a. This began the conflict that still rages on today.
The two colonial powers drew a border separating North Yemen from South Yemen.
The Ottomans kept control of North Yemen until in 1911, a revolution began against the Ottomans. The residents of North Yemen were fed up with being controlled by a far away empire which they saw as a remnant of a different time. After seven years and defeat in World War One, the Ottomans evacuated North Yemen, the first half of the modern country to gain independence.
Starting in 1918, North Yemen was transformed into an imamate, a monarchy ruled by an imam, in this case Imam Yahya Hamididdin, who revitalized the country’s traditional muslim identity, but many in the country were unhappy as Yemen was lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of political freedoms and technological advancements.
The Imam became less and less popular and finally in 1948 the Imam was assassinated, but his son overthrew the revolutionaries and regained control of the country. Amad bin Yahya Hamididdin, the son of Yahya Hamididdin assured people that he would rule the country fairly, unlike his father and create a government with actual representatives, but of course he was full of shit, as many of these recently installed revolutionaries are.
Meanwhile in South Yemen, still a British territory, the local government rulers were starting to get worried. After a leader gets assassinated and his son comes in saying he’s going to enact all of these reforms and then reaffirms a monarchy, you’d probably be a little worried, so the local leaders offer their support to the British.
Britain said it would be advantageous if all of the local governments unified into a larger government that would be good if they ever needed to leave forever. They said they should be prepared to fight North Yemen.
In 1958, the British controlled South Yemen split into a federation of Six States, which is kind of like a team of countries. It’s hard to explain because there aren’t any federations anymore, but they were usually provisional and lasted only a few years. Two or more countries, bonded by similar culture or more realistically getting fucked by the same country combine forces for a common goal. This federation was backed by the British and was still technically British land even though they had almost full sovereignty.
But almost wasn’t enough. The Southern Yemeni people saw the Northern Yemeni people and their economic and political independence and wanted in on it. Britain wanted to avoid conflict with their almost independent protectorate so they left Yemen in 1967, but not after a war with the revolutionaries. After all of the conflict leadership was replaced with the racist and/or nationalist sounding National Liberation Front (the words National, Liberation or Front in a party doesn’t usually have good connotations).
The newly born country was renamed the People’s Republic of South Yemen, and was in immediate disarray from all of the fighting. Their communist leanings made it hard to make friends with the West. They didn’t receive any help or aid from Western countries so instead decided to go full Communist and ask the USSR for help. The USSR had been looking for ways to expand communism around the globe, from China in the East, to Angola and Benin in West Africa to Yemen in the Middle East (a strategic trading location).
Meanwhile in Northern Yemen a civil war broke out between the Imam (the royal leader of North Yemen) and civilians who wanted a republic with elected officials. The war lasted until 1970, and became a major area for proxy war. Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians, the UN, the British and the Americans all threw their hat in the ring for different sides. The Arab nations supported the royalty, on account that Saudi Arabia was a huuuge fan of royalty itself and the UK and US supported the civilians fighting for a republic.
In 1970 a compromise was struck that saw North Yemen becoming a republic, but the royal family could maintain a few positions in power in the legislature. It seems like the royalty got the short end of the stick, but I have no sympathy for oppressive monarchs.
Like they often do the recently installed republican government told the North Yemeni people that the following years would be marked with reforms and improvements to infrastructure, education and civil rights, but with no resources to do any of the things they promised, they were overthrown by Military Leader Ibrahim al-Hamdi who ditched the idea of having any reforms in favor of an oligarchy run by Yemeni business owners. However, al-Hamdi did, after much pushback from the public, offer to try some reforms. He forced Yemen into the 20th Century replacing many cultural institutions with western ones, which angered the sector of the populace in tune with their cultural heritage.
Al-Hamdi’s regime was unpopular he was assassinated along with his successor eight months later.
A period of instability marred by coups rocked North Yemen until 1978, when officials from both North and South Yemen said it might be beneficial to unify. This was difficult because of ideological and cultural differences which led to a war, but in 1990 the two countries unified. Both countries found oil and decided to unify to share the profits and resources used in selling the oil. Both countries also lost a lot of aid money from the USSR and were forced to get each others backs to make it through the time of economic rebirth and instability.
The two sides agreed that the unified Yemen would be a non-communist republic, favoring the governmental style of North Yemen (this is why the current capital Sana’a is in the North). After 1990, the country was struck with a series of assassinations and suicide bombings which left the residents of the country afraid. The already weak economy faltered yet again and food prices skyrocketed. This conflict postponed the elections until 1993.
In 1993, the elections had gone somewhat smoothly, but yet again conflict was looming. The vice-president fled Sana’a for Aden (the capital of former South Yemen) and threatened to remove himself from politics, which would leave the country semi-leaderless again.
In 1995, the economy failed again when remittances stopped coming in. Remittances are small amounts of money sent back to the country by workers living abroad and in many 3rd world countries are an important part of the GDP.
The next important development in Yemen’s history was in 2001, after 9/11 when Yemen promised to help George W. Bush defeat the terrorist elements in the country, something that still hasn’t happened. Al Qaeda used to pose the most threat in the nation, but now ISIS has infiltrated the country and is proving to be more of a problem.
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| Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemeni President until 2012 |
Finally on our long journey to the present in Yemen, was 2011. In 2011 the “Arab Spring” affected much of the Middle East and North Africa including Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and if you remember Yemen. In 2011, on the “Friday of No Return” protesters called for the resignation of Saleh and after nothing happened, the presidential palace was bombed in hopes of killing Saleh. Saleh wasn’t killed, but injured badly and was sent out of the country for surgery.
Yemen’s current president took over as acting president and has been president of a disputed regime for the last four years. Yemen is a nation that has been in constant turmoil since 1967, and the future isn’t looking very bright. The regime wasn’t successfully overthrown, but protesters are continuing to fight against the current government.
YEMEN FACTS
Weddings are incredibly important in Yemeni culture and the average wedding lasts about a month.
Noah from the Bible knew Yemen as “The Land of Milk and Honey” and is the origin of that saying.
Next up, the Ancient Kingdoms of Vietnam...
http://www.cfr.org/yemen/yemen-crisis/p36488
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