The Yemen Arab Republic (YAR; ), also known as Yemen (Sanaʽa) and commonly referred to as North Yemen, was a country that existed from 1962 until its unification with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (commonly known as South Yemen) in 1990, in the northwestern part of what is now Yemen.The United States extended diplomatic recognition to the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) on 19 December 1962, The Times, 20 December 1962. Its capital was Sana'a. It bordered South Yemen to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the north and the Red Sea to the west, sharing maritime borders with Djibouti and the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
The Yemen Arab Republic was formed in 1962, when a coup in the capital Sana'a saw Nasserist military officers overthrow the monarchy and proclaim a republic. The overthrow triggered an 8-year civil war that ended with the defeat of the monarchists and the victory of pro-republican forces. The following years were marked by political instability, civil conflicts, frequent political assassinations and military coups: the country was ruled by a military junta from 1962 to 1967 and again from 1974 to 1978. Relative stability began with the rise to power of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was able to successfully consolidate his position in the government. The YAR eventually managed to establish good relations with many Arab states and the United States, for which it served as a counterweight to communist South Yemen, but it maintained ties with the USSR, relying on the weapons it purchased from it. On May 22, 1990, the YAR united with the PDRY (South Yemen) to form the current Republic of Yemen, under the leadership of Saleh.
Background Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen
Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 after the First World War, northern Yemen became an independent state as the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen.
The first king of the independent country was Yahya Muhammad Hamid ad-Din. Having declared Yemen's independence from the Ottomans, he proclaimed himself king and achieved international recognition for the kingdom in 1926. Hamid ad-Din created the kingdom's first regular army. He fought a war with Saudi Arabia and did not recognize his border with the British protectorate of Aden, leading to periodic clashes with British troops. But he focused primarily on consolidating his power and creating a viable central government and appointed his sons to rule various provinces of the kingdom. After almost 30 years of rule (30 October 1918 – 17 February 1948 as a king), he was assassinated in what became known as the Al-Waziri coup. He was succeeded by his son, Ahmad bin Yahya. Like his father, Ahmad was a conservative. Ahmad's ruthless, arbitrary, and inconsistent rule made him the target of coup attempts and frequent assassination attempts, which he narrowly escaped. His enemies ranged from ambitious family members to forward-looking pan-Arabists and Republicans. His abrupt temperament and unpredictable behaviour united and set against him a variety of enemies. The monarchy deliberately exploited the kingdom's highly fragmented tribal society and used frequent tribal wars for remaining in power. In foreign policy, his only constant goal was to expel Britain from Aden in order to annex it to his kingdom. But he was not destined to realize his ambitions: he died suddenly in his sleep on September 19, 1962.
Throughout the existence of the absolute monarchy, Yemen was a very underdeveloped state. The complete conservatism of the kings and the unwillingness of the absolute monarchy to modernize in general brought with them the unfortunate but quite logical consequences of an underdeveloped economy and almost complete absence of roads or motor transport. The kingdom was predominantly an agricultural country. The rule of Hamid ed-Din (Although Hamid ad-Din took some steps towards creating a modern state, they were not enough) and especially Ahmad was always autocratic and conservative; Ahmad never brooked suggestions. Yemen remained a semi-feudal state, where every detail, no matter how insignificant or trivial, had to be approved by the imam, even for a government truck to move in Taiz or for mules to get fodder.Dresch, p. 67.
History
The coup d'etat and a civil war
The Yemeni kingdom's lack of modernity and development led to revolutionary and anti-monarchist ideas in various layers of society. The army also fell victim to dissent. It had many anti-monarchist soldiers and officers with Republican and Nasserist views. In 1962, at least four plots against the king were planned in Yemen, two of which were prepared by military commanders. In December 1961, the Organization of Free Officers (similar to the Nasserist "Free Officers Movement" in Egypt) was created in the Yemeni Kingdom, the purpose of which was to coordinate an anti-monarchist coup.Dr. Saeed Al-Ghulaisi, The Yemeni September Revolution: Its Leaders and Internal and External Conflicts 1962-1967, Sana'a University, p. 31
[الدكتور سعيد الغليسي , ثورة سبتمبر اليمنية قاداتها وصراعاتها الداخلية و الخارجية 1962م – 1967م , جامعة صنعاء, ص31]
But King Ahmad died suddenly, throwing the plotters into disarray. His son Muhammad al-Badr was crowned in his place on September 19. Badr promised to modernize Yemen so that it could "catch up with the caravan of world progress." We will probably never know whether he had any intention of implementing the promised reforms in the long term, because the military revolutionaries quickly switched its plot from the king to his son. Just a week after Badr's coronation, a coup took place in Sana'a on September 26 in which a group of Nasserist officers called the Revolutionary Command Council overthrew the Yemeni monarchy. King Badr and his accomplices fled. The new government declared the birth of the "Free Yemeni Republic", abolished slavery,Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 352 a curfew was imposed and the Yemeni military police was formed.نشأة الشرطة العسكرية The coup in the north almost coincided (and inspired) with the beginning of the uprising and emergency in the south (in Aden). The first country to recognize the republic was the USSR. Two days after the coup, Abdullah al-Sallal, one of the main organizers of the coup and the first president of the newborn republic, said: "The corrupt monarchy which ruled for a thousand years was a disgrace to the Arab nation and to all humanity. Anyone who tries to restore it is an enemy of God and man!".
But Badr not only survived, but was also able to unite a lot of the tribes that supported him in the opposition to Sallal. He received support from other monarchies (such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan), who were afraid of Sallal's revolutionary nasserist regime and feared that the coup would spread to their monarchy too (Al-Sallal opened the Arabian Peninsula Office in 1963 and openly called for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and the creation of a unified socialist Arabia). At the same time, Egypt began to support Sallal's government, supplying them weapons, military advisers and even sending Egyptian forces to fight against royalists later. As a result, this coup d'état marked the beginning of the North Yemen Civil War that pitted republican troops, assisted by the United Arab Republic (Egypt), against Badr's royalist forces, supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The war was very expensive for Egypt. In 1967, most of the Egyptian troops were withdrawn from North Yemen following the Six-Day War. In November 1967, the royalists laid siege to the capital Sana'a, but the Republican resistance was not suppressed and, in February 1968, the siege was lifted. Despite the fact that territorially, most of Yemen remained under the control of al-Badr, most of the big cities remained in the hands of the Republicans and their Egyptian allies. In 1970 Saudi Arabia, the main ally of King Badr, which was a fundamental enemy of the republican regime, suddenly recognized the Yemen Arab Republic, and other countries, such as the United Kingdom, quickly followed its example. For Badr, this was a complete surprise and humiliation as no one consulted with him, and so, after 8 years, the Republicans de facto won a cruel war, which officially ended in December 1, and received recognition of their republic. The civil war further weakened the economy of the newborn republic.
Post-war period Although the war was over, its consequences remained. The country's already small infrastructure was badly damaged by fighting, bombing and shelling, the weak economy collapsed, and people became even poorer. The first decade after the war was marked by political instability (and several coups of dissident officers).
Rebuilding North Yemen's infrastructure after the civil war proved extremely problematic. Apart from the devastated economy, there were other problems: the military took up to 50 percent of the national budget, amounting to only about £9 million in total, which was hopelessly inadequate in the circumstances. The army was the main social lift, but it (like the government) was riddled with graft and corruption. Controlled by the government, the military's logistics system not only depended on Sana'a's trust in the loyalty of local commanders, but was also susceptible to bribery and corruption. Although various leaders of the Yemen Arab Republic attempted to modernize the state, increase literacy, combat corruption, and rebuild and expand small infrastructure, this did not have the expected impact on the development of the country, which by 1990 remained very underdeveloped, poor, and mired in corruption, largely due to political instability and widespread nepotism.
Back in the 1960s, the Republican government formed the "Ministry of Tribal Affairs" or MTA (Arabic: وزارة شؤون القبائل) to deal with tribal issues and resolve tribe conflicts, which spread under the monarchy. The first president of the Yemen Arab Republic, Abdullah al-Sallal, was overthrown even before the civil war ended, in 1967, and was succeeded by Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, the first and last civilian leader in North Yemen. He opposed the Yemeni monarchy, but made moves to reconcile with royalists at the end of the civil war. In 1970, he reached a national peace accord with many supporters of the royal regime and established formal relations with Saudi Arabia, persuading it to recognize new republic. Under his rule, a unification agreement with South Yemen was reached in 1972 (which formed the basis for unification in 1990), a permanent constitution was adopted, and the first parliamentary elections were held.
However, during the Eryani period, the Yemen Arab Republic remained a weak country by all measures. In fact, despite the presence of a central government, this government was very weak: North Yemen was in social chaos and was ruled by tribal and military power centers that emerged and strengthened after the overthrow of the officer Sallal in 1967: for example, parliament being dominated by tribal elites.Nohlen et al., p293 During those times, the penetration of tribal sheikhs into all state institutions reached a new level. All important army units were commanded by tribal sheikhs, and many tribal militias were institutionalized and integrated into the army under Eryani, and leftist militants waged a full-scale guerrilla war against his government from 1971 to 1973. In January 1973, there were direct reports of local uprisings against the sheikhs and the infiltration of armed agents from South Yemen.
Military junta seizes power
Those problems led to Eryani being overthrown in what became known as the "June 13 Corrective Movement" in 1974 by Military Command Council or MCC - the Nasserist military junta consisted of 7 army's officers - and replaced by Colonel Ibrahim al-Hamdi, the first leader of the MCC.