Conflicted S4 E19: Yemen: In the Shadow of the Imam

Speakers: Thomas Small, Aimen Dean, & Baraa Shiban

Thomas: Welcome back dear listeners, you are tuned in to another episode of Conflicted. I'm Thomas Small, and as ever, I'm joined by my unrivalled co-host, Aimen Dean. Hi, Aimen.

Aimen: Hi, Thomas. Of course, I'm unrivalled because no one will dare to rival me.

Thomas: No one would dare to rival you, Aimen. No one could rival you, at least not in my heart.

Aimen: Good.

Thomas: Except possibly someone else as we'll find out in a bit. But Aimen, I am extremely excited not just about this episode, but the next five episodes of Conflicted.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: All of which return to a subject that we haven't talked about in any detail since our first season, which is Yemen.

Aimen: Oh, Yemen. Happy Yemen.

Thomas: Happy Yemen. Happy Yemen, sad Yemen and everything in between. The story of Yemen is just about the most exciting and complicated story in the world, so let's not waste any time.

Dear listener, do you want to understand the Civil War, which has been tearing Yemen apart since 2014? And do you want to learn about the Houthis? A group who, along with Hamas, are part of Iran's axis of resistance, have recently been firing rockets towards Israel, and could soon join a wider regional conflict in Gaza.

Do you want to know these things? Well, you've come to the right place. We're going back in time to provide as much history as you need to understand what's going on there in the present.

It's a complex spider's web of a country with multiple personalities split geographically, tribally, religiously, politically, north, south, Shia, Sunni, communist, nationally. You name it.

[Music Playing]

Aimen: Calm down. Calm down.

Thomas: Let's jump right in. Now, Aimen, normally I rely on you to give me the on the ground reality of what's been going on in the Middle East, and you do a pretty good job of it.

Aimen: Yeah, of course. I do a pretty good job of it. That's the verdict that I've been handed by so many listeners.

Thomas: But for the next few weeks, we'll be doing something we've never done before on Conflicted, this week, two becomes three. We've got a guest and an old friend of both of ours in the studio with us.

A Yemeni journalist and political activist who was previously an advisor to the Yemeni Embassy in London and has done some amazing work bringing the crisis of the past decade to the world. He's also a dear listener to the show himself.

Baraa Shiban is here with us. Baraa, hello and welcome.

Baraa: Hello, Thomas. Hi, Aimen. I am very, very excited to be on the show today. And actually, I have been tuning in on Conflicted, I think since the beginning. I can't remember the number of times and planes I've taken while I have just the air plug in my ears and just listening again and again to Conflicted. So, I am pretty much excited.

Thomas: Well, we're very excited. Aimen, I mean, you and Baraa have known each other for a while, isn't that, right?

Aimen: Indeed. I still remember those romantic nights in Zanzibar, where we were in that hotel, you and I-

Thomas: Boys, boys, my goodness. Get a room, take it offline.

Aimen: It was such a funny way that we met. I mean, we were such a funny company. So, it was Baraa Shiban, that amazing political activist from Yemen, and we have the former Palestinian Ambassador to London.

And we have with us, the former head of counterterrorism to MI6, and then me, all of us surrounded by so many political figures from Somalia, from Uganda, from Kenya, from Ethiopia, from Tanzania. Goodness. And we were all in a conference trying to bring peace to Somalia. That was-

Thomas: Futile.

Aimen: Absolutely. Because five years ago, and still there is a war in Somalia, so we failed miserably, Baraa. But what we succeeded is that we became friends. I don’t know how, but we did.

Baraa: Well, I'd say that's a remarkable success. So, because actually we remained in touch, and we hope we are going to see peace in Somalia very soon.

Aimen: Inshallah.

Baraa: But at least our friendship will continue to have the peace, we'll see.

Thomas: Whereas I met Baraa eight years ago now when I was working on a film, a documentary film about the Yemen conflict. It had just spilled over into the international consciousness, and I found you an invaluable resource of information. You were a great interviewee, and you became a very good friend. So, we're very happy to have you on the show. Baraa, what is filling your time these days?

Baraa: Well, I'm pretty much still occupied with the ongoing situation in Yemen. I still provide consultancies for different entities. I still continue documenting human rights abuses that occur inside Yemen, and basically trying to continue the work that me and my colleagues from 2013 started, which was the National Dialogue Conference.

That was the convention that brought together all of the political Yemeni factions to negotiate the framework of the new constitution. And we're still trying to meet, trying to discuss, and flying to different parts of the world, trying to see what we can do for Yemen.

Thomas: Well, that's why you are here, to give us a firsthand account of what's still a very live conflict there in Yemen. One, which we've discussed before on Conflicted.

But before we go back to look at Yemen's history, Baraa, let's find out a bit more about your history. We know who you are. Aimen, and I know, but the dear listener doesn't, who are you really? Where do you come from?

Baraa: So, I'm born in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. And shortly after I was born my parents came to the UK for their studies. My family comes from Hajjah. This is a province in the north of Yemen, up in the highlands.

And I come from a middle-class, I would say regular family, but in a way have been entangled within Yemen's different political Yemeni factions.

Thomas: Well, that's the thing about Yemen. Everything's entangled with everything else there. It's disentangling Yemen that we're going to try to do here. We're going to fail because it's impossible, but we're going to try.

But before we start that out, let's talk about Yemen in the Arab imagination or really even in the world's imagination. I mean, Yemen is for many people quite a romanticised kind of place, I think, especially in the Arab and Middle Eastern world.

I mean, Aimen, what does Yemen mean to you as a kind of Saudi educated, Muslim Arab man? When you think of Yemen, what comes to mind?

Aimen: Well, first of all, that Yemen is a place of beauty, of mystery, of wonderful, unique architecture. These beautiful tower-like houses that are rising above the mountains. Yemen reminds me of the jambiya, that dagger that people basically put on a belt around their waist.

It also tells me coffee. That is one thing that I love about Yemen, coffee. And also, Yemen tells me of the wonderful people that worked in Saudi Arabia side by side, and the fact that they were of different cultures.

You think all Yemenis are the same. No, there are the Yemenis from Taiz, the well-educated. There are the Yemenis from Hadhramaut, the wealthy class who became the bin Ladens, the bin Mahfouz, the Binzagr and all of these wealthy families in Saudi Arabia that we hear about. So, Yemen is a mystery, but at the same time, an open book.

Thomas: Well, just during my reading for these episodes, I was reminded of all the romantic associations that Yemen has. I mean, according to I think Muslim tradition, Noah, the prophet Noah went to Yemen and built the capital city of Sana’a for his son, Shem.

The Queen of Sheba, King Solomon's wife, Yemen. And in the more sort of Roman period Arabia Felix, the land of frankincense and myrrh, the spice trade through Yemen, the caravans coming up the coast from Yemen to the imperial zones of the North.

All of these images populate my imagination when I think of Yemen. Baraa, you're a Yemeni. How true is that romantic vision?

Baraa: Well, I think when you speak to my fellow Yemenis, we speak about the history as if it is today. So, people will talk about the stories of the Queen of Sheba. They will tell the stories of what happened in the mediaeval ages when all of those kingdoms and the fall of kingdoms, and they fought in central Yemen as of it was just yesterday.

So, it's pretty much the history is still present in the imagination. And I think it shapes how they relate to the present and how also they relate to the future. History is very much present with us as Yemenis.

Thomas: That's why Yemen is the perfect subject for Conflicted, Baraa. I'm just so excited. I mean, first of all, I think we need to make clear that Yemen is as old as time itself. But in terms of a modern state in terms of a unitary state, it's extremely young.

And this is one of the interesting contradictions of Yemen, one of the oldest places in the world, but very much still in a state building process, perhaps a process that will never end.

But until 1990, the land today known as Yemen, the country of Yemen has only really infrequently been politically united. Once in the 13th, 14th centuries, there was a Sunni dynasty that united the whole area.

Then in the 17th, 18th centuries, there was a Zadyi dynasty. We'll talk about what these means in a minute.

Before we continue, let's get the lay of the land. And though there are many ways to subdivide that land, I would like us to subdivide that land into five different zones. So, if you're looking at it sort of in your mind's eye, dear listener you have the coastal zone along the West Coast, known in Arabic as al-Tihamah.

It's very flat, it's very fertile, it's very hot. And then that coast sort of bends around the Bab-el-Mandeb strait along the south onto the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. And that's where you have the amazing port city of Aden, the incredibly important city of Aden. And its hinterlands, which is a kind of its own zone historically.

And then further stretching out east, you have the Hadhramaut and the desert of Eastern Yemen, which eventually merges quite sort of indistinctly into the great empty quarter, the great Arabian Desert, the majority of which is in Saudi Arabia.

And that leaves the sort of mountainous strip down the middle, the south half of which you could call Central Yemen. It's where the capital is Sana’a. It's where the other great city Taiz is. It's where the vast majority of the population of Yemen live.

And finally, the fifth zone of Yemen, the northern half of that mountain region, the Highlands, the North, the land of the Zaydis. And so, this is where we have to talk about the Zaydis.

Aimen, how are we going to talk about the Zaydis in a way that's not too complicated? Because you start talking about branches of Shia Islam, and very quickly you're in the weeds. Who's the Imam here? Five Imams, six Imams, seven Imams, 12. It never ends. How Aimen, would you simplify Zaydi Islam for the listener?

Aimen: Okay, so the mainstream Zaydism is described by Shia Muslims as the lighter version of Sunni Islam, while the Sunnis describe the Zaydi branch of Shia light version. So, as you can see, both sides describe the other as a lighter version of what they're supposed to be. So, it's interesting.

Baraa: In a nutshell, it's basically they think that Imam Ali was the rightful successor for the prophet. But while they approve that both Abu Bakr and Umar are rightful leaders of Islam, so they don't have that sense of animosity towards the others.

Thomas: So, this Abu Bakr and Umar, these are the first two caliphs of Islam, of Sunni Islam, which Twelver Shia, the Iranian style Shi’ism, they really do not like. But the Zaydis are cool about them. They don't hate them.

Aimen: However, it's not as simple because Zaydism is divided into many, many different factions. Only three of them survive to this day.

Thomas: Zaydi Islam was introduced to Yemen a long time ago in the ninth century when this guy, Yahya ibn Husayn, the Imam al-Hadi was invited to Yemen. He was living in the Hijaz. He was invited to Yemen by some kind of warring tribes, hoping that he would bring some order to their society.

So, he was the first Zaydi leader in northern Yemen to govern the tribes in the Highlands from which you come, Baraa.

And then from this man, Yahya ibn Husayn descended the Zaydi Imamate of Yemen. This word Imamate is important as we move the story onwards to the Houthi movement and what's going on in Yemen today.

It has been described thus by a scholar, an Imam in the Yemeni context, a central religious authority who oversees local dynamics of tribal federations and alliances. Because the thing about the Imams in Yemen, the Zaydi Imams, is that they, they never had, or only infrequently had really direct political power.

It was a religious office with political overtones. And another thing that made it very interesting is it did not follow a strict dynastic principle. So, the Imamate did not pass from father to son at all.

The Zaydi Imam of Northern Yemen was chosen by a council of Hashemites and religious scholars based on a long, quite detailed list of qualities of attributes that he must have, and potential Imams were subjected to close public scrutiny.

So, unlike say in Twelver Shi’ism, there is no infallible Imamate in Zaydi Islam. But maybe for that very reason, it was not great at cementing a central state power. It was like a man who was trying to coordinate between tribal alliances and allegiances and things like that.

So, Baraa what do you think? Have I done a good job there at describing the Zaydi Imamate?

Baraa: Yes, it is, except with one important caveat. So, the Imam is not subject to public scrutiny. He is monitored by a council of scholars who are also Hashemites. So actually, the normal public, the I would say normal citizens do not have the right to question the Imam because he himself is a descendant of Prophet Muhammad.

Aimen: Well, Baraa, you forgot to tell the dear listeners some teeny tiny minute detail here. And that is that you yourself is a descendant of some of those Hashemites who not only chose the Imams, but they were imams themselves.

Thomas: This is crazy. Once again, I'm the only man out. So, Aimen, he's famously a descendant of the Afghan royal family or whatever. And we might as well take the cat out of the bag. You're related to the Prophet of Islam himself.

Baraa: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, I am a descendant of al-Imam Al-Mutahhar bin Sharaf ad-Din. He is this famous warlord that fought the Ottomans when they tried to occupy north Yemen.

And the story goes, he was the leader of the army, but he got injured in one of the battles. So, one of the rules to become an Imam, you should be perfect from any physical imperfections. I mean, I'm afraid, not too friendly towards disabled people, but there you go.

And his father told him, well, now you can't be an Imam because you have an injury. So, he said, well, screw you guys, I'm leading the army. He imprisoned his father and his younger brother.

And then he became this basically powerful warlord new Imam who ruled in north Yemen. And he's known to be very, very brutal. One of the famous stories is that he marched his army towards the province of Al-Bayḍā, and that's in Central Yemen to squash a revolt.

And what he did is he killed 1000 tribesmen. And then ordered the remaining 1000 to carry the heads of their fellow fighters and walk all the way, march all the way into Sana’a, the capital. And then once they arrived, he beheaded them. He's remembered to be a person of character.

Thomas: A charming man, Baraa, you must be very proud to be descended from such a man.

Baraa: But the thing is that he's mentioned in Zaydi books, basically glorified as this great warlord who was spreading the message of Zaydism into all parts of Yemen.

Thomas: Well, he may have tried, but he didn't succeed in spreading Zaydism to all parts of Yemen. And that's one of the most important things to understand about Yemen. I mean, there's a kind of narrative out there that like for a thousand years, Zaydi Imams ruled Yemen.

And it's not true. It's an exaggeration of the truth. The Zaydi Imams, your ancestors Baraa, their centre of power was in the north. It was itself often not directly wielded by the Imams themselves, but it was through tribal alliances and things. It only infrequently spread beyond the North. And so, it's not really true that Zaydi Imams ruled Yemen for a thousand years.

So, now moving on, we can just quickly zoom over a few centuries. The Ottomans arrive in Yemen, they fight, they were up the mountains. The Imam pushes them back at one point, they come back.

So, Ottoman power waxes and wanes in Yemen over several hundred years during which time, local Sunni Sultans in the South and El and elsewhere also have power.

And though, as I said, the Imams never maintained political control over the whole of Yemen and even only sometimes over the North. Nonetheless, and this is what we have to really be serious about here, the Imamate period of Yemen plays a very, very important role in the Yemeni imagination up to the present day, for good or for ill.

I mean, some Yemenis romanticise the period of the Imams and others villainize the period of the Imams, but it's still very present to Yemenis. Isn't that right, Baraa?

Baraa: Yeah, exactly. So, people in Yemen, and especially in North Yemen, are quite split about how they feel towards the Imams and the different and the different Imams who ruled Yemen.

They were nevertheless very, very brutal, I would say. And they were able to consolidate power in a handful number of families who also shared the claim that they are descendants of Prophet Muhammad.

But then beyond that it basically, amongst Yemenis, they have different feelings towards was it a good period or rather a bleak period of Yemen.

Aimen: Baraa, don't you find it a bit fascinating that we are talking about the Imamate and the feeling of the Yemenis about the Imamate, which has ceased to exist more than half a century ago.

And it is expected that Abdul-Malik Houthi, the leader of the Houthis movement, is about to declare an Imamate himself.

Baraa: Yeah. That is quite fascinating. Yeah.

Aimen: And dear listeners, you know, by the time this comes out, you may have already heard the news that Yemen has been transformed into an Imamate by the leader of the insurgent group called Houthis.

Thomas: Indeed Aimen, and right now, it's certainly worth watching to see if the Houthis will be emboldened to proclaim their Imamate by the crisis in Israel, which is engulfing the region.

But back to the history, the Ottomans come and then the Ottomans go. And in the meantime, in the south, the British Empire had set up shop in Aden, establishing an imperial protectorate stretching across South Yemen all the way across the Hadhramaut.

But in the north of Yemen, after the Ottoman Empire withdraws, they're replaced by what's called the Mutawakkilite Imamate or Kingdom of Yemen. It's established by the Imam Yahya in 1918 after the Ottomans leave.

Now, it was during this period that modern Yemen begins to come into focus. He was an extremely conservative Imam king of Yemen. He really wanted not only to maintain, but to strengthen the aristocratic very socially stratified nature of Northern Yemeni society with the Imam at the top, and then these aristocratic Hashemite families below him, kind of governing everything.

With, at the very bottom people often treated like serfs, like peasants, indeed like slaves. I mean, is that speaking too harshly Baraa, or is that more or less what Northern Yemen was like during the kingdom phase in the early 20th century?

Baraa: Well, I think you did explain it quite well, but to go into a little bit of a quick summary, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom, and the family becomes the undisputed rulers of North Yemen.

And the British were still occupying the south of Yemen, but in the north, they create this social hierarchy system, which basically makes the Imam on the top of the hierarchy along with him or beneath him, is the Hashemite families. Those are also families who claim they are the descendants of Prophet Muhammad.

Thomas: Like your family.

Baraa: Like my family. And beneath those are a group of a class called the Judges, and those are people who have served in the judiciary or have served in disputes and so on.

And then beneath that are the tribes, and those are the majority of Yemenis. Beneath those are basically working-class, people who work in manufacturing butchers, hairdressers. And those are kind of looked down upon. Intermarriages are not usually allowed from this from this class.

And then at the bottom are a community called the marginalised. Those are basically Yemenis who are of much darker skin, and they trace their origins back to Africa. Those are kind of the bottom of the hierarchy.

Along with them, I would say there are other minorities like the Jews and the Baha'is who don't have any rights at all.

Aimen: That sounds like India.

Thomas: I was just going to say Aimen, it has sort of overtones of the Indian caste system.

Aimen: Yeah. Goodness.

Baraa: It is, it is very similar. And it's very important because this socio economic caste system is in a slightly softer version, is slowly being introduced by the Houthis today.

Thomas: That is so interesting.

Baraa: They've been introducing through the last nine years; they've been introducing measures and laws to emphasise this social hierarchy. They're trying to bring it together, but slowly.

Thomas: Well back to the Imam Yahya and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, what's fascinating to me about this is that Imam Yahya, in order to build a modern, a quasi-modern, though he was no moderniser, but a more modern kind of kingdom, he played a huge role in the erection of this story of an unbroken Imamate for 900 years that has governed Yemen by divine right.

And I love this little story, Aimen, which I'm sure you know. So, during his reign, his long reign in the first half of the 20th century, Imam Yahya clashed with the Saudis because there was a fighting over where the border of the expanding Saudi kingdom would be.

And in the end, the Saudis gobbled up a decent chunk of what was until then, always just part of Northern Yemen. And in 1933, King Abdulaziz and Imam Yahya met to discuss this dispute.

And Imam Yahya is recorded as saying to King Abdulaziz, this is some serious cheek, “Who is this Bedouin coming to challenge my family's 900-year rule?”

What a thing to say to King Abdulaziz, honestly. Of course, King Abdulaziz showed him precisely who that Bedouin was before long and having lost a chunk of his kingdom to that Bedouin, the Imam Yahya had no choice but to accept the fact that he needed something like a modern military.

And as a result of this, he sent the famous 40, as they're known, the famous 40. 40 Yemeni military officers were sent abroad to receive modern military training. And ironically, this decision by the arch conservative Imam to modernise his military sowed the seeds of his kingdom's downfall.

Baraa: Well, revolutionary ideas actually started in Yemen in the 1940s. In 1948, a group of officers gathered and assassinated Imam Yahya, and then they introduced a constitutional monarchy that only lasted for literally 26 days before his son was able to mobilise tribes and attack the capital, Sana’a.

And he basically promised the tribes that he would allow them to loot Sana’a if they replace the constitutional monarch with him. And they did, they looted Sana’a. And it's still very much in the imagination of the people in Sana’a today.

People remember very well the looting of Sana’a by the Imam and his followers. And Imam Ahmad, his son, became the ruler of Yemen until 1962, when there was another assassination attempt on his life.

Thomas: Yes, 1962 Baraa, of course, is a very important year in modern Yemeni history, specifically the 26th of September 1962, still remembered by Yemenis today as a most momentous day. What happened?

Baraa: Well, this is for the overwhelming majority of Yemenis is the most important day in their recent history. And the reason is because almost a month before the 26th of September, there was an assassination attempt by those officers, again, by a group of those officers on Imam Ahmad.

He survived the assassination attempt, but he suffered through his injuries until he died on the 19th of September 1962. Now, his son came into power, Imam Al-Badr, and then he ruled for just one week.

His method was basically, I'm going to spread fear. These people need to be afraid of me. And that basically was the trigger point that led the officers to topple him on the 26th of September 1962.

Thomas: So, these officers, these are Yemeni officers who, as you say, Baraa, they attacked the royal palace, overthrowing the Imam on the 26th of September 1962. These officers explicitly modelled themselves on the free officers of Egypt, who precisely 10 years before had overthrown Fat Farouk.

And at this point, this was an invitation for a momentous intervention into Yemen by none other than Aimen's best friend and long-term friend of the show. Who am I talking about, Aimen?

Aimen: Oh, yes indeed. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Thomas, you have to understand that Nasser was already drunk on the euphoria of monarchies falling one after another. He and his comrades, the three offices of Egypt overthrew King Farouk, also known as Fat Farouk, you remember in the operation Fat Fucker, organized by the CIA.

Then of course a few years later, the Iraqi officers overthrew King Faisal II of Iraq, the Hashemite, and someone who I adore so much, and you can hear that in the episode about Iraq from season three.

And then he started to feel that, hey, the monarchies are like dominoes and one falling after another. It's 1962 already, he saw how the fall of the monarchies is benefiting his socialist flavoured Arab nationalism.

And if this could be achieved in Yemen, then the next in the domino will be Roman, will be Saudi Arabia, it will be all the other Western influenced kingdoms. And therefore, he thought that this is his moment to shine and to be the saviour of socialist flavoured Arab nationalism.

Thomas: That's true, Aimen. But you've missed out on one important thing in Nasser's mind. I mean, long-term listeners of Conflicted will know that Nasser's great enemy on the global stage was the British Empire.

And though we've not really mentioned it yet, throughout all of this history, and indeed from 1839 onwards, the British Empire was firmly established in Yemen, in Southern Yemen, based in Aden, the important port city of Aden.

And so, after officers modelling themselves on his free officers movement, overthrow the Imam, when they invited Nasser to come in and help them consolidate their revolution and set up a Nasserist Arab nationalist centralised socialist state in Northern Yemen, he was very happy to oblige.

Aimen: But this has caused significant pain for everyone, for the Egyptians themselves, for the Saudis. But most importantly, it was a devastating seven years of conflict and war in Yemen.

Baraa: Well, actually, for many, many Yemenis, Gamal Abdel Nasser is revered in their eyes. Nasser is remembered across many history books and researchers and journalists, not very fondly, I would say, like Aimen.

But in the eyes of many Yemenis, actually, they do feel that they owe him the gratitude of actually helping them to get rid of the Imam, because without his help, it would've been impossible to defeat the Imam. And Nasser was very committed. He sent troops thousands and thousands of troops into Yemen.

Thomas: 70,000 troops, 70,000 Egyptian troops were sent to Yemen.

Baraa: Yeah, can you imagine that 70,000 to just back up this newborn republic. But more importantly than just those 70,000, the new idea of a modern state, a modern republic started to take shape in north Yemen.

So, the Egyptians also sent thousands of teachers, thousands of doctors. The new Republic started to invest in schools, hospitals, and started to basically send students to study abroad.

So, Yemen, in its more modern forms, started to come together in an area that actually was pretty much very much isolated under the Imamate. And I think the most important thing is that those officers introduced something called the Articles of the Revolution, or the Goals of the Revolution.

But the most important part was the first article, which is they promised the idea of Yemen becoming united, so to get rid of tyranny and colonialism. So, they started to promise that they're going to start a revolt against the British in the South, but also to eradicate all privileges and differences that exist between all social classes.

And that resonated with the wider public. So, what started as a military to takeover became more of a popular uprising, because the wider public felt that this young republic is promising them something that they've been deprived from for decades actually.

Thomas: The revolution of 1962, which then led to at times a very brutal civil war in the North, has a lot of resonances with the present day, which I find fascinating. The last Imam, Imam Al-Badr, he didn't actually die, he escaped north and eventually made his way to Saudi Arabia, who housed him and supported him financially and militarily, along with his tribal confederates from Northern Yemen to resist the Nasserite Republican takeover of the north.

So, very strange echoes with the present, where the Houthis conquered Sana’a and the president of Yemen fled to Saudi Arabia, where they are intervening in order to overthrow the consequences of a coup.

It's a reminder that what's happening in Yemen now has happened before. Yemeni history is full of this repeating kind of dynamics, which we'll bring out.

Anyway, in the end, the revolution succeeded, and the Saudis failed in their attempts to reinstate the Imam, not only did they fail, they changed tack and eventually supported the revolution once it was clear that the Imam was going to fail. But that wasn't the end of Nasser in Yemen. Was it, Baraa?

Baraa: Well, Nasser as if his hands were not full already in North Yemen, he started to encourage the South to revolt against the British and started supporting them as well.

And in his mind, he's going to be this great unifying figure for both North and South Yemen. So, he was pretty much occupied, but Yemeni started to feel a little bit unsatisfied by the way he's handling the situation.

They started intervening more and more in the internal affairs of Yemen. Nasser was basically in the eyes of many even revolutionists, this narcissist, egocentric guy. And actually, in 1966, the Yemeni cabinet travelled to Egypt to meet him, and instead of meeting them, he threw them all in prison.

Aimen: You say 1966, they must have met Sayyid Qutb before he was executed.

Baraa: Well, maybe we need to ask any surviving members of the cabinet. But eventually after the defeat of Nasser in 1967 by Israel, he decided that actually he needs to get them out. And this is because of the initiative led by Saudi Arabia, whom they met with Nasser in Sudan, and the president of Sudan at the time, Muhammad Mahgoub, told Nasser, our information tells us that actually the Yemini cabinet are in your prison.

And he felt that it's time to get them out and start negotiating this new deal in which Saudi Arabia favoured. They favoured this idea of we can reconcile between the different Yemeni factions, but we can keep the Imam.

They gave them basically residency and then citizenship, the Saudi citizenship inside Saudi Arabia. But they reconciled between the two main warring parties in Yemen and formed the New Republic.

Thomas: There's another really tragic story from the Nasserite intervention in Yemen, which I didn't know about. I mean, the Egyptian army in Yemen behaved abominably, they used tear gas against their enemies in the north, and then poison gas, the Egyptian Air Force dropped poison gas bombs on the north in order to root out partisans, Imam partisans from caves in the mountains.

There are some echoes there of the recent bombing campaign in the north of Yemen now as well. So again, history repeats itself in Yemen.

Aimen: Yeah.

Thomas: And anyway, in the end, Nasser withdrew, but the revolution in the north succeeded and a new Yemen, there was being created by a modernising centralising socialist come Arab nationalist regime.

And we're going to take a break now after this very long first half of an episode on Yemen, and when we come back, we're going to throw our attention to the south of Yemen, where the British were facing problems of their own. Stay tuned.

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We are back, dear listener. We're here with our friend Barra Shiban, a Yemeni helping us work our way through the convoluted and complex history of Yemen. When we left Nasser's attempt to establish an Egyptian satellite in the north of Yemen failed, but the Yemeni Revolution in the north succeeded, and Yemen was put on its path towards modernization, at least in the north.

How about the South? As we mentioned, since 1839, the British had ruled the south of Yemen. It was called the Aden Protectorate. It was a very loose, typically British colonial affair where the British had a light touch in the region, working very closely with a patchwork of tribal leaders across the deserts of Hadhramaut and the hinterlands of Aden.

But like everything British of the 1960s, it began to fall apart. Nasser as soon as he in intervened in the north, started to support anti-colonial factions in the South. And on the 14th of October of 1963, the Aden emergency began. This is when Southern Yemenis mark their national independence. Isn't that right, Baraa?

Baraa: Yeah, exactly. And not only just the Southern Yemenis, actually, they were accompanied by many of those Northern officers who studied and were inspired by revolutionary ideas in Egypt, came to their aid and to support them in their ongoing battle against the British.

Because in the minds and hearts of Yemenis, this is when the idea started to come. This is the moment we're going to unify the country, both North and South Yemen is going to be one.

Thomas: I'm glad you bring that up, Baraa, because that is really where this story is headed towards this sort of sudden, enthusiastic ambition to make Yemen one. As we said in the first half, for many centuries, Yemen had been really not one.

And yet for some reason, somehow in the hearts of the people known as Yemenis, they felt we must be politically one. And having thrown off the Imam in the north, the question was, can we throw off the British in the South and unite?

The war against the British raged for four years and is a very complex affair because South Yemen was after 130 years of British domination, a very different kettle of fish from the North. It had not had an Imam; it was not hierarchically and aristocratically stratified like in the North. There was no caste system there. The British had modernised their part of Yemen to some degree. Isn't that right, Baraa?

Baraa: So, Aden was very much developed. Many of, even the people who were escaping the north of Yemen fearing from the Imam, found refuge in Aden, and people had the access to information, newspapers were being printed. So, Aden looked like a very, very modern city.

The rest of the south, however, was pretty much marginalised, but the British did invest a lot of their effort and money and time on Aden itself. And that's why it looked very different. And the signs of the British are seen until today, you could see the tunnels that they built to the port, many of the inner city of Ma’ala, this modern city that was built in the heart of Aden.

So, this is pretty much the imagination. This cosmopolitan city goes back all the way to the days of the British rule in Aden.

Thomas: British rule in Aden ended in 1967, when facing for three years, this sort of anti-colonial uprising, they decided to cut and run, and they left a power vacuum behind them because the forces that had been fighting them were not in any way themselves united.

And like so many tales around that time of anti-colonial revolution, the revolutionaries immediately turned on each other. And they were divided. Some of them were Nasserists, straightforward Nasserists, but others were hard line Marxist communists.

And three years after the British left, the Marxist won. And throughout the 70s, there was this very strange fact that in the south of the Arabian Peninsula was a fully-fledged Soviet-backed Marxist Leninist state.

Baraa today in Yemen, and you as a Yemeni, what does it mean that for that period there were like actual communists ruling half of Yemen?

Baraa: Well, it was a strange era for Yemen. So, you have communist ideas spreading now, not just in the south, but they're slowly spreading the communist ideas to the north of Yemen. The socialist party became the undisputed ruling party in South Yemen.

But also, that period from the 1970 onwards was a very brutal and dark period for South Yemen. It witnessed presidents being assassinated; people being executed over their opinions. A lot of southerners fleeing the south of Yemen to the north or to other Arab countries.

So, it's a very strange and weird times that happened from the 1970s onwards.

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, I would say that it is ironic that the Southern Yemen established a properly Marxist communist state, and yet those who fled Southern Yemen went into Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

And there they established some of the most successful capitalist enterprises ever, businesses, banks, construction companies. They established food companies. They established businesses that span now generations. It was a testament that communism was so unnatural to Southern Yemen because the people there were capitalists.

Baraa: Well, you say that Aimen, because the new states, the new communist state in South Yemen nationalised all businesses. So, people were not allowed even to have properties. They confiscated lands. Businessmen had to flee if they want to survive with their capital. And that's why they ended up in all of those neighbouring country.

Thomas: It was a properly communist country. I mean, I think the listener just needs to understand that. I mean, maybe there were positive sides to this. For example, like tribalism in South Yemen had been thoroughly discredited because the tribal shakes had worked alongside the British to rule the British protectorate.

And once communism came and took over South Yemen tribalism and tribal symbols were abolished to the extent that that's possible. But there was a very concerted effort to get rid of tribalism in South Yemen. Which of course would continue its move away from North Yemen where tribalism remained extremely powerful.

But also, communist South Yemen was a magnet really for anti-colonial revolutionary and even terrorist movements from everywhere. So, South Yemen became one of these places in the globe where if you were an Irish Republican army dude, or some kind of Algerian, I don't know, some Algerian rebel, you end up in South Yemen for training and for refuge.

South Yemen was weird supported by not just the Soviet Union, but also China right there in what was still a very poor part of the world.

Aimen: Exactly. They caused even trouble for Oman. There was the revolution in Dhofar, which is the most western part of Oman, the mountains of Salalah and Dhofar. These mountains witnessed fierce fighting between those who opposed the sultan of Oman and his forces. And they were supported by the communist government in Aden.

Thomas: And the communist government in South Yemen also supported communist insurrectionists in North Yemen.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: And that's where any attempts that any Yemenis might have made for unification in the 1970s were not successful. In 1972, especially facing communist insurrectionists in the north, supported by the south, the northern government had to fight back.

And there was a brief war between north and south in that year, followed which there was this sort of actual formal, official attempt to unite. And something called the Cairo Declaration was signed to bring the two countries together or to begin a process whereby that could happen.

But it failed. The two sides were just two different ideologically and now socially as well. Very sort of different people living in the same historic land.

Baraa: It was a strange period. I mean, they both sides are aspiring towards unity and unification is kind of occupying the minds of people all the time, yet they're fighting at the same time.

And really brutal fighting occurred and by one, one side is the socialist party, and they feel pretty much now confident that they can take on the north. They cause a lot of instability, a lot of fighting. And as a result, there were many presidents being toppled and even assassinated, both in the north and the south.

Thomas: By the end of the 1970s, the north was in quite a bad way, both politically and economically. And in the midst of this scenario in the north, a man arrived on the scene who at the time no one would have thought stood a chance in hell to become for 33 years the great strong man of Yemen.

And of course, I'm talking about Ali Abdullah Saleh. Baraa, when you hear the name Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen from 1978 onwards, the man whom the Arab spring protestors in 2011. And you were among them, Baraa wanted out of office. When you hear this name, Ali Abdullah Saleh, notorious strong man of Yemen, what do you think?

Baraa: Well, what I think about him is this notorious very clever individual. He's a tribal man, but also at the same time, he understands the complicated and structure and mixture of Yemen.

He's able to build alliances, but also destroy alliances. At the same time, he jumps through hoops quite cleverly at different times of his presidency. He's also known in the 70s as the smuggler. He used to smuggle alcohol into North Yemen from the port of Mokha, because he himself was a military officer.

Thomas: Yeah. And no doubt a heavy drinker for that reason.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: Ali Abdullah Saleh was born in 1942 in Beit al-Ahmar, which is what? About 20 miles southeast of Sana’a. Is that right?

Baraa: Yeah, yeah.

Thomas: It was very tribal territory. The tribe, the local subtribe, the Sanhan tribe, which was part and dear listener, sadly, you just have to get to grips with the tribes. This is Yemen.

So, the Sanhan Tribe was part of the Hashid Tribal Federation, or is part of it, an extremely important power block in Northern Yemeni politics. The Hashid Tribal Federation.

And Ali Abdullah Saleh was totally integrated from a young age into this tribal world of Northern Yemen. And actually, I have a question for you. Amen. Are there overtones here of Saddam Hussein's background? Because he was also very tribally integrated, wasn't he?

Aimen: No question, no question. That Saddam Hussein was tribally integrated, but not to the same extent as Ali Abdullah Saleh. Yemen definitely is far more tribal than Iraq, even though Saddam was born in the most tribal part of Iraq, which is Anbar, which has a lot of tribes like al-Jubur and Shammar and …

However, Yemen, you mentioned the Tribal Federation of Hashid. There are the equivalent of Hashid. There is Bakil, which is the other big tribal federation. So, peace in Yemen depended on the leadership of Hashid and Bakil, these two super tribal federations getting on well together.

Baraa: But not only that, Hashid was kind of the more centralise, more organised, I would say, tribal structure. So, Ali Abdullah Saleh was able to understand the politics of tribes very, very well.

So, Hashid is actually much smaller than Bakil, but they're more unified and they're more organised. And that's made the leader of Hashid, which was a very famous sheikh, Sheikh Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar who joined the officers as he made his tribe join also the officers in the 1962 revolution, but made him a very important power broker, if you would say.

And that relationship, he maintained these strong ties with Ali Abdullah Saleh, trying to maintain the peace within the tribes, but also extending that piece with the Bakil confederation, which is another, as you said, important confederation.

Thomas: So, Ali Abdullah Saleh himself was not from a particularly prominent family. His father was a blacksmith. And when he was a teenager, he joined the army, the Imams army. This was before the revolution.

And he participated on the side of the revolutionaries in the revolution. He fought valiantly. He was known as a hero of the revolution. I mean, he claimed he was at least. And his rise through the ranks in the army was pretty quick to the extent that by 1976, he'd become a full colonel in the army overseeing a mechanised brigade.

So, Ali Abdullah Saleh is a military man through and through. The following year in 1977, he's given his first political appointment where he becomes the head of security for Taiz, a city in central Yemen, south of Sana’a.

And in 1978, only one year later, he's appointed president of North Yemen. He's only 35-years-old. His predecessor was assassinated. In fact, two of his predecessors had been assassinated. No one expected him to last. Why was he chosen Baraa, to be president and why did he survive?

Baraa: It was very interesting unique circumstances that put him as the runner for presidency. The presidential council, or you could say the leadership of the military we're meeting, and they decided they need someone to come on temporary basis because we need a president.

And people thought, let's put this guy for a week. There's another suggestion, let's put him for a month. And then they have elections in the council or make what was called back then Majlis Al-Chaab, which is the parliament to decide.

But Ali Abdullah Saleh was a very much well embedded within the military. So, he knows what he was doing. There are rumours that actually he himself participated in the assassination of President Ibrahim al-Hamdi, who ruled Yemen from 1974 until 1978.

And became effectively the deputy of Ahmad al-Ghashmi, who only ruled for nine months before he was assassinated by a bomb that was sent in a diplomatic package from the south by the Socialist Party.

Aimen: Oh God.

Thomas: Oh man. Dear listener, I mean, Yemen, isn't it great? It's great. I love it.

Baraa: Basically, Ali Abdullah Saleh can be brutal. And actually, after he came to power, there was a coup attempt against him by the supporters of Nasser. And then he executed them.

And then again, there was another insurgency attempt against him in the early 80s supported by the Socialist Party. And he did crush them. So, he would, I would say, tend to brutal tactics if he needs to.

Thomas: Well, it was this man, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who in the late 70s, early 80s, was the one who was sort of looked to as the leader of Yemen to possibly broker this long hoped for union between north and south.

But in 1979, for example, unity between north and south seemed as far away as ever that year. There was another war between the two of them, and it looked really bad for the north. At that point, the south was still a Soviet client state. There was a lot of Soviet military advice in the South.

And it was only because the U.S. spooked by the recent Iranian Revolution spooked that it was going to lose another, another Middle Eastern state to the Soviets intervened on Ali Abdullah Saleh’s side sending tanks and anti-tank missiles to the north, that that war ended without the south winning.

So, it was a really tricky time for Yemen. And then almost like, luckily, I don’t know if that's the right word to say. Luckily for Yemen in the 1980s, politics in the south really began to fray at the seams. It was a real communist shit-show there with different kind of partisans of various forms of Marxism fighting each other, leading in the end to a terrible civil war.

Baraa: So, it was 1986, and the Socialist Central committee was basically very much divided. Now they say they were divided among, basically between different Marxist ideologies, but actually in the heart of it, it was very tribal.

Thomas: Tribes, tribes, tribes. It's always tribes.

Baraa: Exactly. And I think it proves what Aimen said in a previous episode, the Arab creature is a tribal creature in his heart.

Aimen: Exactly.

Thomas: You guys can say it. You're Arabs. I'm not allowed to say it.

Baraa: So basically, the central committee of the Socialist Party were split between the supporters of the sitting president, Ali Nasir Muhammad. And his opponent mainly was Abdul Fattah Ismail, who was this big ideologue who was living and studying in Moscow.

And basically, they referred to him as the father of Marxism in Yemen, and he came back to Aden. And that split the socialist party between those two camps. Now, Ali Nasir Muhammad thought actually that Abdul Fattah is going to topple him in a soft coup.

Thomas: So, this is the president Ali Nasir, the sitting president is afraid that his rival is going to overthrow him.

Baraa: Exactly, exactly. Because his rival was the former president and still had a lot of supporters in the military and in the government. So, they elected the, the central Committee of the Socialist Party of 15 members. Now, surprise Abdul Fattah was able to put eight of his supporters, and seven were left to Ali Nasir Muhammad.

Thomas: Somehow the president of South Yemen has fewer members on the politburo, on the committee that runs the country than his rival. This isn't good. And things came to a head on January 13th, 1986.

Baraa: Exactly. Now both sides accuse each other of plotting to assassinate the other. So, Ali Nasir Muhammad. So, he said he was attending this meeting and he thought that actually Abdul Fattah is going to assassinate him just before he entered into the hall.

Abdul Fattah and his supporters say, actually, no, we were just meeting to discuss extending powers of the president and they need to limit his powers. So, Ali Nasir Muhammad did send his bodyguard and his secretary into the meeting, and it looked like the president is arriving.

So, they even put his mug, he had his famous mug that he drinks his tea and brought his papers and bag and everything. So, it looked like the President is about to arrive while everyone was attending. But the interesting thing is that the seven members who are the supporters of Ali Nasir Muhammad, the setting presidents were not there.

So, they were under the illusion that they were about to arrive. The president's bodyguard opens the bag, and he brings out a machine gun and start shooting everyone in the meeting.

And almost everyone were basically killed in the spots except for Ali Salem al Beidh, this other figure who basically pretended that he's dead. And also, Abdul Fattah Ismail, whom there is a lot of rumours on how he died, people say that he escaped, but then was shot on his way out.

But they were all killed except for Ali Salem al Beidh, who basically came out of the meeting. And Ali Nasir Muhammad had a televised speech, but he didn't know that Ali Salem al Beidh had survived. And the Ali Salem al Beidh came out basically seeking revenge, and they enter a brutal fighting inside Aden, leading to the death of more than 10,000 people.

Thomas: Well, more I've read 25,000 people died.

Baraa: It could be because there is no actual exact number, but it could be even more than 20,000, as you said, in just a short period of less than 10 days.

Thomas: So, the sitting president's bodyguard enters the politburo building, pulls out a machine gun, opens fire on the president's opponents.

From what I read, their bodyguards, who are also present. They pull out their guns, and there's a massive live firefight in the room where everyone's killed, except the one guy who manages to escape. Unbeknownst to the president who has manufactured this whole bloodbath and following this South Yemen politics falls apart.

The Communist Party was absolutely unable to keep the show on the road after that. It broke the system, and it was really unsustainable for the South Yemeni communist system to continue it. Especially when, in the midst of all this fighting the president of South Yemen, Ali Nasir Muhammad flees, and he flees to the north.

Baraa: Yeah, exactly. He flees to the north of Yemen and leaving his supporters behind whom many of them were executed. And Ali Salem al Beidh, the guy who survived, the only survivor of that meeting, shootout in Aiden, comes out to become the president of South Yemen.

Thomas: What do we think, guys? Is he the luckiest Arab of the 20th century?

Baraa: I mean, not for too long. I mean, he's going to be …

Thomas: Well, no one's lucky for very long in Yemen except Ali Abdullah Saleh. But even his luck runs out as we'll find out later. But for now, al Beidh, now president of South Yemen, he has to turn his attention to the big geopolitical fact of Aimen, the Soviet Union's collapse.

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, the Soviets were losing in Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union was unable to keep the satellite countries in Eastern Europe under check, and things were falling apart.

The Soviet economy was falling apart, and they were not able to sustain any of their allies, whether it's Cuba or Angola or South Yemen. The writing were on the wall in Cyrillic letters, I would say.

Thomas: Soviet aid to South Yemen was totally drying up in the late 80s. So, in addition to their own internal fighting, South Yemeni politicians were seriously having to reconsider their model. It was not going to work anymore. And funnily enough, something that really shifted the story a bit and focused minds was the discovery of oil in Yemen.

Baraa: So, oil was discovered in the province of Marib, and that oil will remains until today, the richest oil will producing oil for Yemen until, until today. And Marib remains this oil rich province in the north.

Not only that, but President Saleh of North Yemen manages to stabilise the situation in the north. So, the north was looking very stable, economically booming. And elections happen for the first time for the local councils. So, things are in the north looking like they're heading towards basically in the right direction.

Thomas: And so, beginning from this position of strength, Ali Abdullah Saleh is able to open up quite fruitful negotiations with President al Beidh of South Yemen over the oil resources because the oil field as it happens, straddled the border. And this became a kind of, let's say a test case for, hey, maybe actually the two sides can get along.

Baraa: So, the two states were racing towards this idea of unification, but they're very different at the same time. The north of Yemen is very capitalist. The south is very Marxist.

The north of Yemen is very tribal, but in the south, the tribal system has been effectively dismantled. And the north of Yemen overall's economy is looking like it's bigger and is booming while the leadership in the South are feeling constraints and feeling the pressure of the collapse of the economy.

So, it creates an interesting case of can you unify two different systems in this very complicated era of Yemen.

Aimen: And this actually was happening in Europe, in the heart of Europe. The unification of the two Germanys, one German state in the west was capitalist, and the other one in the east was communist. So, how do you unite them? The same question was also animating Arabia and the Gulf in particular.

Thomas: And it's the question that will largely animate the next episode in this series on the modern history of Yemen, because Ali Abdullah Saleh eventually in negotiation with President al Beidh of South Yemen, presented a unification deal quite favourable on the face of it to southern politicians and the southern politicians agreed.

And so, in 1990, the Yemeni Republic was founded, uniting north and south. President Saleh of the north remained president and President al Beidh of the south was vice president. And as we all know, Baraa, it was happily ever after, wasn't it?

Baraa: Oh indeed. I mean, maybe for four years.

[Music Playing]

Thomas: Well, with that, we're going to put a pin in it and we'll be back next time dear listener, to continue this exhaustive and possibly exhausting survey of modern Yemen.

Thank you very much, Baraa. It's been fascinating and fabulous having you here. And we look forward to having you with us again next time. Stay tuned.

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.