P. D. R. Yemen: Outpost Of Socialist Development In Arabia

231 Pages·1985·4.439 MB·English

by  Helen Lackner, Husayn Abd Allah Amri

P.D.R.Yemen
Outpost of
Socialist Development
in Arabia
Helen Lackner
Ithaca Press London 1985
© 1985 Helen Lackner
First published in 1985 by
Ithaca Press 13 Southwark Street London SEI IRQ
Printed in England by
Biddles Ltd, Guildford & King’s Lynn
Typeset by EMS Photosetters Rochford Essex
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lackner, Helen
PDR Yemen: outpost of socialist development in Arabia.
1. Yemen (People’s Democratic Republic)-----
Economic conditions 2. Yemen (People’s
Democratic Republic)-----Politics and government
I. Title
330.953*3505 HC 415.342
ISBN 0-86372-032-3
Contents
Acknowledgements
Names & transliteration
Units
General Map of P.D.R.Yemen
Abbreviations
Introduction 1
1 The Colonial Period
The Rationale of British occupation 7
Southern Yemen from the 1850s to the First World War 9
The Transformation of the Hinterland 12
Intervention in the Interior from the 1930s onwards 15
Constitutional Changes in the 1950s and the Federation of South Arabia 19
Colonial maps 22
2 The Development of Nationalism and the Struggle for
Independence
Adeni Political Movements 27
1 The early organizations
2 The ATUC and PSP
3 OLOS and FLOSY
Movements based on ideology 32
1 The Ba'ath
2 The Communists
Anti-British Movements in the Hinterland 34
1 The South Arabian League
2 The United National Front
The NLF 35
1 The Origins of the NLF
2 The birth of the NLF
3 The National Charter
4 The Conflict with FLOSY and victory
The Hadramaut
Conclusion: The NLF take power
3 The First 10 Years of Independence
The Situation at Independence 51
The First 18 Months 53
1 The Fourth Congress of the NLF
2 The 20 March Events
3 The 14th May Movement
4 Disagreements with the YAR
The Corrective Move and the Fifth Congress 61
1 The 22nd June Corrective Move
2 The First Years of Revolutionary Government
3 The Fifth Congress
4 The Seven Days
5 Counter-Revolution
6 Relations with the Northern Part of the Homeland
UPONF and the Power Struggle 1975-78 70
1 The Unification Congress
2 Decline and Falfof<SpIrvtfô>The 26 June Events
4 The State in the 1980s
The Presidency of Abdul Fattah Ismail 81
1 The First Congress of the Yemeni Socialist Party
2 Main Events of the Period
3 The Yemeni National Question
4 The ‘Retirement’ of Abdul Fattah Ismail
The Leadership of Ali Nasser Mohammed 87
1 The Extraordinary Congress of the YSP
2 The Development of the Party
3 Internal Politics
4 A United Yemen?
5 Recent Developments in Foreign Relations
The State in the 1980s 99
1 Representative and Mass Organisations
2 The Armed Forces
5 The Transformation of Society
Society before Independence 103
Islam 109
Détribalisation 110
The Bedu 112
The Position of Women 114
Culture 118
The Urban-Rural Divide 124
Migration 127
6 Social Policies and their Influence on Social Change
Education 130
Adult Education
Health 138
1 Initial Situation and Problems
2 Government Health Policies
3 Developments in Health since Independence
Housing 145
Other Social Policies 147
7 The Economy
Economic Policy 149
1 Early Planning
2 Economic Policy of the First Congress of the YSP
3 The Second Five Year Plan and the Extraordinary Congress of the YSP
a The situation in 1980
b The Second Five Year Plan. How is it doing?
Finance 159
Trade 161
Infrastructure 163
1 Communications
2 Energy
3 Water
Labour 166
Conclusion
8 Agriculture
Agriculture Before Independence 171
Independence and the Agrarian Reform 172
The Cooperatives 176
The Problems of Agriculture and New Policies for the 1980s 179
1 The organisational structure of the co-operatives
2 The taxation system
3 Farmgate prices
4 Marketing
5 Inputs
6 Mechanisation
The State Farms 183
The Private Sector 184
Livestock 185
Agricultural Self-Sufficiency 187
9 Fisheries and Industry
Fisheries 189
1 The Development of the Fisheries Cooperatives
2 The Industrial Fleet and Fish Processing
3 Distribution and Marketing
Industry 196
1 Party Policy
2 Industry before Independence
3 Preconditions for Industrialization
4 Manufacturing
5 Oil and Minerals
The Refinery
Minerals Exploration
Oil Exploration
Conclusion 206
Chronology 208
List of Political Organisations in Arabic & English 211
Bibliography 212
Index 215

Acknowledgements
As anyone who has ever undertaken any research will know, such work is not done
in isolation. Innumerable people have assisted me throughout the many years of
this project, and it would be impossible to list all of them. Will those whom I have
omitted please forgive me and still accept my gratitude for the information and
insights they have given me. My colleagues at work provided a background of
knowledge of the daily life of the country and its problems and I particularly want
to thank the staff and students of A1 Gala Secondary School in Khormaksar, the
Higher College of Education in Khormaksar and Zinjibar and the Institute of
Fisheries in Khormaksar. In the Ministry of Education and the University of
Aden, Dr Said Abdul Khayr an Nuban, then Minister, and Dr Salem Omar
Bukayr, Rector of the University, and their staff both assisted my research and
dealt with the problems of my employment. Similarly my gratitude goes to my
colleagues at the Yemeni Centre for Cultural Research, Archeology and Museums
and in particular to its Director Abdullah Ahmad Muheirez who has supported me
throughout and honoured me with his friendship.
Research for this book would have been impossible without the active
cooperation and assistance of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the
Yemeni Socialist Party, who organised visits for me and gave me introductions to
the various ministries, as well as providing fascinating discussions. In particular I
want to thank the following officials: the late Mohammed Saleh Muti‘ and Abd al
Aziz Abdul Wali, both at one time members of the Political Bureau, who assisted
me in the early years of my work. More recently, Political Bureau members Salem
Saleh Mohammed, Anis Hassan Yahia and Abdul Ghani Abdul Qader provided
invaluable advice, assistance and information. My thanks also go to all the staff of
the Foreign Relations, Ideological, and Economic departments who assisted me at
different times, particularly Farouq Ali Ahmed and Abdul Gabbar Sa‘d.
In the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform I must thank the late
Mohammed A wad Ba'amer, Deputy Minister Naguib Qudar and the staff of the
Planning and Statistics Department; at the Ministry of Fish Wealth, the
Department of Planning and Statistics, the Cooperative Department and the
various corporations; the staff of the Statistics Department in the Ministry of
Industry and in particular my gratitude goes to Deputy Ministe* Othman Abdul
Gabbar whose assistance went well beyond the call of duty, and to his family whose
friendship has meant a great deal to me. In the Ministry of Labour, Deputy
Minister Ali bin Thabet dealt sympathetically with my questions, in the Ministry
of Local Government I had interesting discussions with Deputy Minister Farouq
Shamlan and with Mohammed Husayn Shamsan. At the Ministry of Planning,
then Deputy Minister Abdul Qader Bagammal was helpful as well as the staff of
the Economics department. In the Ministry of Health, I had stimulating meetings
with Dr Ahmad Ghazy Ismail, Dr Ahmad Abdul Latif and Dr Ali Obeid Sallami.
Thanks also go to Mahmoud Said Madhi, Minister of Finance and to Salem al
Ashwali, Governor of the Bank of Yemen and his staff for steering me through the
complexity of financial statistics.
On my visits to the countryside I have always benefited from considerable
assistance and advice from the local authorities and the local Party Organisation,
particularly on my many visits to Hadramaut govemorate and in particular to Wadi
Hadramat. I want to thank the staff of the As Salam hotel in Seiyun for
running such a delightful establishment. Everywhere ordinary people showed
patience and were friendly. I particularly want to pay tribute to all the peasants,
fishermen, factory workers, men and women everywhere, who generously gave me
of their time and assisted in a project without any benefit to themselves.
During my stay in Aden, the French community supported and encouraged me
although they almost universally disagreed with my positions and aims. In
particular I want to acknowledge the support of my friend the late André Fourcade
who lived there between 1977 and 1979. The Sudanese community, specially Dr
Farouq Ibrahim, and Mohammed Magdoub and his family gave me valuable
advice and assistance. Tiger and her extended family made demands and gave me
affection which structured my life there; they also improved my understanding of
fish marketing and feline social organisation.
The staff of the PDRY embassy in London have always been helpful. I owe
particular gratitude to Ambassador Mohammed Hadi Awad who originally
arranged employment and made it possible for me to go to Democratic Yemen in
1977, and to Ambassador Saleh Husayn Muthanna and the current staff who have
helped me with data which I had failed to obtain while in the country.
The development of my ideas about the country has benefited from the expertise
in different fields of the following who have read all or parts of the manuscript at
different stages and provided useful comments. I thank them and apologise for not
always taking their advice. They are John Gittings, Fred Halliday, Bengt
Kristiansson, Dorothy Lewis, Michael Maguire, Martha Mundy and Suleiman
Yeslam. Dr Khaled Ibrahim Hariri read the manuscript and made many valuable
comments. I am grateful for his criticism and advice on many points and for the
support he has given me. David Wolton steered me through the final draft of the
book, his emphasis on readability and his positive editing have added a broader
perspective to this work and his encouragement and patience helped me to persist
through difficult times. Since my return to London the writing of the book has
been made possible by a one year fellowship from the Centre of Arab Gulf Studies
of the University of Exeter. I am extremely grateful to the Centre and especially
to Professor M. A. Shaban for the confidence and trust he has shown in my work,
which has made completion possible, within a reasonable time span and in
comfortable conditions. In London I also want to thank Hermione Harris and
Mukrid for providing moral support in the lonely exercise of writing, and my
mother for patiently accepting many years of absence.
Finally, and this is no mere traditional formula, I alone am responsible for all
assertions, ideas, positions, interpretations, conclusions and errors to be found in
this work. I am sure that no one shares all the positions expressed here but though I
do not in any way claim to have all the answers, I have tried to ask many questions.
Despite its failings, I hope that this book will help readers to greater and more
sympathetic understanding of Democratic Yemen, its people and their recent
history, and to better awareness of the difficulties of socialist development in a poor
Third World country.
Helen Lackner March 1985
Names and transliteration
A number of points need to be made. Yemen is now a country divided into two states,
the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The
latter, subject of this book has, to say the least, an unwieldy name; at home the
official abbreviation is Democratic Yemen which I use here by preference to
South Yemen more commonly used in the West. I have tried to be consistent in this
and when I talk of Yemen I mean the whole country. When talking of North Yemen I
mean either the Imamate for the pre-1962 period or the Yemen Arab Republic
thereafter. When discussing the PDRY I use either that term or Democratic Yemen,
but occasionally South Yemen, usually when referring to other writers or when it
contrasts with North Yemen. Before independence the country was in the 1960s
known as the Federation of South Arabia which was composed of the Colony of Aden
and the Eastern and Western Aden Protectorates. In discussing these I have used the
terms amirates, sultanates, shaykhdoms and statelets almost interchangeably; when
discussing the countryside in contrast to Aden, I use the terms hinterland and
interior. Finally when I use southern Yemen, I refer to the PDRY and the southern
part of the YAR, more or less the Shafi'i part of Yemen which shared a similar
culture with the PDRY’s side of the border.
As all readers of books on the Arab world will know, transliteration from Arabic is
a major problem. I make no claim to adopt academic convention on this. On the
whole I have used the commonly accepted English terms for geographic names.
Although there is, I hope, internal consistency in my transliteration, is does not
include the more obscure diacritical signs. Many institutions in the PDRY have
official English translations for their names which may at first appear strange to the
reader. I have chosen to accept and to use these names even when they are not those I
would have translated myself. Similarly in many quotations I have preferred to use
the available ‘official’ translation, rather than provide an alternative.
Units
1000 fils YD 1
Yemeni Dinar (YD) US $ 0.345
feddan = 1 acre 0.405 hectare (ha)
ton = 1000 Kg
b/d barrels per day
People’s Democratic
------------------1 1 1 ------------
0 W 100 ISO
1 ____________________1 ---------------------I----------------------------------1
MII.F.S
0 SO 100 *50 200
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