Articles filed under Yemen | Middle East Research and Information Project

Moscow's Crisis Management

The Case of South Yemen

by Fred Halliday

published in MER151

In January 1986, a major crisis broke out within the leadership of the Yemeni Socialist Party, the ruling party in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. In two weeks of fighting many thousands of people lost their lives, and afterward between 30,000 and 70,000 fled to neighboring North Yemen.

Please Subscribe to access the full contents of this article.

Full story >>

Plain Old Murder

by Chris Toensing | published July 30, 2012

Drones are President Barack Obama’s weapon of choice in the war on terror.

Since taking office, he has ordered over 280 drone strikes in Pakistan alone. That’s more than eight times as many as George W. Bush authorized and doesn’t even count the scores of other unmanned attacks in Somalia and Yemen. When the mainstream media reports these operations, it claims that almost all the people killed are “militants” -- members of al-Qaeda or affiliated radical groups.

Full story >>

Revolution in Socotra

A Perspective from Yemen's Periphery

by Nathalie Peutz

published in MER263

At the beginning of 2012, as Egyptians and Syrians marked the second year of their revolts, protesters also took to the streets of Hadiboh, the tumbledown capital of Yemen’s Socotra archipelago (pop. approx. 50,000). Like demonstrators elsewhere, the Socotrans were calling for both local administrative change and national political reform. While the Socotran protests, occurring since March 2011, were small, they were no less significant than the more spectacular rallies in the epicenters of Arab revolution. Indeed, the spread of revolution to Socotra, the largest and most populated of the archipelago’s four islands, shows the extent to which the events of 2011 have resonated even at the very margins of the Arab world.

Full story >>

From the Editor

by The Editors

published in MER263

Full story >>

Tawakkul Karman as Cause and Effect

by Stacey Philbrick Yadav | published October 21, 2011

Political activist Tawakkul Karman has brought Yemen’s revolution to New York, speaking directly on October 20 with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and organizing rallies at the United Nations headquarters in lower Manhattan, the largest of which is slated for the afternoon of October 21. The purpose of her visit is to keep pressure on the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that reflects the aspirations of the overwhelming numbers of Yemenis who have sustained peaceful calls for change for the nine long months since protests began in late January. Arriving newly anointed by the Nobel Committee, which named her as one of three recipients of the 2011 Peace Prize, Karman fears -- as does much of the Yemeni opposition, in its many forms -- that the UN will merely reiterate the approximate parameters of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative put forth in April. That plan, which has enjoyed support from the United States, as well as Yemen’s GCC neighbors, would allow legal immunity for President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih, whose crimes against Yemeni protesters have multiplied in the months since the spring. For this reason, Karman will end her week in New York as she has ended so many weeks in Sanaa in recent months -- at the head of a protest.

Full story >>

"Eventually There Can Only Be an Arab Solution"

An Interview with 'Abdallah al-Ashtal

by James Paul

published in MER169

Amb. ‘Abdallah al-Ashtal is Yemen’s representative to the United Nations. He served as ambassador for the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen from 1971 until May 1990, when he became the representative of the newly unified Republic of Yemen. In March and December 1990, he chaired the UN Security Council. James Paul interviewed him in New York City on December 26, 1990.

How would you assess the role of the United Nations in the Gulf crisis?

Even before the crisis, the UN had begun to work differently. One could sense a spirit of accommodation between the superpowers. The Security Council was no longer a forum for rhetoric but a place to lay out possibilities and try to come to a common position.

Please Subscribe to access the full contents of this article.

Full story >>

Yemen: Unification and the Gulf War

by Sheila Carapico

published in MER170

On May 22, 1990, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (the PDRY, or South Yemen) and the Yemen Arab Republic (the YAR, or North Yemen) joined to become the Republic of Yemen. “A Tale of Two Families” reflects the malaise in North Yemen on the eve of unification; the situation in the south, since the 1986 street battles in Aden, was even worse. [1]

Unity offered beneficial economies of scale in oil, power, administrative apparatus and tourism. It made political sense, too, reflecting the view of most Yemenis that the division into separate countries was artificial and imposed.

Please Subscribe to access the full contents of this article.

Full story >>

A Tale of Two Families

Change in North Yemen, 1977-1989

by Sheila Carapico , Cynthia Myntti

published in MER170

Virtually every aspect of life in North Yemen has changed dramatically since 1977, including those aspects of Yemeni society which represent continuity with the past: tribalism, rural life and use of qat. [1] The driving force for change has been economic. By 1975, Yemen was caught up in the dramatic developments that affected all Arab countries. Rising international oil prices generated enormous surpluses in the producing countries, enabling them to initiate ambitious development plans and forcing them to import workers.