Modernization and Democracy Replace Warlike Traditions in Yemen

by Ian Williams

Yemen is a country culturally rich but economically poor. That is hardly surprising. President Ali Abdullah Saleh scarcely exaggerates when he says, “Yemen has suffered enough wars and suffered more than any other country through war.” For 30 years, the country has been afflicted by a dizzying combination of internecine and international warfare. Until reunification in 1990, the former British protectorate-turned Marxist-Muslim state in the South, with its capital in Aden, was at loggerheads with the North. It supported insurrectionists in Oman, and at home tended to behave as if ideological purity came out of the barrel of a gun. The Marxists had chased the British out just as the 1967 closure of the Suez Canal made the Port of Aden, South Yemen’s major resource, useless. By the time the Canal reopened, politics and underinvestment had made the port unattractive to most shippers.

In the North, even after the long civil war between republicans and royalists finished, there was no shortage of domestic squabbles, even within the winning side. While all Yemenis strongly identify with a united Yemen, they also identify with their own tribes and families, and the 64,000 often isolated towns and villages in which they live are scattered. Testifying to local traditions that make the Second Amendment look like a watered-down concession, any self-respecting Yemeni male feels naked without his rhinohorn-handled knife in his belt. Among Yemeni men in the country-side, a casually dangled AK-47 replaces the formerly ubiquitous Ottoman rifles that now are for sale in the souvenir shops.

Improved Relations

Despite such martial traditions going back to long before the age of the Caliphs, ministers repudiate any thought of military action over disputed borders with Eritrea and Saudi Arabia. Foreign Minister Abdul Karim El-Eryani told the Washington Report that relations with the Saudis were better now than ever before, following the visits of Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Ibn Abdel Aziz and Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Ibn Abdel Aziz to Sana’a in October for talks.

The talks were about the Taif Agreement of 1934, which gave the Saudis control of the area just north of the present boundary for 40 years, and also about the undemarcated boundary in the Rub’ Al Qali, the “Empty Quarter.” There is room for compromise. The populated territories have people who may not want to be rejoined to Yemen, while the “Empty Quarter” region may have oil that people in Yemen would like to have joined to them.

Foreign Minister El-Eryani comments hopefully, “Of course, now we know the empty quarter is not so empty. South of the disputed area, there is oil, and north of the disputed area there is oil, so there must be oil in the middle, and I expect it to be significant.”

The area in dispute with the Eritreans, located far to the west in the Red Sea, is going to arbitrationand also has possible oil deposits as a motivation for arguing about otherwise unprepossessingly barren islands. That oil could give Yemen’s renowned poets and musicians something to sing about as the country tries to pull itself out of its poverty trap, with 35 percent unemployed, 40 percent of homes without running water, and 60 percent without electricity.

Indeed, Prime Minister Abdullah Aziz Abdul-Ghani, architect of recent economic reforms, almost makes a virtue out of the country’s poverty. “We are unique!” he proclaims. “All our neighbors are rich.” However, he is eloquently unwilling to compare the calm acceptance of Yemen’s IMF structural readjustment plan with other Arab countries, where such plans have fomented more insurrection than even the Comintern could have managed.

The prime minister claims that so far the plan has largely protected the weak while stabilizing the currency and deregulating the economy. “No one dies of hunger here,” he explains. “Yemen is a society that cares about all its members. And our education budget is higher than the military budget.”

Indeed the strength of local institutions and society is one reason why the statistical poverty of the country is not reflected in more visible deprivation. Onder Yucer, the genial Turk who is U.N. coordinator in Sana’a, adduces that as the reason for the relative success of international aid programs in the country, and points to numerous projects that the Yemenis have kept going after the aid dollars have gone away. Yemen, he says, “has a strong civil society” which gives cause for optimism about the prospects for the thriving, if recent, democracy in the country. Yemen in fact is gearing up for multi-party elections in April, and it already has a vociferous and active parliamentary opposition.

The surprisingly smooth path to reunification in 1990 was, of course, marred by a brief but bitter conflict in 1994, but Sana’a is going the extra mile to remove potential grievances. As the prime minister says, “We have more southerners now among cabinet members than before the war,” and Sana’a is honoring its pledge to keep all government employees in the much smaller South on the payroll. “In the North, the Civil Service is 120,000 out of 11 to 12 million, while in the South there were more than 700,000 for less than 3 million. And the agreement was that none of them would be sacked.”

Another part of the strategy that should benefit the whole country while reconciling the South is the economic development plan for Aden. Supported by the United Nations Development Program, Yemen has completed intensive studies of rival ports across the Indian Ocean, their location, capacity, and depth, and has concluded that the investment will give Aden an unrivaled advantage as a transshipment zone.

Allied with a free zone and Yemeni trading instincts, suppressed but not erased by years of Marxist dogma and armed struggle, Aden could be the engine for the revival of an economy that already is showing signs of growth. It also could be the entry point for a social transformation.

At the portside in Aden, the Maritime Training Institute is on a site that once was thick with South Wales coal that used to fuel ships of the British Empire passing through on their way to and from India. Here the Yemen Port Authority is training young Yemenis in everything from the English language to port management, customs, and computers. While in Sana’a in the north sewing classes for women are regarded as almost avant-garde, the young women of Aden in the south tap at the computers essential for any transformation of Yemen into a modern society.

Nascent Modernization

In the low-lying Hadramaut, the local chamber of commerce for some of the most ancient trading cities in the world proudly displayed the growing number of commodities that were being made and serviced in Yemen. Plastic buckets and bowls may not seem much to more developed countries, but in a country in which the growing and selling of qata mildly narcotic leaf chewed in Yemen and East Africawas the only large-scale industry, it is the beginning of the process of modernization.

However, that does not mean dismissing the past. Local singer Abu Baqr Salim Bafaqih sings dismissively, “Where is Beirut in Lebanon?,” as he trills the praises of the “beautiful cities of the Hadramaut.” And Hadramautis are as proud of their unique adobe skyscrapers as any New Yorker is of the World Trade Center, and there is deep concern at how to preserve them. In Shibhem, rising like Manhattan out of the wadi, many of the buildings are showing signs of lack of maintenance as their owners leave to work in other countries and the infrastructure crumbles. U.N. agencies have declared these white-trimmed beige structures to be the heritage of humanitybut the rest of humanity has not yet rushed to put cash and resources behind these pious statements.

Seven thousand feet up in Sana’a, the renovation and repair process is much more advanced. Ironically, the years of war and poverty have saved Yemen’s unique architecture from the depredations of concrete homogenization that leveled more affluent countries’ heritage. The installation of running water, sewers, and drains has saved the old town from a slide into dereliction. If anything, Sana’a now faces more problems with gentrification than with decrepitude as people realize the convenience and aesthetics of the old town houses, custom-built for the climate. In a way, the project symbolizes the overall opportunity for Yemen to modernize while keeping the best of its traditional culture.