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Beyond the Arab Cold War
OXFORD STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
In War’s Wake
Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order
gerard daniel cohen
Grounds of Judgment
Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century
China and Japan
pär kristoffer cassel
Gordian Knot
Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order
ryan irwin
Mecca of Revolution
Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order
jeffrey james byrne
ASHER ORKABY
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
To my father, who taught me that the deserts of Yemen
are no impediment to success.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
10. The Siege of Sana’a and the End of the Yemen Civil War 197
Notes 215
Bibliography 269
Index 287
Acknowledgments
AS NIGHT FELL over the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a on September 19,
2014, a small convoy of pickup trucks carrying hundreds of heavily armed
tribesmen belonging to the Houthi rebel movement pulled to a stop in
front of the state-run Yemen TV headquarters. Within hours, the world’s
main source of news from Yemen was in the hands of the Houthis. Within
days, the entire city was under Houthi control. These were the first north-
ern tribesmen to enter Sana’a as conquerors since 1962, when the repub-
lic replaced the country’s thousand-year theocracy. The Houthi tribesmen
returned to Sana’a almost fifty-two years to the date after the Yemeni
republic had been founded. They arrived along al-Thawra Road, named
for the very revolution that overthrew the northern tribal order of the last
ruling imam of Yemen in 1962.
The events of September 1962 plunged Yemen into a protracted civil
war between the new republic and the deposed imam. This was a battle
between tribal and modern national identities, a conflict that continues
to define politics in Yemen. Over the next six years this local civil war
was transformed into an arena of global conflict that impacted the emerg-
ing modern Yemeni state and changed the course of Middle East history.
Throughout the civil war, no single power managed to dictate the course
of events. The belligerent parties were not allied along Cold War lines and
were not dominated by the stark divisions between the Saudi monarchy
and the Egyptian Arab nationalist movement. Nor, for that matter, were
Yemenis masters of their own destiny. Rather, during the 1960s, Yemen
became an open field for individuals, organizations, and countries to
peddle their agendas in this remote region of South Arabia, laying the
groundwork for subsequent decades of Yemeni and Arabian history.
2 B e y o n d the A r ab C o l d W a r
fetch water. After six years of conflict, a new Yemen emerged as a modern
state, independent of three dominant forces in South Arabia: the Yemeni
imamate, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalism,
and British Imperialism in South Arabia, all of which met their demise as
a consequence of the internationalized civil war.4
The economic and political burdens of Egypt’s intervention in Yemen
contributed to the downfall of Nasser and the Arab nationalist movement
in the Middle East.5 Egypt’s economy and agricultural production could
scarcely support its growing fellahin (peasant population) and certainly
could not bankroll other nationalist movements. As Egypt was reluctantly
drawn further into the conflict in Yemen, Nasser sought to fund his quasi-╉
occupation on the backs of local Yemenis and their puppet regime through
taxation, printing paper currency, issuing stamps, and exploiting local
resources. Nasser, who built his reputation as an anti-╉imperialist, ironi-
cally managed to construct his own model of non-╉Western colonialism.6
In North Yemen, he created a colony devoid of the financial resources and
investment often associated with European imperialism, yet rife with the
requisite corruption, sense of superiority, and boundless exercise of force
against both allies and enemies.
The emergence of Yemeni nationalism in the northern Yemen Arab
Republic (YAR) inspired similar sentiments in Aden and contributed to
Britain’s complete withdrawal from South Yemen in November 1967.
Violence spilled over the border as Egypt helped arm a growing anti-╉
British insurgency, transforming South Arabia into a new front for the
Arab nationalist struggle against imperialism, a battle that had won
Nasser public admiration during the 1950s. This final round of the Anglo-╉
Egyptian confrontation in Yemen during the 1960s brought about their
mutual defeat and simultaneous withdrawal from South Arabia.
Whose revolution?
Throughout the civil war and in academic literature in the following
decades, the extent of Egyptian involvement in the planning and hatching
of the coup has been debated.5 There were certainly strategic advantages
to Egyptian intervention. By 1962, Egypt was politically isolated in the
Middle East, following the breakup of the United Arab Republic with Syria
and the formation of a Jordanian-╉Saudi alliance.6 Of the major Arab states,
only Algeria maintained friendly relations with Egypt, while Iraq, Jordan,
Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, and Saudi Arabia remained united in their dis-
dain for Nasser’s Middle East machinations.7 Khaled Mohieddin, a promi-
nent member of the Egyptian military admitted that “The Yemen war was
a response to the break with Syria … a sign that Egypt’s Arab role was
not over … as Syria was a blow to Egypt’s Arab leadership.”8 Mohieddin
long believed that “Egypt could achieve far more with propaganda than
with tanks” and lamented in retrospect at having “become trapped in so
humiliating a situation.”9 According to Anthony Nutting, with a quick and
decisive victory in Yemen, Nasser “might have been able to recover the
leadership of the Arab world for more than just a fleeting moment.”10
From a strategic perspective, it is not difficult to understand why
Nasser supported the Yemen republic. Backing Abdullah Sallal would give
Nasser a chance to regain his stature in the Arab World. Furthermore,
the geographic location of Yemen would place Nasser in an advantageous
position to pressure the Saudis for economic aid and support anti-╉British
nationalists in the south. Saddling the British with an internal colonial
uprising would discourage their Foreign Office from considering another
Suez mission and would give the Egyptians unchallenged military and
political preeminence over both sides of the Red Sea.11
British colonial officials and Yemeni royalists, in an attempt to dele-
gitimize the YAR as a foreign entity, predictably accused the Egyptians of
orchestrating the entire event. The British Colonial Office associated the
Yemeni coup with Nasser’s anti-╉British agenda on the Arabian Peninsula.
8 B e y o n d the A r ab C o l d W a r
Not long before the Revolution … the very kind gentleman called
El-qunbula or ‘the Bomb’ put a dagger into me. He knocked at the
legation door at about 1:00 in the morning … I opened the door
and a dagger was stuck straight into my chest… . My wife came out
of the bedroom in her nightie and she attacked him and threw him
down the stairs and he injured himself on his own dagger though
he managed to escape.14
Italian Minister Guillet concluded that the Egyptians had been behind
this attack.15 The fact that Radio Cairo dubbed Qunbula a “National
Hero” further corroborated the suspicions of Egyptian intervention.16
Qunbula was later found and identified by “two bruises on his buttocks.
The distance between the bruises was measured and found to be exactly
the same as the distance between the horns of the Consulate’s goat,
which was assumed to have helped the fellow on his way.” Qunbula was
imprisoned, released under amnesty, and murdered by an unidentified
assailant.17
An attack on the German chargé d’affaires on February 8, 1962, con-
tinued the spread of rumors that Egyptian intelligence organizations were
working to undermine foreign support of Imam Ahmad in preparation for
his overthrow.18 Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhad, Egypt’s diplomat in Sana’a,
was believed to have been conspiring against al-Badr and even misled the
new imam into allowing additional tanks and armored vehicles to “guard”
The Origins of September 1962 9
“The soldiers left Cairo on 19th September, 1962 and boarded a ship
called “The Sudan” on 21st September (4 days before the revolution
started) and told they were going to Algeria. We arrived at Hodeida
on 28th September (2 days after the Revolution) and disembarked.
Other ships—the Nile, al Wadi and Cleopatra—loaded with weap-
ons and ammunition also arrived in Hodeida on the same day. The
ships al Wadi, the Nile and the Sudan, each carried a full Brigade of
1,000 men. The Egyptians’ expeditionary force immediately headed
for Sanaa [sic] with two Brigades, while other Egyptian troops
remained in Hodeida and took control of Manakhah… . First fight-
ing broke out on 3rd or 4th October when an agreement with the
tribes was broken.”21
1963, keeping him away from Yemeni politics for several months. Baydani
was officially accused of “suspicious contacts” with British counterparts
during an earlier trip to Aden.24
Memoirs of Egyptian officials and military personnel argue that Egypt
played at most a minimal role in orchestrating events in September 1962.
Instead, Egyptian troops and support arrived, purportedly, in support of
a genuine national revolution in Yemen. ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, an
original member of Nasser’s Free Officer’s movement who had broken
with Nasser politically over the intervention in Yemen, argued that war in
Yemen came as a surprise. Furthermore, Nasser’s decision to send a small
contingent of troops was made only after he received the false reports of
al-Badr’s death and assumed there were no other viable political leaders
to support.25
Differing from Baghdadi’s interpretation, Salah al-Din al-Hadidi, the
head of Egyptian intelligence and an early critic of Nasser, claimed to have
known about the revolution, but that Egypt made it their official policy
not to interfere. Perhaps in an attempt to maintain the innocence of the
Egyptian intelligence community, Hadidi claimed that Baydani, acting at
the behest of the Egyptians, waited until September 29, 1962, to arrive in
Sana’a with a small contingent of Egyptian officers with a direct wireless
transmitter link to Cairo.26
A particular point of contention between British and Egyptian ver-
sions of the events was in regard to the Egyptian ship Sudan and the
timing of its arrival in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. According to
British sources, four Egyptian ships, the Nile, al-Wadi, Cleopatra, and
Sudan set sail four days prior to the coup.27 Salah al-Din al-Hadidi,
however, claims that the Sudan did not set sail prior to the coup. It
was waiting in the port of Suez on the night of October 2 under “con-
fidential orders to be equipped with everything deemed necessary by
Marshal Amer.” The ship set sail as soon as word was received and
reached Hodeidah three days later.28 Hadidi’s version of the Sudan epi-
sode supports his argument that the Egyptian intelligence knew of the
plans but consciously declined to intervene, allowing the Yemeni coup
to take its course.
British accounts are motivated by a disdain for Nasser and his Yemeni
intervention, while Egyptian accounts aim to absolve participants of com-
mandeering a nationalist revolution. Less than three years after the begin-
ning of the civil war in 1962, the number of Egyptian soldiers in Yemen
reached an apex of 70,000. The large-scale Egyptian intervention in the
The Origins of September 1962 11
civil war has clouded the debate over the origins and organizers of the
September coup. The massive number of Egyptian soldiers at the height
of the civil war does not presuppose Nasser’s role in planning and carry-
ing out the coup. The Yemeni 1962 coup was, in actuality, the culmina-
tion of two decades of anti-╉imam sentiments from a new generation of
Yemeni intelligentsia that preceded the rise of Nasser and the Egyptian
Free Officers in 1952. A few guns and perhaps some logistical training by
Egyptian officers were relatively minor when compared with the histori-
cally Yemeni roots of September 1962.
studying abroad. Between 1958 and 1961, while Yemen was a member
of the UAR along with Egypt and Syria, Nasser curtailed support for the
anti-╉imam Yemeni Union in Cairo. Following the breakup of the union
and Nasser’s disenchantment with Ahmad, Nasser allowed them to pre-
pare for the September 1962 coup from Egyptian territory. The Cairo and
Aden branches of the Yemeni Union worked with dissident elements
of domestic military and political circles to prepare for the nationalist
coup in Yemen. The most obvious element of cooperation was through
Egyptian media. On May 12, 1962, Baydani broadcasted a speech calling
for social justice and economic development in Yemen entitled “Blueprint
for a Yemeni Republic.” In July and August, he gave a series of talks on
Cairo radio entitled “The Secrets of Yemen.” The popular Egyptian maga-
zine Ruz al Youssef published a series of Baydani’s anti-╉imam articles in
the month before the revolution.55 While Baydani and other Free Yemenis
made use of Egyptian media, the aid was limited for the most part to
broadcast and print.
For those who questioned the extent of Nasser’s involvement in orches-
trating the coup in Yemen, perhaps it is necessary to reconsider this line of
reasoning. The FYM laid the foundations of September 1962 well before
Nasser came to power, and it was primarily responsible for its own nation-
alist revolution. According to the Yemeni revolutionary government’s Al
Thawra newspaper, the 1962 revolution was a third stage of a process that
began in 1948 and continued in 1955.56 Others have gone even further and
argued that by September 1962 the traditional Yemeni society had already
begun to break down as a social system, and that even without the coup
against the imamate the process of disintegration would doubtless have
occurred.57 Egyptian intervention in the Yemeni coup was only one part of
a broader local and international involvement in South Arabia that began
nearly two decades before the 1962 revolution.