There was always one big exception to the outside reluctance to deal with Yemen, and that was Saudi Arabia. US and Soviet sponsorship was most important during two mercifully brief wars fought between the Yemens in 19.
South Yemen was, at least at the beginning, run by doctrinaire Communists, leading to obvious conflict with the North. Though there were left leaning elements in the revolution that formed the Northern Yemen Arab Republic, they were mercilessly crushed in the aftermath of the North’s civil war, as the Saudis switched their sponsorship from the defeated Northern Royalists to the Northern Republic. The two countries did become one in the 1990s, but unification has been such a mess that the most powerful Southern factions in Yemen today are all working hard for independence. While the much more populous and usually more economically powerful North transitioned from a Zaydi Shia religious monarchy to a Republic, the geographically bigger but much less populated South spent over a century becoming a wealthy trading hub under the British, before spending a couple decades as a Communist dictatorship. Throughout the massive population gains and economic changes of the 19th and 20th centuries, the North and South developed as two very different countries. In both countries, the prospect of unification was popular, and a priority for most political factions. Unfortunately, this weird immunity to or at least accomodation with outside influence evaporated suddenly in 1990, with disastrous results.īoth North and South Yemen ditched their outside occupiers in 1967. Don’t get me wrong many, horrible, bloody things were encouraged by outside actors, but the superpowers were happier to bribe Yemenis than try to conquer them again. So by 1967, both superpowers had lost more than they had gained in Yemen, which gave the country a sort of immunity to the late cold war. Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian dictator and Soviet friend didn’t just lose in North Yemen in 1967, he also lost to Israel that year in part because of the Yemeni distraction, and the Soviet plans for the Middle East never really recovered. After the British were driven out of South Yemen in 1967, they soon pulled out of the rest of the Middle East, completing the British transition from US cold war ally, to US cold war dependent. Each superpower lost a useful ally to Yemen. But these Yemeni victories were deeply pyrrhic for the superpowers. In the 1960s, the West sort of won the Yemeni civil war in the North, and the Soviets had kind of won the Southern independence struggle, which had produced the Arab World’s only Communist State. The 1970s and the 1980s, more or less the second half of the cold war, were pretty universally horrible for the developing world, but Yemen had already taken some of the worst the Cold War could dish out, and had given both the Americans and the Soviets a bloody nose in the process.
Maybe the most interesting thing about the period we are discussing today, is that it started out pretty well for Yemen’s people. The two groups that have done the most to defeat the Saudi invasion over the past decade, the old Zaydi Shia elites, and the Southern Separatists, both started their battles for freedom during this era. The 1970s through the 1990s are essential to understanding Yemen’s current war.
Today we will discuss how Yemen survived, and even thrived during the Cold War battle between the US and Soviet Empires, only to squander that victory with poor choices at the Cold War’s end.
Yemen vs getman empire vs upper volta flag series#
In this series so far, we have brought Yemen from the 1500s to the 1960s, covering its humiliation of the Ottomans, the Egyptians, and the British. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.įor at least a century, Afghanistan has been renowned as the graveyard of empires, but the South Arabian country of Yemen might be even more worthy of that title. If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click here to support this project through Patreon. Heading back to do more YouTube Drama before I attempt “Yemen vs. Every step of the way was a bit of a struggle.
Yemen vs getman empire vs upper volta flag full#
A full 30 minutes of produced video, which is only part three of four, got a bit daunting. This one was a bit of an ordeal, honestly.
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