THE BREAK-UP of Yemen threatens the failure of the most serious attempt yet at overcoming the artificial borders imposed on the Arab world by colonialism.
Only last year Yemen, the poorest and most populous state in the Arabian peninsula, conducted the region's first multi-party elections, and the first in which women were allowed to vote.
The Republic of Yemen was formed in May 1990 by the unification of two very different states and regimes: to the North, the Islamic, conservative and tribal Yemen Arab Republic'; in the South, the left nationalist 'People's Democratic Republic of Yemen'.
Economic crisis had lent new urgency to the traditional calls for reunification. The North's Ali Abdullah Saleh became president, while the last surviving leftist leader of the South's National Liberation Front, Al Salim al-Beid, became Vice-President. The widely popular reunification was opposed by many leftists in the South and by Islamicists in the North.
Unification was also opposed by Saudi Arabia, which feared a large, populous democratic and strategically significant neighbour even more than it has feared the small, poverty-striken and isolated southern republic.
The war in the Persian Gulf provided the opportunity for Saudi interference. Yemen was one of a handful of Arab regimes which refused to oppose the US-led attack on Iraq. The sole Arab state on 200 miles SAUDI ARABIA Norther NORTH YEMÈN Dhamar ETHIOPIA лівост army base the UN's Security Council, Yemen had voted with Cuba to oppose the assault.
Saudi Arabia's response was to expel a million emigrant Yemeni workers, mainly from North Yemen. It cost Yemen, already the poorest Arab country, over £2,000 million in lost remittances and aid, while 25,800 million of property was confiscated by Saudi Arabia.
•The refugee influx increased Yemeni unemploy. ment to about 30 per cent. The resulting budget shortfall and huge price rises led to major civil disturbances In the heavily unionised south, hundreds of thousands of govemment workers went on OMAN. MAHRA SOUTH HADHRAMAWT Mukalla O The Saudis and their fundamentalist allies in Yemen also instituted a campaign of terror against the activists of the Yemen Socialist Party, the NLF's successor, killing at least 150 in two years.
Protesting against the government's failure to counter this terror, Vice-President alBeid went on virtual strike: last August, refusing to leave his Aden stronghold or to participate in government meetings.
Despite Salah's agreeing to al Beid's reconciliation pact in February, fighting erupted the following day which Salah turned into full-scale war on May 4, after talks had failed.
Attempts by the northern army to occupy the South are now going badly. The more developed South has made full use of the naval and air arms, in which they have superiority, and seems to be turning back the weakening northern army outside Aden.
The possibility remains that the North could make a military breakthrough to overturn the social gains defended by the South.
Whatever the final outcome, the real beneficiary of the conflict will be Saudi Arabia, which aimed to discredit Yemen's democracy and the political and strategic threat it could become. There are also newly found oil reserves in a disputed border region.
There is an urgent task for international solidarity, especially from revolutionaries in the region, for defence of the gains of the Yemeni revolution and for the overthrow of the feudal Saudi regime.
Their SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 64, 11 June 1994, Page 13