Mideast: The Enduring Significance of a “North” & “South” And Yemen's Future
Xinhua News Agency
Yemen is reeling from what is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the decade and much of its history has to do with North-South rivalries and the influence of foreign actors, namely Saudi Arabia and Iran.
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to plague the world, we are once again reminded of the devastating statistics coming out of Yemen, where the number of malnourished children may reach 2.4 million by the end of the year. The country’s health infrastructure is all but devastated not least because of Yemen’s ongoing civil war that has brought foreign entities into the fold with devastating consequences. Arbitrary arrests, disappearances, and countless human rights abuses have followed in recent years.
North and South Yemen have for the last century of their existence been marked as disparate entities governed by and inhabited by two distinct cultural and political groups. These groups have shifted from an Ottoman North and British South near the turn of the century, to an Arab North and a British influenced federated South, to a Saudi Arabian dominated North and a Marxist South. All while ideas and thoughts towards unifying Yemen continued to exist and loomed in the air. A substantial move towards unification only arose in the region as a result of a decline in the Marxist South and infighting both within the North and South and with each other. When unification was made formal in 1990, tensions did not disappear, and like with most all neighboring states, patronage networks and political ties between tribes and religious groups have proven to be vital, rather complicated, and as illustrated by the current catastrophe in the country— thoroughly destabilizing.
Unification did not mean an end to North and South Yemeni differences. Some aspects of culture and identity remain contrasting between the two, and allegations of an “unequal citizenship” (unequal economic conditions and a dominant North threatening political representation), between Northers and Southerners, have further fueled suspicions that a unified Yemen has really yet to be proven viable.
A Complicated History, Made More Complicated by Foreign Influence
Yemen has since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Saudi Arabian state faced pressure from its northern neighbor. This, of course, has intensified after the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 and the commencement of a violent and devastating civil in 2015. What we know as Yemen was pre-1988 composed of two varied and distinct states, North and South Yemen. North Yemen, called the Yemen Arab Republic, whose capital was at Sanaa (still the capital of unified Yemen) was considered an ‘Islamic state’. South Yemen on the other hand, called the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and whose capital was at Aden, was run by the Yemeni Socialist Party and was heavily aligned with the USSR and other Communist states. Owing to both its geography and then-recent political happenings, North Yemen was more heavily aligned with Saudi Arabia. But when factoring in the religious demographics of both the north and the south, the issue becomes more complicated.
Religious Demographics of Yemen (2020)
Zaidi Shi’ism, of which a majority of Houthis adhere to, remains a dominant force in Yemen’s North, this illustrated quite clearly in Yemen’s current civil war. The Houthis, owing to their Shiite faith, have been easily co-opted by another regional power, Iran. Mirroring other proxy conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, Iran has supplied the Houthis with enough material resources to make their campaign formidable and have directly interfered with Saudi Arabia’s own interests in the region, who have made clear their disdain for the Houthi armed movement. The Houthis have in recent years dominated the North, leaving the South and most importantly the city of Aden in the hands of Southern separatists, backed by the United Arab Emirates. This has however in recent days been mediated by agreements between separatists and Yemen’s desperate central government, aided by Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
‘North’ and ‘South’ Yemen still bear significance in a country that for all intents and purposes is thought of as a unified state. What does this say about Yemen’s current state and the enduring significance of its dividend history? Well, it could very well be true that unification has failed. Not just because Northern and Southern Yemenis may have different cultures or a different sense of identity, but because of early problems in the country’s unification process that have yet to be dealt with. A lack of federalism, a rush towards unity, a failure in leadership, and of course foreign interference have all resulted in a unification of Yemen that was “an experiment conducted not in a pristine laboratory of democratization but in the real Arabian Peninsula of the early 1990s, very much a case of the wrong place at the wrong time” as one analyst has said.
Does This Mean Unification is Impossible?
Perhaps not. If a central Yemini government reformed its constitution and gave way to a plan of federalizing the region and giving substantial autonomy to the South of the country, responses to grievances may very well quell divisions between the two. Indeed, although Yemen’s North and South may have varying history, that is no obstruction to the possibility of a unified democratic system if adequate time is given to providing political representation for both entities. But differences between a ‘North’ and a ‘South’ Yemen are but one issue one has to factor in when analyzing the complicated and varied political and humanitarian crises happening in Yemen. Indeed, some more glaring problems include the Houthi insurgency in the country, the aforementioned devastating humanitarian crises, and the ever-present and complicated patronage networks amongst tribes and religious groups in the country that continue to threaten the democratic process in the country. In dealing with issues in Yemen priorities should be organized. And although meaningful unification may be desirable, it’s hardly as important as making sure Yemen’s children are not dying of malnutrition at the rate that they are.
