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History and Government
History: To the Romans, Yemen was Arabia Felix, whose mountains and fertile areas distinguished it from the barren desert of the rest of the Arabian peninsula. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Yemen came into the seventh century under the influence of Islam, which was then rapidly expanding throughout the region. It remained within the orbit of various regional powers until, in the 15th century, it became a flashpoint in the struggle between the Egyptians and the Ottoman Empire. Its strategic location subsequently attracted European powers and, during the early 17th and early 19th centuries, there was a constant struggle for control between the Europeans and the Ottomans.
The development of trade routes to India and the Far East eventually made protection of the Suez sea route an imperative for the British, who occupied the port of Aden in 1839, as a staging post and military base. The Yemeni hinterland was, for the most part, under the loose control of the Ottoman Empire throughout the 19th century, until 1918, when the Imam Yahya took power in what became the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). Aden and its surroundings, meanwhile, were firmly established as a British colony. Yahya was assassinated in 1948 and his son Ahmed took over. From 1958-1961, the YAR was federated with Egypt and Syria in the United Arab States. Ahmed died in 1962 and an army coup led to civil war between Egypt-backed republicans and Saudi-backed royalists.
By this time, in the south, the British colonial forces faced armed opposition from both the leftist National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY). In November 1967, just before the formation of the Yemen Democratic People’s Republic in the south by the victorious NLF forces, a Republican government took control in the north. There was intermittent warfare between the two Yemens throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s and political instability in the north throughout the 1970s.
In 1978, Lieutenant-Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh became Head of State. In 1983, he was unanimously re-elected by the People’s Assembly. Meanwhile, in 1978, Ali Nasser Muhammad became Head of State in the south. In January 1986, civil war between rival elements within the armed forces broke out after an attempted Politburo purge. A new government was formed under the former Construction Minister, Haydar Abu Bakr al-Attas. The long-promised merger of the two Yemens took place in 1990, with unexpected ease. Ali Abdullah Saleh became leader of the unified Republic of Yemen.
The newly created republic gave firm diplomatic support to Iraq during the 1990/91 Gulf crisis. This made little practical difference at the time but subsequently caused considerable problems for the Yemenis in their relations with Saudi Arabia. Multiparty elections in early 1993 were won by the principal northern-based party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), with the moderate Islamic party, Al-Islah, coming second and the southern-based Yemen Socialist party in third place. A government with representatives of all three parties took power.
A revolt by southerners unhappy with northern dominance took place in April but was quickly suppressed. In the wake of that, the YSP was marginalised as a political force. This has left Al-Islah, which is believed to have some backing from the Saudis, as the only serious opposition to the ruling GPC. In October 1994, President Saleh was re-elected to serve a second term and then, in September 1999, a third term. In April 1997, at the most recent election for the House of Representatives, the GPC took an overall majority with 187 seats; the remainder was roughly divided between Al-Islah and non-aligned candidates, with a handful taken by minority parties. The premiership is currently held by Abdul-Qadir Bagammal, who took office in 2001.
Yemen also has problems across the Red Sea, with the newly-independent republic of Eritrea – both claim the Hanish islands in the Red Sea, variously to develop as a tourist facility or as a platform for oil and gas exploration in the Red Sea. Drilling has begun with the acquiescence of both governments, although the territorial issue has yet to be fully settled.
The world’s attention was drawn to Yemen by an incident in 1999, in which Western tourists were kidnapped by an unidentified group; several died in the course of a rescue attempt launched by Yemeni security forces. Another serious incident took place in the autumn of 2000, when an attack on a visiting American warship claimed 17 lives. Under strong pressure, the Yemeni government has since moved to suppress al-Qaeda – which was responsible for the warship attack – and various affiliated home-grown organisations. This new collaboration between the Yemenis and the Americans was dramatically illustrated in late 2002, when a group of alleged al-Qaeda militants were killed in a missile attack by an American ‘drone’ (pilotless aircraft) in a remote area of the country. However, domestic sensitivities mean that Yemen is unlikely to back (at least, not in public) any American-led assault on Iraq in 2003.
Government: Executive power is held by the president who is directly elected for a five-year term and appoints a Prime Minister and Council of Ministers. Legislative power is held by the 301-member Majlis al-Nuwaab (House of Representatives), which is also directly elected.
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