![]() But in the North Yemeni civil war of the 1960s, Saudi Arabia was directly aligned with, and heavily subsidized the Zaydi Shia elites who were trying to hold on to the country back then. In the 1930s, and today, when it works for propaganda and political alignments, religion is used to rally support in the fight between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Zaydi Shia practice prevalent in Northern Yemen is actually much closer to Sunni practice than it is to the Shia practice of Iran. Some like to claim that today’s conflict in Yemen is about religion, but it’s really not. Nasser’s forces were initially welcomed by many, but the Egyptian’s contemptuous treatment of Yemenis, and their years long failure to end the war bred resentment. The Egyptian troop presence quickly reached the tens of thousands. The newly declared Yemen Arab Republic did have some popular support, but it quickly became clear that it would need significant Egyptian help to take the country from Badr, his royalist forces, and their Saudi sponsors. Badr survived, but he had to flee the capital. His successor, Badr was targeted by a coup before the month was out. In September 1962, Ahmad, the old Imam in the north died. This focus made Aden the world’s second busiest port in the British era, and the expansion of military facilities in Yemen made it clear that the British intended to stay. If Britain could hold onto Aden, then they could still claim to be a major world power. Yemen, and Aden specifically, was Britain’s last stronghold by the Bab El Mandeb strait, a trade route of massive importance that was getting more valuable by the year, as oil exports from the Middle East increased. By the late 1950s the British had lost India, and were struggling mightily to hold on to what was left of their African and Asian empires. This British failure to hold onto Egypt, highlights why they were so eager to hold on to Yemen. They tried and failed to overthrow him with an invasion of Egypt in 1956. The British that controlled Southern Yemen of course saw Nasser as a great threat. In the 1950s the Imams that had ruled Northern Yemen since the first world war flirted with Nasser and Arab nationalism, something they would later come to regret. 1958 saw Syria and Egypt join together as the United Arab Republic, which seemed very significant at the time. His speeches were heard across both Yemens through newly available transistor radios. The 1952 overthrow of Egypt’s British owned monarch by Gamel Abdel Nasser inflamed nationalist feeling across the Arab world. In the 1950s, while Saudi Arabia’s worldwide apparatus of fundamentalist subversion was still just being built, Egypt came roaring back onto the Yemeni scene. Even newly independent countries had a crack at it… ![]() The British built their Yemeni outposts as the Ottomans fell, and other empires tried their luck as the British were chased out. Today we will look into the next 50 years of Yemen’s history, and cover the country’s humiliation of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, the British world system.Īs with the destruction of Ottoman hopes, the conflict between rival empires was a crucial part of London’s defeat as well. In part one of this series we covered Yemen’s two victories over the Ottoman Empire. If they had known the country’s history, they could have seen just how doomed their effort was from the very beginning. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.įor seven years now it’s been getting more and more obvious just how badly the Saudis and Emiratis misjudged their 2015 invasion of Yemen. If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click here to support this project through Patreon. The hope is that now that I’ve done this once, I will be able to repeat the trick for other countries in the region more easily. I’m pleased with how the series has gone so far, and I’m excited to complete it, and finally move on to other projects I’ve been delaying for too long. My hope is to tell the modern history of Yemen, and do it in such a way that it sticks with people, by drawing firm connections between what’s happening now, and what has gone before. The point of this series should be becoming clear. I believe history should have some passion behind it. This is exactly the sort of video I’ve always wanted to do.
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