This thread outlines the political history of modern #Yemen in the last 50 years. I will be share more Twitter threads about the history of #South_Yemen in the coming days.
Below are a few facts about Hamdi's tenure, by many considered the founder of modern Yemen.
@gamalsadi_nyc
Below are a few facts about Hamdi's tenure, by many considered the founder of modern Yemen.
@gamalsadi_nyc
As a military colonel, Al-Hamdi led a successful coup leading to the overthrow of Abdurrahman Aleriyani in 1974. Al-Hamdi believed that the revolutionary path of the country paved in 1962 was being washed away under a weak system prone to foreign colonial interference.
Al-Hamdi formed a military transitional council and abolished the presidency and former ministries. Hamdi being a socialist, he steered the country towards a new path of rapid modernization that still linger as unfathomable for its time and even today. Education a priority.
Suffering from an almost decade-long war, the Northern Yemen Arab Republic was excruciatingly poor. The country lacked the most basic services and infrastructure, and most people struggled to get by on a day-by-day basis.
Al-Hamdi's first measure as the country's new leader was introducing a five-year plan for rapid modernization. The plan focused squarely on road construction, school building and the establishment of sufficient water networks.
Al-Hamdi managed to allocate an entire 31 percent of the country's annual budget towards education. He introduced a free breakfast program for pupils in the most remote parts of the country to increase food security & access to schooling.
Al-Hamdi eradicated tribal loyalty in the government, state institutions and military, as well as abolishing the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which he saw as an obstacle towards modernization, economic development and social advancement.
Al-Hamdi's 5-year plan was a huge success, resulting in North Yemen's GDP rising from a mere 21.5 percent in 1974 to 56.1 percent in 1977. Per capita income rose by 300 percent within that same period.
Al-Hamdi steered the country into the non-aligned bloc, establishing relations with both China and the USSR. His tenure was also highly focused on the reunification with the declared Marxist southern state into a united, socialist-oriented Yemen.
He consolidated state power over the country's productive cooperatives into a single state-funded Union, cutting potential for dubious income and allowing the state to reach remote areas for development. Seizing the means of production for the country's future.
Al-Hamdi didn't live to see the fruit of his plans. On the 11th of October 1977, two days before a scheduled visit to Aden for reunification talks, Al-Hamdi was brutally murdered in a plot orchestrated and funded by SA
Hitler-lookalike Ahmad Al-Ghashmi, a member of Hamdi's transitional council, is suspected of being part of the plot. He would succeed Hamdi as president, but was then eventually replaced with Saudi henchman Ali Abdullah Saleh in 1978.
According to @IsaBlumi's book on Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh reversed all of Hamdi's reforms, creating a society that depended heavily on loans from the IMF and world bank. State owned institutions established under Hamdi were privatized, and public assets liberalized.
Under Saleh's 33-year long autocratic rule, any mention of Hamdi or public appraisal of his legacy was de-facto outlawed. Yemeni socialists were being increasingly persecuted and imprisoned as Saleh switched out modernization with US monopolization of key aspects of the economy.
When Yemen tried to go an independent and progressive route, the Saudi regime made sure it would never materialize. The murder of Ibrahim Al-Hamdi made it clear to everyone that Saudi Arabia's sole goal was to keep Yemen poor and under its watchful guardian eye.
And I believe it is in the shadow of Hamdi's legacy & fate that we find Saudi Arabia's real intentions with its war on #Yemen. Saudi Arabia considers the "Houthis" a real threat because the "Houthis" are serious when they say they're going to reform & modernize the country.
The link between Hamdi's murder and the current war is, so I will try to expand a bit on it.
Some of it has to do with Hamdi abolishing tribal loyalty. The Saudi regime held significant influence over the tribes at the time.
Some of it has to do with Hamdi abolishing tribal loyalty. The Saudi regime held significant influence over the tribes at the time.
The Minister of the abolished Ministry of Tribal Affairs was Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar of the Hashid Tribal Confederation. The abolishment of the ministry led to confrontation between Hamdi and the Hashid tribes, who later sought the assistance of Saudi Arabia.
Abdullah Al-Ahmar would return to politics under Saleh's regime as a member of the House of Representatives, Speaker of parliament until 2007 and Sheikh of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party.
The name Al-Ahmar may sound familiar. The current vice president of the exiled Hadi government is Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, and although not a part of the immediate Ahmar family, Ali Mohsen have held close connections to the family and tribe. Ali Mohsen is also a member of Islah.
Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar is mostly known as being one of Yemen's most vicious Salafi warlords and amongst many tasks led the Saleh regime war against the Houthis in the northern province of Saadah since 2004.
To make a long story short, the Houthis sprung to prominence in the '90s under the name "Believing Youth". They were Zaydi youth dissatisfied with the Saleh regime and the growing influence of Salafi tendency in Zaydi heartland Saadah up north, which Saleh facilitated.
The forerunners to both AQAP and other Salafi movements can be directly traced back to the mercenary units that Saleh used to crush dissent in South Yemen during the 1994 war. They were schooled and politically supported by Saudi Arabia.
In 2004 Saleh birthed the current myth that the Houthis were supposedly agents of Iran, and that the only solution to the "problem" was a military operation. Any opposition to growing Salafi influence & opposition to Saleh was seen as opposition to Saudi Arabia.
The Believing Youth was a non-violent moderate religious movement until Saleh's war in 2004. A total of six wars were fought in Saadah from 2004 to 2009 between the people of Saadah and Saleh's regime.
The Youth revolution against Saleh begins in 2011, but unlike what many think, historians have come to the conclusion that it was hijacked by Saudi Arabia and the Islah party to replace Saleh with another Saudi-loyal stooge. Saleh had become incompetent in the eyes of Saudi.
The Houthis of course took part in the revolution against Saleh from 2011, but quickly saw the downwards trajectory it was heading. The Saudi regime managed to talk Saleh into stepping down from office, being replaced by his then vice president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Hadi was inaugurated in a sham election with only his name on the ballot in 2012 for a two-year transitional period. During Hadi's tenure, many of the foreign-manufactured austerity measures were implemented, including the disbandment of fuel subsidies.
This led to the people taking to the streets once again in 2013. People were losing their jobs, the economy was in decline and no one could afford basic necessities. The Houthi movement, officially known as the Ansarallah, rose to prominence as the leading revolutionary movement.
Ansarallah leader Abdul Malek Alhouthi said if the government did not roll back its destructive austerity policies, the people would be forced to take other measures into account.
Fast forward to September of 2014 and the protests are still ongoing. Remember Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar? On September 9th 2014, Al-Ahmar ordered his troops to gun down peaceful protesters outside the office of the then-Prime Minister.
100 civilians were wounded and 7 seven pronounced dead in what would be known as the "Prime Minister massacre". This made the pot boil over, and on the 16th of September the Ansarallah stormed the capital in what they called a People's Revolution.
By September 21st 2014, the Ansarallah had taken control of the capital. A UN-brokered Peace & National Partnership Agreement paved a new path towards Yemeni democracy. September 21st was declared the date of Yemen's new corrective revolution, and is celebrated each year.
The Ansarallah & allied progressive parties announced the constitutional declaration on February 6th 2015, announcing the disbandment of the House of Representatives and stressing that a new page of Yemen's road towards people's democracy had been turned.
At this time Saudi-loyal Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi was placed under house arrest, but he would eventually flee to Aden where he would pronounce himself the legitimate president (despite resigning a month prior), and asking Saudi Arabia to help him be reinstated.
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