Dr. Abdullah Awbal
Former Yemeni Minister of Culture
In Yemen’s modern history, there are many moments of solidarity and complementarity between the people of the north and the south in achieving the revolutionary act of liberation from the Imamate and colonial rule. A unified Yemeni identity and a shared set of revolutionary values were vividly embodied in this achievement: liberation from a theocratic system of rule in the north and from British occupation in the south. One cannot speak of the history of the September and October revolutions without mentioning the unity of the revolutionaries from the south and the north and their voluntary initiatives to defend the republic and independence. This refutes the calls that promote the idea of an “Arab South” while abandoning belonging to Greater Yemen, disregarding the facts and recent events of history.
In modern times, Yemen was burdened by two forms of occupation: an internal clerical rule based on divine right in the north, and British colonial rule in the south. Two occupations overthrown by the people in the September 1962 and October 1963 revolutions. Yemen was divided geographically and in terms of governance systems between north and south. The people, however, long suffered under the administration of the Imams according to the racist doctrine of selection (their claim of descent from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet) and divine right in the north, and under semi-feudal sultanate cantons in the south. Meanwhile, the colony of Aden, due to its geographic location and strategic port, experienced significant development in the 1950s to serve as Britain’s first military base in the Middle East. The city saw the establishment of banks, companies, unions, associations, newspapers, and parties, and transformed into a vibrant free market, becoming one of the most important cities in the Middle East. But this division between a monarchical north and a sultanate-based rural south did not prevent the social, cultural, familial, and national bonds among the Yemeni people.
In Sana’a there were no modern elites or intelligentsia in the contemporary sense, but rather a religious elite produced by a limited system of religious education (the kuttab), while illiteracy, hunger, poverty, and disease plagued the population. From these religious circles emerged the political opposition to the theocratic Imamate rule. Naturally, the Imam could not tolerate any form of political opposition. Thus Sana’a witnessed the tragedy of the Constitutional Revolution of 1948, when a split within the royal family led to a rebellion by the Imam’s cousin, who secretly communicated with religious figures who had taken refuge in the British colony of Aden. In Sana’a, he formed a secret opposition cell against Imam Yahya Hamid al-Din with a small group of officers who had just returned from a training course in Iraq. In Aden, they drafted a constitutional document. But the Imam discovered his cousin’s plot before the revolution could be declared, had some executed, and threw others into horrific prisons. Some opposition figures fled, among them the poet Muhammad Mahmoud al-Zubairi—whose relationship with the tribes was reminiscent of Ibn Khaldun—and the politician and thinker Ahmad Muhammad Nu‘man. Meanwhile, the officers staged another rebellion in 1955, but their revolution failed and they were dragged to execution grounds and prisons. Al-Zubairi and Nu‘man formed an important political duo in Aden that remains in Yemeni memory to this day. There they established the “Yemeni Union” as a political platform opposing Imamate rule, along with a number of clubs and associations that carried out political and cultural activities directed against the regime in Sana’a.
One of the most important factors of social and cultural cohesion was the flight of senior judges from the Imam’s repression to the southern sultanates and sheikhdoms. This demonstrated that there were no real religious differences between Zaydis and Shafi‘is. Judge Ali al-Dabba from Sana’a served as a judge for the Lower Awlaq Sultanate in Ahwar, while Judge Abdul Karim al-‘Ansi from Dhamar became chief judge of the Fadli Sultanate in Abyan. What the Houthis are doing today is an erasure of cultural and religious identity and the creation of an artificial sectarian division—at a time when the two schools of thought had already merged to the point that differences between them were minimal. It is even said that Zaydism is the closest of all sects to Sunnism. No one at that time asked about a judge’s sectarian affiliation, nor were there seminaries or hawzas.
The social and familial connections among Yemenis were of great benefit to the political opposition. Whenever the noose tightened on them under Imamate rule, they moved to colonial Aden, where freedoms, newspapers, and political platforms existed. And as we will see later in this account, a similar shift occurred for the opposition to British colonial rule in Aden. The leftist leader Abdullah Badhieb, for example, fled to Taiz, the seat of Imam Ahmad’s rule, and founded an opposition newspaper there.
Yemenis’ rejection of despotic monarchic theocratic rule never ceased. Officers trained in Iraq, religious intellectuals, and students had seen modern societies, infrastructures, and services from which Yemenis had been deprived under the Imam’s isolationist regime, which feared any modernization that could dismantle the myths upon which it relied to control a population drowning in illiteracy, ignorance, and epidemics. Illiteracy hovered around 98% of the population; there were no roads, no potable water networks, and state resources were drained into the Imam’s coffers, indistinguishable from the state treasury itself. All these factors of backwardness were reasons for the September 26, 1962 Revolution, led by the Free Officers under President Abdullah al-Sallal, who himself had been imprisoned for participating in the failed attempts of 1948 and 1955.
In Sana’a, the overthrow of the monarchy was declared, and on the ruins of what was known as the Mutawakkilite Kingdom, a new republican system—the Yemen Arab Republic—was established. The revolutionary poet Muhammad Mahmoud al-Zubairi described the 26th of September with these words: “A day whose radiance was not crafted by the midday sun—but one we forged with our own hands.” The newborn republic immediately faced a long war aimed at restoring the monarchy, supported regionally and internationally. The republicans defended the republic for eight years until 1970, when the siege was finally broken and the republic remained—thanks to popular support from the inhabitants of Sana’a, where small merchants, artisans, and thousands of fighters from the south stood alongside them against the royalists. The unity of Yemeni society in defending the September Revolution and the republic was embodied even while the south remained under British occupation. Waves of fighters from Aden and the southern sultanates continued to arrive with their personal weapons throughout the eight years; many were killed, a striking embodiment of Yemeni patriotism, love of freedom, and solidarity—Yemenis standing shoulder to shoulder to ensure the triumph of the revolutionary will.
When speaking of the complementarity of the two revolutions—September 1962 against the theocratic Imamate, and the October 14, 1963 Revolution in the south that culminated in national independence on November 30, 1967—we are speaking of one people, the common people, who participated in making the revolution. Southerners defended the republic alongside their brothers, the September revolutionaries, while northerners took part in the October Revolution. Just as citizens from all Yemeni regions participated, the cities and geography provided strong havens for revolutionaries. The late fighter Ali Antar, one of the senior leaders of the National Front for the Liberation of the South, said in one of the widely circulated videos: “Without the September Revolution, we could not have achieved our revolution against British colonial rule in the south. Aden was a refuge for Yemeni revolutionaries from the late 1940s until the proclamation of the republic in Sana’a, while Taiz and Sana’a were safe havens for revolutionaries coming from the south.” Taiz was the base for southern revolutionaries, and from there the liberation struggle was launched. In Taiz, the leadership of both the National Front and the Liberation Front was based, and from there they received Egyptian arms, which they transported from Taiz to Aden. Professor Muhammad Salim Basindwa, the second leader of the Liberation Front of occupied South Yemen (FLOSY), recounts in his book The Beginning – The Struggle for Independence that he used to hide weapons in his own car, transporting them from Taiz to Aden at constant risk of discovery by the British, before distributing them to the fighters across various neighborhoods of Aden.
To escape the Imam’s repression and the injustices in the north after the revolution, Aden became the safe destination; conversely, escape from Aden was to resist British colonial rule. After independence, Sana’a and Taiz became refuges for those fleeing civil wars from 1967 to 1986. Thus, all current talk denying the link and communication between north and south is nothing but propaganda serving the narrow interests of certain forces seeking domination over the south, using as pretexts the injustices that followed unification on May 22, 1990, and the unjust war of 1994 waged by the Saleh regime, during which state property was looted, southerners were excluded from public employment, and other practices rooted in the mentality of tribal victors. This is the fault of the leaderships that ruled after unification, not of unification itself, which was a great historic achievement at the end of the 20th century.
In conclusion, the September and October revolutions were not separate events, but one revolution against internal and external oppression—an embodiment of the unity of Yemenis, north and south, in confronting Imamate and colonial rule. The current attempts to cast doubt on these bonds are the result of narrow political struggles, but they do not erase the fact that the unity of destiny and struggle has been—and will remain—one of the defining hallmarks of modern Yemeni history.
