Canfranc Railway: Nazi Gold Train, Spanish Ore and War-time Border Espionage

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
International Relations, Military history, Regional History

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At the commencement of the world war in 1939, Francisco Franco’s authoritarian Spain was officially a neutral state in the global conflict※, this despite the Spanish dictator’s pro-Axis leanings and his debt of gratitude to Hitler and the Axis for its invaluable contribution to the Falangists’ victory in the recently-ended civil war in Spain. 

The Spanish Caudillo ⇪
Because of Franco’s neutrality path, Hitler was not able to make Spain and the Iberian Peninsula a base of war operations for the Axis side [L. Fernsworth (1953). ‘Spain in Western Defense’, Foreign Affairs, 31(4), 648-662, doi: 10.2307/20030996]. Notwithstanding this Franco’s Spain still proved a useful and even vital ‘ally’ to the Axis powers, especially to Nazi Germany, during the war. This was nowhere more evident than in the role played by a single railway which linked southern France to northern Spain. 

The track through the Pyrenees 
Before that story, first some background on the railway line and its remarkable ‘central’ station. The idea of a train line between France and Spain via the rugged and formidable Pyrenees mountain chain goes back to the mid-point of the 19th century. The first step to turn the dream into actuality started on the French side in 1904. World War I held things up, as did the fact that the project was an enormously hard, almost Herculean challenge to the railway engineering and building methods of the day.  To complete the line, in excess of 80 bridges, 24 separate tunnels and four viaducts had to be hacked out of the rocky terrain of the middle Pyrenees, as well as a massive deforestation of the regional landscape [‘Urban Exploration: Canfranc Railway Station’, Forbidden-Places, www.forbidden-places.net/].

The enormity of the Canfranc rail line earned it the sobriquet, “The Titanic of the Mountains”.  Finally, by 1928, it had become a reality. The line ran from Pau in France to the village of Canfranc not far inside the Spanish border▣.

Canfranc-Estacíon
Canfranc was the jewel in the crown of the whole international rail network. The railway station (designed by Fernando Ramírez de Dampierre), architecturally a mix of Art Nouveau and Neo-Classicism, was built on an XXL scale. Boasting some 365 windows, a linear monolith of concrete, glass, steel and marble, it had space for living quarters for both Spanish and French customs officials, an infirmary, restaurants and bars, and (later) a hotel. Effectively, the station’s “French section” functioned as a French embassy [‘3rd Reich’s Abandoned “Highway” For Stolen Gold’, George Winston, War History Online, 17-Jul-2019, www.warhistoryonline.com]. The platforms extended for over 200 metres in length! The station has been described as “perhaps the world’s most beautiful disused railway station” [‘The most beautiful abandoned train station on the planet’, The Telegraph (UK), 02-Oct-2017, www.telegraph.co.uk]. 

The train line’s commercial fatal flaw: the irregular Iberian gauge
Despite Canfranc’s imposing and glamorous edifice, the Pau to Canfranc line’s history is a tarnished and diminished one. Some have called it’s history jinxed. Right from the start of operation there were problems and drawbacks. The biggest structural flaw for a supposedly international railroad was that the gauges were different! Spain retained its broad-gauge rails cf. the standard-gauge in France and elsewhere on the Continent. Passengers had to change trains once inside the border, this proved even more disruptive for goods cargo…the need to move the load to another rail vehicle meant that ultimately the line was too slow (and therefore too costly) to transport goods freight. The Wall Street collapse and the Depression occurring just one year after the Canfranc line commenced didn’t help business either. And to complete the ‘cursed’ thesis, in the early years there was a devastating fire affecting the line. 

Throughout its lifetime the Canfranc railway always fell short of achieving economic viability. By the early 1930’s there were as few as 50 passengers a day using the service [‘Is Europe’s ghostliest train station about to rise again?’, Chris Bockman, BBC News, 01-Oct-2017, www.bbcnews.com]. To compound matters, during the civil war Franco had the line’s tunnels sealed off to prevent arms smuggling to the Republican side from France. 

(Photo source: www.canfranc.pagesperso-orange.fr)

The Nazi “Gold Highway” 
Following upon Hitler’s conquest of Western Europe the railway got a new lease of life, albeit one inspired by less than the purest motives. Franco reopened the tunnels to the Nazis and in 1942 deals were struck between the interested parties. Hitler and the German Wehrmacht needed the “Spanish (and Portuguese) ore”, tungsten (AKA wolfram), for producing metal and steel for the Nazi war machine—as much as they could get their hands on! And after the neutralising of France, the Canfranc line became a vital conduit for its delivery. The arrangements were mutually advantageous with plundered Nazi gold from Switzerland and French grain wending it’s way in the opposite direction to Spain and Franco⊡. US documents declassified during the Clinton years reveal that Franco returned only a portion of the stolen gold in 1948 (described as a “marginal amount”)—and that only after pressure was applied by the Allies [‘Secrets of the Railways: “Nazi Gold Highway”‘, (SBS Television, aired 03-Nov-2019)].

The reopened train line was advantageous not only to the Nazis and Spain. Refugees (Jews, communists, leftist artists like Max Ernst and Marc Chagall) and allied soldiers used the train and the Somport Tunnel route into Spain (and thence to safe destinations beyond) to escape Nazism.

The highly adaptable M. Le Lay ⇪

(Photo source: www.caminandoporlahistoria.com)

Spy and counterspy: Life imitating art
Despite the railway and the key Canfranc Station being in Nazi hands, the place was a hotbed of spying and smuggling activities. At parties and events held by Nazi officials stationed at the glitzy hotel, pro-Resistance railway workers gathered important intelligence and passed it on to the Allies. A figure instrumental in the espionage activities was the hotel proprietor Albert Le Lay. Le Lay had a dual role as congenial hotel host for the Nazi guests and as head of the local border control. This allowed him, in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the movie Casablanca with Le Lay the unsuspected Resistance spy resembling a real-life “Rick Blaine”, to undermine the Germans and help smuggle many Jews out of France [ibid.]. Le Lay’s dangerous game kept him one step ahead of the Gestapo, but in 1943 he too was forced to flee as the Nazi net was closing in on him.

Decline and fall…and rise again?
After the war the Canfranc railway stumbled on, still operating but never coming close to reaching the potential of its planners’ high hopes for it. An unfortunate mishap in March 1970—a train derailment on the French part of the line causing a bridge collapse—proved not just costly, but signalled the end of the road for the railway. The French authorities, despite the opprobrium heaped on them by their Spanish counterparts, flatly refused to rebuild it. The railway was discontinued, replaced by a bus service. The stock and buildings were left to be vandalised and run into the ground slowly—seemingly for good!

Recently though, a (belated) rescue plan of sorts has emerged. The Aragon municipality in Spain has signalled its wishes to resurrect the once grand Phoenix from the ashes. It has indicated it wants to open a new rail line on the location. There’s talk of a £350m restoration project to restore Canfranc to its long lost railroad glory. Encouragingly, the corresponding French provincial authority , Aquitaine, has offered to assist in the project. This life-line has prompted renewed interest in the rail relic from the public with new tourism accounting for more visitors to the train site than there had been passengers using the service in it’s heyday! [Bockman, loc.cit.; Winston, loc.cit.].

Footnote: Portugal in on the largesse

Portugal possessed the same raw material (wolfram) so prized by Hitler and Portuguese dictator Salazar was happily agreeable to a clandestine deal. Accordingly some of the stolen Nazi gold made its way to Lisbon via Canfranc and into the vaults of the Bank of Portugal. This is reflected in the figures which show a dramatic upsurge country’s gold reserves:

1939|63.4 tons|||1945|356.5 tons

[Neill Lochery, Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945 (2011)]António Salazar ⇪

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜
※ after the fall of France in June 1940 the official policy was modified to one of “non-belligerence”. Franco’s position of non-involvement was basically about not antagonising the western powers, especially the USA whose exports Spain depended on at a time its economy was still brittle after the civil war
✦ for instance Franco’s ‘neutrality’ didn’t prevent him from “green-lighting” Spanish volunteer brigades to fight for the German Nazi army (the Division Azul or Blue Division) against the Soviet forces (but not the Western Allies) 
▣ from Canfranc there was a further rail link to Jaca, and eventually to Zaragoza
⊡ estimated at close to 90 tonnes of gold (Winston)

Birkenhead Point Back Story

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Commerce & Business, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Retailing history

Origin of place name: Birkenhead Point on the southeast corner of Drummoyne (Sydney) derives its name indirectly from a northern English town via the Birkenhead Estate in Drummoyne … Birkenhead is or was a village near Liverpool-on-Mersey in the UK.

Birkenhead Point, former site of Dunlop-Perdriau Rubber Co, Roseby Street, Drummoyne

Birkenhead Point Factory Outlet Centre (BPFOC), on the western side of Sydney’s Port Jackson, is a bit of a sleeper as far as shopping centres and malls go. Recently, it ‘celebrated’ (sic) it’s forty-year anniversary (opened 26 July 1979), but it was an anniversary bereft of any fanfare whatsoever! The centre has 170 stores or services including two anchor tenants but can’t attract a major department store chain. In recent times it has tried to lure more paying punters by introducing a “shopper hopper” ferry service from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour. Thursday night shopping is virtually a non-event with most of the vendors not bothering to stay open. The only shoppers you are likely to see at night are those grocery shopping at Coles and Aldi✾.

The reasons for BPFOC’s low-key status among the large retail outlets and malls of Sydney are manifold. It’s relatively small size and its distance away from the Sydney rail network are contributing factors. Likewise the proximity of Burwood Westfield (a few kilometres away) and the Broadway Centre to name two, gives these shopping complexes a comparative advantage.

Birkenhead Point before it was a shoppers’ haven

The area around the point was originally part of a land grant made to John Harris, the colony’s first surgeon (circa 1800). By the late 1830s Harris’ land on the point, having shifted ownership several times, was a brick-making operation. This business didn’t apparently succeed as the owner, a Mr Dutton, went bankrupt in the early 1840s. At this time Birkenhead Point went under the name of Duttons Point, then part of Five Dock Farm.

(source: Dictionary of Sydney)

“Abercrombie’s Point”

Charles Abercrombie, the next man of capital to acquire Birkenhead Point, turned it into a race track (Abercrombie’s Racecourse). The first Australian steeplechase was held here on 19 September 1844. The horse racing caper failed to produce a worthwhile dividend for Abercrombie, prompting him to transform the site into a “salting and boiling down works” in the mid 1840s. This business as well was apparently not sufficiently profitable and Abercrombie resold the land.

New industry, rubber works

In the following years the land on the point again changed hands several times. In 1885 the property was bought by the Perdriau brothers (Henry and George) who started a business to make rubber engine packing for their ferry service (With a single work shed at Birkenhead Point). In 1899 under the leadership of Henry Perdriau, the brothers established the Perdriau Rubber Company (PRC) and began manufacturing rubber products in 1904. Coinciding with the rise of the automobile, the company launched itself into the manufacture of rubber tyres, sufficiently successfully that PRC took over the whole 7.7 hectare site (by 1928 it was producing somewhere between 500,000 and 780,000 tyres annually)⍟.

Dunlop Rubber plant

In 1929✩ the Perdriau Company merged with the English firm Dunlop (forming Dunlop-Perdriau Rubber Co) and the new enterprise at Drummoyne became the Dunlop Rubber Company (DRC)❂. By the 1960s Dunlop’s Birkenhead Point factory employed 1,600 workers. By the 1970s the complex comprised eight brick buildings⌺ and a number of auxiliary structures (sawtooth roofed sheds). The brick buildings were substantial, being between two and four storey high.Perdriau‘s rubber hose line

From industrial to commercial

In 1977 the Birkenhead Point tyre plant closed its operation with the site being acquired by major Australian retailer/department store chain David Jones for $21M. DJs converted the brick and rust-red tyre factory into a waterfront shopping centre, retaining 40% of the original factory buildings. The shops were eventually replaced by designer brand clothing outlets (including a David Jones factory outlet and a Fletcher Jones factory outlet). In the 1990s apartments were added to the site. A long glass ceiling was installed on the top floor in 2010 and the decade saw the centre undergo a number of extensions and renovations.

Over the last thirty-plus years the Birkenhead Head complex has undergone several changes of ownership. Most prominently in 2004 it was bought by Singapore tycoon Denis Jen for $111M (later unloaded). Currently, Birkenhead Point Outlet Centre is owned and managed by the Mirvac Group.

BP Marina

The prime location of the factory outlet centre fronts on to a marina which caters for over 300 mostly pleasure watercrafts (as well NSW Marine Rescue and Divers maintain operational vessels at the marina). There are also Marine Rescue and maritime industry association offices below the shopping centre at wharf level. The Birkenhead Point complex originally planned to include a series of museums in the site (car, fishing and maritime) but these ventures have never apparently gotten off the drawing board.

Publications and websites consulted:

‘Dunlop Factory Buildings At Birkenhead Point (Former)’, www.environment.nsw.gov.au

‘Five Dock racecourse’, Dictionary of Sydney, www.dictionaryofsydney.org

Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney: Walks into Sydney’s Unexpected and Endangered Places (1991)

Brian & Barbara Kennedy, Sydney and Suburbs: A History and Descriptions, (1982)

‘The Names of Sydney: Suburbs D to G’, Pocket Oz Sydney, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au

‘Roaming Roy Goes Shopping For History – Birkenhead Point’, The Tingle Factor Box, 24-Feb-2013, www.tinglefactor.typepad.com

Josephine Tovey, ‘Resurrected shopping centre up for sale’, Sydney Morning Herald, 06-Mar-2010

▄▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▄

✾ late night shopping at Birkenhead Point in any case would be a misnomer as the centre’s closing time on Thursday is 7:30pm

✩ a couple of sources give the date as 1928

⍟ shoes were the other mainstay of Perdriau Bros’ production business…in 1928 just prior to the merger they were still producing 50,000 shoes per week

❂ although some of the company’s advertising in the day referred to the business as the “Dunlin Rubber Co”

⌺ architect Peter Hickey’s design of the commercial project allowed the extant brick buildings to retain their former industrial character whilst integrating the centre into the maritime setting of the waterfront…the original buildings are listed by Heritage NSW as being of Federation warehouse design

Contemporary Yemen: A Vulnerable Pawn of Convenience in a Regional Cold War

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Regional History

Background to the present imbroglio

The unification of the hitherto bifurcated Yemen in 1990 left the North Yemen strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh holding the reins of power. At the same time, a future stakeholder in the country, the Zaydi Shi’a group Ansar Allah✽, was about to emerge on the scene. Ansar Allah, better known as the Houthis (after their leader Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi), was tentatively etching out a spot for itself in the Yemeni political landscape. Cynically, the opportunistic Saleh initially tacitly supported Ansar Allah’s formative endeavours to establish itself, sensing that the Houthi rebels would be a distraction and impediment to Saudi Arabian schemes to meddle in Yemen.

(Source: www.edmaps.com)

The residual grievances of South Yemen at the perceived inequity of the earlier unification (Saleh, previously president of North Yemen, clearly favoured the numerically larger north in the new state’s distribution of resources) led to a resumption of civil war in 1994✦. After a brief conflict the southern army was defeated gifting Saleh a fairly free rein to shore up the foundations of the unified republic.

By around 2000 the political dynamic within Yemen was shifting after the government sealed an agreement with Saudi Arabia over a border demarcation issue (Treaty of Jeddah). Saleh’s view of the Houtsis had changed from initially having considering them a useful buffer to Saudi interference in Yemen to something potentially menacing to his own position controlling the republic.

Saleh meeting Russian leader Putin

Saleh’s crackdown
In June 2004 Saleh’s government outlawed Ansar Allah, hundreds of Houthi members were arrested and a reward offered for the capture of commander al-Houthi, now public enemy № 1 in the republic. In September Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi was killed in fighting between Yemeni military and the rebels. The fighting continued in 2005, now with the dead leader’s brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, in charge of the insurgents. The government-Houthis conflict results in hundreds of casualties, the fighting was punctuated by ceasefires and Saleh grants a partial (and temporary) amnesty to Houthi fighters in 2006, a device which helped the Yemeni leader to get re-elected in the 2006 elections. The fighting resumed in 2007 until another truce was brokered between Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and Saleh, this time with the assistance of neighbouring Qatar.

Operation Scorched Earth
The persistence of the conflict led Saleh to launch Operation Scorched Earth in 2009 with the aim of crushing the Houthi resistance in their stronghold of Sana’a. Concurrently, Houthi militias engaged in fighting with Saudi troops in border clashes in the north. Saleh accepted another ceasefire in February 2010 with the rebels…while at the same time the Yemeni military launched “Operation Blow to the Head” to try to silence both the Houthi rebels and Al-Qaeda militants in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The operation against AQAP extended to Shabwa in southeast Yemen.

The “Arab Spring” imprint in Yemen
The Arab Spring movement having impacted on other parts of the Middle East and North Africa spread to Yemen in 2011. People power (the Yemeni Intifada) was tentatively flexing its muscles in Yemen…there were public demonstrations against the 33-year rule of Saleh which he tried to appease with the offer of concessions (including a promise not to seek re-election). This was not enough to quell the public disquiet – Saleh (predictably) followed the ‘carrot’ with the ‘stick’…a further crackdown by the regime left a death toll estimated variously at between 200 and 2,000 Yemenis.

Saleh, again true to form, reneged on his agreement for hand-over of power (which had been brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council). This prompt some supporters of the government (the influential Hashid Tribal Federation plus several army commanders) to switch allegiances to the regime’s opponents. A bombing seriously injured Saleh requiring him to decamp to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. Upon his return after recuperation, Saleh again tried to avoid the inevitability of regime change but in November 2011 he was finally forced to relinquish the presidency to his deputy, Abrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who formed a unity government in early 2012.

Hadi’s unstable political inheritance

Within a short time, the rift between the Hadi government and the Houthi rebels dangerously widened…in 2014 an intensification of anti-government protests forced Hadi to dissolve his cabinet and do a U-turn on a planned fuel hike. The Houthis picked their moment to step up the pressure on the Yemeni regime…by late in the year they have extended their hold over most of the capital Sana’a and captured the strategically important port city of Hodeida on the Red Sea.

Inevitably, with the edge in the conflict moving towards Ansar Allah, Hadi was placed under house arrest and forced to resign. By early 2015, the Houthis were in control of the government in Yemen (Hadi having fled to Aden on the southern gulf). Around the same time, Islamic State, having established a toe-hold on Yemeni territory, was playing its terror card in the troubled country (ie, initiating suicide bombing of Shi’a mosques in Sana’a).

Escalation of war: Saudi Arabia joins the civil war
By 2014-15 the conflict had reached a dangerous escalation phase with the intervention of external players. Hadi, who relocated to Saudi Arabia after a Houthi counter-offensive, persuaded Riyadh to intervene in the conflict. The eager Saudis headed up a coalition of Arab states – which comprises most of the Gulf states (exception: neutral-aligned Oman), Jordan, Egypt and several North African states – with the intent of restoring Hadi to the presidency.

2015, a new phase of the ongoing civil war: the Saudi quest for regional hegemony
Saudi Arabia’s aggressive “hands-on” approach to the Yemen conflict has been attributed to various factors. The ascension of new king Salman al-Saud and his son Prince Mohammad to power in the kingdom is thought to be a prime mover.

Crown Prince Mohammad

Launching Operation Decisive Storm, the coalition strategy comprised attacking Houthi targets by air, initiating a naval blockage and deploying a small ground force against the rebel forces. By April 2015 Operation Decisive Storm had given way to Operation Restoring Hope, though the earlier strategy of bombing rebel targets was continued (the US had entered the exercise full-on in the role of supplier of arms and intelligence to the Saudi armed forces). From this time through to the present, the Saudis have conducted scores of indiscriminate and disproportionate air strikes on Yemeni civilian targets (as at November 2018 officially 6,872 civilians had been killed, the majority from Saudi strikes, in the conflict according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) (‘Yemen Events of 2018’).

Saleh, “Alsyd Flip-Flop”, re-enters the scene

Former president Saleh, exhibiting all the manoeuvrable dexterity of a classic political opportunist, now entered into a formal alliance with the Houthis (confirming the suspicions of many that he had covertly conspired in the Houthis’ overthrow of Hadi). US president Barack Obama made an attempt at crisis management by trying to bring the participating parties together but it proved unsuccessful. By August 2015 the Houthis had taken charge of the whole Shabwah governorate. In 2016 UN-sponsored peace talks broke down.

Iran and Hezbollah intervention thickens the Yemeni morass

The civil war in Yemen was further internationalised with the involvement of Islamic Shi’a Iran and Hezbollah (حزب الله)✪. With both materially backing the Houthi side, drone-operated missile strikes have been launched at the Saudi capital. The civilian cost of the ongoing war in Yemen since 2015 has been incremental and devastating…thousands killed and wounded, an outbreak of cholera and a potential famine in Yemen. Ali Saleh once again did a volte-face, finally siding with the Saudis. In 2017, while fighting the Houthis in Sana’a, the former president and perennial strongman of Yemen was killed.

The consequences for ordinary Yemenis

Between January 2016 and April 2019 more than 70,000 Yemenis (including civilians◬) have died (ACLED database tracking). The country’s humanitarian crisis is in full swing…international charity Save the Children estimate that more than 50,000 children have perished as a result of cholera and famine. In June 2018 the Saudi-backed government forces attacked the key western port of Al-Hudaydah, the main entry point into Yemen for aid (Battle of Al-Hudaydah/AKA “Operation Golden Victory”). The effect of this on desperately needed food supplies for Yemenis has been catastrophic, the country’s health system is near to collapse and the UN has reported that 75% of the population was in dire need of humanitarian assistance.(Photo: www.forbes.com)

Speculating on the Saudis and the Iranians’ “skin in the game”

Regional hegemony as a motive for Saudi Arabia’s incursion in the Yemen War has long antecedents (aggressive Saudi actions against its southern neighbour can be traced back to 1934 – just two years after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was created). The Islamic Republic of Iran for its part is motivated by a desire to block any attempt the Saudis make to achieve hegemony in the region. While the conflict in Yemen at its core retains the character of a civil war, other complexities have overlayed the central conflict…as the European Council on Foreign Relations recently summarised the imbroglio, “Rather than being a single conflict, the unrest in Yemen is a mosaic of multifaceted regional, local and international power struggles, emanating from both recent and long-past events”. Iran and Saudi Arabia’s involvement is an extension of a Middle East Cold War which ebbs and flows between the two rival, oil wealthy countries, using proxies in conflicts in vulnerable states. This was also the case with Iranian and Saudi interference in the Syrian Civil War.

The extent of the Saudi regime’s commitment to the Yemen conflict, a full-scale operation reportedly costing Riyadh between five and six billion US dollars a month (MEI, December 2018), underlines the seriousness of the Saudis’ leadership ambitions in the region. Saudi power-flexing in Yemen and in other recent neighbourhood conflicts such as its 2011 incursion into Bahrain, demonstrates its imperative of wanting to counter Iranian influence and avoid its efforts to establish a foothold in the Gulf (Darwich).

Tehran’s investment in the Yemen conflict in the Houthi cause is much less substantial than the Saudis (materiel support, military advisors, possibly some military manpower but not Iran’s elite forces). Saudi Arabia has tended to overstate the degree to which the Houthis can be labelled mere proxies of the Iranians, but it constituted a convenient pretext for the peninsula kingdom to ramp up the scale of its own military involvement in the war✥.

Other secondary players

The Al-Qaeda ‘franchise’ has increased its activities in Yemen over the last eight years, providing better than nuisance value and plaguing the efforts of the Yemeni government (with US support) to regain control of the country. AQAP, as it is known, has made inroads in Yemen’s east and south and holds on to significant portions of territory in the area, which in 2011 it declared to be a AQ emirate. AQAP’s local jihadist offshoot, Ansar al-Sharia, is also an active insurgent in the south-east, waging war against the Hadi government, the US and the Houthis. In 2014, AQAP engaged in conflict with ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) which had established a presence in the south-eastern deserts of the troubled Arabian Gulf state (‘A-Q in Yemen’, Wikipedia).

AQAP’s black standard

Also active in the south are southern separatist groups, the remnants of the secessionists who unsuccessfully tried to break away from Saleh and the north in 1994. The most prominent is the Southern Movement or Al-Hirak (subsumed under the umbrella Southern Transitional Council (STC)), which engages in para-military actions, protests and civil disobedience against the Sana’a (Hadi) government (‘Mapping the Yemen Conflict (2015)’).

As the decade draws to an end, prospects for a resolution of the war in Yemen are far from sanguine. A stalemate in the campaigns suggests that there is no conceivably foreseeable military solution to the conflict. The US Congress’ attempts to freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been vetoed by President Trump who is, rhetorically at least, hell bent on wreaking some measure of punitive action on an unrepentant Iran.

The political map of Yemen in 2019 is a patch-quilt of different hues. Five different entities control separate chunks of the country◚. Tiny Yemen is very much between the proverbial rock and a hard place – without the strategic importance of either Iraq or Afghanistan it is largely ignored by the US government and poorly covered by its media. As the poorest Arab country in the Middle East, Yemen is marginalised by its predicament, politically divided, economically blockaded, critically lacking in water and facing a catastrophic famine (Schewe). The crisis drags on relentlessly with the inevitable outcome a dire worsening of the country’s growing humanitarian disaster.(Photo: www.asianews.it)

Footnote: The religious mix: Shi’a v Sunni and Shi’a v Shi’a

Yemen, a predominately Arab country, is 99% Islamic in religion. According to UNHCR, 53% of the population are Sunnis and more than 45% are Shi’as, the bulk of which are adherents of the Zaydi school (‘Fivers’) – cf. the Iranian ‘Twelvers’ or Imamis sect of Shi’ism. The Zaydis mainly inhabit the northern highlands of Yemen, which also contains pockets of Isma’ilism (another sect of Shi’ism). The Salafi movement, a revivalist or reform variant of Sunni Islam, is also widespread among the Yemeni Sunnis. AQAP and Ansar-al-Sharia combatants in the south-east for instance are Salafi.
 

_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_。_

✽ translated as “Parisans (or Supporters) of God” – the dissident group evolved out of a youth organisation, Al-Shabab al-Muminin, (“the Believing Youth”). The Houthi movement as adherents of the Zaydi branch of Shi’ism became activists in reaction to the aggressive spread of Sunni Islam in Yemen – particularly the Salafi strain of Sunni’ism (Reynaud)

✦ a key determinant in the war re-erupting so quickly after the last truce was that the armies of the north and south had remained unintegrated after 1990

✪ Shi’a Islamist political and militant group based in Lebanon

◬ the Saudi-led coalition forces (despite their extensive US-provided firepower) have had a clear lack of success against the Houthi rebels, perhaps explaining the coalition’s tendency to strike civilian targets in the conflict (Schewe)

✥ the largest conflict in which the Saudi Army has ever been involved (Darwich/Schewe)

◚ the Supreme Political Council (Houthis); the Hadi-led government and its allies; the Southern Transitional Council; Islamic State (ISIL); and AQAP and Ansar-al-Sharia

╰╱╳╳╳╲╱╳╳╳╲╯

Reference materials consulted

‘A Timeline of the Yemen Crisis, from the 1990s to the Present’, (Marcus Montgomery), Arab Center Washington DC, 07-Dec-2017, www.arabcenterdc.org

‘Iran’s Role in Yemen and Prospects for Peace’, (Gerald M Feierstein), Middle East Institute, 06-Dec-2018, www.mei.edu

DARWICH, MAY. “The Saudi Intervention in Yemen: Struggling for Status.” Insight Turkey 20, no. 2 (2018): 125-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26390311

‘Profile: Who are Yemen’s Houthis?’, (Manuel Almeida), Al Arabia, 08-Oct-2014, www.english.alarabiya.net

‘Mapping the Yemen Conflict (2015)’, European Council on Foreign Relations, www.ecfr.eu

‘Yemen: The conflict in Saada Governorate – analysis’, (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), 24 July 2008

‘Who are Yemen’s Houthis?’, (Miriam Reynaud), The Conversation, 14-Dec-2018, www.theconversation.com

‘Humanitarian Crisis Worsens in Yemen After Attack on Port’, (Margaret Coker and Eric Schmitt), New York Times, 13-Jun-2018, www.nytimes.com

‘Why Yemen Suffers in Silence’, (Eric Schewe), JSTOR Daily, 23-Aug-2018, www.daily.jstor.org

‘The Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org

Yemen 1970-1994: A Roller-Coaster of Coups, Sporadic Conflicts, Rapprochements, Civil Wars and Uneasy Unions

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Political geography, Regional History

A tale of two republics

After the uprisings and civil wars of the 1960s, Yemen in 1970 was delicately poised between a Saudi Arabian-backed North, the Yemen Arab Republic, and the South, the Soviet Union and Chinese Communist-backed People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The South Yemeni PDRY regime, bolstered by large injections of Soviet cash and aid, was taking on an increasingly Marxist complexion…close ties were forged with other left-wing states and organisations – PRC, Castro’s Cuba, East Germany, the PLO (PDRY was the “only avowedly Marxist nation in the Middle East” at this time) [‘South Yemen’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

With the formation and consolidation of power by the Yemeni Socialist Party, South Yemen’s polity moved to a one-party state. The YSP embarked on a nationalisation program which restricted agricultural privatisation to a minimum✽. The economy was restructured along centralised planning lines. An ambitious land reform program was launched, creating 60 collective farms and 50 state forms. Limits were placed on home ownership and the holding of rental properties [ibid.; Halliday, Fred. “Catastrophe in South Yemen: A Preliminary Assessment.” MERIP Middle East Report, no. 139, 1986, pp. 37–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3012044].


Some progressive pluralism
Despite the overall conservative and politically unsophisticated nature of Yemeni society, the regime did not shy away from modernising and progressive reforms. A secular legal code was introduced, replacing Sharia Law, education was also secularised. Reforms addressed at making the position of women in society more equal, were especially bold – polygamy was banned as was child marriage and arranged marriages [‘Sth Yemen’, (Wiki), loc.cit.].

External aid to PDRY 1968-1986
Soviet Union $US270m
PRC (China) $US133m
(Halliday)

The Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) came into being with the ‘Compromise of 1970’…the republican government included some royalists in senior posts but the deposed imam was not allowed to return to North Yemen. In contrast to the leftist PDRY, YAR maintained friendly relations with the West (eg, trade deals with the US and the German Bundesrepublik (West Germany). The new republic embarked on tentative political and economic reforms [‘Yemen – the age of imperialism’, Encyclopaedia Britannia, https://www.britannica.com/]. The YAR civilian government lasted only until 1974 when the military dissolved it and ruled in partnership with some tribal elements.

From 1972, a regular cycle of war/peace/war

A unified Yemeni state had long been an abstract idea in the deliberations of Yemeni politicians, but relations between the two adjoining republics became strained in 1972 when conflict between the North and South Yemens erupted over a border disputation. Fighting between the North (backed by Saudi Arabia) and the South (backed by the USSR) was only brief. In October a peace was concluded with the Cairo Agreement where it was agreed that both sides would work towards an eventual unification [‘CIA Study on Yemeni Unification’, www.scribd.com].

Political marginalisation and economic disenfranchisement within North Yemen

Under the Saudi-backed Ali Abdullah Saleh, who took over the presidency in 1978, certain elements of society became more favoured – centring round a small mostly northern tribal group (of Zaydi ‘fivers’, a Shi’a sect with it’s base in the northwest highlands) who benefitted from a tax rate of half that imposed on the more numerous lowlands tribes [‘Yemen the 60-Year War’, Gerald M Feierstein, Middle East Institute, (Policy Papers, 2019-2), www.mei.com].

▼ President AA Saleh

(Source: www.aljazeera.com)

The 1979 war: “Groundhog Day”

In 1979 this conflict/pause/conflict pattern repeated itself…PDRY funded ‘red’ rebels fighting the northern government in Sana’a provoking YAR into a military response against the South. The spiral into open warfare was triggered by acts of assassination – both the YAR president (al-Ghashmi) and the PDRY president (Rubai Ali) were killed in separate incidents. Outright war followed with South Yemeni on the cusp of inflicting a decisive defeat on North Yemen when the Arab League intervened with a mediation. At the ensuing Kuwait Summit relations between the two states were again patched up, with a now increasingly familiar sounding outcome – unification was once again back on the agenda [‘Yemenite War of 1979’, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

YSP shifts from a hardline position

From the late 1960s to 1980 PDRY was led by Abdul Fattah Ismail who followed a dogmatic Marxist line and actively interfered in regional politics. In 1980 Ismail resigned the leadership and left Yemen to seek medical treatment in Moscow. Taking his place was Ali Nasir Muhammad, a more pragmatic Arab socialist who pursued a less interventionist approach than Ismail in relation to North Yemen, Oman, etc.

1986, factional showdown within the YSP

South Yemen’s peace was broken again in 1986. The South Yemenite Civil War was (at least partly) internecine in nature, spiralling out of an ideological power play between two factions of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party❂, exacerbated by tribal tensions. The war lasted only eleven days but the fallout was truly catastrophic – somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 Yemenis died, with 60,000 refugees, the southern capital Aden was sacked. Ismail returned and launched a coup to try to regain the presidency, but was killed in a factional shootout. Nasir Muhammad himself was ousted from power…with both rivals out of the picture a new figure, Ali Salem al-Beidh, emerged as the main power-broker in the YSP and the South [FP Halliday, Revolution and Foreign Policy: The Case of South Yemen, 1967-1987, (2002)].

Salem al-Beidh ▲ South Yemen leader

Forging a fragile union

Up to the late 1980s efforts at unification by both states had been at best half-hearted. After 1986 however al-Beidh made a more concerted effort to reconcile with North Yemen than previously. Aden liberalised the authoritarian strain prevailing in the PDRY…releasing prisoners, allowing political parties (in addition to YSP) to form⎋ [‘Sth Yemen’, (Wiki), loc.cit.].

Economic straits

There were compelling economic reasons for the Beidh regime to reach out to the North at this time…the arid conditions of the country exascerbated by a parlous lack of water made self-sufficiency in food impossible. Accordingly there was an over-reliance on the state’s fishing exports [Halliday, loc.cit.]. Compounding this, between 1986 and 1989 the Soviet Union, itself feeling the pinch, halved its aid to the South Yemeni regime exposing the weakness of it’s economy [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1994, (Special Report), ‘North and South Yemen: Lead-up to the Break-up’, Robert Hurd and Greg Noakes, www.mrmea.org].

By the beginning of 1990 North Yemeni president Saleh and his southern counterpart al-Beidh had reached agreement on a unified Yemen. Political power was intended to be shared evenly. Thus Saleh was made president of the new republic with al-Beidh vice-president and another South Yemeni politician appointed as prime minister [ibid.].

Conundrums of power-sharing

Sharing power under the new alliance was always going to be a problematic consideration. Al-Beidh and YSP going into the union would have had an expectation of an equal standing in the government. The reality was that a balance between North and South was unrealistic given the demographics – the North contained some 80% of the republic’s total population. This came home to roost for the South in the 1993 multiparty elections – al-Beidh’s YSP won only 54 seats in parliament out of a total of 301. Saleh’s General People’s Congress won the outright majority, with a new, third force, the northern Islamist-tribal alliance Al-Islah , garnering 62 seats,
pushing the YSP into third place.
Descent into conflict and violence

With this power imbalance now starkly visible to all, relations between North and South deteriorated rapidly – especially after the South Yemenis gave support to southern rebels in the North region who were trying to secede from Yemen. In 1994 open fighting erupted and the numerically stronger armed forces of the North invaded the South with the intention of capturing the capital Aden✥.

Saleh’s march on Aden was held up by southern resistance and its superior air power to that of the northern forces. In May the southern leaders seceded and al-Beidh declared the formation of the People’s Republic of Yemen (which did not find international support). By July the North had captured Aden which promptly triggered the disintegration of resistance by the South, driving al-Beidh and other leaders into exile [ibid.]. Reunification was forcibly established with Saleh in charge of the state

▼ General People’s Congress (emblem)

Appendix: Other factors contributing to the failure of unification

The chances of the 1990 unification lasting was always at best a long shot. Decades of mutual suspicion and ill-feeling between the two Yemens amounted to considerable baggage to carry into a bold experiment in unification. Some of the stakeholders found themselves pitched against each other in pursuit of their own (sectional) interests, eg, northern elites v southern elites. This also was the case at the leadership level. Both Saleh and al-Beidh came to power and maintained it through ruthless actions (treachery, deceit) and the personal animosity between the two didn’t make for constructive cooperation for the good of the new state.

From al-Beidh’s viewpoint, the economic circumstances making unification an attractive option had altered over time. North Yemen’s economy took a hit after their revenue source from overseas remittances was shut down✫, and the potential oil productivity in the southern Yemen region led al-Beidh to envisage South Yemen becoming an “oil statelet” along the lines of the Gulf states [ibid.].

Contrasting and unharmonious societies

Another element contributing to the rupturing of the union was the seeming incompatibility of the two Yemens – socially and ideologically. North Yemeni society was conservative and tribal, resistant to modernising tendencies. The society of the South had a diametrically opposite dynamic, secular, socialist, and an economy driven by central planning. Among the more liberal, progressive elements of South Yemen, there was a fear that the conservatives in the North might roll back some of the progressive gains in DRPY society, such as those made by women (their representation in the judiciary for example was under threat) [ibid.].

External players in the region

Following the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, interference in Yemen by the Islamic Republic heightened tensions with Saudi Arabia as the two powers manoeuvred for influence in the region. The gravitation of the North towards Saudi Arabia and the South towards Iran was an underlying factor destabilising the united Yemen state [‘Yemen and the Saudi-Iranian Cold War’, (Peter Salisbury), Chatham House, (Research Paper, Feb 2015), www.chathamhouse.org].

Oman (source: www.geology.com)

Footnote: Proximity to an unstable Yemen

It is interesting to briefly consider the situation of the Sultanate of Oman 🇴🇲 on the eastern flank of Yemen. Oman’s history in modern times has not escaped turmoil and instability itself. In 1964 Oman’s unity was confronted by the threat of separatism in Dhofar Province. The separatists, aided by leftist South Yemen et al waged guerrilla war against the sultanate for over ten years before being defeated in 1975. Over the last several decades Muscat under Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said, appreciative of its delicate geo-strategic position vis-a-vís radical states (close to both Iran and Iraq) has pursued a steadfast policy of non-interference – in the spiralling out of control conflict in Yemen. Oman has been particularly careful to do what it can to maintain stability on the country’s western flank [‘Oman’s Balancing Act in the Yemen Conflict’, (Roby Barrett), Middle East Institute, 17-Jun-2015, www.mei.edu].

(Source: Nafida Mohamed)

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✽less than permitted in the USSR at the same period (Halliday)

❂ one faction led by Ismail pursued a doctrinal hard-left strategy, while the other under Nasir Muhammad took a more pragmatic socialist approach

⎋ in this spirit of reconciliation Aden and Sana’a agreed to demilitarise the border, allowing free passage and to conduct joint commercial ventures to tap the oil discovered in Marib Governorate in the mid Eighties (which also unfortunately created opportunities for corruption) [Feierstein, op.cit.]

✥ what accelerated this descent into war was the failure of the two republics’ military forces to integrate in 1990

✫ Saleh’s injudicious backing of Salem Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait earned the displeasure of Saudi Arabia and retaliatory action (an estimated 1M Yemeni workers employed in the Saudi Arabian oil fields were sent home). The returning migrant workers were a double blow to the economy and the Saleh-led regime, swelling the ranks of the unemployed [Colton, Nora Ann. “Yemen: A Collapsed Economy.” Middle East Journal, vol. 64, no. 3, 2010, pp. 410–426. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40783107.]