Mengjiang: The Empire of Japan’s Other East Asian Puppet State in Inner Mongolia

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Political geography, Regional History, Travel

The creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo out of a huge chunk of China’s northeastern territory in 1932 was a springboard for Japan’s nationalists and militarists to expand territorially deep into China and other parts of Eastern Asia [see preceding blog: http://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/06/27/manchukuo-an-instrument-of-imperial-expansion-for-the-puppet-masters-of-japan/].

(note how close Mengjiang’s eastern boundary came to China’s principal city Peking)

The Japanese military used Manchukuo as a base to gradually move piece by piece into Chinese Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Siberia and elsewhere in China. Or as one Western observer of the day put it: “Automatically, by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan became committed to the invasion of Mongolia”, [Lattimore, Owen. “The Phantom of Mengkukuo.” Pacific Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4, 1937, pp. 420–427. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2750626].

Demchugdongrub and his Japanese advisors ⇣

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Demchugdongrub, Pan-Mongolism to vassal state
In Inner Mongolia, a member of the Royal House of Chahar, Prince Demchugdongrub (Te Wang 德王), was agitating in the 1930s for Mongolian autonomy from Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Republic of China. Demchugdongrub and other Mongolian nationalists harboured irredentist desires for a Pan-Mongolia (the reuniting of Inner and Outer Mongolia) [‘5. Another Manchu-kuo, the dream of the “Inner Mongolian Independence”‘, TAKESHITA, Yoshirō 1997, http://teikoku-denmo.jp/ cited in Global Security, GlobalSecurity.org)].

Mengjiang flag⇣

▫️▫️▫️

Enforced mergers and shifting nomenclature
The opportunity arose with the aggressive expansion of the Japanese military into the country. Chahar and Suiyuan provinces in Inner Mongolia were taken by Japan’s Kwantung Army and its allies. With the muscle of the occupying Japanese military behind him, Demchugdongrub in 1936 was installed as the leader of a new puppet-state regime✳️, the Mongol Military Government (sometimes also called the “Mongolian Border Land”).

In 1939 South Chahar and North Shanxi provinces (both predominately Han Chinese in population✥) were added to the ‘Mongolian’ regime, now renamed the Mengjiang✼ (or Mongol) United Autonomous Government (蒙疆聯合自治政府) (Měngjiāng Liánhé Zìzhì Zhèngfǔ Mōkyō Rengō Jichi Seifu) with its capital in Kalgan (Zhāngjiākǒu) [ibid.]. On paper Prince Demchugdongrub remained Mengjiang head of state (until 1945), his main function seems to have been to give the territorial entity the countenance of legitimacy. One manifestation of Mengjiang’s Mongolian roots was Demchugdongrub’s adoption of the historic Mongolian calendar…1936, Mengjiang’s creation year, became the year 781 to associate the regime with Genghis Khan (below) and the height of power of the Mongol Empire [John Man, The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China, (2015)]✧.

▫️▫️▫️

MUAG becomes MAF
In 1941 Mengjiang was rebranded once more, this time as the Mongolian Autonomous Federation (蒙古自治邦). At the same time the Japanese sponsored the elevation of Wang Zhao-ming. Wang, better known by his pen-name of Wang Jingwei, was put in charge of the Reorganised National Government of the Republic of China (中華民國國民政府) (RNGRC)❦. Wang had previously lost out to Chiang Kai-shek in a leadership struggle for control of both the KMT and the Chinese government.

Wang Jingwei, RNGRC president⇣

Wang’s defection to the Japanese was motivated by this and he envisioned his alternate government, RNGRC, would provide him with the power base within China he was seeking▣. With Wang’s appointment as “Chinese president”, Demchugdongrub’s MAF was subsumed under the Wang regime, but in practical terms the MAF was still autonomous of it, if not of the Japanese [‘Mengjiang’, (Military Wiki), www.military.wikia.org].

Mengjiang one yuan note⇣

▫️▫️▫️

RNGRC a ‘toothless’ regime
The RNGRC under Wang was a one-party totalitarian dictatorship, but the reality of Wang Jingwei’s regime was that it was only afforded very limited powers by it’s Japanese masters. Wang, befitting the function of a pliable puppet, was basically no more than a convenient pawn for the Japanese military to negotiate with Chiang’s government [‘Wang Jianwei regime’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. In 1944 Wang died in Japan…his successor as president mayor of Shanghai Chen Gongbo played an equally subservient role for the Kwantung (Chen in 1946 was tried as a war criminal by the Chiang government and executed).

Mongolian flag 1945⇣▫️▫️▫️

At the end of WWII, both the Mengjiang regime of Demchugdongrub and the ‘Reorganised’ Republic of China were effortlessly swept away by the invading Soviet and Mongolian armies. The Inner Mongolian territories were returned to China (along with Chinese Manchuria) and the Soviet satellite Outer Mongolia gained independence after a national plebiscite (100% yes vote!) in late 1945 (which the USSR immediately and China later recognised).

PRTT crest⇣

PostScript: Tannu Tuva, a regional curio Mengjiang (or Mengkukuo) and Manchukuo were not the only contemporary puppet states in that region of Northeastern China/Mongolia. Nestled in between Outer Mongolia and Russian Siberia, is the tiny enclave of Tannu Tuva (1944: 170,500 sq km, Pop. 95,400)…historically this land was part of Mongolia and therefore part of a client state of the Chinese Empire. The People’s Republic of Tannu Tuva (Tьʙа Arat Respuʙlik) (1921-44) was recognised only by the USSR and Mongolia. Nominally independent but in reality another satellite state of the Soviets, in late 1944 it was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast. Today, it is the Tyva Republic, a constituent member of the post-communist Russian Federation.

(map source: www.globalsecurity.org)

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

✳️ Demchugdongrub, despite his vaulting ambitions, was only ever nominally in charge of what was always transparently a Japanese-controlled puppet state

✥ exacerbating pre-existing tensions between the Mongolian and Chinese sections of the state (Lattimore, op.cit.)

✼ Mengjiang 蒙 (literally ‘fierce’ or in compound form ‘dream to act’). The entity is sometimes styled Mengkukuo 蒙古國 because of its parallels with Manchukuo

✧ the Mongolian prince’s supposed autonomy was always surface deep at best…”an autonomy administered by the Japanese for the Japanese”, (ibid.)

❦ colloquially known as the “Wang Jingwei regime“

▣ Wang’s would-be government was based in the former capital Nánjīng, however the de facto capital was Shanghai

.

Manchukuo: An Instrument of Imperial Expansion for the Puppet-masters of Japan

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Economic history, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

In 1931 the Manchurian component of the Japanese Imperial Army faked the sabotage of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (which was controlled by the Japanese themselves) near Mukden (present day Shenyang). The Japanese military, playing the victim, alleged it was the work of Chinese dissidents, and used the so-called Mukden Incident to launch a full-scale invasion of Manchuria✴.

Kwantung Garrison troops in Shenyang, 1931 ⇓

The military onslaught from Japan’s Kwantung Army (formerly Garrison) [関東軍, Kantogun] (AKA the Guandong Army) met with determined if largely ineffective resistance…the Chinese were under-prepared, under-equipped and not as technologically advanced militarily as the Japanese, but their defensive efforts were also undermined by Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek who ordered the local warlord Zhang Xue-liang✪ to hold back on resisting the Japanese invaders. The reason – Chang had fixed on a strategy that prioritised gaining control over the rest of the China in the civil war against Mao’s Chinese communists [‘Mukden Incident’, Encyclopaedia Britannia, (John Swift), www.britannia.com]. The Japanese military successes were followed by the creation of a Japanese “puppet state”, Manchukuoꆤ, in Manchuria in April 1932 (comprising China’s Northeast and Inner Mongolia).

Background to Manchukuo: Japanese “special interests’

Japan had pursued an aggressively interventionist policy in the region for decades before Manchukuo. Victorious wars against a diminishing Chinese empire (First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95) and Tsarist Russia (Russo-Japanese War 1904-05) emboldened Japan’s ambitions. Japan’s spoils of war after defeating the Russians included the extension of its economic sphere of influence to southern Manchuria. Moving into ports, mines, hotels and other businesses and its takeover of Russian railroads, brought with it a big influx of Japanese settlers [‘Manchukuo’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

Even prior to Manchukuo’s creation, Japan had been conceded a portion of Chinese territory in the southern Liaoning Peninsula which included Dalian (renamed Darien by the Japanese). Known as the Kwantung Leased Territory, it remained in Japanese hands until 1945.

Manchukuo’s capital was Hsinking [Xīnjīng: (literally ‘new capital’)] (today reverted to its original name, Chángchūn) in Jilin province. In 1945 at the end of WWII the capital was moved to nearby Tonghua. Hsinking had the status of a “special city” under the Manchurian state, as did Harbin.

Puppet statehood

The Manchukuo state established by the Japanese militarists was initially a republic but in 1934 it was changed to a one-party constitutional monarchy, the so-called Empire of (Greater) Manchuriaᴥ. The Japanese dredged up the former boy-emperor Pu Yi (last Chinese emperor of the Qing Dynasty) to be the titular figurehead of the ’empire’. Executive power of the Manchukuo government purportedly resided with the prime ministers (Zheng Xiaoxu 1932-35 and Zhang Jinghui 1935-45). The Manchukuo PM held authority under an authoritarian–personalist dictatorship, but this was more perception than substance as real power lay firmly with the Japanese☯️.

“Emperor of Manchukuo” ⇓ (Model display of puppet emperor in palace museum)

Kwantung Army, a rogue element

The Kwantung◘ Army, the arm of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, functioned as something of a rogue element, habitually acting independently of the Japanese government and the Army General Staff in Tokyo which struggled to rein it in. The Mukden Incident (see above) and the Huanggutun Incident (see below) are two such instances of their rogue activities. Service in the Kwantung Garrison, which had its headquarters in the Manchukuo capital Hsinkingᕡ, was a recognised path for promotion in the Japanese high command…instrumental chiefs of staff Seishirō Itagaki and Hideki Tōjō were both beneficiaries of this [ibid].

Hsinking: Kwantung Army HQs ⇓

Highly politicised, the Kwantung Army adopted an extra-military role for itself in Manchuria, eg, the commanding officer of the Kwantung Army was also Manchukuo ambassador to Japan and held an extraordinary power of veto – even over the Emperor of Japan! [ibid.].

‘Race’-based stratification

Japan peopled the sparsely populated parts of Manchuria with Japanese migrants who sat atop a social pyramid with other ethnic groups in the region stratified under the Japanese. Rationing of essential foodstuffs (including rice, wheat and sugar) was administered in accordance with this racial hierarchy. The Japanese-dominated colony of more than 30 million has been characterised as more “an Auschwitz state or a concentration-camp state” than merely a “puppet state” [Yamamuro Shin’ichi, quoted in Smith, Norman. “Disguising Resistance in Manchukuo: Feminism as Anti-Colonialism in the Collected Works of Zhu Ti.” The International History Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 2006, pp. 515–536. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40111222].

Japanese dominated Manchuria was indeed a police state, one of the most brutal in an (interwar) era of totalitarian excesses. The Manchukuo regime unleashed a systematic campaign of terror and intimidation against the local Russian and Chinese populations (including arrests without trial, “thought crimes”, organised riots and other forms of subjugation) [‘Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Artillery unit of Fengtian Clique ⇓

Resistance to Japanese domination

After the establishment of Manchukuo and the ineffective performance of the Fengtian (Liaoning) Army against the Japanese war machine, various Chinese militias were formed to carry on the resistance. The main forces comprised Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies, backed by the KMT Nationalists and led by famous general Ma Zhanshanᕤ. Other resistance to the Japanese in the Northeast came from Communist-organised guerrilla units. The anti-Japanese militias’ campaigns, which included harrying and terrorising the Kwantung Army, lasted ten years until the Japanese Army and Airforce finally pacified Manchuria in 1942.

The brunt of the early Chinese fight-back against Japan’s imperial expansion was borne by these warlord militias and volunteer armies, but after Chiang Kai-shek was talked round to a truce with the communists and a united front against Japan in 1937 (in effect postponing the civil war to the conclusion of WWII), the Republic of China (ROC) army engaged directly with the Kwantung Army (Battles of Shanhai Pass, Rehe, Beiping-Tianjin, 2nd Battle of Héběi, Chahar Campaign, etc).

ROC flag (>1928) ⇓ 中華民國 Chunghwa Minkuo

1937: Second Sino-Japanese War

After colonising Manchuria, the Japanese military used it as a base to invade the rest of China. In 1937 the eruption of fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops near Peking (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) led to full-scale war. Antony Beevor [The Second World War, (2012)] marks this episode as being effectively the start of the Second World War (some historians date it’s origins earlier, from the Mukden Incident in 1931).

Marco Polo Bridge ⇓(Photo: The China Guide)

Siberian sideshow

Eventually the Kwantung Army, unchecked by Tokyo, overreached itself by invading Siberia, provoking the USSR into an undeclared war and several border conflicts and battles in the late 1930s. The clashes culminated in the decimation of Japanese 6th Army at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 [‘The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939’, The Diplomat, (Stuart D Coleman), 28-Aug-2012, www.thediplomat.com].

1930s Tokyo ‘spin’

The Japanese came under attack in the West for establishing a harsh, totalitarian regime in Manchuria. Attempts were made to deflect the criticism by portraying the interventions in China’s northeast as a positive contribution to the restoration of regional order. Apologists for Japan, pointing to the pattern of internecine conflicts between warlords, communist insurgency and general chaotic conditions in the rest of China in the first third of the 20th century, argued that Manchuria in the same period had, courtesy of Japanese involvement, enjoyed “peace and order, progress and prosperity, (making) great strides in commercial and industrial development” [Saito, Hirosi. “A Japanese View of the Manchurian Situation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 165 (1933): 159-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1018175].

Manzhouguo passport ⇓

Japanese spin imbued the Manchukuo regime with a pseudo-legitimacy that was almost mythic: “the ‘Manchus’ followed the ‘kingly way’ (王道 wangdao) of harmony, prosperity, and peace under the benevolent guidance and protection of imperial Japan” [Review of Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern, (Prasenjit Duara), by John J. Stephan, The International History Review,Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 181-182. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40110486]❅.

Myth-busting Manchukuo

Reconnecting with this, Japanese historians in the postwar period, tried to justify the horrors committed by the occupying Japanese army, characterising the incursion in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia as an act of ‘liberation’, prompted by motives which were ‘enlightened’. Recent research by Shin’ichi Yamamuro leads the Japanese academic to posit a view of the Manchukuo occupation that challenges the mainstream Japanese one. Yamamuro debunks the theory that right-wing Japanese military and civilian authorities were supposedly imbued with the idealism of wanting to construct a “paradise in earth” in China’s three northern provinces [Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, (Shin’ichi Yamamuro, translated by Joshua A. Fogel), 2006; Bill Sewell. “Review of Yamamuro Shin’ichi. Manchuria under Japanese Dominion. Translated by Joshua A. Fogel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006,” H-US-Japan Reviews, March, 2007. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=265211196449094].

Scope of the membership of the Greater EACP Sphere ⇓

“Greater Co-operation” – code for Japanese expansion and economic domination

In 1940 Japan incorporated its Manchurian client-state into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACS). The purported aim of GEACS was that it would be an economically self-sufficient “bloc of Asian nations led by Japan and free of Western powers”. In reality, this veneer of Pan-Asian idealism (regime motto: “five races under one union”) was a front for the Japanese militarists and nationalists to expand south and west and advance its domination of Asia [‘Manchukuo’, Wiki, loc.cit.].

A prized economic asset

Manchukuo (and the Inner Mongolia territory) was incorporated into both the Japanese war machine and the national economy. Rich in natural resources (especially coal and iron), under the Japanese Manchuria became an industrial powerhouse. Japanese citizens, who had been hard hit by the Great Depression, were enthusiastic in their support for the army’s intervention in Manchurian territory right through the period of Japanese occupancy [ibid.].

August 1945: D-day for the Japanese puppet states

August 9, 1945, the day after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, the Soviet Red Army and the Mongolian Army invaded Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, which was to be the final campaign of the Second World War. In a swift operation (Manchzhurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastupatelnaya Operatsiya), Manchukuo, Mengjiang and Japanese (northern) Korea were all liberated, thus culminating in the break-up of the Japanese empire. Manchuria and Inner Mongolia were returned to China, and the Soviets set about orchestrating a communist takeover of North Korea…meanwhile Korea south of the 38th Parallel was occupied by US forces [‘Soviet invasion of Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Victorious Soviet soldiers in Harbin ⇓Photo: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/

Footnote: ‘Manchuria’ as a geographic descriptor was first used by the Japanese in the 1600s and later adopted by Westerners in China…the Chinese themselves these days are less inclined to use the term ‘Manchuria’, preferring to describe this part of China simply as Dongbei (东北), the Northeast).

Manchurian malfeasance – for the record: these days the once imperial “puppet palace” of Manchukuo is a history museum – a reminder to Chinese and the very occasional 外国人 (foreign) visitor alike of the aberrant and abhorrent regime imposed on North-East China during the interwar period of the 20th century. Manchukuo (State of Manchuria) comprising northeastern China and part of Inner Mongolia Area: approx 1.19 million km Pop (est) 1940: 30-35 million Ethnic Mix: Han Chinese (majority), Manchus, Mongols, Huis, Koreans, Japanese, Belorussians (minorities)

⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰

✴ in 1932 an independent inquiry with US participation, the Lytton Commission (Ritton Hōkokusho), found that both parties were at fault for the incident. In its Report which led to exposure of the Japanese duplicity, it condemned Japan for its aggression (albeit conceding it had “special interests” in the region), while also criticising China for inflaming anti-Japanese sentiments…the League of Nations subsequently demanded that Japan vacate Manchuria, Japan’s response was to give notice to withdraw unilaterally from the League (effective 1935) [‘Lytton Report’, (United States History), www.u-s-history.com]

✪ Zhang’s father, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, also a Manchurian warlord, had been assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung military in 1928, in an episode in Shenyang known as the Huanggutun incident. Zhang senior was one of the most powerful warlords in the Warlord Era, which saw local military cliques carve out territorial strongholds in different parts of China

ꆤ Manzhouguo in Chinese

ᴥ the Chinese expression for Manchukuo is 虚假帝国 (the “false empire”)

☯️ Zheng, a royalist and close collaborator of Pu Yi, had hoped that Manchukuo would become a springboard for the restoration of Qing rule in China, aims not shared by the Japanese who pressured him to resign in 1935 [‘Zheng Xiaoxu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. His successor Zhang Jinghui was even more of a powerless figurehead, content to allow advisors from the Kwantung Army run the state, earning Zhang the unflattering sobriquet of the “Tofu prime minister” [‘Zhang Jinghui’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

◘ Kwantung means “east of Shanhaiguan”, ie, Manchuria

ᕡ the Kwantung military also maintained a peninsula naval base at Ryojun (Port Arthur)

ᕤ the charismatic general started fighting against the Japanese, was then induced to swap over to the Japanese side and finally switched back to the cause of Chinese resistance

❅ Stephan summarises Manchukuo as “a producer of beans, bandits and bunk” with the ‘kingly way’ grandiloquence falling under the third of these attributes

💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮

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.]