The mournful wail of air raid sirens, punctuated by the familiar double explosion of SCUD re-entry and impact, disturbed the quiet of the night on the Arabian Peninsula again. But this time the cities woken from slumber were Sanaa and Aden, not Riyadh and Dhahran. Yemen, which had become one country only a few years earlier, had fallen into the abyss of fratricide that was its 1994 civil war. The ancient home of the Queen of Sheba, Yemen had been known as Arabia Felix "Happy Arabia" in Roman times. But those days were long past, and the more recent history of the region was strife ridden, much of it along tribal and clan lines. North Yemen achieved its independence in 1918, as the Yemen Arab Republic, ending centuries of rule by the Ottoman Turks. South Yemen was administered by the British until 1967 when independence was achieved, unifying Aden and South Arabia into the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Arab world's only Marxist state. The more populous, smaller YAR pursued a foreign policy that closely tied it to the Arab League, while the PDRY became effectively a client state of the USSR, opening the strategic port of Aden at the mouth of the Red Sea to Soviet warships in 1979. Relations between the two Yemens were never cordial and a series of border clashes almost erupted into full-fledged war in the 1970s. With the financial collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of subsidies, as well as the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe throughout 1989, the PDRY found itself increasingly isolated. Unification was sought, with the PDRY bringing both Aden's port and considerable oil reserves to the new Republic of Yemen, proclaimed on May 22, 1990. The move promised a brighter future for one of the Arab world's poorest countries. The ROY's provisional president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had ruled the YAR since 1979, while the prime minister, Haydar Bakr al- Attas, was from the PDRY. Only a few months after its installation their transition government protested the presence of foreign military forces massed in Saudi Arabia to counter Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The Saudis then expelled 850,000 Yemeni workers, increasing unemployment and adding to the new nation's economic problems. Political turmoil forced the government to postpone elections, which were finally held on April 27, 1993. The General People's Congress (GPC), the former ruling party in the YAR, won 121 seats in parliament; the Yemen Socialist party (YSP), the former ruling party in the PDRY, won 56 seats; a new Islamic coalition party, al-Islah, won 62 seats; and the remaining 62 seats were won by minor parties and independents. The president and prime minister remained in office after the election, and the three major parties formed a coalition in the legislature. Relations between Vice President Ali Salem Beidh, a former PDRY official and Saleh deteriorated during negotiations for a power-sharing arrangement in April 1994. Beidh moved from Sanaa the capital back to Aden, taking many of his backers in the government. Attempts at reconciliation by various Arab leaders, including King Hussein of Jordan, were doomed to failure when a series of political assassinations targeting Beidh allies created an irrevocable breach. First Strike Saleh struck first, sending planes to raid Aden on May 5th. Fighting erupted along the old border between the two countries later that day. Communication lines were shut down, the airports closed and Western governments ordered their nationals out of the country. Saleh had planned a lightning strike against Aden, intending to capture the southern capital in a matter of days before outside mediation by the Gulf Cooperation Council, Arab League and United Nations could begin. It proved to be an overly optimistic forecast. Thanks to past Soviet largesse the south's air force was twice as large as the north's and its MiG 21s and MiG 29s dominated the skies almost to the end of the war. The southward advance of Saleh's army was not only hampered by the lack of air support but by the terrain. Yemen's mountains are some of the most treacherous in the world and the countless narrow passes and defiles gave the southerners excellent defensive positions. The south launched a barrage of 15 SCUD missiles at Sanaa on the war's fifth day. As in Desert Storm, the SCUDs hit nothing they were aimed at, coming to earth willy nilly in the city. One landed in a residential area, killing 25 and wounding another 50. Saleh replied with a pair of SCUDS at Aden, neither of which reached the city. SCUDs continued to rain on Sanaa on which 13 more were targeted the following week. The north's numerical superiority began to tell by the war's second week as the key city of Al Daleh fell to advancing forces. Beidh effectively declared a levee en masse and ordered the arming of civilians. In Yemen's mountains, fierce artillery and rocket battles marked the front lines. The key to the defense of Aden was the military "city" at Al Anad, the joint command center for southern operations, a mere 60 kilometers from Aden, and northern forces continued to press forward. A second front was opened towards Mukalla, capital of the eastern Hadhraumut Province, and center of the south's oil production. With military operations going against him, Beidh declared the secession of south Yemen and the creation of an independent Yemen Democratic Republic on May 22nd, the fourth anniversary of unification. The move was primarily a political one, aimed at gaining tacit recognition for the country and allowing negotiations to proceed between the two factions as equals. Saleh rejected the claim and responded with a third prong on May 30th in the northwest area near Lahj. Southern military commanders publicly admitted they had ignored this area of the front and were unable to respond. Al Anad, flanked from two sides fell the next day. On June 1st the UN Security Council called for a cease fire. Saleh replied by launching the north's first air attacks against Aden since the start of the war. Five days later northern artillery shells were falling in Aden's northernmost suburbs. The southern capital was cut off as northern units formed a semicircle around the rebel coastal capital. Fierce resistance bogged down the advance, and on June 6th Saleh offered a unilateral cease-fire on the condition that Beidh be surrendered for trial. Not surprisingly, the offer was rejected though Beidh did leave Aden, establishing a new seat of government at Mukalla. Northern units advanced into Aden amid heavy street fighting, eventually reducing the southern held area of the city to the Old Town, a tongue of land that juts into the sea. The final days saw both sides using rockets and heavy artillery to hammer each other's positions. The 3000 remaining southern defenders surrendered the city on July 8th. Beidh and other southern leaders fled to nearby Oman, and the Yemen Civil War was over — for now. Map Back to Cry Havoc #19 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com