Yemen is currently among the countries in the Middle East facing the most complex political situation: the country is divided between the Houthis, which rule former North Yemen, and the recognised international government known as the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) that controls former South Yemen. Historically, Yemen has continuously shown this fil rouge, defined by turbulent governments, unifications and secessions, underscoring with the passing of time social and economic disparities in the internal Yemeni context that has endured until current times.

The watershed moment in Gulf and Yemeni history is the start of the 19th century, when three main actors ruled the Arabian Peninsula: the Ottoman Empire, the seed of the future Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the British Empire. This moment in history is crucial and it still has an impact on modern Yemen, because at that moment the Yemeni people were divided into two different countries, a case that will endure for a long period of time, which additionally led to a crucial differentiation in social and economic development in the future.

The Ottoman Empire had been present in the Arabian Peninsula since the 16th century, but were forced out of Yemen due to pressures from Zaydi imamates in the Western part of modern Yemen. The Ottomans reentered Yemen in 1849, and settled near the borders with the British Aden Protectorate, which was established ten years prior.[1] The British Empire, other than establishing the protectorate in southern Yemen, managed to establish protectorates in other key parts of the Gulf, marking a long period of Pax Britannica in the Arabian Peninsula. Precisely, Britain assumed responsibility for the defense of Oman in 1829, the Trucial States (the present-day United Arab Emirates) in 1835, Bahrain in 1861, Kuwait in 1899, and Qatar in 1916.[2] The main interest that arose in the Ottomans and in the British concerning Yemen, related to the establishment of the trade route that passed by the Red Sea and comprised the Bab al Mandeb Strait. In fact, the Suez Canal as a trade route was officially opened in 1869.[3] Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, faced a complex century, given that the fortunes of the Sa‘ud family rose and fell several times as the Saudi rulers contended with Egypt, the Ottoman empire, and other Arabian families for control of the peninsula.[4]

At the dawn of the 20th century, one of the three main actors of the 19th century retreated from the Arabian Peninsula and ceased to exist: the Ottoman Empire. The latter, in fact, struggled to rule effectively North Yemen, due to the influence of the Zaydis imams, which staged with the complicity of the population a number of revolts. In 1911 the Zaydis were granted autonomy by the Ottomans, which subsequently retreated from the Arabian Peninsula in 1918, after the fall of the empire due to the loss in World War I. The Zaydi imam Yahya Ibn Muhammad and subsequently his son Ahmad began ruling for the subsequent 44 years the territories formerly part of the Ottoman Empire with the final aim of revitalising Islamic culture and society [1]. Southern Yemen, on the other hand, was still under British protection for the full first half of the 20th century, while Aden established itself as central for trade routes connecting the West and the East. In the same period, Saudi Arabia managed to create a stable Kingdom under the rule of the Sa‘ud family, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Sa‘ud founded the modern Saudi state; in 1926, he became king of the Hejaz and Najd, and in 1932 these regions were unified as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [4], the political unit that is still present today.

The second half of the 20th century was marked by tumultuous events, for both North Yemen and South Yemen. North Yemen had been ruled since 1918 by Zaydi imams, but with the passing of time, Yemeni began suffering from a stagnating society leading to the stark contrast with the other countries undergoing the process of modernisation. In 1948, a failed revolution took place, then another failed coup in 1955 happened, while a successful coup d’etat took place in 1962 against royalists supported by Saudi Arabia from the republicans backed by Egypt.[5]

The revolution resulted in the deposition of the imam supported by Riyadh and then in the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), ruled by a group of revolutionary republicans, part of the army, supported by Egypt and partially by the USSR. Military confrontation continued until 1970 between the two parties and their supporters on North Yemeni soil, until foreign countries decided to leave the conflict given the economic burden and other more pressing international matters. The country would be ruled until 1990 by the revolutionary republicans. South Yemen, on the other hand, was still under British rule, but the wave of decolonisation that characterised the 1960s worldwide reached Aden, and after years of a pro-independence insurgency, the British withdrew from the territories leading to the creation of the People’s Republic of Yemen in 1967 [5]. Between 1967 and 1971 the British left officially the Arabian Gulf, marking the end of 150 years of protectorates. South Yemen in 1970 transitioned to a new regime, the Marxist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). Under communist rule, the country developed quickly, mainly in education, women’s rights, and manufacturing.[6]

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent financial crisis led to a government collapse, which drew South Yemen towards the unification with North Yemen in 1990, and with the following birth of Yemen as a united country. Another incentive that drew the two countries together was the discovery of oil and natural gas in both countries at the same time and in the same geographic region. Sharing the profits would have been much more sensible rather than incurring in a costly conflict. Despite the unification of the two countries, driven mainly by opportunism rather than sense of community, in 1994 the unintegrated armies of the north and the south faced off, resulting in a brief civil war that resulted in the defeat of the southern army and shored up Yemen’s reunification, with the election of Ali Abdullah Saleh as president, who was president of former North Yemen since 1978.[7]

The 21st century commenced with a united Yemen, but the government and the state as a whole were extremely weak, due to internal fragmentation created by the long division of the two entities. On the other hand, the other countries in the Gulf peninsula developed quickly, marking a new fruitful century. The Houthi group – born in the 1990s – became nationally relevant in the early 2000s. Tensions ran high between Saleh’s government and the group which eventually led to a rebellion against the government in 2004, with a subsequent ceasefire in 2010 [7], but the Houthis were not ready to lay down arms yet. With the eruption of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, the Houthis sided with demonstrators in Sana’a, who called for the end of Saleh’s 30 year old regime. The result was a change in Yemen’s leadership, with Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi as new leader, with the aim of creating a new constitution in the framework of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) with the support of the GCC and the UN. The talks in the NDC went hand in hand with military advances in the northern Zaydi highlands by the Houthis, and in September 2014 the group seized the city of Sana’a, with president Hadi fleeing the city.[8] An additional actor appeared in the southern part of the country: the Southern Transitional Council (STC). The STC was established in 2017, joined the PLC in 2022, but still claims to represent the will and interests of the southerners and it advocates for the south’s peaceful secession.[9] The civil war, started in 2014 with the seizure of the capital, is still ongoing.

As underlined in the introduction, Yemen has one of the most complex histories in the Arabian peninsula, that still has an impact as of now. Its history is marked by continuous international intervention, continuous change in government, sectarian differences, everlasting grievances and a long division in the second part of the 20th century; instances that coherently show the traumatic past of the Yemeni people and give a framework of understanding of the current affairs in Sana’a.