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SO
IT WAS that I was
reintroduced to a part of the world that was
always a bit of me, buried away in my thoughts
as I had toiled to start a new life on the other
side of the world. Returning to Western
Australia I had immediately thought of how I
could return to Sana'a and the Hadhramaut.
Perhaps I could lead a group? I contacted the
Yemenia offices in London and they gave
me the names of the biggest tour operator and a
smaller outfit. I chose the latter. Then -
disaster appeared to strike.
In April 1993
the Yemen had held the first democratic
elections on the Arabian peninsula for a
Consultative Assembly, elected by some 2.7
million voters, which was to include a number of
women. In theory, the election brought the two
portions of the country together in a political
framework designed to assist the President 'Ali
Abdullah Salah, ruler of the north, to cooperate
with his Vice-President 'Ali Salim al Baid,
erstwhile leader of the Polit Bureau in Aden. It
was an uneasy union. President Salah's party
held 121 seats, Al Baid's 56, with the remainder
held by the fundamentalist-inclined Al Islah's
62 representatives. There was continuous
bickering: to outsiders, the southerners' form
of Marxist-inclined administration was seen to
be running rather better than that in the north.
The north had been somewhat more
'laissez-faire.' Decisions were made in Sana'a
and money was spent from there. Accusations of
favouritism, of peculation and general ill-will
flowed back and forth between the leaders. It
soon came to a head.
The
Vice-President stormed out of the Assembly,
meeting in Sana'a, taking his 56 supporters with
him back to Aden. Subsequently the
northern-dominated parliament voted to 'dismiss'
the southern political leadership. On April 27
1994 a tank battle erupted north of Sana'a,
where a southern regiment had been based. Fierce
fighting broke also broke out at Abyan in the
south between rival army units. Scud missiles
were fired at Sana'a [1] causing some damage and
fighting erupted throughout the country,
concentrated on the old border dating from the
Turkish/British days. Foreign nationals were
evacuated from the country.[2] Northern troops
invaded the Hadhramaut and my erstwhile enemy of
the grenade attack in Mukalla, the Mamur of
Say'un, accepted defeat and retired to his
house. Exiles from the British days based in
Sa'udi Arabia who had hurriedly assembled in
Mukalla, just as hurriedly retreated, as
northern troops overwhelmed Aden after a
terrible siege of the southern capital, when
water supplies were cut off and the very young
and the old died from thirst. The northerners
fought their way along the southern shores to
Mukalla and joined their brothers who had
overwhelmed the Hadhramaut. The country was
reunified but at enormous cost. Both armies had
been terribly mutilated and the death toll was
in the tens of thousands.
Al Baid went
into exile with a number of his cronies. The
President announced an amnesty for all those who
had been on the other side, including the
Sultanic exiles from Sa'udi Arabia and this
resulted in many revisiting their country for
the first time in decades, to pledge allegiance
to the new country and its President and to
reclaim sequestered estates. It was at this
stage that my tourism contact suggested a visit
to Yemen to see for myself that everything was
'normal.'
We landed in
Sana'a, practically the only tourists there
were, and took the road south, to see for
ourselves. There was an eerie calm everywhere.
Armoured vehicles reinforced the ubiquitous
roadblocks but the soldiers waved us through. I
chose the route through Dhala', curious to see
whether my house was still standing. My driver
urged me not to talk with anyone there and
particularly not to let on that I had been a
British officer. Still the same sullen groups of
wizened tribesmen with averted gaze ... after a
cursory tour of the souq we hurried on;
a military complex that could not be
photographed now obscured the house.
At Habilayn,
half way to Aden, we stopped. Here there had
been a mighty tank battle. The ground was
littered with empty shell casings; rows of
freshly dug graves were to one side. My driver
said that 11,000 men had died there. As I
returned to the vehicle I saw an empty SWAN beer
bottle in among the debris of war which I
retrieved as a grim memento of the battle. I
could imagine the tank commander draining his
bottle, before returning to the fray.[3]
The road to Aden
was lined in places by the blackened remains of
tanks, facing both ways. Between Lahej and Dar
Sa'ad every house had shell and rocket holes;
roofs were missing. The water tanks had been
shelled. We drove across the familiar causeway
from Shaikh Othman to Khormaksar. Where our last
house had stood was the Hotel Movenpick, a
once-5* colossus, its western face blackened by
the explosion of a shell that had severely
wounded a doctor from Medicins sans
Frontieres who had been unlucky enough to
have been there during the fighting. The Swiss
general manager had evacuated nearly all
expatriate staff and was running the
establishment with a skeleton crew of 30 locals.
He glumly showed me the remains of the
magnificent ballroom, devastated by shelling.
The hotel had been lucky. At the height of the
war a mob of looters had stormed the foyer and
been seen off by a courageous Adeni official.
Not so lucky the Bulgarian-built hotel at Gold
Mohur, completely looted (even down to wiring
and light fittings). The hotel's records drifted
like snowflakes through the ruined lobby.
However, we felt
completely safe in Aden. There was an air of
frightened calm as the Adenis were adjusting to
rule by the north. We drove to Madinat al Sha'ab
- the old Federal capital - and re-visited the
house where we had been bazooka-ed 30 years
previously. A Bedouin family greeted us with
some apprehension and, once they were assured we
had not come to reclaim their home, welcomed us
effusively. There was the rebuilt wall still
showing where the missile had struck. The other
end of the house was a blackened ruin. The house
had been an observation post and received a
direct hit by rockets. Its condition did not
seem to worry its current occupants.[4]
Little Aden, the
battered old refinery, had suffered, too. Two of
the large tanks had been holed. At the British
cemetery the concrete cross had been vandalised
and a number of head stones pushed over. The
never-occupied British military township at
Falaise, further down the track, was now a
Yemeni garrison. The copper sheathed spire of
the intended church now signified its role as a
community hall.
The road to
Mukalla was generally free of the signs of war.
After Bir 'Ali though, signs indicated that
mines had been laid on either side of the
bitumenised road. To the west of Mukalla a
desperate last-stand had been waged. Remains of
dug-in tanks pointing towards Aden showed where
the battle had been lost by the southerners.[5]
We spent some
time in a gloomy Mukalla where the power supply
was erratic and the people, like in Aden,
apprehensive. After calling in on Colonel 'Atiq,
my would-be killer, under virtual house arrest
in Say'un, we drove over the desert to Ma'rib
and up to Sana'a, without hindrance of any sort.
Back in Perth I
started to organise a small party to tour Yemen,
which was successful, though in my inexperience
I had assumed that everyone would get on
together and enjoy what was on offer. I
determined the next time to vet who would
accompany me and on this occasion a group of
friends accompanied me, providing in the words
of one of them, "the incredible richness of the
Yemen experience."[6] It was a joy to introduce
my Australian party to my Yemen friends who
often invited us into their homes, where we
marvelled over the minimalist but striking décor
of the rooms and the female travellers exclaimed
at the Arab women's clothing (always covered by
the black hijab in public). Yemen
incidentally had been transformed from the
period of war relics which were all cleaned up.
Armoured vehicles were seldom visible from the
road and the damaged houses around Aden were
repaired. The country opened up to receive
tourists. For a period business was brisk.
Jenny and I then
toured the country together in January 1997 and,
in the company of a small group of family and
friends, were married by the British Consul in
Sana'a, in February 1998, a joyful and romantic
occasion in the gardens of the British Embassy.
We planned to return to Yemen with a large group
of scholarly Australians in October 1999 and
were on our way to Yemen on January of that
year, when we received news of tourists being
abducted by a group of dissidents. Apparently
this was to force the authorities to release a
group of British Moslems who had entered Yemen
to cause mayhem and who had been arrested with
their arms and explosives. In the subsequent
fire fight 4 tourists were killed and the Yemen
government came in for stringent criticism by
the British who subsequently advised British
tourists to keep away. The Australian government
picked up this advice and informed Australians
that Yemen is dangerous to visit, a travesty
indeed. Tourism - at least from Britain and
Australia - has since languished.[7]
We were still in
Yemen in the aftermath of the ruckus, helping
with an Australian school party that has
'twinned' with a school at Jiblah. Jenny and I
then travelled with our driver back to Sa'ada
where, to my great excitement, we came across
what could only be hominid prints in what had
been lava ash - those of an adult wearing some
covering across the feet, presumably to protect
the individual from the lava, deeply impressed
as though a load was being carried (a child?)
while alongside were the footprints of a child.
It looked as if the two were escaping from a
volcanic eruption. We photographed the site and
wrote a brief report for the department of
Antiquities in Sana'a but have heard nothing
further.[8]
Later we were
driven by the locals in a Toyota with bald tyres
up a massif along a track that was more steps
than road, with great precipices to one side, to
the mountain fastness of Shihara with its
magnificent bridge spanning the top settlements.
Again, we were the only visitors and received
with warmth and touching hospitality. That
concluded the latest visit to where I always
feel part of my heart remains.
We intend to
visit again, in 2000. In the meantime we keep
abreast of developments in Yemen, as the
authorities struggle with the manifest economic,
social and political problems consequent on a
country still medieval in many of its tribal
opinions and behaviour. To counter the less
appealing of these there remain the old-style
courtesy of the inhabitants, the beauty of the
country and the richness of the country. The
country, the people and the lifestyle have
something to teach the West, in their strong
family bonds, their resilience and their
culture.
It has been my
privilege to be a participant in Yemen's
progress and to watch from the sidelines the
struggles to unite a people that has seldom been
a unified entity, with a history that goes back
to before the time of Christ. Given the
challenges facing a people whose customs are
disparate and whose average daily income is less
than US$1, I think such progress as has been
made is truly remarkable. Let us pray that it
continues.
-
I was told
by a Royal Jordanian Airlines crew that they
had been landing at Sana'a airport, when a
missile exploded behind their aircraft as it
touched down, lifting the tail. The aircraft
aborted its landing and flew back to Amman,
without further incident. The crew was
severely shaken.
-
The French
Foreign Legion, based in Djibouti across the
Red Sea, was outstanding.
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SWAN beer
is sold throughout Yemen as a soft drink,
with the alcohol removed. It is from Western
Australia and has the familiar logo of a
black swan for which the Yemenis have no
word in Arabic. It is known as wuz al aswart
(black turkey).
-
On a
subsequent visit I was told the Government
had provided funds to rebuild the house but
the money had been spent on a television set
- far more important, I was assured.
-
Salah
Bubakr bin Husainnon, the ex-Minister for
Oil & Mineral Development in the first
unified government, was killed here. He had
been a medical orderly in the Hadhrami
Bedouin Legion. He subsequently rose to be
Chief of Army Staff under the Russian
regime, and Ambassador to Moscow and became
a politician of stature. He organised
resistance to the northern invasion and is
regarded as a traitor to Yemen, at least by
the northerners.
-
In Habban,
where I was looking for overnight
accommodation I literally just came across
'Ali Mis'aed Babakri, back after 27 years of
exile. We fell into each other's arms. He
put a house at our disposal.
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Yemen is on
a list with Chechnya and Afghanistan as
places not to visit, a nonsense when one
considers the many places in the world
tourists go, without such warnings. South
Africa? India?
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Apparently
the last eruption in that area was about 1
million years ago which would date the
population to the same period as the fossil
remains found across the Red Sea and would
rewrite the history of 'human' occupation in
south-west Arabia - and from where the first
inhabitants originated.
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