The silent demise of democracy: the role of the Clinton administration in the 1994 Yemeni civil war.

Yemen is part of the Middle East least in the public eye - although it overlooks the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait and contains about half the population of the Arabian peninsula.(1)

INTRODUCTION

At the same time president Clinton was delivering a speech on 3 May 1994 promoting democracy, democracy was suffering a setback in Yemen at the hands of U.S. allies. The President declared "security, prosperity, and democracy" as the "pillars of our strategy in the new world" for the protection of "our land, our people, and our way of life.(2) However, in Yemen, as in the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, democracy comes second to protecting U.S. prosperity.(3)

The following headline clearly expressed the crux of the issue: "Yemen's War, Democracy's Loss." The background for these changes was the fact that "the prospect of a unified, oil-rich, and democratic Yemen worried Yemen's northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia."(4)

Fortunately, the civil war in Yemen lasted less than three months, saving U.S. State Department officials from having to deal with a number of key and uncomfortable questions: How far is the U.S. willing to nurture democratic values and practices in the Middle East? Is the U.S. willing to risk its alliance with Saudi Arabia for the promotion of democracy? Will the U.S. recognize the role of widespread poverty and inequality in the Middle East and take steps to close the prosperity gap that threatens Middle Eastern stability? Is it still in the best interest of the U.S. to have its partnership with Saudi Arabia as the cornerstone of its Arabian Peninsula policy?

Continuing with the established foreign policy of earlier administrations, the Clinton administration has answered "yes" to the last question. An examination of the "silent" civil war in Yemen will show the implications of this policy for democracy in the Arabian Peninsula and the long-term risks the U.S. is taking for supporting conservative governments.

As the self-designated champion of democracy, the U.S. would be a likely candidate to aid the fledgling democracy in Yemen. Clinton in his "Global Forum" speech stated,

The new progress of democracy all around the world resonates with our values and our interests. It makes us safer here in the United States .... Now the greatest opportunity for our security is to help enlarge the world's communities of market democracies, and to move toward a world in which all the great powers govern by a democratic plan .... Our goal is to foster the success of new democracies - and to apply pressure to restore democracy where it has been overthrown.(5)

Moreover, Clinton also stated that the U.S. does have an "obligation to join with others to do what we can to relieve suffering and restore peace."(6) Why then has the U.S. been so silent about the Yemeni civil war?

Had it chosen to do so the U.S. had an opportunity to end suffering, restore peace and promote democracy. The crucial factor is the U.S. response to the concerns of both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait who "fear that the socialist and democratic ideas practiced by a highly literate population next door might contaminate the minds of their own subjects."(7) For their part, the Yemenis feel "it is the moral duty of Western countries to help us because we uphold the universal values which they champion: a multi-party system, full observance of human rights, more appropriate male-female relations and a fully free enterprise system."(8)

Perhaps the answer is that U.S. prosperity lies with the non-democratic states that can assure America of a steady relatively cheap supply of oil. Clinton's foreign policy calls for protecting and promoting prosperity, specifically U.S. prosperity. Clinton suggested that for countries to receive U.S. support they must "be committed to growing the economy, to participating in the market economy, and to giving their people a chance to compete and win in a global economy."(9) In the name of prosperity, the U.S. has turned its back on a fledgling democracy in Yemen and formed an exclusive partnership with one of the least democratic states in the world, Saudi Arabia.

YEMEN'S FIGHT FOR AUTONOMY

Yemen has been for centuries coveted by ambitious and rapacious merchants, sultans, kings and queens, super and regional powers. In the mid-Nineteen Century Yemen was divided between the Ottoman and the British empires. The British area of control was centered in the port city of Aden, and the Turkish in the interior city of Sanaa.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Yemen was at the heart of the struggle between regional powers, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, representing respectively the forces of Arab nationalism and conservative monarchies. In 1962 the Imamate in North Yemen was overthrown by a military coup that created the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). A period of civil war followed with fighting between the Egyptian-supported "republican" forces and "royalists" that had the backing of Saudi Arabia. The civil war ended in 1967 when, after being defeated by Israel, Egypt was forced to withdraw and grant Saudi Arabia hegemony over the Arabian Peninsula.

Political and social upheaval, however, was also taking place in South Yemen. British rule lasted there until 1967 when South Yemen became the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), a Marxist state. The 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s were characterized by constant border clashes between North and South. The Arabian Peninsula became a battlefront in the Cold War. During this period, the containment of communism was Saudi Arabia's major foreign policy objective.

With the end of the cold war, new and significant changes occurred.(10) In the late 1980s, the wave of glasnost hit the city of Aden forcing the Yemen Socialist Party (YSP) of South Yemen to begin instituting democratic reforms, such as a multi-party system, and liberalizing the economy. The status of women continued improving as it had since the creation of the PDRY.(11) However, without the patronage and largesse of the Soviets, the southern Yemenis floundered.

Under military rule the North remained more conservative than the South. Domestically, Islam was the state religion, political parties were banned, and internal security was

largely maintained by an active National Security Organization .... The central government in Sanaa continues to expand its authority to all parts of the country, but tribal leaders in isolated areas are reluctant to surrender their traditional prerogatives, such as tax collecting and mediating disputes. Tribal conflicts and blood feuds occasionally spill into the major cities, and tribesmen in rural areas often carry automatic weapons.(12)

In the 1970s, after the loss of Egypt's support, North Yemen's dependence on Saudi Arabia increased. In addition to becoming North Yemen's main source of foreign aid, Saudi Arabia continuously manipulated the tribes' opposition to Sanaa to its own advantage. The objective of Riyadh was to keep Yemen divided.

Unity is a common goal among the Yemenis. Efforts at unity during the 1960s and 1970s, however, were thwarted by Saudi interference. South Yemen, taking advantage of a momentary military superiority, brought North Yemen to the negotiating table to discuss unity in 1979. One of the main objectives of the PDRY was to make the National Democratic Front (NDF) - "a coalition of North Yemeni leftist organizations" supported by Aden - part of the North Yemen government.

Both Saudi Arabia and North Yemeni opponents of unity, however, mobilized their considerable instruments of pressure to halt the leftward trend in the YAR .... In mid-1979, tribal leaders organized themselves into an ad hoc "Islamic Front" .... It is likely the Front had the moral and material support of Riyadh. The Saudis at the same time acted unilaterally to pressure Ali Abdallah Salih [the President of North Yemen! into reversing his course. At the end of 1979 Saudi budgetary support for the YAR government was suspended .... It was also clear the U.S. arms promised to the YAR, which had been paid for by Riyadh, would not be delivered. In March 1980 the Salih regime agreed to Saudi demands to arrest its drift toward unity and the Soviet bloc, and Saudi aid resumed.(13)

In the early 1980s, "the momentum that had developed in 1979 toward integral unity was halted"(14) until the final years of the decade. The combined effects of South Yemen's loss of Soviet support and the new found oil wealth in disputed border areas produced a new pull toward unity.

South Yemen initiated negotiations for a merger with North Yemen that ended in May 1990 with the creation of the Republic of Yemen. The smaller, less populous South Yemen merged with the more populous North largely on northern terms. The transitional government which resulted was led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh from the North and vice president Ali Salem al-Beidh from the South. A 38-member cabinet was established that had both northern and southern members.(15) Saudi Arabia, as expected, remained hostile to Yemeni unification.

In June 1990, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait put the newly created republic through a difficult test. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to punish Yemen for not being completely subservient and for advocating an "Arab solution" to the crisis, decided to cut all aid and expel more than 800,000 Yemeni workers. Unemployment increased and with it, naturally, political discontent. From the Saudi perspective, political mobilization was particularly dangerous in Yemen where democratic freedoms allowed open discussion of the role played by Saudi Arabia.

"But the Saudis were further irritated by Yemen's democratic elections last year, a slap in the face to Saudi notions that a ballot based on universal suffrage is not appropriate for the Arabian Peninsula."(16) The April 1993 parliamentary elections brought the conservative alliance of Saleh's General People's Congress Party (GPCP) and Islamic Yemeni Alliance for Reform (Islah) to power "to the detriment of al-Beidh's Yemeni Socialist Party in the south."(17) Islah is tied financially and ideologically to Saudi Arabia and has made clear its intention to resist the Constitution signed between Saleh and al-Beidh in 1990. In particular, "the religious leaders of the north demand sharia for the whole country and abhor the secular south."(18)

Relations between North and South deteriorated and in May 1994 civil war erupted once again in Yemen. Although several factors contributed to the outbreak of hostility, the primary contributor to this civil war was northern aggression. The YSP was almost destroyed by a number of political assassinations perpetrated by the North. According to al-Beidh "at least 153 of his supporters and senior party officials have been assassinated in Sanaa" since unification.(19) The YSP accused Saleh of "ordering the liquidation of southern army units stationed in the north" and demanded justice and a trial for Saleh.(20) The President did very little to stem the tide of aggression against the south and southern leaders.

Northern aggression was also felt in the economic arena where "many southerners have become convinced that they have been discriminated against, and their conviction that the northerners enjoy more power and money remains a point of friction."(21) Northern governors sent to govern southern provinces created further hostility and suspicion.(22) Finally, in May al-Beidh suggested that the North was "foot-dragging on merging political and defense institutions" and was "keeping expenditures and oil revenue hidden from the country's budget."(23)

The situation in Yemen was volatile. The aggression of the North, the discovery of oil reserves in the South, the perpetuation of standing armies, and the cultural and political differences between the conservative North, and the liberalized South, thwarted efforts at unification. Another factor was the influence of Saudi Arabia which feared the spread of democracy and the clout of a united Yemen. Yemen's independent stance during the Gulf war added anger to fear. As will be argued later, if a united Yemen was going to emerge, Saudi Arabia was determined it would be under a conservative government. Finally, continued poverty in Yemen, particularly in the South, fueled popular discontent.

In July 1994, the civil war in Yemen ended with the victory of the Northern forces. Many of the Southern leaders fled and the YSP lost most of its power. What was the role played by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and what are the further implications for democracy in the region?

A SILENT CIVIL WAR?

The civil war in Yemen and the role of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. can be more clearly understood by enumerating events as they occurred. The war was instigated by the North and the real loser was the YSP of the South. The military and economic superiority of the North, with three times the population of the South, was obvious. War broke out in the first week of May. By June, The New York Times was reporting that the "North Is Said To Be Gaining In Yemen War."(24)

The North's aggression began immediately after the April 1993 Parliamentary elections. Then came the political assassinations of YSP members. Frustrated with the official insensitivity toward the assassinations and Saleh's lack of interest in implementing the terms of the 1990 unification accord - and maybe concerned with his own security too - al-Beidh left Sanaa in August 1993 and established his residence in Aden. Northern aggression continued with the firing of Southern cabinet members and a troop buildup along the former border.

The North lied to justify its aggression. In January 1994, "President Ali Abdallah Saleh charged that MIG jets from the former southern Yemeni Air Force had launched a raid on a military base in northern Yemen."(25) Shortly thereafter, officials in Sanaa admitted that the Southern war planes were on an approved training mission. This admission "lent credibility to the southern accusations that the north's military, led by President Saleh, had fabricated the incident to legitimize its own troop buildup along the former border."(26)

The balance of forces before the outbreak of hostilities makes it clear that it was not in the interest of al-Beidh to initiate a civil war he was sure to lose. In the past, South Yemen was capable of fighting the North because it had the support of the Soviet Union. However, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Russia "reaffirming Moscow's position in support of unity and stability in Yemen,"(27) there seemed to be no where to turn. Al-Beidh found a quite unexpected ally: Saudi Arabia. With Saudi Arabia on his side, or so it seemed, al-Beidh found the confidence to declare on 21 May 1994 a new state in South Yemen. Al-Beidh was hoping Saudi Arabia would help him push back the forces of Saleh that by the third week of May had taken the Anad base, 35 miles northwest of Aden. However, Saudi Arabia had other plans in mind.(28)

Riyadh's policy toward the civil war in Yemen must be seen in the broader context of Saudi Arabia's foreign policy on the Peninsula, especially its two-track policy toward Yemen. On the one hand, it established formal military and economic links with North Yemen to contain the South. On the other hand, Riyadh financed tribes and groups in both the North and the South to protect the conservative dynastic rulers on the Arabian Peninsula against the threat "caused by the thwarted aspirations of the Arab people."(29) This perpetuated the separation of the two Yemens and kept their respective governments busy defending themselves against internal and external threats.

With a larger population, but with per capita income only 3% of Saudi Arabia, Yemen's potential for upsetting dynastic rule in the region was of great concern to the Saudis. As one scholar stated,

Unity plans between the Yemens will continue to be opposed by Saudi Arabia and by powerful tribal shaykhs in the North. The Saudi interest in keeping the Yemens divided is clear. A united Yemen would be more populous than the Saudi state, perhaps influenced by the radical ideology of the National Front, and possessed of irredentist grievances against the Saudis in the Asir region .... It would certainly be a potent challenge to Saudi hegemony on the Peninsula.(30)

A united Yemen under a radical ideology would certainly pose "a potent challenge to Saudi hegemony on the Peninsula." If unity were to take place, Saudi Arabia would do its utmost to insure it will be under a conservative ideology. Saudi Arabia's concern is not merely the size of a united Yemen but its policy orientation.

After the two Yemens signed their unification pact in May 1990, Saudi Arabia was eager to show its displeasure with the path its neighbor was undertaking. Riyadh's attitude toward Yemen was no secret. A headline in the Los Angeles Times declared "Arabia Watches Warily as Yemen Marches Toward Democracy." "Yemen: Free Speech, Free Press Worry Monarchies."(31) The Economist was even more explicit when it referred to Yemen as Saudi Arabia's "discomforting neighbour" because it had a "multi-party government, backed by an election."(32)

If the core of Saudi Arabia's foreign policy concern is democratic development in Yemen, not all parties are pro-democratic. The largest, the GPCP, represents the military and technocrats in North Yemen. From the time the GPCP took power in 1962 until unification in 1990, political parties were banned.(33) The pro-Islamic Islah Party, as already mentioned, is well known for its ideological affinity and financial ties with Saudi Arabia. The YSP of South Yemen, however, is practically the only party with democratic antecedents prior to unification. As emphasized by the U.S. State Department, South Yemen began experiencing democratic transformations in the mid-1980s. In 1990, The Economist summarized the political differences between South and North Yemen:

Aden, with its own glasnost, is rapidly outstripping Sana in human rights: parties are being organized, political prisoners have been freed. The secret police, the mukhabarat, once a Stasi clone, are due to be disbanded by the end of March; nothing similar has been mentioned in Sana, where the security advisers are mostly from Iraq. Notwithstanding Aden's communist bureaucracy, justice is reckoned to be more equitable than in the North. Adeni women enjoy a more equitable status than most others in the Arab world, and worry about northern fundamentalism.(34)

As a result of the civil war, Yemen is once again unified. But it is a unity without democracy. President Saleh's military victory in the recent civil war means the consolidation of power within the conservative alliance between the GPCP and Islah, and the removal of the YSP and the democratic forces it represented to the fringes of Yemeni politics. This is clearly a foreign policy success for Saudi Arabia. The only serious democratic challenge on the Arabian Peninsula has been militarily defeated, and YSP leaders have taken refuge in Saudi territory. Riyadh has intentionally offered safe haven to YSP leaders in order to have another group to manipulate against President Saleh as a way of controlling his activities.

Yemen's dependence on Saudi Arabia has not changed after the civil war. What has changed is the internal balance of power in Yemen. A conservative government is now in power and the democratic challenge is vanquished. With this, the Saudi monarchy has insured the stability of traditional authoritarian governments in the Arabian Peninsula and successfully manipulated Yemen.

Saudi success is American success. In 1980, after the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter declared that oil in the Persian Gulf was a "vital interest" and that the U.S. was ready to use military force if necessary to protect it.(35) "The free flow of Saudi oil to the West at bearable prices is the primary U.S. interest in the Peninsula ...." (36) The U.S. government believes that any threat to the Saudi monarchy is a threat to its economic prosperity. The Clinton administration willingly tolerates the Saudis' anti-democratic stance in order to insure the flow of cheap oil. U.S. behavior during the civil war reflects its desire to protect its own prosperity by continuing to secure a cheap oil supply. By supporting a united Yemen, the U.S. was not supporting President Saleh against Saudi Arabia. What the Clinton administration was supporting was the use of force to eliminate the YSP and its supporters, erasing the only serious democratic alternative to traditional, authoritarian rule in the Arabian Peninsula.

THE PRICE OF PROSPERITY

U.S. policy toward Yemen is dictated by an American desire to protect its prosperity. In the Middle East, U.S. prosperity translates into cheap oil. The cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy on the Arabian Peninsula is its partnership with Saudi Arabia. The price of this partnership with Saudi Arabia is the perpetuation of traditional, authoritarian monarchies, at the expense of democratic reform.

The single partner approach, in this case the sole reliance on Saudi Arabia, has serious drawbacks and dangerous repercussions. This policy is extremely shortsighted. Americans who embrace the Saudis in the short-run, forget that Saudi-American relations were quite different during the oil embargo of the 1970s. Since the policy is not broad-based, the U.S. would do well to recognize that this partnership has the potential to be short-lived.

Additionally, this single-ally policy leaves the U.S. blind to the faults of its ally. With the exception of Yemen, the other regimes on the Arabian Peninsula have autocratic monarchs that rule with an iron fist. Their conservative governments have an interest in maintaining political traditionalism under Islamic orthodoxy. Not only do these regimes deny political democracy to their populations, but also the ruling families perpetuate the economic division between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor. The Saudis themselves are much more aware than their American allies of how vulnerable they are to regional forces of secularism and democracy that criticize the ruling elite of living lives replete with the delights of Western-style freedoms, while denying these freedoms to their own people. This domestic policy of the Saudis, accepted by their American allies in the name of U.S. prosperity, is unlikely to succeed in holding back the tides of time.

The Saudi royal family has many reasons to worry about maintaining its continued strangle-hold on domestic and regional politics. Not only do the Saudis have the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran worrying them, but also a more secular, democratic threat to the south.(37) An independent Yemen with oil resources threatens the Saudis. All of these political and religious forces interact with economic pressures. Saudi Arabia and the other wealthy Gulf states are no longer as prosperous as they once were. The irony of the situation is that they are unable to increase their revenues significantly because if they want the continued support of the Americans, they have to keep the price of oil down.(38) The ruling family in Saudi Arabia has relied on its oil wealth both to buy off domestic unrest and regional dissidents like the conservative tribes in North Yemen and the more democratic Yemenis in the South. Not only has the U.S. decided to rely on a sole partner that is under considerable stress to change but also the Saudis may find that their price of its partnership with the U.S. is too high.

Political change will occur sometime in Saudi Arabia. The Clinton administration may stumble with it when that change happens as in Iran. Alternatively, the Clinton administration may seize an historic opportunity and move in a bold new direction.

The great breach between the wealthy and the poor on the Arabian Peninsula is widening. The political repercussions of this breach are apparent. The Saudi's preoccupation with their own priorities - both financial and political - means pushing all needy Arab states aside.(39) This was evident in the Gulf war, in which the U.S. sided with the wealthy states to preserve cheap oil. The poor on the Peninsula believed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait would alter the region's economic imbalances in their favor.(40) The wealthy dynastic families understood that the Gulf war was a threat to their economic and political privileges. Using U.S. backing, the wealthy nations prevailed. The resulting message was clear: Prosperity is only for the Americans and the already wealthy Arab states.

Yemen's diplomatic resistance to the U.S.-Saudi strategy in the Gulf war was understandable coming from a poor country that was dependent on a wealthy neighbor. Yemen, as the chair of the Security Council, was in a unique position during the pre-war crisis period.(41) The Yemeni ambassador to the United Nations was the most articulate advocate of a moderate solution while at the same time condemning the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Yemeni ambassador was keenly aware of Yemen's own disputed oil field on a shared boundary with Saudi Arabia. Although Yemen abstained in the resolution imposing sanctions, it declared its intention to abide by the Security Council resolution. Yemen disagreed with the presence of American forces in the region and advocated an Arab solution to the crisis.(42)

The Saudis were not pleased by Yemen's call for an Arab resolution to the problem or by Yemen's condemnation of the U.S. leadership of the anti-Iraqi coalition. From the Saudi perspective, an Arab solution could well mean a compromise on the border issue between Iraq and Kuwait that would have repercussions on their own border dispute with Yemen. Immediately after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Saudis moved troops to their southern border with Yemen for fear that Iraq might persuade Yemen to launch a second front.(43)

Further the Saudis decided to punish the Yemenis. Yemen's economy crumbled after its two main sources of hard currency, foreign aid and foreign remittances, were cut off. The Yemeni currency lost three-quarters of its previous international value, and a third of the labor force was unemployed. Saudi Arabia in May 1992 issued letters to six oil companies warning them against operating in the border region between the two countries. Riots in December 1992 left 100 dead and many more injured throughout the country.(44)

Saudi Arabia has long sought to keep Yemen within its sphere of influence. This policy is often aggressive, with territorial disputes settled by force. A bilateral committee exists to settle border issues but many Yemenis are skeptical about Saudi Arabia's desire for a settlement. The Yemenis believe that Saudi Arabia prefers to continue destabilization through the funding of disruptive tribal groups.

The U.S. has long been aware of the price of its partnership with the Saudis. In the short-term, this policy is paid in human lives and in human suffering throughout the region. American prosperity is the ultimate goal. The Clinton administration hides the consequences of policy behind the cloak of rhetoric that conceals the reality of the death of democracy and the perpetuation of human bondage.

CONCLUSION: RHETORIC VS REALITY

While Clinton was promoting peace and democracy, the U.S. in the Yemen civil war was giving diplomatic support to the aggressor, the northern President Saleh. At the same time, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Robert H. Pelletreau, under the rhetoric of defending unity, was ensuring the demise of the YSP. These actions by the Clinton administration effectively eliminated the major democratic threat to the conservative ruling families of the Arabian Peninsula. While Clinton espoused slogans of "security, democracy, and prosperity" for all, the status quo on the Arabian Peninsula - the gap between rich and poor and exclusionary governments against the Arab people - was once again upheld.

In a truly Orwellian way, the Clinton administration defined "unity" as "democratic" and "secession" as "anti-democratic." Using these definitions, Assistant Secretary Pelletreau sold President Saleh's victory as a victory for democracy. In reality, however, the opposite occurred: President Saleh's victory was a triumph of authoritarianism over democracy.

The Clinton administration has clearly demonstrated that the gap between rhetoric and reality in foreign policy continues. Perhaps maintaining the gap is what realpolitik recommends: the manipulation of language to serve the national interest. However, if the preservation of democratic rights directs foreign policy and the conduct of government, then truth and credibility should be demanded from American leaders. The Clinton administration should reflect on the fact that it is damaging U.S. credibility by contributing to the existing gap between rhetoric and reality.

Ultimately, the question in Yemen was not "unity versus secession" but unity under what terms. With the ascension of the North, the U.S.-Saudi partnership may rest assured that the new united Yemen is under the rule of a conservative alliance. For now, prosperity has prevailed over democracy.

NOTES

1. Gregory F. Gause III, "Yemeni Unity: Past and Future," The Middle East Journal, 4, 1985.

2. A Global Forum With President Clinton, (Transcript), CNN, Atlanta, 3 May 1994, p. 5.

3. Elizabeth Van Wie Davis, Carlos A. Parodi, and Elizabeth Rexford "Foreign Policy in the Clinton Administration," (forthcoming), Oral History of the Clinton Administration.

4. Mamoun Fandy, "Yemen's War, Democracy's Loss," The Christian Science Monitor, 12 May 1994.

5. A Global Forum ..., p. 6.

6. Ibid.

7. Nora Boustany, "POWs in Yemen Hoping for Peace," The Washington Post, 14 May 1994.

8. Nora Boustany, "Airports, Palace Bombed in Yemen," The Washington Post, 6 May 1994.

9. A Global Forum ..., p. 14.

10. Robin Bidwell, The Two Yemens. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1983.

11. U. S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988, Washington D.C.: GPO, 1989, p. 1545.

12. Ibid., p. 1536.

13. Gregory F. Gause III, p. 42.

14. Ibid., p. 43.

15. Corey D. Wright and Darren Pinsker, "Republic of Yemen Undertakes the Daunting Task of Unifying Two Disparate Economic and Political Systems," Business America, 27 July and 10 August 1992.

16. Deborah Pugh, "Yemen: Seams of Unity Unravel," The Christian Science Monitor, 17 May 1994.

17. Nora Boustany, 14 May 1994.

18. Mark Dennis, "Yemen Grapples With Costs of Unification" The Christian Science Monitor, 21 May 1992.

19. Nora Boustany, 14 May 1994.

20. Nora Boustany, 6 May 1994.

21. Ibid.

22. Simon Taggart, "Letter From Yemen," New Statesman and Society, 11 March 1994.

23. Ibid.

24. The New York Times, 1 June 1994.

25. "Yemen to Solve Dilemma of Dual Armies," The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Jan 1994.

26. Ibid.

27. "Secessionists in Southern Yemen Name Head of New Government," The New York Times, 23 May 1994.

28. Nora Boustany, "Despite Cease-Fire, Yemeni Fighting Heats Up After South's Bid to Split Union," The Washington Post, 22 May 1994; "Cease Fire Announced by Yemenis," The New York Times, 7 June 1994; Deborah Pugh, 17 May 1994, op. cit.

29. Saeed M. Badeeb, The Saudi-Egyptian Conflict over North Yemen, 1962-1970, Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1986, pp. 92 and 100. Saeed M. Badeed, a Saudi official, believes Saudi Arabia and Yemen to be "inevitable partners."

30. F. Gregory Gause III, p. 46.

31. Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1992.

32. "Yemen. A Discomforting Neighbour," The Economist, 26 June 1993.

33. U.S. Department of State, p. 1545.

34. "The Unification in Araby," The Economist, 3 March 1990.

35. Michael T. Klare, "The Development of Low-Intensity-Conflict Doctrine." Peter J. Schraeder, ed., Intervention into the 1990s. U.S. Foreign Policy in the Third World, 2nd. edition, Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner Pub., 1992.

36. F. Gregory Gause III, p. 47.

37. "A Discomforting Neighbour," p. 44.

38. Amy Kaslow, "Prospects for Aid to Middle Eastern 'Have-Not' States," Middle East Insight, July-August 1991.

39. Ibid., p. 43.

40. Ibid., p. 42.

41. Ken Matthews, The Gulf Conflict and International Relations, New York: Routledge Press, 1993, p. 77.

42. Ibid., p. 79.

43. "No Longer Yesmen," The Economist, 29 September 1990.

44. "A Discomforting Neighbour."

Carlos A. Parodi and Elizabeth Rexford are Assistant Professors, and Elizabeth Van Wie Davis is an Associate Professor, all in the Department of Political Science at Illinois State University.