Over a century, shadow South Yemen It is subject to the British control, which turned Aden and its surroundings into a pivotal focal point within its global empire, and in light of this long colonial reality, signs of local resistance have emerged at separate intervals, but they remained dispersed and weak, and did not succeed in undermining the established colonial system.
However, things began to change in a concrete manner with the second half of the 20th century, when armed political organizations with a liberation, most notably the “Liberation Front” and the “National Front”.
With the escalation of armed action against the British presence in southern Yemen, Britain found itself forced to take the decision to withdraw, nearly 129 years of colonial domination, and in the midst of this transformation the “National Front” emerged as the most prominent political and military power on the scene.
On September 26, 1962, the revolution in the north led Abdullah Al -Sallal Against the property and the declaration of the republic, with the support of Egypt, which sent its army to support this revolution.
It was influenced by these events, the National Front in South Yemen and its supporters led the support of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser Beginning of 1963- Confronting British colonialism in Aden and reserves since 1839 and supporting national movements demanding independence financially, militarily and media.
From the revolution to the conflict over the state
Indeed, the National Front in Taiz, led by Qahtan Al -Shaabi, began its media and military campaign against Britain with the full support of President Abdel Nasser, and the National Front opened its struggle with the October 14, 1963 revolution in southern Yemen as a popular armed movement against the British occupation.
After years of struggle and grave sacrifices, the revolutionaries succeeded in imposing a new reality on the ground, which culminated in the declaration of full independence on November 30, 1967, ending a long colonial stage that had been established through the repression and structural dismantling of society.
As Joseph Costlener states in his book “The Conflict for South Yemen”, the post -liberation stage was quickly characterized by a severe conflict of power between the two main factions in the national movement, the “National Front” and the “Liberation Front”.
The conflict soon developed into armed confrontations, and ended with the superiority of the National Front, during the negotiations that took place in Geneva, which actually led to the delivery of the reins of government and the neutralization of its competitor.
Thus, independence began in the shadow of the dominance of one faction, which threw its shadow in the form of the nascent state, and paved a strict party centralization that would be a major feature of rule in southern Yemen for subsequent decades.
On November 30, 1967, the birth of the People’s People’s Republic of Yemen was officially announced, after the last British soldier left the city of Aden, the National Front was awarded the reins of power, and its Secretary -General Qahtan Muhammad al -Shaabi was chosen as President of the Republic, to form the first government in the nascent state.
The National Front took over the administration of the nascent state in southern Yemen after independence, adopting a leftist orientation in its political structure and ideological discourse, but the internal discretions quickly exploded, and a hidden struggle broke out between two streams within the front: one of them is moderate adopting a pragmatic approach in dealing with power and society, and the other radical pushing towards an ideological project.
This conflict led to the exclusion of the moderate wing from the political scene, as Qahtan Muhammad al -Shaabi was forced the first president of the republic, Faisal Abdul Latif al -Shaabi, the founder of the National Front in Yemen and one of the most prominent leaders of independence, was forced to leave the authority on June 22, 1969.
As Helen Lakkner monitors in her book “The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen”, the radical wing was advanced to lead the front of the rule, devoting the dominance of the Marxist Lenini stream led by Abdel -Fattah Ismail, who adopted the idea of the “Vanguard Party” and “Marxist Scientific” as a strict reference for the state and the party, alongside President Salem Rabie Ali, who represented a stream affected by the Chinese Mawli model Collective organization is a basis for the legitimacy of the political system, with its refusal to focus on power in the hands of the central elite.
However, stability has been far -reaching; The conflict between the comrades reached its climax after less than a decade, when Salem Rabie Ali was overthrown and was executed on June 26, 1978, in one of the most bloody moments in the party’s history.
In that year, the establishment of the Yemeni Socialist Party was announced as a unified political entity, so that Abdel -Fattah Ismail took over the leadership of the state, devoting an ideological project passing through the stage of national liberation towards a strict central socialist experience.
The road to the massacre
In light of the leadership of Abdel -Fattah Ismail and the adoption of the Marxist orientation, which was characterized by a radical and comprehensive dealing at home and expansion abroad, the “scientific socialism” was established as a comprehensive intellectual framework for the state, and this was reflected in the policies of the broad nationalization of the joints of the national economy, including the basic industries and production means, as well as imposing a directed electoral pattern that preserves the socialist party monopoly of power.
The political system in the south began to witness a symbolic, authoritarian features, expressed by Ismail’s personal centralization in the political discourse and the increase in the presence of the party as a comprehensive reference for the state and society.
On the regional level, the South Yemen government was not satisfied with the policy of neutrality or good neighborhood, but rather was actively involved in supporting the armed Marxist movements in the Persian Gulf, the most prominent of which was the “Popular Front for the Liberation of the Arabian Gulf” and “The Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman”.
Aden provided direct support for these movements, through training and logistical supply and securing paths to pass weapons coming from the eastern camp countries, especially the Soviet Union and China, which made southern Yemen a key player in Dhofar’s rebellion against the Sultanate of Oman from the mid -1960s until the seventies.
This revolutionary activity extended to the northern Yemeni scene, where the southern leadership sought to enable its Communist allies to undermine the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in preparation for the establishment of a Yemeni unit led by a unified socialist leadership, and this strategy created a charged reality in the region.
This path led to the introduction of the Republic of South Yemen in a state of regional isolation, as a result of its adoption of a revolutionary international project that does not take into account the existing geopolitical equations, which contributed to the tension of its relations with the Arab neighboring countries, and established the image of the revolutionary state that exceeds its geographical borders in order to export its ideological model.
At the internal level, the party went on to implement a comprehensive program for the nationalization of private property, which included real estate, lands and commercial institutions, and individual ownership was subjected to strict procedures that limited its activity.
These policies have resulted in confusion of the local productive system, and the dismantling of traditional economic patterns without being compensated by alternative projects capable of absorbing human energies and providing new job opportunities, as well as confronting the local powers that were described as reactionary such as tribal elders, senior merchants, scholars and others.
In the face of this reality, as Paul Drish says in his book “The History of Modern Yemen”, a large number of residents of the south were forced to displace the Yemeni Arab Republic (North Yemen), which was at that stage more stable on the economic level, driven by the returns of expatriates, and with gradual transformations that included infrastructure, social mobility, and a relative openness in political and religious life, compared to the closed situation that printed public life in the south.
For all these reasons, the challenges escalated against Abdel -Fattah Ismail after the failure of the project to export the revolution to the Sultanate of Oman, and the increasing tension with Sanaa, which contributed to weakening its position within the party, and losing the support of a large stream of its supporters, as Moscow – the main ally of Aden at the time – began to review its support for him, preferring to push with less strict and more harmonious elements with its regional interests in the shadow of the conflict Southern.
Under internal pressure from prominent parties in the party, most notably Ali Nasser Muhammad, Ali Antar and Saleh Musleh, and due to fears that he was subjected to an assassination attempt, Ismail was forced to resign in April 1980, and he left for Moscow, ending a stage of governance characterized by ideological sclerosis and political isolation.
Ali Nasser Muhammad, who adopted a more moderate approach, succeeded him in power, and was keen to re -normalize relations with neighboring countries and with international powers, and his policies were distinguished by pragmatism, and moved away from the radical revolutionary line.
However, this shift was not conflict within the party, as polarization continued between the supporters of Ismail, who adhered to the strict revolutionary model, and Ali Nasser’s wing, who sought to redirect domestic politics towards openness, which paved the way for a major political explosion represented in the events of January 13, 1986, which entered history as one of the bloodiest and complicated chapters in the history of South Yemen.
After assuming power for 5 years without a partner, Ali Nasser Muhammad entered into an unannounced confrontation with currents and figures within the Socialist Party, she expressed her objection to his policies and his managing style of the state, and in an attempt to absorb the escalating tension within the party, in mid -1984 agreed to the return of Abdel -Fattah Ismail from his exile, which was achieved in February of the following year.
With the third conference of the party in October 1985, the anti -Nasser movement succeeded in imposing a formula for authority, with which he had to waive the leadership of the political bureau in the interest of its opponents, maintaining the membership of the Central Committee, and in June 1985 the party approved the prevention of resorting to violence to settle internal differences, considering those who do this outside the law.
However, this arrangement did not end the crisis but rather exacerbated, as Farid Hallidai sees in his book “Revolution and Foreign Policy: The Case of South Yemen, 1967-1987”, the severity of the division between the party’s wings escalated until it exploded on January 13, 1986, in a violent bloody struggle within the city of Aden, left thousands of dead leaders and party cadres.
During the events, the qualifiers were characterized by regional backgrounds, and the confrontations resulted in the survival of a number of leaders such as Ali Salem Al -Baid, Haider Abu Bakr Al -Attas, and Salem Saleh Muhammad, who maintained their sites in the post -war stage.
Who killed Abdel -Fattah Ismail?
On January 13, 1986, the personal guards of President Ali Nasser Muhammad opened fire at a meeting of the political office of the Yemeni Socialist Party, targeting a number of the most prominent leaders.
This led to the outbreak of an immediate armed clash, as most of the attendees of the party leaders were carrying weapons and surrounded by their guards in the light of an internal tension that has escalated for months, and it is irony that Ali Nasser and his supporters were not in the meeting hall at the moment of the outbreak of the attack, which raised a lot of speculation about the motives and timing of the operation.
The initial clash resulted in the killing of a number of senior leaders, most notably Vice President Ali Ahmed Nasser Antar, Defense Minister Saleh Musleh Qasim, and Head of the Party Discipline Department, Ali Shawi Hadi, while Abdel -Fattah Ismail escaped the direct attack, but he was soon killed later on the same day, probably as a result of artillery shelling carried out by pro -naval units of Ali Nasser targeting vital sites.
The battlefield expanded after that to include most of Aden and the battles lasted for 12 days, leaving a horrific human outcome between 4 thousand and 10 thousand dead, along with widespread destruction in the infrastructure, and the conflict led to the actual overthrow of Ali Nasser Muhammad from his political position.
After the end of the confrontations, nearly 60,000 supporters of Ali Nasser Muhammad, who were personally advanced, fled towards the North Republic of Yemen, where they obtained political and logistical support, and a bloody page of the party’s history was folded.
Ali Salem Al -Baida, as one of the few leaders of the Abdel Fattah Ismail movement that survived the massacre, emerged, to become a pivotal figure in the political path of southern Yemen, especially in the post -war and even Yemeni unity.
In 2021, Haider Abu Bakr Al -Attas made the last president of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, with media statements, the first of its kind in decades, in which he alluded to the involvement of the former Secretary -General of the Yemeni Socialist Party, Ali Salem Al -Baid, in the bloody events that the south witnessed on January 13, 1986.
Al -Attas indirectly said that Abdel -Fattah Ismail, one of the most prominent leaders of the party and engineers of his ideological project, was lured to his liquidation site by some party leaders.
Al -Attas explained in his speech that “Ali Salem Al -Baid and some of the Brotherhood” were an active party in sending Abdel -Fattah to his whereabouts at the time of his death, without clarifying whether this had been aware of them with what would happen or in advance coordination with another party.
Followers considered that this reference, even if it came in a hinting language, represents a shift in the narration of one of the most prominent witnesses of that sensitive stage, whose repercussions affected the political scene in Yemen for subsequent decades.
In August 2022, the Al -Jazeera program produced by a comprehensive survey on the bloody events of January 1986, and proved through many eyewitnesses that the matter was planned and planned for it, in which Abdel -Fattah Ismail and a large number of party leaders were lured in a trap to get rid of them.
Some eyewitnesses – including the journalist and historian Saeed Al -Janahi – accused them of being behind the assassination, and they are Ali Salem Al -Baid, Saeed Saleh and Saleh Saleh.