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1988 Autonomy and Secondhand Oil Dependency of the Arab Sheila Carapico University of Richmond, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Carapico, Sheila. "Autonomy and Secondhand Oil Dependency of the ." Arab Studies Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1988): 193-213.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Autonomy and Secondhand Oil dependency of the Yemen Arab republic

Sheila Carapico

Recent SCHOLARSHIPON STATEAUTONOMY in the ThirdWorld has been influencedby thedependency thesis that capital accumulation at thecore of the world economyis associatedwith economic underdevelopment and political dependencyat the periphery.Dependency reasoning is rootedin a devastating empiricalcritique of the once prevalentmodernization paradigm, in which national policy was the centralindependent variable. Accordingto dependencytheory, peripheral nations' subordinate structural positions in the internationalpolitical economy resultsin sacrificeof authoritativepolicy- makingto foreigninvestors, bankers, experts, , and institutionsor theirlocal counterparts.Typically specializing in primarycommodity exports, dependentnations therefore fell into a viciouscycle of deficits,debt, and fiscal crisisthat worsens whenever the price of their prime commodity export fells. Duringthe 1970sthe considerable material affluence and politicalleverage of oil producersand even theirneighbors seemed to ensureagainst this scenario. Whiledependency theorists wrote about Latin Americaand Africa,relatively few Arabiststurned to world systemstheory to explain phenomena,tradi- tionallyviewed through a prismof culture and custom.The mid-1980s' decline in petroleumprices, however, has revealedthe and theMiddle Easterneconomy as a whole to be as vulnerableto the vicissitudesof global marketsas itspeasants and herdersonce wereto theweather. Mostnations are tiedinto a worldeconomy and susceptibleto externalmarket forces;but the complexinterdependencies among the core NorthAmerican, European,and theAsian economies differ significantly from the vulnerability of peripheralstates, especially oil importers.Whereas the conceptof autonomy ("therelative autonomy of the state")is definedfor core nationsas the state's independencefrom the overridinginfluence of one domesticclass, faction,or coalition,in the peripherythe central question is whetherthe stateis freefrom overwhelmingexternal influence-whether it can, indeed, make and execute domesticpolitical and economicdecisions autonomously from foreign investors, creditors,governments, or markets.1n the periphery, both state autonomy (from landowners,exporters, or otherinternal class interests)and nationalautonomy

SheilaCarapico is AssistantProfessor ofPolitical Science, University ofRichmond. ASQ Volume 10 Number 2 193 194 Arab Studies Quarterly

(fromforces in the externalenvironment) are real issues on thedebated agenda. A third,complicating issue concernsthe of thestate, the extent of its rulingauthority, and its abilityauthoritatively to allocate values withinits territory. The mostserious criticism of dependency theory is thatit points to questionsof how internal politics and class formationinfluence national and state autonomy,but failsto seriouslyengage these questions, apart from noting that even withinnations there is a centerof power and accumulationand a periphery upon whose resourcesthe core draws,either by exportingits productsor by utilizinglabor whose subsistenceit does notprovide. By locating the dynamic of dependencyin foreignexchange, the basic paradigmdiverts attention from the complexrelationship among domesticclasses, the state,and foreignpowers, thusrelegating ordinary politics to thebackground. Part of the difficultyand debate stems fromthe failure to analytically separateand definenational autonomy and stateautonomy. Each of thesetwo variables is operationalonly when a priorcondition has been met. National autonomyis at issue only forsystems integrated into world markets,that is, nationsthat have gone beyond pre-capitalistautarky. Similarly, the question of state autonomypertains only where the state possesses a fairdegree of hegemony over the society, indicated by its capacity to authoritatively allocateresources for projects. Once thiscondition has been met,the question of whetherthe stateis settingits own agenda or implementingthe interestsof a particularclass comes intoplay. In the Latin Americanexamples on which dependencyanalysis is based, nationsare well integratedinto the world economyand statespossess a fair degree of internalhegemony. Neither the statenor the nationis autonomous, however;on thecontrary, domestic and foreigninterests, in coalition,mold the appropriationand allocation of resourceson theirown, joint,behalf. Even assuming this is a correctanalysis of certaincases, otherconfigurations are possible. These include situations in which the nation is but partially integratedinto the world system,or the statepossesses incompletehegemony overthe hinterland,or the class situationis poorlydefined, or any combination thereof.In othercases, integration,hegemony, and class formationare fairly complete but the state manages, in one way or another,to steer a course autonomousfrom either or bothdomestic and foreignclass interests.Where the statepossesses neither hegemony nor national autonomy, it appears"suspended" above society and is not likelyto have a firmclass basis. Finally,a strong national class, whether feudal or bourgeois, shares the state's interestin hegemonyand mayin certaininstances favor national autonomy. For the major oil-exporters'poor cousins,3the cycle of expansion and contractionin the regionaleconomy furthered capitalist and statepenetration into even rural and frontierterritory- to the point where both national autonomyfrom foreign donors, lenders, and tradepartners, and stateautonomy fromindigenous capitalist classes, became issues. At thispoint, the questionis Yemen Arab Republic 195

not simplywhether "the state-that is, public officialswrit large-[is] acting upon its own policypreferences, translating them into public policy,"or "its authoritativeactions [are] shaped and constrainedby the expectations, demands,and pressures"of domesticclasses or foreignactors.4 Also at issue is whetherthe state defines its own interestsautonomously from dominant internal orexternal concerns. The Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), a small, nominallycapitalist, Western leaningbut nonalignednation whose fertilesoils and temperateclimate make it home to half the populationof the Arabian Peninsula,is in many ways an exceptional case for dependency theory. Until the 1962 revolution, a reactionary,pre-capitalist form of autonomyserved the interests of a dominant -collectingclass closely aligned with the imamate. The revolution underminedrent- and tribute-collectingauthority, but the rise and fall of oil prices,experienced secondhand, heightened the struggleamong the state, domesticforces, and foreignpowers for control over the allocation of resources for developmentprojects.

Precapitalist autonomy

The YAR is a young state in an old nation. Oftencalled to distinguishit fromits sisterstate, the People's DemocraticRepublic of (the PDRY, a formerBritish ), the YAR was bornof violent revolutionin the mostisolated and undevelopedsocial formationin the Arab world. Afterthe decline of the Ottomans,an obscurantistdynasty of imams xenophobiclyand autocraticallyavoided externalcontacts, sealing the kingdom fromEuropean penetrationat popular expense. Prohibitedfrom engaging in foreigntrade, most households were tied to the land as grain and livestock producers,exchanging food, implements, and householdgoods at weeklysuqs or markets. Standard developmentindicators in 1962 showed widespread poverty, ignorance,and disease. Per capita annual incomewas estimatedat U.S. $60. About10 percent of boys and 1 percent of girls were in school,and adultliteracy was about3 percent. Life expectancy at birthwas only36 years,and sixout of ten childrendied beforetheir fifth birthday. Smallpox, leprosy, and tuberculosis were endemic.Even moredebilitating were water-borneparasites, dysentery, and complicationsfrom pregnancy and childbirth.There were no paved roadsor electricitysystems, so annual energyconsumption per capita was only the equivalentof sevenkilograms of oil; veryfew households had uncontaminated sourcesof water, and transistorradios were rare indeed. Three secondary schools traineda selectcadre of futureofficials and militaryofficers, the latteroften drawnfrom low-status groups to minimizetheir potential political following. Foreigntrade was restrictedto monopolyconcessions granted to membersof the rulingfamily in partnershipwith a handfulof favoredmerchants. So limited 196 Arab Studies Quarterly was trade that there was no need to establish a national currency;what exchangescould notbe agreedupon bybarter utilized a silverthaler of Austrian origin.There were no banksor publicsources of credit save a Saudi branchoffice. A fewItalians and otherEuropeans traded through the North Yemeni Red Sea portof Hodeidah, but there were no foreigncorporations. In this pre-capitalist enclave, a dominant tribute-collectingmode of production,organized politically in the imamate,coexisted with a communal- subsistencemode, orgainzed politically in thetribes. The majorclass groupswere therefore(l)tribute collectors, expecially tax farmersand landlordsbut also statefunctionaries, whose controlof the use of forceenabled them to extractand redistributeamong themselvessurpluses produced by the farmingmajority; (2)sharecropperswho, depending on environmentaland contractconditions, paid fromone- to three-quartersof theirproduce as rentor taxes; (3)smallholders who raised food cropsand livestockfor household consumption but were also subjectto taxationand quarteringof troops;and (4)tradespeople,including artisansand peddlers,who weredependent ori the consumption demands of other classes. A minisculefifth class was made up of merchants,their profits secured throughroyal favor and monopolysupplies of coffee, cotton, and importsrather thanthrough active trade. Pre-revolution Yemen was notcharacterized by class mobility,although in the twentiethcentury young men began to escape to the Britishport at . The statetransparently served the interestsof tribute-collectingclasses, and its power was greatestwhere landownerscollected both taxes and rents. Proportionsof land under sharecroppingreached one hundredper centin the spate-irrigated,tropical wadis of the Tihama coastal plain and on the fertile, temperate terraces of the western and especially the southern uplands, althoughsome large estates could be foundeven in irrigatedpockets of the more rocky,arid centraland northeasternplateau, where smallholderstended to predominate.Independent grain farmers, especially in the northernand central regions,were organized politicallyinto tribesand tribalconfederations that resistedroyal adminstration and taxation.Not justthe post-Ottoman period but centuriesof Yemeni history could be summarizedas centralstates' efforts to bribe or brutalizethe tribes'shaykhs into submission,in effectto imposethe tribute- collectingsystem. Even as the imamatestruggled for political and class hegemony,the system was beingundermined from within and without.The weakestpoints were where the tributarysystem came into contactwith externalcommercial capital: in Hodeidah, and throughclandestine commerce and communicationsbetween Aden,in SouthYemen, and NorthYemen's southern provinces of Ibb and Ta 'iz. The defectionof tradersfrom the imams' monopolisticlicensing system, the migrationof thousands of smallholders,traders, tenants, and even sons of landownersand tax collectors,and thepenetration of ideological influences from the Ba°thto the Muslim Brotherhoodinto the armyand the rulingclasses, all conspiredto destroythe semi-feudalorder. In September1962, the old imam died in his sleep and the Palace Guard preventedhis son fromassuming the Yemen Arab Republic 197 throne.Within days, the young republic banned the most hated extortions of tax collectors,nationalized the royal family'sholdings, and liftedrestrictions on internationaltrade, investment,technology, travel, and repatriation.Soon Yemeni riyals were minted and circulated.The main fettersto capitalist developmentwere gone. Elementsof the ancien régime fought back, and thecivil war becamea regional conflict.cAbd al-Nasir dispatched Egyptian forces to assist the republicancoup whilethe Saudis committedthemselves to restorationof the .'s interestdwindled after its 1967 defeatby while Saudi attitudestoward theY AR changedafter the radicalanti-imperialist revolution in South Yemen (the People's DemocraticRepublic or PDRY) in 1968/69.The war in North Yemen formallyended in 1970 with Saudi acceptance of a modernizing republicanregime with old royalistsin its civilian coalition.The YAR was indebtedto Egypt,hoped forSaudi charity,and attractedsmall international aid packages.Expatriate Arab advisorsfigured very prominently in the newly createdor restructuredministries. Although subsistence agriculture continued to supporta majorityof tenantand smallholdingfamilies, imports climbed while exportsstagnated.

The commercial bonanza

The infusionof oil revenuesinto neighboring countries occurred as a tentative peace settledover the YAR's newlyliberalized economy, at a time when the powerof thetributary system had beenbroken but issues of internalpower and organizationwere yet unresolved, when purses were strainedby a destructive civil war and by a droughtin 1971/72,and when both the Yemeni riyaland importedconsumer goods werepenetrating urban and ruralmarkets. Part of the revenuesto the Arab Gulf foundtheir way via privatetransfers and official assistanceto Yemen,where they financed rapid expansion,particularly in the construction,transport, and servicessectors. The combinedeffects of migration and remittancesled to what one teamof observerslabeled the "anomalyof a labor-short,capital-surplus, least-developed economy."5 In this anomalous situation,the mobilityand scarcityof labor,the expansionof the market,the increasedvalue of non-landedwealth, and rapidgrowth in consumptiontended to exacerbateunresolved tensions in ways thatinvolved foreign powers more deeplyin Yemeniaffairs. Cash remittancesto a populationof around eightmillion topped a billion dollarsin 1979,and rose to $1.6 billiona year in the early 1980s.These funds werevirtually untaxed, and two-thirdsremained outside the nascentbanking system,beyond the reach of the state and formalfinancial institutions. Remittancesbought a transitionfrom consumption of domesticproducts to consumptionof goods fromabroad. Despite the alarmingratio of exportsto imports,the YAR sustainedan overallbalance of paymentssurplus, currency 198 Arab Studies Quarterly paritywith the dollar and the Saudi riyal,and nationalreserves that were the envy of most Third World oil importersthroughout the 1970s. Labor was a valuableexport commodity. Migrationabroad was notnew to theYemeni labor force, but now occurred on an unprecedentedscale. It is no mysterywhy over a millionYemeni men- about a thirdof themale workforce,or "one fromevery house," as villagersput it-went to or otherGulf states during the oil boom.Internal liberalization, mobility,and hardship all coincided with the bonanza next door. Travel overlandwas easy, given the absence of passportchecks until after 1978 and customarylong-distance trade, herding, marriage, and pilgrimageacross the unmarkedborder. Jobs and pettyentrepreneurial opportunities for Yemenis either working alone or for fellow villagers abounded, especially in the constructionand tertiarysectors. Rates of remunerationwere good, and frugal livingguaranteed high savings. The exportof male laborhad severalramifications for the domestic economy.6 In thegrain farming cycle, some seasonally redundant male labor could be spared withoutsacrificing productivity. Beyond this point, however, the loss of labor encouraged the taking of shortcuts(such as less frequentpruning) and abandonmentof marginalterraces (supporting a row or two of sorghum).This tendencywas exacerbatedby the appearanceof day labor,used especiallyfor seasonal tasks like plowing and terracemaintenance, and the subsequent inflationin its cost. Eventually,farm hands became so expensive(unskilled, aboutYR 50 or $11 per day) thatcropshares were renegotiated to benefittenants, and high labor costs discouragedlarge and intermediate-scalefarmers from intensifyingproduction. With overall GDP growthat 8 per cent per annum, agriculturestagnated. The proportionof the workforceon the farmslid from near90 per centon theeve of therevolution to 78 percent in 1975and less than halfin theearly 1980s. The highestpercentage increases were in construction(25 per cent),trade and finance(60 percent), and miningand (10 per cent).Yet the WorldBank estimatedan additional38,000 workers were needed at all levels. Loss of labor was only half the story.The other half was the flood of remittances,which in practicemeant goods as well as cash. Beforeturning to the question of how remittancesmodified overall patternsof consumptionand especially investments,it is importantto map the formsand distributionof remittances.Wages and profitswere transmittedback in threeforms. First, it was business-wiseto purchaseconsumer items in theGulf. Migrants bought and loaded a pickupor tractor-trailertruck with goods fortheir families and to sell, typicallywith a mind to using the vehicle to generatefuture income. Many "migrants"made regularround trips, bearing goods purchasedcheaply into the Y AR and returningnorth with passengers and occasionally livestock or watermelons.Only toward the end ofthe period did theYAR governmentbegin to taxthis trade and curbsmuggling. Secondly,remittance agents and traderstransferred funds for longer term migrants,accepting deposits in Saudi Arabiawith instructions for stipends back home,purchase and storageof building materials, or investmentsin urbanreal estate.Agents thus performed a rangeof financial services, for a commission,and Yemen Arab Republic 199 representedan importantelement in theemerging bourgeoisie. A handfulof big moneychangersdominating the marketmade vast fortunes,while a much greaternumber of smalleragents handsomelysupplemented incomes from shopkeepingor otheractivities. Lastly,migrants traveled home with thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars'worth of Yemenior Saudi riyalsstuffed in theirbelts. This cash,like transfersthrough agents, was distributedin a numberof ways. Sons made lump contributionsto theirfamily farms or trades in lieu of theirwork for the partnership,or paid debtsto providersor protectorsof theirfamilies in their absence. Bridepriceand othermarriage costs soared to over YR 100,000(or $22,000)in some regions,paid to thebride's father (the largest share), the bride herself,and her women relatives.Finally, returnees spent exorbitantlyon consumptionfor themselves, their extended families, and theirfriends. They boughtclothes, gold, televisions,and linoleum,built new roomsonto family homes,and entertainedlavishly. Chewing the mildlynarcotic leaves of the qat plant,a luxurylimited to certainhigh-elevation regions and high-income classesbefore the revolution, became a regulardaily ritual for the vast majority ofmen and manywomen. A greatdeal morewas spenton consumptionthan on production. The huge investmentpotential represented by remittedearnings, therefore, was notheld solely or evenmainly by migrantsthemselves but dispersed among agents and traders, fathers-in-law,female and male kin, construction contractors,and qat sellers. So the factthat in the aggregate a portionof remittanceswas translatedinto private and collectiveforms of investment does not necessarilymean that it was individual migrantswho were doing the investing.7Indeed, apart from a coupleof agents, this aggregate spending power was verywidely dispersed. The mostcommon form of collectiveinvestment was in distributiveservices. Roads, waterdelivery, and electrification,in particular,were necessaryto get Toyotasladen withtelevisions and washingmachines to mountaintopvillages. At least60 per centof thecosts of some 15,000kilometers of rough,bulldozer- hewnmountain tracks, hundreds of water collection and deliveryprojects, dozens of neighborhood,town, and villageelectrical generators, and scoresof primary and intermediateschool buildings and clinics,were borne in ad hoc fashionby agentsand merchants,townspeople and traders,migrants and farmers,and sometimesthe and foreigndonors.8 This type of expenditurefigured prominentlyin overall domesticcapital formation.These services,in turn, strengthenedboth commerce and thepower of the in outlying areas,and greatlyexpanded opportunities for entrepreneurship. Collectiveinvestments rarely generated income directly;rather, they laid thebasis forprivate investments. The vast majorityof all farmand business investmentswere undertakenby individualsand families.Most were small scale: a 1980 surveyby the CentralPlanning Organization showed only sixty- nineindustrial establishments with more than ten workers, for example, and the agriculturallabor force was overwhelminglyorganized at thehousehold level. 200 Arab Studies Quarterly

Individual investments operated within a pattern of incentives and constraintsthat favored the tertiarysector. First,to be viable in sheerly economicterms, a domesticinvestment should promisereturns comparable to what could be made in Saudi Arabia. Beyond this, the twin pressuresof inflationand scarce labor favoredspeculation stocks of importsor urbanreal estateeven as the same inflationclosed theseoptions to new small investors. Pettyshopkeeping and serviceslike drivingor grain grindingconsequently became highlycompetitive and minimallyprofitable. For the skilled,small- scale construction-relatedindustries such as carpentry,metal door manufacture, and productionof distinctlyYemeni arched stained-glass windows were good investments. In agriculture,the potential for investmentsin tractorsand irrigation technologywas limitedfirst by thegenerally mountainous terrain and terrace cultivationand secondlyby the limitednumber of contiguousholdings of a hectareor two. Such innovationsalso generallyinvolved a substitutionof hired for imputed (family) or fixed-share(tenant) labor. The most lucrative agriculturalcommodity in the late 1970swas the hardy,undemanding, highly marketableqat, grownonly at certainelevations and servinga domesticmarket; other cash crops like cotton,dates, coffee,and tobacco sufferedfrom the competitionof imports.The most attractivesectors for privateinvestment, therefore,were wholesale or trade in imports or qat, related transportationand services,and thereal estate and constructionsectors. Whileremittances were the source,direct or indirect,of mostprivate capital, foreigndonors underwrotethe state.External loans, grants, and directproject assistanceaccounted for over three-quarters of governmentexpenditures in the 1976-81period.10 The Saudis and otherGulf "petrocracies" had everyincentive to be generousto the Y AR- neighbor,labor-supplier, excess capital absorber, potentialbreadbasket, bulwark against the communist menace in SouthYemen. Importantgovernment infrastructure partly or whollyfinanced by Arab oil revenuesincluded stringsof stone school buildings,the Universityof Sana'a campus,and salariesfor tens of thousandsof non-YemeniArab teachers;direct subsidiesboth to theYAR centralbudget and to therecalcitrant northern tribes; major hospitals and other medical facilities;a complete national color televisionstation; restoration of theancient Marib dam to operatingorder; two paved north-southhighways; technicalplanning assistance; and so forth. Directbilateral assistance combined with Arab and internationaldevelopment fundsto totalbillions of dollarsfor social and economicinfrastructure, favoring the five main towns but not entirelyneglecting provincial centers and rural areas. The oil boom also attractedother international donors to theYAR, the closest "needy"nation to the strategicallyand economicallyindispensable Arab Gulf. Hence along withthe petrodollarscame loans,grants, technical personnel, and scholarshipsfrom nearly every Westernand socialist donor. For example, Egyptian,Sudanese, Russian, Chinese, German, Swedish, Norwegian, American, Yemen Arab Republic 201

Italian, French,Irish, and other nationalities' doctors and nurses treated Yemenipatients. The WorldBank took a lead in designingand financingmajor regionaland infrastructuralprojects, and theUnited Nations organizations, the ArabDevelopment Fund, and othermultilateral agencies also played an active role.The FederalRepublic of was thelargest non- Arab donor, followed by the USSR. Overall,foreign assistance enabled the government to undertake ambitiousthough poorly coordinated construction and servicesprograms. In short,then, remittances from current and previousmigrants combined with foreignassistance to generateseveral formsof new investment:large-scale, state-sponsoredinfrastructure; smaller-scale, collectively financed services; some major and countlessminor trading, transport, construction, and light industrialsector enterprises;and unprecedentedmarketing of imported manufacturesand food.Massive externalfinancing promoted the urban-based constructionboom both directly in theform of contracts for roads, airports, public buildings,and other facilities,and indirectlyin the formof demand for residencesfor Arab and Westernexpatriate workers. If remittances were fueling the"downscale" end of bothdemand and construction,international assistance was financinglarge or "upscale"projects. The influxof privateand public funds,an explodingdomestic market, and fast-pacedurban expansion together lured still another source of capital.What mightbe calledthe absentee bourgeoisie, the sons and daughtersof Yemenis who had migratedto Aden, East Africa,Asia, , and Americabefore the revolution,began "returning" to Yemenas revolutionsswept their new homesor simplybecause of rapidgrowth in theYemeni economy. Many Adenis,North Yemenis, and half-Yemenisrepatriated all or part of businesses such as equipmentor autodealerships or travelor currency exchanges; others invested in Yemeni real estate,construction, or modernrestaurants and supermarkets. Anothersegment of thisgroup brought fluency in technocraticEnglish to high positionsin thenew ministries.Larger in numberbut smallerin influencewere thosewho parlayedmechanical, office, or linguisticskills into "modern" sector jobs.Finally, refugees and emigrantsfrom and East Africa(im welcome in Saudi Arabia)formed the core of a new workingclass of factoryworkers and householdservants. The transferof vast sums intoa smalleconomy also hastenedand molded a processof class transformationalready begun when the innercircle of the old aristocracycollapsed. Absenteebusinessmen and intellectualsjoined agent- banker-traders,a lone industrialmagnate, some old monopolists,certain landowners,and the happyowners of farmlandsituated for sale as urbanreal estate in the emerging,primarily commercial bourgeoisie. Petty trade and restauranteuring,despised before the revolution,became popular occupations, and merchantsearned new respect. Migrationwas the avenue for poor smallholders,sharecroppers, and artisans to enter the ranks of the self- employedpetty bourgeoisie, but failedentrepreneurs, freed tenants, marginal smallholders,and poor emigrantsconstituted a smalland growingwage-labor force.The mobilityof labor,unprecedented value of non-landedwealth, and 202 Arab Studies Quarterly changes in taxation,services, and commerceall challenged existingsocial relations. Economic expansion and class realignmententailed struggle,particularly betweendeclining agrarian elites and risingcommercial classes. Especiallyin the southern and central regions, the effortsof republican officersand administrators,merchants and peddlers,coffee and qat growers,and migrants and truck-ownersto cut roads or divertirrigation water for household supplies metwith resistance from landlords, who blockedbulldozers, intimidated work crewsand broughtlengthy legal, bureaucratic,and politicalsuits. Competition amongcommunities or clans foraccess to projectstook the form of contests and tinywars over road alignments,water utilization,generator ownership, and school or hospital locations. Many innovationscomplicated generations-old claimsto water,land, and markets. FromSana'a, a successionof regimesfought to securethe state'stax base, its frontiers,and its legal authority.The forcesresisting the statewere diverse. Most cases containedelements of a tax revolt,and manyregions conditioned loyaltyon the provisionof servicesand otherbenefits. The Hashid and Bakil tribesof the northand east, while hardly"traditional" when it came to market participation,presented tribal law as a viable alternativeto centralauthority and chargedthat government projects favored the more productive southern and coastal regions.The Sunni Shafacisof these regionscounteralleged that the republicangovernment, as muchas theimamic system before it, represented the ShiiteZaydi sect of the northernand centralhighlands. When strugglesby communitiesof farmers,tradespeople, and migrantsfor access to new services faced feudal intransigence,on the one hand, or the preferredstanding of a wealthierrival community,on the other,these struggles sometimes associated overtlywith the loosely organized progressivemovement known as the NationalDemocratic Front (NDF) or simply"the front." These conditionswere especiallyprevalent in those southernand centraldistricts where traditional landowners'authority remained strong. One ofthe NDF s positionswas supportfor unity, or at leastcloser cooperation, with South Yemen. Not only the small political leftbut also, in varying degrees,people in the southernuplands and Tihama, familieswith kin or personalties to the South,and manyeducated nationalists argued that a single nationwith coasts on two seas and combinedbudgets would be moreviable than two states.This positionwas made somewhattenable at thegovernmental level by the fact that Southern natives held high positions in the YAR, as did Northernersin the PDRY. Butit was vigorouslyopposed by manyreligious and economicconservatives, some merchantswho had fled the revolutionin the South, northernYAR regional interestsfearing a southward shiftin the nationalcenter of politicalgravity, and mostespecially by theSaudis. As its greatestbenefactor, Saudi Arabiawielded considerableand sometimes paradoxicalinfluence over the YAR. After1970 Riyadhabandoned the royalist cause in favor of molding a friendlyrepublican regime throughbilateral assistance,subsidies to bothtribal and rightistelements, and negotiationswith Yemen Arab Republic 203 the on behalf of the YAR and against the PDRY. Massive budgetarysupport ensured a say in policy,as in the fieldof education,where universitylibraries closed forprayer, classes were segregatedby sex, and at least one unveiledwoman was stonedby fundamentaliststudents. Religious institutesreplaced some secular community schools, and historybooks stressing a commonlegacy with South Yemen were revised. Cash grantsto both the recalcitrantHashid and Bakil confederationsand the fundamentalist"Islamic Front"fortified resistance to the governmentand domesticprogressives. All of thesepolicies were just slightlycontradictory, pushing modernization with a reactionaryface and fosteringgovernment power within definite limits. The Saudis were now likened to the Egyptiansa decade earlier. It was remarkedthat their broadcast news maps showedno southernborder, and that this or that narrowstretch of frontierhad been annexed by the Kingdom. Riyadhwas implicatedin the assassinationof Presidental-Hamdi on the eve ofa statevisit to Aden,and in boththe choice and theremoval of his successor. The considerableinfluence of the Yemeni-SaudiCoordinating Committee in domesticas well as foreignpolicy was a source of irritation,as was the Americansale ofarms to Yementhrough Riyadh in 1976. The year of two assassinations,1977/78, was the nadir of state power. As usual,many of the northerntribes were in revolt. In the centraland southern highlandsthe National Front "tookover" a dozen or two districts,getting sympathizersinto locally responsible positions, organizing community services and roads,evading taxes, and defyingcentral authority. The amy,backed by some tribalcontingents, counterattacked, driving some rebels into PDRY territory.By New Year's,1979, muchof the southernhalf of the YAR was in turmoil,and Soviet-trainedPDRY forceswere on alert.The Saudis worriedlest theprogressive movement penetrate the kingdom via migration,bring an NDF- to in Sana'a,or their of thetwo inspiredgovernment power gain objective uniting Yemens. Thoughlargely unrelated, these events coincided with the Iranianrevolution and withArab opposition to Camp David, thuscoming at a timewhen Riyadh was especially vital to Western securityand oil supply interests.This confluenceof events attractedunusual U.S. official,press, and scholarly attentionto Saudi securityconcerns, notably surrounding events in Yemen. Following Defense SecretaryBrown's visit with Prince Fahd, the Carter administrationhastily ordered some $300 million worth of F-5 fighters, armoredpersonnel carriers, tanks, howitzers, and lightweapons for sale to Sana'a via the Saudis; and a shipmentof fire-spittingVulcan anti-aircraft weapons,promised in 1976, was dispatchedimmediately along with trainers and advisors.As the fightingescalated, Saudi troopswent on alert,and the WhiteHouse responded with a show of militaryforce in the Arabian Gulf, another$100 millionin arms,and authorizationfor covert operations based in NorthYemen against the PDRY.12 204 Arab Studies Quarterly

Through this deal the Saudis regulated Yemeni access to the weapons, contingentamong other things on limitingrelations with the Soviets, the PDRY, and ,and guaranteeda stillstronger Saudi rolein NorthYemeni domestic politics.The armspackage constitutedimplicit American recognition of Yemen as a clientstate of Saudi Arabia,and Yemeniofficials and citizenscomplained of Washington'sfailure to deal withthe YAR as a sovereignstate. Thus both politicallyand economically,the YAR had becomeintegrated into the global politicaleconomy as a dependencyof Saudi Arabia. Saudi control was notabsolute, as new agreementswith the USSR weresoon to underscore,but there was no significantpolicy sphere-trade, finance,education, internal security,foreign policy- in whichthe Yemeni state was genuinelyautonomous fromits northernneighbor. This highdegree of externaldependency coincided withnear in morethan half of the country'seleven provinces as Sana'a faced not one but multipleinsurrections and a virtualcollapse of national taxationduring the period 1977 through 1982.

The down side of the cycle

Between 1982 and 1985, the combinedoil exportrevenues of Saudi Arabia, ,and the UnitedArab Emiratesslid fromover $180 billionto under$60 billion.During the same fouryears, private transfers into the YAR fellfrom $1.4 billion to $.6 billion. Althoughthe YAR remaineda priorityin the Gulfs sharplyreduced foreign assistance budgets, the days ofunchecked largesse were gone. Thus the two major supplies of hard cash to the YAR economywere curtailed.Yet, as in the Gulfitself, there was no returnto the situationbefore theboom, because whilerevenues held constant or declined,many expenditures continuedto climb.At boththe nationaland the householdlevels, it cost more and moreto maintainthe standards and expectationstasted during the bonanza. Despite progresson necessary,basic infrastructureand services,very little of the cash "surplus"of the 1970shad led to productivesubstitutes for migration and importation.The governmenthad been ill equipped to directinvestments, and privateinvestors found speculationin importsand real estategenerally morelucrative than agriculture and industry.The resultswere feltin the 1980s. The moneyand waterspent in agriculturaldevelopment and manufacturinghad yet to be justifiedin termsof eithernutritional or hard currencyreturns, and equipment,fuel, and raw materialsall came fromabroad. Whileits GNP per capita now restedat a moderatelycomfortable $550 a year,deficits, debts, and underproductivitycast long shadows over the economy. Rates of new migrationpeaked in the late 1970sbut numbersremained fairly high throughthe mid-1980sbecause the Arab Gulfeconomies still seemed to offeropportunities for earnings and savingsthat compared favorably to those available at home.But new migrants,finding the smaller numbers of jobs filled Yemen Arab Republic 205 byAsians accustomed to low wages,now oftenreturned home after only eight or ninemonths with far more modest savings than their predecessors. Externalfinancing changed hands and forms.Assistance from driedup due to itswar with . The oil kingdomscontinued to pay forexisting programs but curtailednew grantcommitments. Much ofthe difference was made up by new Araband internationalloans, funds from East and WestEurope and ,and disasterrelief after the 1983earthquake in Dhamar.In the meantime,however, earliernotes came due; some were rescheduled;more loans were taken.The spendingpower representedby internationalassistance declined, and forthe firsttime the government resorted to privateborrowing. Despitesteady GNP growthfor a decade, domesticproduction was lagging. The agriculturelabor force, per centof GDP fromagriculture, proportion of all investmentin the farmsector, share of nationaland familydiets produced locally,agricultural exports, and overallfood production all continuedto drop. Localized gains on newly pump-irrigatedholdings and the importationof expensivefertilizer and equipmentnotwithstanding, food production was lower in the mid-1980sthan it had been a decade earlier,while cereal importshad increasedmore than fourfold.In addition, especially as long as the riyal retainedparity with the dollar,domestic producers of Yemeni dates, coffee, cotton,tobacco, eggs, chickens,nuts, fruits,and oils all sufferedfrom the competitionof cheaper importsmore efficientlymarketed. Food and live animalsrepresented 30 per cent of importsinto a still primarilyagricultural economy. Withmigration and farmopportunities tightening, unemployment threatened a formerlylabor-short economy. Acute competition among throngsof drivers, shopkeepers,graingrinders, and even gas-stationowners minimizedtheir profits.Though still fairly brisk, annual additionsto the statepayroll for the army,office workers, and teaching,health, engineering, and maintenancestaffs failedto pick up the slack, partlybecause foreignersfilled so many skilled positions.No transnationalcorporate employers were drawn to the Yemeni market,for the labor force was unskilled and expensive by international standards.Chinese and Koreanroad constructioncontractors brought their own crews. Several thousand new jobs in public and private factories notwithstanding,most new "modernsector" jobs fedeither the government or the tradedeficits. And yetthere remained acute shortages of skilledpersonnel. Earningsremained constant while inflationeroded spending power. The standardtaxi fareof YR 15-20between locations in Sana'a, daily wage rates fromYR 50-150per day, and governmentsalaries around YR 1,500a month barelychanged between 1979 and 1987despite inflation in commodityimports of 25 per cent per annum. Having sacrificeda portionof the harvestto keep sharecropperson theland a decade earlier,landlords now demandeda returnto the statusquo ante or took bank loans forinputs to justifyretaining a larger share,so sharecropperincomes declined. Imported white wheat steadily 206 Arab Studies Quarterly depressed demand forthe rainfedgrain crops of the greatmajority of small farmers. Household,business, and publicconsumption of importsmounted, while the value of exportsstagnated. In the early 1980s,the World Bank figuresgrew ominous.In 1980there was a currentaccount deficit of $478 million, and external public debt of $836 million,equal to 27 per cent of GNP. Still annual debt paymentsof $5 milliona yearcame to only.6 percent of GNP and only6 percent of the value of exportsof goods and services;while internationalreserves, at $1,289million, were stilladequate to coverseven months' imports. Three years laterthe picturewas much darker.The currentaccount deficit reached $558 million.External public debt,now $1,574million or morethan 38 per centof GNP, requiredannual paymentsof $13 millionor 1 per centof GNP and 14 per centof the value ofgoods and servicesexported. Reserves, down to $369million, a quarterof whatthey had been,would now coveronly two months'spending abroad. In 1983, exports of $204 million compared with importsof $1,521 million. Balanceof tradedeficits led to austeritymeasures beginning with the second five-yearplan in 1982.The riyal,which during the boom yearshad been held at a constant,unified value against the dollar of $1=YR 4.5, was devalued; and imports,particularly of fruitsand vegetables,were restrictedto makedomestic produce more competitivelocally. But deficitsdipped only slightlybefore worseningfurther. By mid-1986a dollar would buy nearlytwelve riyals, and morecould be had on theblack market. In August1986, imports were temporarily suspended to trimthat year's deficitand reduce consumerdemand through higherprices. In 1987 the governmentbrought suit against Sana'a's biggest moneychangers/remittance agents, forcing them to close shop and unifyingthe priceof the riyalat the bankrate (between 9 and 10 riyalsper dollar). All the while, road use and demand for schools, medical facilities, electrification,and water pumpingschemes still multiplied. In twentyyears, crudebirth rates had dropped6 per centand death rates21 per centthanks in part to over ten times more doctorsand othermedical personnel.A thirdof childrenwere in primaryschool. Annual energyconsumption was up to the equivalentof 116 kilogramsof oil percapita. In citiesand towns,consumption of piped waterand packagedgoods createdthe need forsewers and regulargarbage disposal. As use of and demand forservices mushroomed, so did government expenses.Not surprisingly,with revenues down and expendituresup, ministries couldn'tmake ends meet.By 1982the government deficit had climbedto a third of GDP. By crackingdown on smugglingand tax evasion, the government managed withinfive years to drive its deficitbelow twentyper centof GDP, whilethe debt service ratio rose to aboutfifteen per cent. As the governmentresponse to the economiccrunch indicates, its role in economicpolicy was strongerthan during the bonanza. President Salih survived a difficultfirst few years to surpass the tenure of any of his republican predecessors,replace banditrywith check points on the nation'sroads, and establishcentral administration in all eleven provinces.The armygained the Yemen Arab Republic 207 upper hand over but did not impose defeatupon the tribesand leftistforces; instead,some leaderswere drawninto government and othersinto a "national dialogue" on constitutionalproposals. Local administrationwas integrated with the multi-tierednetwork of cooperativedevelopment councils, whose nationwideelections drew more and morevoters in eachround between 1976 and 1986.After a fundamentalistvictory in these polls in 1982,more progressives and intellectualsand even a handfulof womenwere electedin 1986.National securitysurveillance shifted from the Yemeni to theexpatriate community. Legitimacyand controlwere reinforced.One importantand complexpolicy restrictedborder crossings to passportholders and thendenied passports to non- veteran men, bringingsons of ministersas well as of innkeepers and sharecroppersinto the army. Illiterates served an extrayear in readingclasses. The draftplus additionsto the civil serviceput thousandsof familiesinto state insurance,purchasing, and financialprograms, while schools and training facilitiesand nationaltelevision exposed them to theemerging civic culture. Constructionof nationalinfrastructure, generally with foreignassistance, reinforcedcentral authority. Roads and massivegovernment complexes, and also schools,hospitals, and the nationalelectricity system, had all helped extend the physicalpresence of the stateto the frontierprovinces of al-Bayda,Marib, theJawf, and Sacadah.Public buildings and servicesalso penetrateddown to the districtlevel. Its provisionof servicesand assertionof militarycontrol enabled theregime to centralizeboth tax collectionand expendituresfor local services, raisingits own revenuesand limitingthe autonomy of communities to undertake projects.Even local and regionalprojects, which as oftenas notwere a challenge to centralauthority at theoutset, ultimately buttressed state hegemony. Via migration,remittances, imports, wages, and services,every household was now tied intothe riyal economy, and thus intothe realmmanipulated by monetarypolicy and affectedby changesin foreignexchange. The contractionin foreignexchange, far more than the expansion that preceded it, called for decisivestate action to marshalinvestments. The resultwas thatfor the first timesince the revolutionthe governmentwas practicingeconomic policy as opposedto pursuinga constructionschedule. While still an open-marketpolicy, thiswas a markedchange from the extreme laissez-faire of theseventies. Althoughthe governmentacted againstcommercial interests in suspending imports,closing moneychangers, enforcing customs taxes, and imposingother austerity-linkedmeasures, by and large the interestsof the stateand those of the bourgeoisiecoincided in broad areas such as education,internal security, transportand communications,urban development,and multilateralforeign assistance,as well as in specificproject-related purchasing and contracts.These intereststriumphed over the motleyrange of landed, leftist,fundamentalist, and tribalforces, in partby co-optingthem. Reducedfinancial and economicdependence and greaterinternal hegemony enabled the YAR to assertgreater autonomy vis-à-vis its northernneighbor. Controlson smugglingand passportchecks made economicboundaries less permeable.Reductions in Saudi subsidiesto the tribesand the religiousright 208 Arab Studies Quarterly eased severalpressures and cleavagesthat had underminedthe republicin the 1970s. Fences were mended with South Yemen and the NDF, and unitywas prominenton the national political agenda. While observerswere rarely sanguine about a true mergerof the "socialist"PDRY with the "capitalist" YAR,common tourism, economic and communicationsventures, publication and extensivediscussion of unityclauses in theconstitutional documents, joint forces sent to during Israeli attacks,and otherforms of cooperationlong regardedas anathemato the Saudis now symbolizedYemeni and independence.Most analystsagreed thatthe YAR was successfullyplaying the Soviets against the Saudis and plottinga relativelyindependent foreign policy.14 In the mid-1980s,reserves of at least 500 millionbarrels of oil, well beyond domesticneeds, were discovered in theYAR' s easternbasin. Contracts with Hunt Oil led to hopes of revenuesby the ,but also necessitateda halfa billion dollars' investmentover a two-to-threeyear period, virtuallyall foreign exchangefor purchases abroad. Fearfulthat being an oil exporterwould reduce thecountry's prospects for concessional foreign assistance, the Central Planning Organizationpointed out thateven over a ten-yearhorizon revenues were not expectedto offsetthe decline in remittances.15In any case, the discovery,and evidenceof additionalreserves, put an end to planners'worst fears about the futureof foreignexchange. Though its reserveswere smallcompared with the Saudis',they put the YAR on the footingof a competitorfor the firsttime, and bothYemenis and Americansbraced for maneuvers to delayor controlits oil and gas production. In theshort run, at least,the YAR was no less dependenton externalfinancing to implementits domestic projects,but it was an increasinglymultilateral dependencyon Arab,Communist, Western, and multilateralorganizations that granted no extraordinaryinfluence to any one donor but ratherafforded considerableleverage. The mostprominent influence in developingthe 1986-91 five-yearplan was the World Bank, which proposed to co-financecapital- intensiveagricultural modernization in the northernand easternregions along the linesof projectsalready operating in theTihama and the southernuplands and being executed in the centralregion. In unveilingthe plan, the Central PlanningOrganization advised other donors that future projects must conform to targetedstrategies and activities,else theywould be declined. While allocating capital to the oil sector,the third five-yearplan gave priorityto agriculture,where the strategywas to promotea "greenrevolution" in heretoforesemi-arid regions by experimentingwith imported technology and extendingit throughcredit packages to cash farmers.The newly completed MaribDam and a waterdevelopment scheme for Wadi al-Jawf,both in theeast, would bringthousands of hectaresunder private commercial production. The developmentplan forindustry, while including some projectsrun by individual state agencies, likewise was to provide public, deficit-financedsupport for privateinvestment in medium-to large-scaleenterprises. This private-sector approach is a product not simplyof the Bank's blueprint,for the Bank also Yemen Arab Republic 209 workswith the PDRY, but also of the politicaland economicsituation in the YAR. It definesthe national economic interest as thatof privateequipment and machineryimporters, kulak farmers,and nativeindustrialists: neither the old landlords or the private financiersand consumer-goodsimporters of the remittance-boomera, but a productivecapitalist class. In the YAR, oil revenuescan be expectedto have a significantimpact on domesticpolitics. The situationduring the boom was one of capitaldispersion, in whichthe privatesector took initiativesindependently of the government's plansand even taxation.Conversely, the Yemeni share of revenuesfrom its oil productionwill accrue to the newly created Ministryof Oil and Mineral Resources.This foreignexchange will thereforebe available to the stateitself, or to a "stateclass" managingpublic assets, to investin projectsas it sees fit.16 The resultshould be a more powerfulstate more able to directthe economy throughproject initiatives, a reconfiguration ofthe bourgeoisie around managers of public assets, alliance of this class group with transnationalcorporate interests,and perhapsits clash withagrarian or otherinterests. In any case, it willbe a morecomplex class situationentailing a correspondinglymore complex seriesof questions regarding autonomy.

CONCLUSIONS:NATIONAL AND STATEAUTONOMY

Fourpoints may be distilledfrom this account. First and foremost,the cyclein oil prices helped carry through the bourgeois revolution, that is, the penetrationof capitalismand re-establishmentof state hegemonyand the strugglesthey entailed, such thatnational and stateautonomy are now issues. Second,although its integration into world markets necessarily implied a loss of earlierautonomy, the contractionin currencytransfers was associated witha relativerestoration of nationalcontrol over the allocationof resources.Thus, in 1988, the prerequisitesfor either self-directedcapitalist development or dependencyare in place.Third, the state is moreautonomous from its class base thanit was threedecades ago, butnow activelypromotes the interests of a rising class as the interestsof the nation.Finally, in recentexperience there seems to havebeen something of a tradeoffbetween national and stateautonomy, leading to the questionof whetherthe YAR possesses sufficientlegal, financial,and executiveclout to exerciseboth hegemony and absoluteautonomy from domestic and foreigninterests. One featureof dependencyis overwhelmingreliance on the sale of a single primarycommodity for foreign exchange, such thatfluctuations in the world price of that commoditydetermine growth or recession in the dependent economy.The YAR, exportingthe most primaryof all commodities,labor, experiencedthis dependency at secondhand. Economic demand for Yemeni labor was generatedby oil revenuesto labor-shortArab countries, in turndetermined by intricateglobal political and economic forces far, far beyond Yemeni influence.Although the YAR was notan oil producer,the priceof oil was more 210 Arab Studies Quarterly decisivefor trends in GNP and nationalaccounts than were domestic agriculture and industrycombined. The Yemenislearned that growth does notnecessarily foster autonomy. Short- termgrowth realized from massive labor export and foreignaid reducedrather than enhanced economic and politicalindependence. The period of greatest dependencybrought development, if developmentis understoodas transition fromprecapitalism to capitalism.Infrastructural progress accompanied the emergenceof a new coalitionfavoring commerce over autarky and nationalist over theocraticvalues. The fortunesof millionsof people became tied to the marketplaceinstead of the weather.But the developmentwas dependentin thatit was largelynon-productive and externallyoriented, thus ultimately not self-sustaining. The strengtheningand then looseningof ties to the regionalcore actually helped fortifyYemen's own core,centralizing political authority and economic control.In its thirddecade, the YAR's stateand newlyenriched classes enjoy unprecedentedability to appropriateand allocateresources within a political economy defined at the national level. Spending power that was widely dispersed is now increasinglyconcentrated. The periphery(workers, farmers, consumers)now mustgo throughthe center (the state, major trading houses) to get at the earnings(remittances, profits from trade) and resources(foreign aid, fundingfor local services)that could formerlybe accesseddirectly. The Yemeni centerhas, in effect,bought internalhegemony with externalpolitical and financialdebts, but is nonethelesssomewhat better able to allocateresources to itsown developmentthan a decade earlier. Prospects for relativelyautonomous national developmentmight well be greaterthan before the bonanza, inasmuch as infrastructuraloverhead can now supportproductive investment. Roads and utilitiesconstructed at the regional and local level createda veryrudimentary yet widespread network of services to supportagricultural and even lightindustrial production for the market, ratherthan the concentrationof expendituresin one or two wealthyurban, mining,or farm areas that typifiesdeep structuraldependency. Foreign ownershipin the economyis minimal.At the same time,the preconditionsfor dependency are also in place: national debts and deficits,the external interventioninto planning and managementthey bring, an underemployedand underproductivedomestic labor force,and newlyprominent classes' external orientations. It is now correctto identifythe bourgeoisieas the dominantclass, but with some qualification.First, vestiges of subsistence and tributarymodes of productionpersist and maydo so forsome time to come.Secondly, the bourgeoisie is primarilya commercialclass whose ties to workershave heretoforebeen indirect:to appropriateor accumulatethe surplus of Yemeni labor, entrepreneurs have to handle theirmoney, sell themgoods, or constructtheir houses. While fairlylucrative, selling services does nothave theconnotations, or theeffects, of employinglabor. In Marxistterms, there is no directclass relation(or dynamic) betweenthe bourgeoisie and workingpeople. Yemen Arab Republic 211

Statepolicy, the interestsof the stateas it sees them,is to encouragethose with private capital to use it to both employ and economize on labor in productiveenterprises. As an American-schoolcomparative advantage-based model,it proposesto competitivelyexport fruits and vegetablesto financethe importationof consumerand capital goods. This policy does not directlygo against either landowning or commercialinterests, but it is designed to strengthenstill nascent industrialand agriculturalentrepreneurs and, by association,the formationof a properworking class. The statehas definedits own interestsin conjunctionwith investors in lightof domesticand foreign politicaland exchangefactors, therefore, rather than in responseto prodding fromkulaks and industrialists.Concerned above all with its hegemony, ideological, financial,and physical, the governmentseeks alliance with modern,entrepreneurial, national interests and will use state resourcesand assistancefrom sympathetic donors to empowerthem. The theoreticalpoint underscored by the Yemeni case study is that paradigmaticassumptions about nationaland state autonomy,whether the mainstreamassertion that nation-states are by definitionautonomous or the dependencyinference that all ThirdWorld governments lack autonomy,cannot be made. Rather,national and stateautonomy are variables.Quite simply,this meansthat each can takea rangeof values frompositive to negative;that there is no necessary association between the two; and that other variables, specificallyin thiscase the worldprice of petroleum,can be expectedto alter the configurationof the state'srelationship to outside powers and domestic classes.

NOTES

1. Modernizationtheory compares parallel histories across nation-states; although autonomyis notpart of its basic vocabulary, the legitimacy, efficacy, and controlof the stateare a primaryfocus of inquiry. By contrast, world-systems conception of a single globalhistory raises more questions about the peripheral state's autonomy from ruling classinterests of thecore than about internal state-building and capitalaccumulation. Whereasthe former tends to assume both internal and external autonomy, the latter tends toassume the opposite. Current scholarship fuses the two perspectives in variousways. Forinstance, Thomas M. Callaghydefines the "search for sovereignty by the ruler and a rulingclass" as "a questfor separation, autonomy, and diminished dependence vis-à-vis internalsocietal groups and classesand externalgroups in theworld political and economicenvironment"; "Absolutism, Bonapartism, and the Formation of Ruling Classes: Zairein ComparativePerspective," in Studiesin Powerand Class in Africa, ed. I.L. Markovitz(New York: Oxford University Press, 19 87). 2. Thishas led tocriticisms from Marxists such as BillWarren, "The Postwar Economic Experienceof theThird World," and JamesH. Weaverand MargueriteBerger, "The MarxistCritique of Dependency Theory: An Introduction" (both in ThePolitical Economy of Developmentand Underdevelopment,ed. Charles K. Wilber(New York:Random House,1984). It is ofcourse well known that Andre Gunder Frank, widely cited as the founderof the dependista school, has now declared development and underdevelopment theoriesequally bankrupt. 212 Arab Studies Quarterly

3. SamirAmin finds four groups of countries the wealthy, underpopulated petroleum- exporters,with only 10 percent of the region's population but half the GDP andexport earnings;a coupleof more industrialized oil-exporters, which benefitted most from the boom;larger group of lightly industrialized non-exporters with half the population of the Arab worldbut only 20 percentof its income;and finallythe "particularly underprivileged"periphery, including Yemen. The Arab Economy Today (London: Zed Books,1982), 42-47. Amin,of course, is thenotable, and controversial, exception to the generalization made aboutthe scholarly distance between Middle East studies and dependency theory. He has< alsopaid considerableattention to theinternal dynamics of dependency. His analysisof themechanisms ofappropriation from the periphery tothe center has recently led him to callfor "delinking" ofperipheral nations from the world system. 4. EricA. Nordlinger,'Taking the StateSeriously, in UnderstandingPolitical Development,ed.Weiner and Huntington (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), 353. 5.John M. Cohenand David B. Lewis, "Capital Surplus, Labor Short Economies: Yemen as a Challengeto RuralDevelopment Strategies," in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.(1979), review the literature on migrationin Yementhrough 1978, much of whichwas optimisticthat remittances would be translatedinto productive private sector investments. 6. The socialeffects of migrationon sendingcommunities have been the topic of considerableresearch. Ahmad al-Kasir's "The Impact of Emigration on SocialStructure in theYemen Arab Republic," in Economy, Society, and Culture in ContemporaryYemen, ed. B.R. Pridham(London: Croom Helm, 1985) and CynthiaMyntti's "Yemeni Workers Abroad:The Impact on Women,"MERIP Reports, no. 124(June 1984), both focus on the agriculturaleconomy. 7. Swansonhas foundin twostudies in differentregions that migrants were not especiallyinclined to invest their earnings in eitherprivate or collective enterprises. See JonSwanson, "Some Consequences of Migration for Rural Economic Development in the YemenArab Republic," Middle East Journal 33, no. 1 (1979),and "Emigrant Remittances andLocal Development: Cooperatives inthe Yemen Arab Republic," in Pridham,ed. 8. Althoughit is dear thatin theaggregate the ready cash to financeservices came fromremittances, there is verylittle ethnographic evidence of migrantsas a group leadinglocal projectinitiatives. See Swanson,"Emigrant Remittances"; Swanson and Mary Hebert,Rural Societyand ParticipatoryDevelopment: Case Studiesof Two Villagesin theYemen Arab Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Rural Development Committee,Yemen Research Program, September 1981); and Sheila Carapico, "Self-Help and DevelopmentPlanning in theYemen Arab Republic" in PublicParticipation in DevelopmentPlanning and Management,ed. Jean-Claude-GarciaZamor (Boulder: Westview,1985). 9. SheilaCarapico and RichardTutwiler, Yemeni Agriculture and EconomicChange (Sana'a:American Institute for Yemeni Studies, 1981). Shelagh Weir's chapter on "The Economicsof Qat Consumption" in Qat in Yemen : Consumption andSocial Change (London: BritishMuseum Publications, 1985) analyzes investment as well as consumption. 10. Abdul-KarimAhmed Omer, Economic Planning in theYemen Arab Republic: The DependencyProblem (Sana'a: Dar Azai,1986), chap. 5, appraisesproblems of planning anddependency using an economic model. Accordingto statisticscited by Paul Hallwoodand StuartSinclair in Oil,Debt, and Development:OPEC in theThird World (Boston: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 101, the YAR rankedsixth in OPEC bilateralaid between1973 and 1977,with $593 million, althoughon a percapita basis aid to NorthYemen was secondonly to , and the PDRYfollowed close behind. Hallwood and Sinclairargue that debts accumulated as a resultof OPEC actionsoutweighed financial assistance, even for the majority of aid recipientsthat were, like Yemen, also major labor exporters. 11. Between1972 and 1982,the YAR and thePDRY alternated between warfare and negotiationsfor unity. See SultanNagi, "The Genesis of the Call for Yemeni Unity," and UrsulaBraun, "Prospects for Yemeni Unity," both in ContemporaryYemen: Politics and HistoricalBackground, ed. B.R.Pridham (London: Croom Helm, 1984); Abdel wahab El- Affendiet al., "Unity:A WillThey, Won't They Saga," in "YemenFile," Arabia: The IslamicWorld Review, no. 30 (February1984): 45-46. Helen Lackner's "The State in the 1980s"in P.D.R. Yemen:Outpost of SocialistDevelopment in Arabia (London: Ithaca Yemen Arab Republic 213

Press,1985) recounts the events in termsof South Yemeni politics. Steven Page, The Soviet Unionand theYemens: Influence in AsymmetricalRelationships (New York:Praeger, 1985),entitles his two chapters on NorthYemen "Moscow and the YAR: Relations at Low Ebb(1970-77)" and "Disaster and Recovery (1978-84)." 12. Thisis thestory as reportedin theNew YorkTimes and theWashington Post, althoughthere is evidencethat the CIA's covert operations inYemen go back even further to a timewhen its overall Middle Eastern activities were limited. For accounts of the events,see BernardWeinraub, "Yemen, to Get Added Arms," New York Times, 12 February1979, p. A4;Drew Middleton, "The Mideast Power Balance and Brown's Tour of Area,"New York Times, 13 February1979, p. AIO;"Attacks Reported on BorderBetween NewYork 25 Edward "Hostilities theTwo Yemens," Times, February1979, p. All;" Cody, in YemenPit Marxist Regime Against Ally of the West, WashingtonPost, 27 February 1979,p. A9;"U.S. Is SendingArms to Yemen," New York Times, 27 February1979, p. All; and"South Yemen Asks Death for 13 in SabotageCase," New York Times, 13 March 1982, p. A5. Finally,Bob Woodward's"Carlucci Launched CIA Operationin YemenThat Collapsed,"in WashingtonPost, 4 December1986, appeared in thecontext of controversial reportsof Saudi involvement in covert U.S. arms dealings with Iran and the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.Theevents are chronicledin moredetail by Nadav Safranin SaudiArabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Cambridge: The BelknapPress of HarvardUniversity Press, 1985), especially 282-94 and 387-97,and by AnthonyH. Cordesman,The Gulf and theSearch for Strategic Stability: Saudi Arabia, the Military Balance in the Gulf, and Trends in the Arab-IsraeliMilitary Balance (Boulder:Westview, 1984), both of whichstress the stability of Yemen as theforemost Saudisecurity concern. For a Saudiview of the necessity of Yemeni dependence on the kingdom,see Saeed Badeeb,The Saudi-Egyptian Conflict over North Yemen, 1962-70 (Boulder:Westview, 1986). A less sympatheticview of theU.S. /Saudi connection is offeredby Joe Stork, "The Gulf: Target for U.S. Intervention,"MERIP, no. 85 (February 1980),"Hie Carter Doctrine and U.S. Bases in the Middle East," MERIP, no. 90 (September 1980),and "Saudi Oil and the U.S.," MERIP, no. 91 (October1980). 13. This paper cannotdo justiceto the complexitiesand variationsin tenancy arrangements,which in anycase differconsiderably by region,irrigation, crop, and socioeconomiccircumstances. However, field research in the late 1970s produced a series of instancesof rising cropshares to tenants(a thirdto half, half to five-eighths, two-thirds to three-quarters)and a fewextreme examples of landlords surrendering all rightsto coffeeor date harvests. By contrast, in 1986and 1987,the greater supply of labor edged sharecroppers'portions down. Moreover, the introduction of pumpirrigation was accompaniedby a sharpdecline in harvestshares to tenants (eg., from half to a quarter) as wellas additionalwork. By taking a bankloan on easyterms to finance irrigation, landownerscould expect significant immediate profits. But the sharecropper could not expectto recover the halving of his share by a doublingof the return per day worked. 14.See MaryAnne Fitzgerald's "Foreign Policy: A BalancingAct Between East, West," and ManfredWenner's "Drive to Be Self-Sufficient:Key to YemeniRelations Abroad," bothin theInternational Herald Tribune, 26 September1985; Mark N. Katz,"North YemenBetween East and West," and Margarita Dobert, "The Development ofForeign Aid inYemen," both in American-Arab Affairs, no. 8 (Spring1984). 15.Interviews with CPO andWorld Bank officials in Sana'a,November 1987. See also DavidHawley, in "NorthYemen's Oil- a mixedblessing" (MEED, 3 January198 7) and OlfatTohamy, "Promising Oil FindsSpur Government toSearch for More" (International HeraldTribune, 26 September1985). 16.Robert D. Burrowes,m TheYemen Arab Republic: The Politics of Development, 1962- 1986(Boulder: Westview, 198 7), sees this as thevictory of modernists over religious and otherconservative elements, such that "they will have thefunds to buildthe modern farms,factories, and secularschools they want, even if thetraditionalists and their externalpatrons prefer mosques and religious schools" (p. 143).