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Rogers, Joshua (2019) Violence and the (trans)formation of the state in the Yemen Arab Republic 1962‐1970. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30895 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. 1 Violence and the (trans)formation of the state in the Yemen Arab Republic 1962-1970 Joshua Rogers 2018 Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Department of Development Studies SOAS, University of London 2 Declaration I have read and understood Regulation 21 of the General and Admissions Regulations for students of the SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 3 ABSTRACT Did the civil war in North Yemen during the 1960s ‘make’ the new Yemeni state? If it did, how did it do so, and what was the nature of the state it made? To answer these questions, the thesis draws on hitherto untapped Egyptian and German archival material. It develops a model of the specific and contingent processes linking practices of civil war to state formation outcomes and uses the model to trace the processes whereby war (trans)formed the state. The thesis reveals dynamics of state formation that have been hitherto neglected or misunderstood during this decisive episode of Yemen’s history. Wartime violence and the practices associated with its mobilisation, administration, and financing shifted the political settlement of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). The prominence of tribal leaders during the 1980s and 1990s and the concomitant tribalisation of the military and militarisation of the tribes are shown to be outcomes of the civil war. Similarly, the investigation reveals a dramatic and largely untold fiscal transformation of the YAR during the 1960s, which meant that government income came to rely primarily on external donors. Finally, the war, or rather the practices associated with it, altered the very idea of political order in North Yemen between 1962 and 1970. Spurred by competition for public support, elite discourses converged around the rhetorical commonplaces of modernity, development and the people. Although fragmentary and contradictory, these new commonplaces all privileged the central state as an actor and addressee of claims. In addition to these insights into the specific legacies of the civil war, the thesis uses points of disagreement and slippage between the model and the rarely studied case of Yemen to problematise and suggest additions to the literatures on civil war, state building, and state formation. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the course of several years of research, I have incurred more debts than I can count. In particular, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Christopher Cramer, who accompanied and encouraged this project from its inception and Dr. Jonathan Di John, Dr. Charles Tripp, and Helen Lackner for comments on drafts and invaluable advice along the way. All remaining mistakes are, of course, my own. Special thanks go to the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK. This research would not have been possible without an ESRC PhD Studentship (ES/J500021/1). Dr. Gabriele vom Bruck was a constant source of advice, encouragement and contacts for all things Yemen, as was the British Yemeni Society (BYS) and especially its Secretary Audrey Allfree and President Dr. Robert Wilson. The BYS also generously supported me with its annual research grant in 2015. Yūsuf Ḥamīd al-Dīn was incredibly helpful, generous, and hospitable and gave me access to his impressive personal archive as well as facilitating interviews and hosting me in Amman, Jordan. I am especially thankful to Prime Minister Muḥsin al-ʿAynī, General Ḥamūd Baydar, Ambassador ʿAlī Muḥsin Ḥamīd, Sayyid ʿAbd Allah al-Kibsī, Sayyid ʿAbbās al-Mukhtafī, General Talaʿat Musallam, Sayyid ʾAḥmad al-Sayyānī, and Sayyid Qāsim bin ʿAlī al-Wazīr, all of whom gave up time to patiently answer my questions, often over several sittings. Special thanks also to Kamāl ʾAḥmad Nuʿmān, who shared a treasure trove of documents with me. Dr. Gilbert Achcar was exceptionally helpful and generous with his time, as were Dr. Abdullah Hamidaddin, Dr. Ahmad Yusuf, Dr. Hilmi Shaʿarawi, Dr. Yassin Said Numan, Dr. Khaled Fahmy, and Dr. David Blanks, who hosted me at the American University in Cairo. Thanks for advice, discussions and encouragement along the way also go to Thanos Petouris, Dr. Marc Valeri, Dr. Marieke Brandt, Dr. Marie-Christine Heinze, Mareike Transfeld, Dr. Paul Dresch, and to Dr. Zoe Marriage and the other members of the Violence, Peace, and Development Research Cluster at SOAS. Thanks also to my friends and former colleagues at the EU Delegation in Ṣanʿāʾ and the Saferworld Yemen team for teaching me much about Yemen when I knew even less than I do now; and to my Arabic teachers and especially to Hasnaa Essam, who spotted errors in my transliterations. I am grateful to the UK National Archives, the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, and the Dar al-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya for permission to access materials and for help in locating elusive folders. Last but not least I owe a debt of gratitude to my family, friends, and to Lina. Thank you. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations and Symbols ..................................................................................................... 7 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 Blanks in the historiography of Yemen ................................................................. 17 1.2 (Mis)understanding the link between civil war and state-formation ................... 19 1.3 Towards a definition of civil war and the state ..................................................... 24 1.4 Conclusion to Chapter 1 ........................................................................................ 32 2 Building a model for process tracing ............................................................................ 34 2.1 Process tracing ...................................................................................................... 34 2.2 Effects on the political settlement ........................................................................ 42 2.3 Effects on institutions ........................................................................................... 49 2.4 Effects on ideas of the state .................................................................................. 54 2.5 Conclusion to Chapter 2 ........................................................................................ 60 3 Starting points: on the eve of the revolution ............................................................... 62 3.1 The political settlement on the eve of the revolution .......................................... 64 3.2 Imamate government institutions ........................................................................ 74 3.3 Ideas of the state and Imamate era legitimacy .................................................... 84 3.4 In lieu of a conclusion: the al-Badr regency and aftermath 1959-60 ................... 93 4 The civil war and the political settlement ..................................................................... 96 4.1 The crisis of the settlement: the fall of the sāda and external intervention ........ 97 4.2 Empowering local violence specialists: the renaissance of tribes ...................... 105 4.3 Mobilising new violence specialists: The embattled rise of officer-politicians .. 121 4.4 Just no good at violence? The rise and fall of traders ........................................ 135 4.5 Conclusion to Chapter 4 ...................................................................................... 141 5 The civil war and government institutions ................................................................. 144 5.1 The fiscal basis of the state: taxation and allocation .......................................... 145 5.2 The wartime evolution of coercive, central, and local institutions .................... 166 5.3 Conclusion to Chapter 5 ...................................................................................... 186 6 The civil war and ideas of the state ............................................................................ 189 6.1 From elite divisions to popular polarisation ....................................................... 191 6.2 Mobilisation for violence and ideas of the state ................................................ 204 6.3 War financing: taxation, allocation,