North Yemen Civil War: A Visual History

The North Yemen Civil War (1962-1970) began when army officers under Abdullah al-Sallal overthrew the newly crowned Imam Muhammad al-Badr on 26 September 1962 and proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic. Al-Badr escaped to the northern tribes and, with Saudi and Jordanian money and British mercenaries, waged a royalist guerrilla war; Nasser sent an Egyptian force that grew to 70,000, bombed royalist villages (using poison gas) and held the towns but not the mountains. Egypt's defeat by Israel in 1967 forced withdrawal; the royalists besieged Sanaa in the winter of 1967-1968 and failed; Saudi Arabia and the republic reconciled in 1970 with royalists given posts but the imamate abolished. About 100,000 to 200,000 died.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Egyptian troops in Yemen

Timeline of the North Yemen Civil War

1. 1962
   Coup; republic proclaimed; Egyptian intervention26 September.
2. 1963
   Egyptian gas attacks begin
3. 1965
   Jeddah agreement fails
4. 1967
   Six-Day War; Khartoum; Egypt withdraws; siege of Sanaa
5. 1968
   Siege broken
6. 1970
   Saudi recognition; reconciliation

The coup

The Zaydi imams had ruled North Yemen for a thousand years; Imam Ahmad's brutal isolationism ended with his death in September 1962, and a week later tanks shelled the palace of his son al-Badr. Al-Sallal, a Nasserist, declared a republic; al-Badr, believed dead, walked out through the ruins and rallied the northern tribes with Saudi gold. Nasser, seeing a chance to spread Arab nationalism and threaten the Saudis and the British in Aden, sent troops within days.

Egypt's quagmire

Egyptian forces held Sanaa, Taiz and Hodeidah and pushed north, but the tribes fought from caves in the mountains; Egyptian aircraft bombed Saudi border towns and, from 1963, dropped mustard and nerve gas on royalist villages, the first chemical warfare since 1945. British and French mercenaries organised by David Stirling and Jim Johnson trained the royalists, and Israel airdropped supplies to bleed Egypt. Nasser's commitment rose to 70,000 men and 60 million dollars a year; talks at Jeddah (1965) and Haradh failed.

Withdrawal and reconciliation

The Six-Day War of June 1967, in which Egypt's best units were absent in Yemen, forced Nasser to accept the Khartoum agreement and withdraw by December 1967; the Saudis were to cut off the royalists in return. Al-Sallal was deposed in November 1967 by his own side; the royalists besieged Sanaa for 70 days that winter and were broken by republican and Soviet air support. Fighting waned as tribes changed sides; in 1970 Saudi Arabia recognised the republic and royalist leaders joined it, though al-Badr went into exile in England. South Yemen meanwhile became a Marxist state in 1967, setting up decades of north-south rivalry.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• Soviet Union (USSR) (1922 to 1991)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• Qajar Empire (1789 to 1925)

Wars of the same era and region

• Yemeni Civil War (2014 to present)
• Arab-Israeli conflict (1948 to present)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• Lebanese Civil War (1975 to 1990)
• Kurdish-Turkish conflict (1978 to present)
• Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988)

8 surprising things about the North Yemen Civil War

1. The Yemen war is often called Egypt's Vietnam; Nasser himself used the phrase.
2. Egypt's use of mustard and nerve gas on Yemeni villages was the first chemical warfare since World War II and drew a muted international response.
3. The mercenary operation for the royalists was run from London by SAS founder David Stirling and paid for by Saudi Arabia.
4. Israel secretly flew supply missions to the royalists to tie Egypt down.
5. Egyptian troops in Yemen numbered more than the entire Israeli army in 1967.
6. Imam al-Badr survived a tank bombardment of his palace by climbing out over the back wall.
7. The war's British-trained royalist forces included the future president Ali Abdullah Saleh's opponents; Saleh himself was a republican soldier.
8. The imamate that ended in 1970 was the same Zaydi tradition the Houthis revived after 2004.

Sources

• North Yemen Civil War Wikipedia
• Yemen: The Yemen Arab Republic Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Gamal Abdel Nasser Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Jesse Ferris, Nasser's Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War (2013) Princeton University Press

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