The Yemen Arab Republic (YAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية اليمنية al-Jumhūriyyah al-‘arabiyyah al-Yamaniyyah), also known as Yemen (Sanaʽa) and commonly referred to as North Yemen, was a country that existed from 1962 until its unification with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (commonly known as South Yemen) in 1990, in the northwestern part of what is now Yemen. Its capital was Sana'a. It bordered South Yemen to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the north and the Red Sea to the west, sharing maritime borders with Djibouti and the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
The Yemen Arab Republic was formed in 1962, when a coup in the capital Sana'a saw Nasserist military officers overthrow the monarchy and proclaim a republic. The overthrow triggered an 8-year civil war that ended with the defeat of the monarchists and the victory of pro-republican forces. The following years were marked by political instability, civil conflicts, frequent political assassinations and military coups: the country was ruled by a military junta from 1962 to 1967 and again from 1974 to 1978. Relative stability began with the rise to power of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was able to successfully consolidate his position in the government. The YAR eventually managed to establish good relations with many Arab states and the United States, for which it served as a counterweight to communist South Yemen, but it maintained ties with the USSR, relying on the weapons it purchased from it. On May 22, 1990, the YAR united with the PDRY (South Yemen) to form the current Republic of Yemen, under the leadership of Saleh.
Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen
Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 after the First World War, northern Yemen became an independent state as the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen.
The first king of the independent country was Yahya Muhammad Hamid ad-Din. Having declared Yemen's independence from the Ottomans, he proclaimed himself king and achieved international recognition for the kingdom in 1926. Hamid ad-Din created the kingdom's first regular army. He fought a war with Saudi Arabia and did not recognize his border with the British protectorate of Aden, leading to periodic clashes with British troops. But he focused primarily on consolidating his power and creating a viable central government and appointed his sons to rule various provinces of the kingdom. After almost 30 years of rule (30 October 1918 – 17 February 1948 as a king), he was assassinated in what became known as the Al-Waziri coup. He was succeeded by his son, Ahmad bin Yahya. Like his father, Ahmad was a conservative. Ahmad's ruthless, arbitrary, and inconsistent rule made him the target of coup attempts and frequent assassination attempts, which he narrowly escaped. His enemies ranged from ambitious family members to forward-looking pan-Arabists and Republicans. His abrupt temperament and unpredictable behaviour united and set against him a variety of enemies. The monarchy deliberately exploited the kingdom's highly fragmented tribal society and exploited frequent tribal wars for remaining in power. In foreign policy, his only constant goal was to expel Britain from Aden in order to annex it to his kingdom. But he was not destined to realize his ambitions: he died suddenly in his sleep on September 19, 1962.
Throughout the existence of the absolute monarchy, Yemen was a very underdeveloped state. The complete conservatism of the kings and the unwillingness of the absolute monarchy to modernize in general brought with them the unfortunate but quite logical consequences of an underdeveloped economy and almost complete absence of roads or motor transport. The kingdom was predominantly an agricultural country. The rule of Hamid ed-Din (Although Hamid ad-Din took some steps towards creating a modern state, they were not enough) and especially Ahmad was always autocratic and conservative; Ahmad never brooked suggestions. Yemen remained a semi-feudal state, where every detail, no matter how insignificant or trivial, had to be approved by the imam, even for a government truck to move in Taiz or for mules to get fodder.
The coup d'etat and a civil war
The Yemeni kingdom's lack of modernity and development led to revolutionary and anti-monarchist ideas in various layers of society. The army also fell victim to dissent. It had many anti-monarchist soldiers and officers with Republican and Nasserist views. In 1962, at least four plots against the king were planned in Yemen, two of which were prepared by military commanders. In December 1961, the Organization of Free Officers (similar to the Nasserist "Free Officers Movement" in Egypt) was created in the Yemeni Kingdom, the purpose of which was to coordinate an anti-monarchist coup.
But King Ahmad died suddenly, throwing the plotters into disarray. His son Muhammad al-Badr was crowned in his place on September 19. Badr promised to modernize Yemen so that it could "catch up with the caravan of world progress." We will probably never know whether he had any intention of implementing the promised reforms in the long term, because the military revolutionaries quickly switched its plot from the king to his son. Just a week after Badr's coronation, a coup took place in Sana'a on September 26 in which a group of Nasserist officers called the Revolutionary Command Council overthrew the Yemeni monarchy. King Badr and his accomplices fled. The new government declared the birth of the "Free Yemeni Republic", abolished slavery, a curfew was imposed and the Yemeni military police was formed. The coup in the north almost coincided (and inspired) with the beginning of the uprising and emergency in the south (in Aden). The first country to recognize the republic was the USSR. Two days after the coup, Abdullah al-Sallal, one of the main organizers of the coup and the first president of the newborn republic, said: "The corrupt monarchy which ruled for a thousand years was a disgrace to the Arab nation and to all humanity. Anyone who tries to restore it is an enemy of God and man!".
But Badr not only survived, but was also able to unite a lot of the tribes that supported him in the opposition to Sallal. He received support from other monarchies (such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan), who were afraid of Sallal's revolutionary nasserist regime and feared that the coup would spread to their monarchy too (Al-Sallal opened the Arabian Peninsula Office in 1963 and openly called for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and the creation of a unified socialist Arabia). At the same time, Egypt began to support Sallal's government, supplying them weapons, military advisers and even sending Egyptian forces to fight against royalists later. As a result, this coup d'état marked the beginning of the North Yemen Civil War that pitted republican troops, assisted by the United Arab Republic (Egypt), against Badr's royalist forces, supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The war was very expensive for Egypt. In 1967, most of the Egyptian troops were withdrawn from North Yemen following the Six-Day War. In November 1967, the royalists laid siege to the capital Sana'a, but the Republican resistance was not suppressed and, in February 1968, the siege was lifted. Despite the fact that territorially, most of Yemen remained under the control of al-Badr, most of the big cities remained in the hands of the Republicans and their Egyptian allies. In 1970 Saudi Arabia, the main ally of King Badr, which was a fundamental enemy of the republican regime, suddenly recognized the Yemen Arab Republic, and other countries, such as the United Kingdom, quickly followed its example. For Badr, this was a complete surprise and humiliation as no one consulted with him, and so, after 8 years, the Republicans de facto won a cruel war, which officially ended in December 1, and received recognition of their republic. The civil war further weakened the economy of the newborn republic.
Although the war was over, its consequences remained. The country's already small infrastructure was badly damaged by fighting, bombing and shelling, the weak economy collapsed, and people became even poorer. The first decade after the war was marked by political instability (and several coups of dissident officers).