MER Article Lackner, P.D.R. Yemen Helen Lackner, P.D.R. Yemen: Outpost of Socialist Development in Arabia, (London: Ithaca Press, 1985). It is hard to imagine a more timely publishing event than the appearance of Helen Lackner’s new book on the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, given the crisis that engulfed that country this Joe Stork • 2 min read
MER Article Catastrophe in South Yemen How can social tensions be managed and policy differences resolved by ruling socialist parties in poverty-stricken Third World states? On January 13, 1986, this question defeated the Yemeni Socialist Party in a devastating spasm of civil war. Parallels can be drawn between the South Yemeni trauma an Fred Halliday • 11 min read
MER Article The Yemenis of the San Joaquin Musa (“Moses”) Saleh laughs now at his expectations as a new immigrant to the United States. “We were fooled,” he says, reflecting on the first morning when he prepared for his new job as an apricot picker in California. “We didn’t know what kind of work our Yemeni friends had been doing here…. I dr Ron Kelley • 15 min read
MER Article Stookey, South Yemen Robert Stookey, South Yemen: A Marxist Republic in Arabia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982). Fred H. Lawson • 1 min read
MER Article Bidwell, The Two Yemens Robin Bidwell, The Two Yemens (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983). Robin Bidwell was a British political officer in Western Aden Protectorate from 1955 to 1959, and has written five other volumes on the Arabian Peninsula. Most of this new work deals with the region subsequent to the British seizure of Jon C. Swanson • 1 min read
MER Article Memories of a Sentimental Education I was supposed to set an example. Voluntary Service Overseas was in its second year in 1959 and two of us were here on a pound a week plus keep, to be examples. Nineteen-year-old examples. A year before university, you’ll have a wonderful experience. It was, too. The students in Form 2A were not wh Michael Gilsenan • 9 min read
MER Article "We Must Be Realistic About Our Goals" “Al-Hamdani” is the nom de guerre of a representative of the Yemeni People's Unity Party. MERIP spoke with him in February 1984. (Author not identified) • 8 min read
MER Article The Arabian Peninsula Opposition Movements The contemporary opposition movements in the Arabian Peninsula have their origins in two processes of radicalization in Middle Eastern politics. The first was the rise of radical nationalists, Nasserists and Baathists, and of communist parties in the 1950s and 1960s, and the second is the spread of The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Oil Find Could Alter YAR-Saudi Relations In July 1984, the Hunt Oil Company announced it had struck oil in the Yemen Arab Republic. Tests so far suggest that the field will produce a minimum of 75,000 barrels per day (b/d). This would be the threshold for commercial exploitation, given the field’s location nearly 500 kilometers inland and Joe Stork • 2 min read
MER Article North Yemen Today The streets of Sanaa, the North Yemeni capital, appear to condense some of the most divergent elements of Third World economic change and political upheaval. Perhaps nowhere else in the Middle East, or indeed elsewhere in the Third World, do the antinomies of combined and uneven development come so Fred Halliday • 18 min read
Molyneux, State Policies and the Position of Women Workers in the PDRY Maxine Molyneux, State Policies and the Position of Women Workers in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, 1966-1977 (Geneva: International Labor Office, 1982). Joel Beinin • 2 min read
MER Article Yemeni Workers Abroad In Yemen one often hears the hypothesis that as men migrate abroad in search of work, women move into male economic and political roles, at least within the household. The assumption is that women take over production tasks and decisionmaking which have always been the responsibility of men. While t Cynthia Myntti • 16 min read
