From: Hank Roth <odin@halcyon.halcyon.com>
Subject: Somalia & Yemen
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 21:03:56 GMT

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From PEOPLE'S WEEKLY WORLD, December 26, 1992}
SOMALIAN ADVENTURE: Squeeze play on Yemen?
by Tom Foley
 
Part of the explanation for the "humanitarian" military 
intervention in Somalia may lie right across the Gulf of Aden to 
the north, in Yemen. Saudi Arabia in particular as well as the 
other oil-rich states in the Persian Gulf are concerned about 
Yemen for a number of very concrete reasons.
 
Yemen, along with Cuba, took a strongly progressive line when it 
was a member of the United Nations Security Council. Two years 
ago it opposed all attempts at military intervention against 
Iraq. This infuriated the Saudis who expelled over one million 
Yemeni guest workers from Saudi Arabia, thereby increasing 
Yemen's unemployment rate to a catastrophic 40 percent.
 
The fact is that Yemen, in the mountainous extreme southwest of 
the Arabian Pennisula, has more people - at least 14 million - 
than Saudi Arabia and the Arab states of the Gulf put together. 
It is the one place on the Arabian Peninsula where rainfall 
agriculture is possible.
 
North and South Yemen united in May 1991 and democratic elections 
were scheduled for November. But Yemeni President Ali Abdullah 
Saleh - perhaps under Saudi pressure - has now postponed them 
until April. The Yemen Socialist Party, the former ruling party 
in South Yemen, has weidespread support throughout the country.
 
The YSP, led by its general secretary, Vice President Ali Salem 
al-Beedh, spearheaded the armed national liberation struggle 
against the British in South Yemen. It was the only such movement 
in the entire Arab world with its base of support in organized 
labor. After 1967 independence, the YSP developed a pro-Marxist-
Leninist, pro-Soviet postiion. Among other things the YSP insists 
on women's equality.
 
Last but not least, South Yemen is full of "elephants" - the oil 
industry term for gigantic untapped oilfields. British, Canadian, 
French, German and U.S. firms were pouring into South Yemen, but 
Saudi threats apparently have scared off the British and French. 
The Germans are hanging tough, much to the annoyance of the 
Saudis and Americans. 
 
"In 10 years, Yemen will equal the sheikhdoms on the Persian 
Gulf" in terms of oil output, said Christoph Bettermann, the 
German chair of Crescdnt Petroleum in Aden. Wes Densmore of 
Canadian Occidental added that Canoxy had found an "elephant" 
field near Masila in the Hadhramaut (the eastern part of South 
Yemen) of 550 million barrels (14 million tons) "and it is 
`sweet' oil, sulphur-free."  There are an estimated 12-20 
"elephant" fields like Masila in the Hadhramaut, some of them 
close to the Saudi border. As a result in recent months there has 
been sharp escalation in Saudi attacks and ambushes against 
Yemeni border patrols, with the Saudis insisting the "true-
border" lies somewhere to the south. 
 
In addition there have been a number of mysterious assassinations 
and kidnappings, and a stream of death threats to foreign (but 
not U.S.) oilmen. In Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, government 
spokesman Hassan Makki said all trails led to the Saudis and 
"there could be a foreign conspiracy among states that don't like 
democracy." Abdel Aziz el-Sakkaf, editor of the English-language 
Yemen Times, said: "They don't like the idea of 14 million 
democrats next door. We want no regime that thinks it is actiing 
like God's viceroy on earth." On the Saudis, he said: "They want 
to hold us down and strangle us with poverty."
 
Somalia is just a bit over 100 miles south of Yemen across the 
Gulf of Aden. The U.S. and Saudis could be putting Yemen in a 
vise, and not for "humanitarian" reasons. 
---------------------------------------------
Cross-posted from: P_news, a conference for progressive news, 
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others, send comments to me: <Hank Roth> odin@world.std.com (On 
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pnews@igc.apc.org. [This article has also been posted to W_news 
(The World At Risk,  another fidonet conference, moderated by 
Hank Roth (info available upon request via e-mail)] 
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