Extracts from An Element of Luck by Michael A Crouch:

Introduction

1. A day of reckoning

2. Full circle: "It should never have happened"

3. Returning "home"

3. Returning "home"

In this final extract, the author recounts something of the civil war that ravaged the country in 1994 and of his personal experiences in touring the country soon after the carnage. He writes of his marriage in Yemen in 1998 and talks of Yemen’s future, marred by international perceptions of continuing unrest.

So it was that I was reintroduced to a part of the world that was always a bit of me, buried away in my thoughts as I had toiled to start a new life on the other side of the world. Returning to Western Australia I had immediately thought of how I could return to Sana'a and the Hadhramaut. Perhaps I could lead a group? I contacted the Yemenia offices in London and they gave me the names of the biggest tour operator and a smaller outfit. I chose the latter. Then - disaster appeared to strike.

In April 1993 the Yemen had held the first democratic elections on the Arabian peninsula for a Consultative Assembly, elected by some 2.7 million voters, which was to include a number of women. In theory, the election brought the two portions of the country together in a political framework designed to assist the President 'Ali Abdullah Salah, ruler of the north, to cooperate with his Vice-President 'Ali Salim al Baid, erstwhile leader of the Polit Bureau in Aden. It was an uneasy union. President Salah's party held 121 seats, Al Baid's 56, with the remainder held by the fundamentalist-inclined Al Islah's 62 representatives. There was continuous bickering: to outsiders, the southerners' form of Marxist-inclined administration was seen to be running rather better than that in the north. The north had been somewhat more 'laissez-faire.' Decisions were made in Sana'a and money was spent from there. Accusations of favouritism, of peculation and general ill-will flowed back and forth between the leaders. It soon came to a head.

The Vice-President stormed out of the Assembly, meeting in Sana'a, taking his 56 supporters with him back to Aden. Subsequently the northern-dominated parliament voted to 'dismiss' the southern political leadership. On April 27 1994 a tank battle erupted north of Sana'a, where a southern regiment had been based. Fierce fighting broke also broke out at Abyan in the south between rival army units. Scud missiles were fired at Sana'a [1] causing some damage and fighting erupted throughout the country, concentrated on the old border dating from the Turkish/British days. Foreign nationals were evacuated from the country.[2] Northern troops invaded the Hadhramaut and my erstwhile enemy of the grenade attack in Mukalla, the Mamur of Say'un, accepted defeat and retired to his house. Exiles from the British days based in Sa'udi Arabia who had hurriedly assembled in Mukalla, just as hurriedly retreated, as northern troops overwhelmed Aden after a terrible siege of the southern capital, when water supplies were cut off and the very young and the old died from thirst. The northerners fought their way along the southern shores to Mukalla and joined their brothers who had overwhelmed the Hadhramaut. The country was reunified but at enormous cost. Both armies had been terribly mutilated and the death toll was in the tens of thousands.

Al Baid went into exile with a number of his cronies. The President announced an amnesty for all those who had been on the other side, including the Sultanic exiles from Sa'udi Arabia and this resulted in many revisiting their country for the first time in decades, to pledge allegiance to the new country and its President and to reclaim sequestered estates. It was at this stage that my tourism contact suggested a visit to Yemen to see for myself that everything was 'normal.'

We landed in Sana'a, practically the only tourists there were, and took the road south, to see for ourselves. There was an eerie calm everywhere. Armoured vehicles reinforced the ubiquitous roadblocks but the soldiers waved us through. I chose the route through Dhala', curious to see whether my house was still standing. My driver urged me not to talk with anyone there and particularly not to let on that I had been a British officer. Still the same sullen groups of wizened tribesmen with averted gaze ... after a cursory tour of the souq we hurried on; a military complex that could not be photographed now obscured the house.

At Habilayn, half way to Aden, we stopped. Here there had been a mighty tank battle. The ground was littered with empty shell casings; rows of freshly dug graves were to one side. My driver said that 11,000 men had died there. As I returned to the vehicle I saw an empty SWAN beer bottle in among the debris of war which I retrieved as a grim memento of the battle. I could imagine the tank commander draining his bottle, before returning to the fray.[3]

The road to Aden was lined in places by the blackened remains of tanks, facing both ways. Between Lahej and Dar Sa'ad every house had shell and rocket holes; roofs were missing. The water tanks had been shelled. We drove across the familiar causeway from Shaikh Othman to Khormaksar. Where our last house had stood was the Hotel Movenpick, a once-5* colossus, its western face blackened by the explosion of a shell that had severely wounded a doctor from Medicins sans Frontieres who had been unlucky enough to have been there during the fighting. The Swiss general manager had evacuated nearly all expatriate staff and was running the establishment with a skeleton crew of 30 locals. He glumly showed me the remains of the magnificent ballroom, devastated by shelling. The hotel had been lucky. At the height of the war a mob of looters had stormed the foyer and been seen off by a courageous Adeni official. Not so lucky the Bulgarian-built hotel at Gold Mohur, completely looted (even down to wiring and light fittings). The hotel's records drifted like snowflakes through the ruined lobby.

However, we felt completely safe in Aden. There was an air of frightened calm as the Adenis were adjusting to rule by the north. We drove to Madinat al Sha'ab - the old Federal capital - and re-visited the house where we had been bazooka-ed 30 years previously. A Bedouin family greeted us with some apprehension and, once they were assured we had not come to reclaim their home, welcomed us effusively. There was the rebuilt wall still showing where the missile had struck. The other end of the house was a blackened ruin. The house had been an observation post and received a direct hit by rockets. Its condition did not seem to worry its current occupants.[4]

Little Aden, the battered old refinery, had suffered, too. Two of the large tanks had been holed. At the British cemetery the concrete cross had been vandalised and a number of head stones pushed over. The never-occupied British military township at Falaise, further down the track, was now a Yemeni garrison. The copper sheathed spire of the intended church now signified its role as a community hall.

The road to Mukalla was generally free of the signs of war. After Bir 'Ali though, signs indicated that mines had been laid on either side of the bitumenised road. To the west of Mukalla a desperate last-stand had been waged. Remains of dug-in tanks pointing towards Aden showed where the battle had been lost by the southerners.[5]

We spent some time in a gloomy Mukalla where the power supply was erratic and the people, like in Aden, apprehensive. After calling in on Colonel 'Atiq, my would-be killer, under virtual house arrest in Say'un, we drove over the desert to Ma'rib and up to Sana'a, without hindrance of any sort.

Back in Perth I started to organise a small party to tour Yemen, which was successful, though in my inexperience I had assumed that everyone would get on together and enjoy what was on offer. I determined the next time to vet who would accompany me and on this occasion a group of friends accompanied me, providing in the words of one of them, "the incredible richness of the Yemen experience."[6] It was a joy to introduce my Australian party to my Yemen friends who often invited us into their homes, where we marvelled over the minimalist but striking décor of the rooms and the female travellers exclaimed at the Arab women's clothing (always covered by the black hijab in public). Yemen incidentally had been transformed from the period of war relics which were all cleaned up. Armoured vehicles were seldom visible from the road and the damaged houses around Aden were repaired. The country opened up to receive tourists. For a period business was brisk.

Jenny and I then toured the country together in January 1997 and, in the company of a small group of family and friends, were married by the British Consul in Sana'a, in February 1998, a joyful and romantic occasion in the gardens of the British Embassy. We planned to return to Yemen with a large group of scholarly Australians in October 1999 and were on our way to Yemen on January of that year, when we received news of tourists being abducted by a group of dissidents. Apparently this was to force the authorities to release a group of British Moslems who had entered Yemen to cause mayhem and who had been arrested with their arms and explosives. In the subsequent fire fight 4 tourists were killed and the Yemen government came in for stringent criticism by the British who subsequently advised British tourists to keep away. The Australian government picked up this advice and informed Australians that Yemen is dangerous to visit, a travesty indeed. Tourism - at least from Britain and Australia - has since languished.[7]

We were still in Yemen in the aftermath of the ruckus, helping with an Australian school party that has 'twinned' with a school at Jiblah. Jenny and I then travelled with our driver back to Sa'ada where, to my great excitement, we came across what could only be hominid prints in what had been lava ash - those of an adult wearing some covering across the feet, presumably to protect the individual from the lava, deeply impressed as though a load was being carried (a child?) while alongside were the footprints of a child. It looked as if the two were escaping from a volcanic eruption. We photographed the site and wrote a brief report for the department of Antiquities in Sana'a but have heard nothing further.[8]

Later we were driven by the locals in a Toyota with bald tyres up a massif along a track that was more steps than road, with great precipices to one side, to the mountain fastness of Shihara with its magnificent bridge spanning the top settlements. Again, we were the only visitors and received with warmth and touching hospitality. That concluded the latest visit to where I always feel part of my heart remains.

We intend to visit again, in 2000. In the meantime we keep abreast of developments in Yemen, as the authorities struggle with the manifest economic, social and political problems consequent on a country still medieval in many of its tribal opinions and behaviour. To counter the less appealing of these there remain the old-style courtesy of the inhabitants, the beauty of the country and the richness of the country. The country, the people and the lifestyle have something to teach the West, in their strong family bonds, their resilience and their culture.

It has been my privilege to be a participant in Yemen's progress and to watch from the sidelines the struggles to unite a people that has seldom been a unified entity, with a history that goes back to before the time of Christ. Given the challenges facing a people whose customs are disparate and whose average daily income is less than US$1, I think such progress as has been made is truly remarkable. Let us pray that it continues.

Footnotes

1. I was told by a Royal Jordanian Airlines crew that they had been landing at Sana'a airport, when a missile exploded behind their aircraft as it touched down, lifting the tail. The aircraft aborted its landing and flew back to Amman, without further incident. The crew was severely shaken.

2. The French Foreign Legion, based in Djibouti across the Red Sea, was outstanding.

3. SWAN beer is sold throughout Yemen as a soft drink, with the alcohol removed. It is from Western Australia and has the familiar logo of a black swan for which the Yemenis have no word in Arabic. It is known as wuz al aswart (black turkey).

4. On a subsequent visit I was told the Government had provided funds to rebuild the house but the money had been spent on a television set - far more important, I was assured.

5. Salah Bubakr bin Husainnon, the ex-Minister for Oil & Mineral Development in the first unified government, was killed here. He had been a medical orderly in the Hadhrami Bedouin Legion. He subsequently rose to be Chief of Army Staff under the Russian regime, and Ambassador to Moscow and became a politician of stature. He organised resistance to the northern invasion and is regarded as a traitor to Yemen, at least by the northerners.

6. In Habban, where I was looking for overnight accommodation I literally just came across 'Ali Mis'aed Babakri, back after 27 years of exile. We fell into each other's arms. He put a house at our disposal.

7. Yemen is on a list with Chechnya and Afghanistan as places not to visit, a nonsense when one considers the many places in the world tourists go, without such warnings. South Africa? India?

8. Apparently the last eruption in that area was about 1 million years ago which would date the population to the same period as the fossil remains found across the Red Sea and would rewrite the history of 'human' occupation in south-west Arabia - and from where the first inhabitants originated.