THE
BORDER treaty between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, signed on
June 12, describes itself as "final and permanent". It
is not actually final because, as the text
shows, a large portion of the border is still to be agreed
- though that should not detract from what has been achieved.
Yemeni leaders are particularly delighted, claiming that it is as
important a landmark as the unification of north and south Yemen
10 years ago.
There are few surprises in the
treaty: the frontier it describes could probably have been agreed,
given the right conditions, at any time during the last decade.
The significant point is that conditions were not right then, but
they are now - and the changes seem to have occurred mainly on the
Saudi side.
The Saudis have long regarded
Yemen as a problem, whether on account of its republicanism, its
larger population, its democratisation, or the unruly ways of some
of its people. The unification of Yemen worried them, and they did
their best to ensure that it would not succeed.
But Saudi Arabia is changing. With
King Fahd’s health declining, Crown Prince Abdullah is now in
day-to-day command and his influence is ever-more apparent. In
May, Abdullah took the unprecedented step of attending the
celebrations in Sana’a to mark the tenth anniversary of Yemeni
unification, the event that the kingdom had done so much in the
past to oppose.
There could be no clearer
acknowledgement that previous Saudi policies towards Yemen had failed.
It was a signal that, instead of regarding Yemen as a problem, the
Saudis were prepared to regard it as a partner - at least for a
while, to see how Yemen would respond.
Abdullah also appears to have
taken a decision to tidy up the kingdom’s borders once and for
all; the dispute with Yemen was the biggest, but not the only one.
He has since turned his attention to the dispute with Kuwait.
THE
TREATY divides the Yemeni-Saudi border into three
parts. The first part is the area originally covered by the 1934 Treaty
of Ta’if. This runs from the Red Sea coast to Jabal
al-Thar, the "moving mountain" whose identity had been
hotly disputed. It is now fixed in position with a grid reference.
The main problem here has been
relating the line described in the Ta’if treaty to actual points
on the ground. Both sides have now agreed to employ a specialist
company to survey the line and erect marker columns.
There is also a continuing problem
in relating ancient tribal boundaries and grazing rights to the Ta’if
line. The Wa’ila tribe, for instance, reject the official border
on the grounds that they have a 241-year-old document demarcating
their own tribal boundary with the Yam tribe. The new agreement
provides for amendments to the Ta’if line where the border cuts
through villages, and allows cross-border grazing (with special
permits) for shepherds.
One concern is that this area is also a traditional smuggling route, and Appendix
4 of the agreement seeks to prevent well-armed
"shepherds" driving across the frontier in convoys of
trucks stuffed full of consumer goods.
The second part of the land border
- the longest section - runs from Jabal al-Thar to the
frontier with Oman but its precise legal status under the treaty
is puzzling. The treaty says it has not yet been defined but "the two contracting parties have agreed to demarcate
this part in an amicable way".
The treaty does, however, define
the starting and finishing points, and refers to Appendix 2, which
is described as "tables defining distances of the border
line". The tables are not, in fact, "distances" but
a set of 17 co-ordinates:
|
NORTH |
EAST |
1 |
52,
00, 00 |
19,
00, 00 |
2 |
50,
47, 00 |
18,
47, 20 |
3 |
49,
07, 00 |
18,
37, 00 |
4 |
48,
11, 00 |
18,
10, 00 |
5 |
47,
36, 00 |
17,
27, 00 |
6 |
47,
28, 00 |
17,
07, 00 |
7 |
47,
11, 00 |
16,
57, 00 |
8 |
47,
00, 00 |
16,
57, 00 |
9 |
46,
45, 00 |
17,
17, 00 |
10 |
46,
22, 00 |
17,
14, 00 |
11 |
46,
06, 00 |
17,
15, 00 |
12 |
45,
24, 00 |
17,
20, 00 |
13 |
45,
13, 00 |
17,
26, 00 |
14 |
44,
39, 00 |
17,
26, 00 |
15 |
44,
34, 00 |
17,
24, 00 |
16 |
44,
28, 00 |
17,
26, 00 |
17 |
44,
21, 58 |
17,
26, 00 |
Joining up these co-ordinates
would produce a border very similar to the "Como Line"
which was provisionally agreed in 1997 when President Ali Abdullah Salih met
Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz in Italy (see article in
Middle East International).
What seems to have happened is
that the two sides have agreed on a number of fixed points but not
the line between them. This may be an attempt to avoid the
problems that can arise when borders are drawn in straight lines
on a map without reference to the local geography. Once the
independent survey team have done their work it will be easier to
see whether any adjustments should be made in the spaces between
the fixed points.
It is worth noting that the
provisional border in this area is
well to the north of borders claimed by the Saudis between the 1930s and 1950s.
Part of it appears to follow the Riyadh Line (offered by the
British to Ibn Saud in 1935) but it dips south in the middle to avoid the Saudi city of al-Wadi'a.
The third part of the border is
the maritime frontier. The repeated and very precise references to
its starting point on the coast - the quay of Ra’s al-Ma’uj
Shami, Radif Qarad outlet (latitude 16, 24, 14, 8 north, and
longitude 42, 46, 19, 7 east) - are obviously intended to leave no
room for doubt … a sign that this has previously been contested.
Yemen had earlier pointed out that
the Ta’if line turned north-west before reaching the sea and
regarded it as an indication that the maritime border should
continue in the same direction. The Saudis appear to have won that
argument, because the newly-agreed maritime line starts by heading
due west.
THE
YEMENIS have always been interested in the economic
benefits that might follow from a border agreement.
The 1934 Ta’if treaty had a
side-letter granting special privileges for Yemenis to work in
Saudi Arabia. This effectively ceased in 1990 when the Saudis took
offence at Yemen’s attitude to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Yemen has long maintained that the
letter is an integral part of the Ta’if treaty. Although the Ta’if
treaty has been incorporated into the new agreement, the status of
the letter remains unclear. But it is unlikely that the Saudis
will want to revert to the previous situation, which gave Yemeni
workers more rights in the kingdom than other Arabs.
The new agreement provides for
negotiations in the event that "shared natural wealth"
(e.g. oil) is discovered on the border. This is a minimal
commitment: it does not require either side to do anything more
than negotiate, and it does not prevent either side from
exploiting shared mineral wealth unilaterally. That is not
necessarily a problem, but it will only work if there is mutual
trust and goodwill.
The new treaty also incorporates the 1995 Memorandum of Understanding
which contains several important clauses not directly related to
the border. One of these is the promotion of economic, commercial
and cultural relations between the two countries. There are
suggestions in the Yemeni press that Saudi Arabia will now support
the country’s application to join the Gulf Co-operation Council.
Another key clause from the
memorandum incorporated in the treaty says: "Both countries
confirm existing obligations whereby their territories will not be
used as bases or centres of aggression against the other: nor will
they be used for political, military or propaganda purposes
against the other party."
This is easily the most
contentious part of the agreement and the extent of its observance
will determine whether relations have really changed. Both sides
have long accused each other of meddling in their internal
affairs.
If the interference does stop,
several hundred politicians, tribal leaders and officials in
Yemen, who have been accustomed to receiving loyalty payments from
the kingdom, will see their incomes cut. The future of some Yemeni
opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, and of those southern
Yemeni leaders who took refuge in the kingdom after the 1994 war,
looks uncertain, too.
The non-interference clause also
extends to "propaganda" - which has sometimes been
interpreted as meaning that neither side should allow its media to
attack the other. If that interpretation prevails, the effect will
be to enshrine a permanent restriction of press freedom in an
international treaty.
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