The Two Yemen Wars of 1979: Cold War, Qat, and the Road to Unity

In 1979, Yemen experienced not one but two civil wars within a single year. This episode unpacks the parallel conflicts that tore apart the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and how a single substance — qat — played a hidden but decisive role. We trace the fighting in Sana'a between Ali Abdullah Saleh's forces and the National Democratic Front, backed by South Yemen, and the simultaneous purge in the south as Abdul Fattah Ismail crushed his rivals in the Yemeni Socialist Party. A Saudi-brokered meeting in Kuwait produced a surprise unity agreement that briefly warmed the Cold War proxy chill. Along the way, we visit a mafraj in Tihama where qat chewing sessions became de facto war councils, and ask whether the leaf that Yemen chews is also the thread that binds its fractures. Featuring the 1979 Treaty of Kuwait, the role of the Hashid and Bakil tribal confederations, and the quiet tragedy of a unification that would end in blood fifteen years later.

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