Yemen’s Abyan province, located on the coast of the Arabian Sea, has long cradled the food basket of Yemen’s south. 15 fertile valleys cut through Abyan’s 11 districts and drain into the Gulf of Aden, serving as a watershed for the flash floods that cascade down from surrounding regions. Small villages dot the slopes of this verdant basin, where 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood. Local residents have historically grown bananas, dates, coffee, sorghum, maize, millet, legumes, sesame, papayas, mangoes, melons, tomatoes, onions, and other fruits and vegetables. Some of these crops are consumed locally, while more are exported to Abyan’s neighboring provinces of Aden, Al Bayda, Lahj, and Shabwa—and some to the Arabian Peninsula’s gulf countries. Livestock breeding and beekeeping also contribute to Abyan’s agricultural economy.
Among Abyan’s 15 valleys, the Bana and Hassan valleys feed the province’s most prolific region, the Abyan Delta, which stretches from the Yaramis area in Khanfar district to the Qurayyat area in Zanzibar district and supports approximately 150,000 acres of farmland. In recent history, banana plantations have accounted for as much as 80 percent of the delta’s total agricultural production as the tropical climate yields banana harvests twice a month in the summer and once a month during the winter. At their peak, Abyan’s plantations were producing 80 to 100 tons of bananas per day—providing jobs to large numbers of workers. These fruitful harvests were due in part to a legacy of agricultural development in Abyan that began in the 1940s when British forces occupied the delta as a part of World War II food production drives across the British empire.
During the war years, officials from the British-ruled Aden protectorate oversaw the reconstruction of earthwork and brushwood dams in the Abyan Delta that had been destroyed during earlier hostilities between local tribes. They also developed an irrigation network that channeled seasonal flash floods into organized canals and transformed Abyan into an agricultural laboratory for the entire country. During this time, the delta’s silty soil brought fame to a new crop—long-staple cotton. In 1946, Brian Hartley, the Director of Agriculture for the Aden protectorate planted an experimental crop of Egyptian cotton in the delta and by 1955 his cotton growing scheme was producing a crop worth 2.4 million British pounds. Colonial officials framed the scheme as a “partnership” between local elites, farmers, and British management. However, the scheme became associated with colonial exploitation, and many believed that Abyan’s farmers were being paid less than their fair share for their cotton. Mimicking the success of the Abyan scheme, a similar project had been started in the neighboring province of Lahj—where production was managed entirely by Yemenis and farmers were paid more for their cotton. In the shadow of higher profits for cotton farmers in Lahj, paternalistic British management in Abyan added to the grievances that were spurring mobilization against colonial rule.[1]
Abyan natives were among the leaders of Yemen’s anti-colonial movement, and on November 29th, 1967, Abyan’s Salim Rubai Ali[2] and his radical Marxist faction—the National Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (NLF)—forced the British to finally withdraw from the country. Commonly known as “Salimin,” Rubai Ali served as the head of state of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) from June 1969 until his execution in June 1978 by Ali Nasir Muhammad,[3] also from Abyan. The PDRY regime, which attempted to create a socialist-orientated mixed economy, was characterized by destructive infighting that some say resulted more from traditional regional or tribal rivalries than from ideological differences. Ali Nasir ousted Salimin’s successor, Abdul Fattah Ismail, to act as President of the PDRY from 1980 – 1986. Then, on January 13th, 1986, Ali Nasir Muhammad’s bodyguards opened fire on members of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) politburo and his naval forces began to shell the city of Aden in a confrontation with factions of the YSP loyal to Abdul Fattah. The fighting lasted for 12 days and although Abdul Fattah was himself killed, his forces from Yafa’a and Al Dhalea prevailed over Ali Nasir Muhammad’s Abyan forces in what became known as the South Yemen Civil War of 1986. It is said that somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 people died and 60,000 people, including Ali Nasir, fled[4] to the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) north of the PDRY.[5]
Four years after the South Yemen Civil War, in 1990, the YAR and PDRY united to form a single country. However, the results of unification were largely negative for southerners—especially for remote, rural areas like Abyan. The new government in Sana’a reversed the PDRY’s previous agrarian reforms and by 2004, cotton production in Abyan was in decline and its economic viability for farmers was drying up. The government had dropped support for agricultural inputs including seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and interest-free white loans. Furthermore, since the departure of the British, no maintenance had been carried out on Abyan’s famed irrigation networks and much of its infrastructure—including bridges, dams, and canals—had collapsed.[6] Drought, desertification, and the erosion of vast areas of farmland contributed to the evaporation of Abyan’s overall agricultural productivity and by the time Yemen’s current war started in 2015, the poverty rate in Abyan was already nearing 50 percent. Although Abyan’s agricultural production continued to constitute about five percent of Yemen’s total agricultural production, local revenues from taxes, fines, penalties, and sales of goods and services accounted for just three percent of the income funding the budget for local governance while central grants and subsidies covered the remaining 97 percent. As the new war continued to drive up the cost of agricultural inputs alongside the previous subsidy cuts, more and more acres of Abyan’s fertile valleys began to lay fallow. Today, commercial cotton production has all but stopped in the province and it is only grown in small amounts by a local organization with the goal of maintaining the purity of the seed.[7] Meanwhile, in the Abyan delta banana yields have decreased by 75-80 percent from peak production, down to 20 tons per day, leaving many of Abyan’s daily wage farm laborers without work.[8]
Alongside this agricultural atrophy, however, Abyan’s farmers have also continued to show experimental initiative in the midst of Yemen’s crisis. As wheat prices have spiked worldwide in association with the war in Ukraine, farmers in Abyan have tried planting this staple of the Yemeni diet with some success. Now they are calling for support in order to expand production to amounts that could reduce Yemen’s reliance on wheat imports and enable the province to flourish as a regional breadbasket.[9] Working to restore Abyan’s agricultural productivity could go a long way towards reducing the need to distribute food baskets to the more than 350,000 people, representing 52 percent of the population, who are currently said to require humanitarian assistance in Abyan after more than eight years of war.[10] Furthermore, restoring prosperity and reducing poverty in Abyan may also be key to transforming the province’s reputation as fertile ground for extremist groups.[11]
Abyan has served as a home base for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its predecessors ever since Yemenis began returning from jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s. The seasoned jihadis were sent to kill socialist infidels aligned with the former PDRY in Yemen’s south and some never left.[12] AQAP officially emerged in 2009 and was soon considered by the United States to be Al Qaeda’s most dangerous offshoot. In 2011 they seized control of Abyan’s main cities—Zinjibar and Ja’ar—ruling the cities for a year before being driven out, only to take them again for several months beginning in December 2015. While they ruled, the group gained some favor by offering efficient services and a functioning judicial system to a local population lamenting a lack of socioeconomic services from the state—and although they were eventually expelled from the cities, the group’s activity in the province as a whole never decreased.[13] Throughout 2023, Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council (STC), a coalition of forces seeking to restore a sovereign state in Yemen’s south with the borders of the former PDRY, has been actively battling AQAP in the mountainous terrain of Abyan’s Mudiyah district.[14] In August, the guerilla-style warfare led to the capture of mid-level AQAP commander Abu Al-Qaqa (Saeed Ali Saeed Al-Anbouri)[15] and the death of STC Commander Abd Al-Latif Al-Sayyid.[16] Born in Abyan’s Khanfar region in 1972, Al Sayyid was a member of AQAP until he defected in 2012 and founded local armed groups to help the Yemeni army fight against the militants. After that, AQAP tried to kill Al Sayyid more than 10 times, executing some of his relatives in an effort to force him to surrender, before they finally succeeded on August 10th of this year. Sayyid was in Mudiyah’s Omran Valley to inspect forces sent to expel militants from their valley strongholds when his vehicle was destroyed by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), killing him and three of his troops. Intelligence sources believe that Al Sayyid’s location and movements may have been betrayed to AQAP by an insider, as he was famously secretive regarding his location and movements. In the wake of his death, Elisabeth Kendall, a terrorism expert, said that AQAP was no doubt relieved to have eliminated one of their most driven and capable opponents. “AQAP has been attempting to assassinate him for around a decade,” Kendall told Arab News, “so achieving this at last is a significant boost, particularly to AQAP in Abyan.”[17]
Nonetheless, following Sayyid’s death, STC forces managed to secure Abyan’s Rafd and Jenin Valleys in August—clearing out a clandestine AQAP base in the Jenin Valley. In September, STC forces worked to secure other mountain and valley regions of Mudiyah, all the while AQAP continued striking out against STC forces in the province.[18] Thus, today, the battle continues for the 15 fertile valleys that comprise the food basket of Yemen’s south, where Abyan’s rich ideological soil has seen the rise and fall of numerous dynasties and empires over the centuries. Over 300 archeological sites scattered across the province bear witness to these ancient civilizations that date back to the pre-Islamic area. More recently, as the earth of this province that once nourished the region has suffered neglect, Abyan’s soils have sprouted both extremists, as well as the fiercest rivals of those extremists. Looking to the future, one thing seems clear—whatever is sown and tended in the soils of Abyan is likely to deliver a harvest with impact beyond its borders.
[1] https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/blog/cotton_expertise_and/
[2] https://dbpedia.org/page/Salim_Rubai_Ali
[3] https://merip.org/1986/07/the-last-days-of-ali-nasir/
[4] Among those who fled from Abyan to northern Yemen was Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi—who later attempted to lead Yemen as president through a National Dialogue to form a representative government following the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012. However, he was driven from the capital in Sana’a by the Houthis in January 2015 and finally ceded his powers to an eight-member Presidential Leadership Council following the start of a ceasefire with the Houthis in April 2022.
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/world/massacre-with-tea-southern-yemen-at-war.html, https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/South_Yemen_Civil_War, https://ecfr.eu/publication/war_and_pieces_political_divides_in_southern_yemen/
[6] https://yementimes.com/farmers-complain-about-revenuescotton-plantation-in-abyan-archives2004-801-business-economy/
[7] https://south24.net/news/newse.php?nid=2349
[8] https://www.khuyut.com/article/declination-banana
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=O0xwt5zHF58
[10] https://yemenlg.org/governorates/abyan/
[11] AQAP released Bangladeshi UN official Akam Sofyol Anam and four Yemeni UN staff members after kidnapping them in Abyan on February 11th, 2022, as they returned to Aden from Abyan’s Mudiyah village.
[12] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/aqap-south-yemen-past-and-present
[13] https://acleddata.com/2019/12/18/yemens-fractured-south-aden-abyan-and-lahij/
[14] https://www.criticalthreats.org/briefs/gulf-of-aden-security-review/gulf-of-aden-security-review-june-30-2023
[15] https://www.punjabnewsexpress.com/world/news/yemen-govt-army-launches-major-operation-against-al-qaeda-hideouts-218702
[16] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/10/al-qaeda-attack-kills-secessionist-commander-and-three-fighters-in-yemen
[17] https://www.arabnews.com/node/2353121/middle-east
[18] https://sanaacenter.org/the-yemen-review/august-2023/20833
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