In the war between the North and the South, the USSR helped both
The 30-year Soviet military presence in the region began with support for Egypt, which intervened in the civil war in Yemen. Moscow encouraged Aden more, who chose the socialist path, but nevertheless maintained military ties with the traditionalist Sanaa, who was moving on a pro-American course.
On September 26, 1962, a group of leftist officers led by Colonel Abdullah Salal overthrew the young King Mohammed al Badr and proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). Supporters of the monarch - militias from the Shiite Zeidi tribes launched a guerrilla war against the Republicans with the financial and military support of Riyadh. Now their heirs, the Hawsites, are fighting against the Saudi coalition.
Mercenary Manual
Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser sent troops, combat aircraft, heavy artillery and tanks to help the Republicans. Great Britain supported the monarchists, since its strategically important protectorate Aden (South Yemen) was under attack. London relied on a covert operation involving mercenaries. The core of the team was special forces veterans - the Special Aviation Service (SAS), led by Major John Cooper on the battlefield. To cover the recruitment of mercenaries, the company Keenie Meenie Services was created, which became the prototype of the now widespread private military companies. The French intelligence service SDECE helped the British to attract a detachment of "soldiers of fortune" (mostly veterans of the Foreign Legion) under the command of the mercenaries Roger Folk and Bob Denard, who had already appeared in the Congo by that time. Paris was also concerned about the situation in Yemen, fearing for the fate of its African colony of Djibouti. Israel provided the mercenaries with weapons and other assistance.
During the four and a half years of the war in Yemen, the composition of the mercenary group never exceeded 80 people. They not only trained al-Badr's troops, but also planned and carried out military operations. One of the largest battles took place in the town of Wadi Umaidat. One and a half thousand fighters of the 1st royal army and various tribes, led by two British and three French, cut the strategic supply line of the Egyptian troops and repulsed attacks of superior forces for almost a week. But a mercenary-led rebel effort to take Sana in 1966 ended in failure. The Royalist commander never gave the order to advance.
Jim Johnson, in a secret memorandum dated October 1, 1966, suggested that the British government withdraw all mercenaries from Yemen. He demanded and received from the Saudi government a monthly severance pay for his fighters, hinting that the undisciplined French like to blow up planes of unscrupulous customers. In addition, he managed to remove all weapons from Yemen, including heavy mortars. It is known about one French mercenary and three British soldiers who died in this war.
Under the Egyptian flag
The participation of the USSR in this war consisted primarily in the work of the military transport aviation (MTA). From the summer of 1963 to January 1966, Soviet An-12 transports flew along the route Kryvyi Rih - Simferopol - Ankara - Nicosia - Cairo, from where VTA aircraft bearing the Egyptian Air Force insignia transferred troops, weapons and military equipment allocated by Nasser to Sana'a. Flights were carried out only at night, any radio communication was prohibited.
The losses of the USSR in this campaign were two military advisers (one died of illness) and eight crew members of one of the transport workers who had an accident during takeoff.
Since the mid-50s, Soviet military equipment has been exported to the still monarchical North Yemen. Deliveries continued after the revolution. In 1963, 547 Soviet military specialists were already working in Yemen, who helped in improving troop control, studying and mastering weapons and military equipment, organizing repair and maintenance, creating a training and material base, and building military facilities.
The Egyptian and Yemeni Republican troops did not achieve decisive successes for several years of fighting with the king's supporters. After the defeat in the Six Day War with Israel, Nasser decided to curtail the Yemeni operation. At the Khartoum conference in August 1967, an agreement was reached between Egypt and Saudi Arabia: Cairo withdraws its troops from the YAR, and Riyadh stops helping the rebels.
The last Egyptian soldier left Yemeni territory a month before British troops left. On November 30, 1967, the People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed, in 1970 it was renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). The civil war in North Yemen ended with a reconciliation between republicans and monarchists. The time has come for conflicts between the two Yemeni, in which the USSR, despite the active military support of the South, was politically equidistant.
To all tank sisters
From 1956 to 1990, the Soviet Union supplied 34 launchers for operational-tactical R-17 Elbrus and tactical missiles Tochka and Luna-M, 1325 tanks (T-34, T-55, T-62), 206 infantry fighting vehicles (BMP-1), 1248 armored personnel carriers (BTR-40, BTR-60, BTR-152), 693 MLRS, aviation (MiG-17, MiG-21 fighters, Su-20M, Su -22M, MiG-23BN, Il-28 bombers, Mi-24 helicopters) and naval equipment (missile, artillery and torpedo boats of project 205U, 1400ME, 183). In total - more than seven billion dollars on credit or free of charge.
Although the USSR began military-technical cooperation with North Yemen much earlier, the South received the lion's share of our weapons and military equipment, since in 1969, two years after the departure of the British, Aden announced a socialist orientation. After the civil war, the northerners began to create a semblance of a market economy with the preservation of the influence of the religious and tribal elite.
From 1968 to 1991, 5,245 Soviet military specialists visited South Yemen. In the political process, complicated by clan and factional contradictions, the USSR tried not to interfere.
For Moscow, the need to strengthen military ties with the NDRY was determined primarily by the strategic position of the country, which in fact controlled the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. At first, Soviet ships had the right to anchor and replenish supplies in ports. Then a naval base was actually built with a maneuverable base of the USSR Navy. From 1976 to 1979, she received 123 Soviet warships.
The strategic value of the NDRY increased when the USSR, having supported Addis Ababa in the war for Ogaden ("Irreconcilable Allies"), lost all its military infrastructure in previously friendly Somalia. The facilities, including the space communications center, were transferred to Ethiopia and the NDRY. All Soviet airfield equipment was transferred to the southern Yemeni airbases.
Dashing 70s
Different state structure, unsettled border issues, as well as mutual support of the opposition forces predetermined the confrontation of the NDRY with both its northern neighbor and Saudi Arabia, Oman.
Soviet military advisers were in the combat formations of the Aden army during the first armed conflict between the YAR and the NDRY in the fall of 1972. On September 26, detachments of South Yemeni emigrants and mercenaries from Arab countries entered the NDRY territory from North Yemen in the districts of Ed-Dali, Mukeyras and the island of Kamaran. The main enemy forces were concentrated in the area of the village of Kaataba (120 kilometers from Aden) and in the valley along the Yemeni ridge. At night, using a roundabout route, the strike group of the NDRY, reinforced by a tank company, went into the rear of the enemy and defeated him.
In 1973, Soviet military advisers led amphibious operations to transfer tank units to strengthen the defense of the Tamud oil-bearing regions on the border with Oman, and armored vehicles and artillery to Perim Island to block the Bab al-Mandeb Strait during the Arab-Israeli war.
In June 1978, fighting broke out in Aden between the supporters of the head of the presidential council Salem Rubeya and his opponents in the government. The Soviet large landing craft "Nikolay Vilkov" came under fire. The president was arrested and shot.
The confrontation between Aden and Sana'a led to another border war in February-March 1979. This time, South Yemeni troops invaded the YAR and captured a number of settlements. The conflict again ended in nothing and a year later flared up again. From that moment on, a sharp increase in the contingent of foreign military advisers in the NDRY began - up to a thousand Soviet military experts and up to four thousand Cuban ones. According to some reports, ours took part in hostilities during the armed conflict between the NDRY and Saudi Arabia from December 1, 1983 to January 31, 1984.
Battle of Aden
Paradoxically, with constant armed confrontation, the issue of uniting the two Yemenis was constantly discussed and gained more and more supporters both in the North and in the South. In May 1985, the leaders of the two countries signed a document stipulating the principles and nature of interaction between the YAR and the NDRY.
On January 13, 1986, a coup took place in the NDRY. The guards of President Ali Nasser Mohammed (an opponent of the socialist path and a supporter of the union with North Yemen) shot several active members of the opposition. Fighting broke out between supporters of the current government and followers of the leader of the socialists Abdel Fattah Ismail, who was supported by most of the army. The entire fleet and part of the Air Force sided with the president.
Soviet military experts were at the center of events. The main military adviser, Major General V. Krupnitsky, gave the order to maintain neutrality. Everyone decided for themselves what to do. The chief adviser of the fleet, captain of the first rank A. Mironov, with a group of colleagues and a hundred Yemenis managed to seize a pilot boat and a motorboat and go to sea, where they were picked up by a Soviet ship. The putschists recaptured and shot their own.
Some of the military advisers and specialists remained with their commanders and were drawn into the war. One person was killed - Colonel Gelavi. In total, at that time, there were two thousand military experts in the country, up to 10 thousand civilians and members of their families, about 400 Cubans.
A decisive battle unfolded in the port of Aden between missile boats, coastal batteries of the pro-presidential navy and an opposition tank group supported by the Air Force. At the same time, there were several Soviet ships in the harbor, including the fully loaded tanker of the Pacific Fleet "Vladimir Kolechitsky". The opposition won the battle for the capital, and the presidential rebellion was suppressed.
Military cooperation between the USSR and the NDRY did not suffer. In 1987, North and South Yemen met once again in a tank battle on the border, and in 1990 they merged. A year later, with the collapse of the USSR, the era of the Soviet military presence in the region ended.
First person
“And on the fourth day, we were told from the doorway that the negotiations did not make sense, since“your country no longer exists”
How the Soviet-Yemeni military cooperation ended, recalls Andrei Medin, a well-known journalist, currently the creative director of Men's Health.
I ended up in Yemen in September 1991. By that time, it was already a single state, but in the southern part with the main city of Aden, where I flew, there were still external signs of the NDRY - slogans on the streets, military and police uniforms, signs of state institutions.
I learned that I would have to serve in Yemen as an interpreter in mid-June at the final exams at the Military Institute (then - VKIMO). I remember that in the morning we were lined up in front of the head of the course, after greeting he began to name the graduates and the country where we should go to serve: Libya - nine people, Syria - five, Algeria - three, and suddenly Yemen - one. To be honest, I was surprised that I was the only one. Moreover, they gave me a naval uniform, unlike all my comrades, explaining that I would serve at a communications center that belongs to the fleet. I wore this uniform only twice - for graduation from the institute and for a memorable photo session with my parents. During our service in Yemen, we all went "in civilian clothes" so as not to attract the attention of foreign special services.
First impressions: wild heat (even at night about 30 degrees) and a language that bears little resemblance to that Arabic literary with some interspersed Egyptian dialect as the most common that we studied at the institute. I was met by an interpreter whom I changed at the communication center. He was a civilian from Tashkent University, after which he served in Yemen for two years. We had two weeks to educate me and adjust to the local dialect.
I quickly figured out the language. Even if he did not understand individual words, the general meaning of what was said was caught. But the external situation was more complicated. At that moment, serious changes began in relations between our countries and in Yemen itself too. Before the unification of Soviet experts of various specialties in the southern part of the country, there were so many that on the streets of Aden the Russian language sounded almost like Arabic. The people joked that the NDRY was the 16th republic of the USSR, and the young Yemenis were happy about it. There were Soviet oil workers in the country who drilled wells in the desert but could not find anything, and builders of pipelines and highways, and sailors from Soviet cargo ships. The Aeroflot office and the hotel operated with it - Soviet planes landed at the local airport to refuel and change crews on their way to African countries.
But after the merger, the course changed. The leader of North Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who gravitated towards the West, became president. He appointed his people to key posts in the administration of all South Yemeni structures, who began to curtail cooperation with the USSR. And in just a year, almost nothing remained of the former Soviet diaspora in Aden - by September 1991, only the consulate with its hospital and school, the Aeroflot office and two military facilities - our communications center 40 kilometers from Aden and a military airfield in desert, where once a week transport planes flew from Moscow with food, equipment and other necessary cargo.
The translators were also reduced accordingly - there were two of us left in South Yemen (the second was at the airfield). Plus consular staff, many of whom knew Arabic, but they did not resolve military cooperation issues. Therefore, I had to deal with a variety of problems of the functioning and life of the communications center, where more than a hundred Soviet officers (many with families) and sailors lived at the same time. I met new employees at the airport and saw off those who served, went to the local bank for a salary for everyone, called and accompanied utilities during various accidents with plumbing and sewerage, translated during urgent operations at a local hospital, when our specialists got there as patients … Weekends, of course, they relied on, but they had to constantly be alert and in shape in case of an emergency call.
Meanwhile, the situation in the country was heating up - functionaries from the former South Yemen showed dissatisfaction with the distribution of posts after the unification and their subordinate position. They, of course, still ruled the entire situation in the southern provinces and therefore, by the way, Soviet specialists maintained friendly relations at all middle and lower levels of government, which helped me a lot in my work. But they were dissatisfied with their bosses, who came from the North, who did nothing, but held high positions and received a large salary. This ultimately led to a civil war in 1994. But then I was no longer in the country.
At that time, great changes were taking place in the USSR, which, albeit with a delay, affected our work. The military leadership in Moscow ordered the withdrawal of the Soviet flotilla from the Indian Ocean (assigned to the Pacific Fleet), communication with which was provided by our communications center. And its further existence, like the Soviet airfield near Aden, began to raise questions both in Moscow and in Sana'a. In addition, the next term of the agreement on military cooperation between our countries was coming to an end. The Soviet military leadership was going to prolong this beneficial cooperation for us (Yemen paid for the training of its military in our universities, the supply of weapons, etc. in dollars) and sent in December 1991 a representative delegation for negotiations. For some reason, there were no translators in its composition, and I had to urgently leave for Sana'a (from Aden by car for almost a day across the whole country) in order to work with a colleague from the embassy in negotiations at the Ministry of Defense. The Yemeni side changed conditions and its position every day (at night we rewrote the texts of all documents), and on the fourth day we were told from the doorway that the negotiations were meaningless, since “your country no longer exists”. It was on December 8, immediately after the signing of the Belovezhskaya agreements.
A long streak of uncertainty ensued. For a while, the former Soviet facilities were forgotten abroad. Instructions from Moscow were received less and less, planes flew to the military airfield less often, and we continued to carry out our daily tasks.
Until August 1992, when I returned to Russia, I managed to receive another military rank and a medal from the Yemeni armed forces for valor and diligence. I keep it as a memory of a year of service in this country.
