King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, usually known in the West as “Ibn Saud”, had annexed the ‘Asir region north of Yemen, and with that annexation claimed the provinces of Jizan and Najran, which Yemen had disputed with ‘Asir. In a brief war, Prince Feisal’s army plunged deep into Yemen, and the Imam of Yemen sued for peace. Cannily, he asked the Saudi King to decide the border, and old King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, traditional desert monarch that he was, felt obliged to be generous, since his defeated enemy had thrown himself upon the King’s mercy. Although the Saudis kept Jizan and Najran, they returned much of the land they had occupied in Yemen proper. (Since the later South Yemen then was under British control, partly a colony and partly a protectorate, “Yemen” at this time meant the later North Yemen, united with the South in 1990.)

The Ta’if Agreement which followed was agreed in May 1934 in a small fishing town near Hodeida named Ta’if, though many people today assume that the treaty takes its name from the Saudi mountain resort town of the same name. The two sides demarcated their border from the seacoast to a point in the mountains, leaving the boundary farther east undefined (and of course in no way defining the border with the later South Yemen).

In addition to not completely defining the border, the Ta’if Agreement had another characteristic which would later prove a problem: a 20-year duration.

In the years after 1934, Saudi relations with the then-Imamate of Yemen were generally smooth. In 1954, when Ta’if was to expire, neither side seems to have taken any note of the fact. That, at least in the Saudi view, amounted to an extension of the treaty for another 20-year term.

Then, in 1962, Yemeni military officers overthrew the Imam and Yemen plunged into a long civil war, with Saudi Arabia supporting the monarchists and Nasser’s Egypt the republicans. By the time the war finally ended in 1969, South Yemen had become independent of British rule and was under the control of a Marxist regime. Saudi Arabia remained closely entwined in internal North Yemeni politics.

In 1971 Saudi Arabia, by then ruled by King Feisal, the man whose victories had led to Ta’if, began a major aid program to Yemen, including direct financial support of the big Zaydi tribes of the north, the Hashid and Bakil. In 1974, Yemeni Prime Minister ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Hajri signed an agreement extending Ta’if for another 20 years, until 1994. That agreement, however, was never ratified; Hajri was soon replaced, and later that year Ibrahim Hamdi led a new coup and Yemen entered a long period of military rule with no parliament in place to ratify treaties formally.

The issue of the status of Ta’if had already become one of some concern in Saudi circles, for if Ta’if were held to have expired, Yemen might seek to renew its claim to Jizan and Najran. After a border war between North and South Yemen in 1979, the two began to discuss unification. Saudi Arabia strongly opposed this; the population of the combined Yemens would rival that of the Saudi Kingdom. But North Yemen was heavily dependent on Saudi direct aid and on the remittances of Yemenis working in the Kingdom and other Gulf states. During the 1980s, there were frequent reports of clashes along the Saudi-Yemeni border, but details were usually hard to come by and sometimes the clashes were denied firmly by both sides.

In 1986, the Marxist leadership of South Yemen was decimated in an internal bloodbath; that plus the decline of Communism abroad led to a moderation in the South. In 1990, North and South Yemen united, ahead of a planned timetable, and without the blessing of Saudi Arabia. Then, in August, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Yemen happened to hold the Arab seat on the UN Security Council at the time, and its votes were widely seen as pro-Iraqi. Many Saudis convinced themselves that Yemen and Jordan were engaged, with Iraq, in a plot to dismember the Kingdom: Saddam to take the oilfields, Yemen to reclaim Jizan and Najran, and King Hussein of Jordan to seek his ancestral domain in the Hejaz. That there was no evidence of such a plot did not weaken the conviction of many Saudis (even today) that such a plot existed.

Over a million Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. What little Saudi aid remained was suspended. Later, in 1994, when the former South Yemeni leadership sought to secede from united Yemen, Saudi Arabia backed the secession, even though it involved supporting some of the same former Marxists it once had demonized. Relations between Saudi Arabia and the central government in Yemen were at a low point.

Further complicating matters was the fact that oil had been discovered in Yemen. One of the oil-bearing regions, Ma’rib, was shown on some Saudi maps as being close to Saudi territory. The Kingdom warned Western oil companies that companies exploring in parts of Yemen claimed by Saudi Arabia would be prohibited from operating in the (much richer) Kingdom. And some Saudi maps showed a boundary deep inside the former South Yemen.

On December 7, 1994, Saudi and Yemeni forces clashed around the town of al-Buqa‘, just east of where the Ta’if-demarcated border ends. After a few weeks of tension the two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding on February 25, 1995, agreeing to negotiate a permanent border based on the Ta’if Agreement. From that point onward, it was clear that when an agreement was concluded, it would incorporate and make permanent the line demarcated after Ta’if, as well as demarcating the remainder of the long border.

In the two and a half years which followed, the two sides met regularly, with the Interior Ministers of each country handling the negotiations.

 By the summer of 1997, both sides were making extremely optimistic, if vague, proclamations about the imminence of a border pact. It soon became obvious that the sticking point was not so much the border itself (though there were a few outstanding issues), but Yemen’s desire to build economic relations into the agreement, and Saudi Arabia’s determination to limit the agreement to the boundary issue alone. Since by enshrining the Ta’if line as the permanent border Yemen would no longer have any cards to play of a territorial nature, it hoped to ensure and write into the pact a revived economic relationship, including both aid and the right of Yemenis to work in the Kingdom.

In the summer of 1997 there were stories indicating that the border was essentially settled. A Yemen Times story in its issue of August 25-31, 1997 (summarized in the Dossier in The Estimate for September 26, 1997) described a boundary which appears to be remarkably close to, if not identical with, the one agreed to on June 12.

But it took almost three more years to move from that outline border agreement to the signed version, and based on the published content, it is hard to see why. Presumably the Yemenis and Saudis continued to disagree about including economic provisions.

The Agreement

What is clear is that no economic provisions were included. Prince Nayef reportedly said at his news conference on June 17 that there were no secret clauses, but also encouraged Saudi employers to hire Yemenis, suggesting that the Saudis will, at least, improve the atmosphere surrounding Yemeni expatriate workers in the Kingdom.

The lack of an economic component clearly would appear to be a victory for the Saudis, along with the predetermined agreement to make the Ta’if lines in the west permanent.

In addition to confirming the lines established at  Ta’if, the treaty spells out the general coordinates of the entire 1,500 kilometer border, and provides for commissioning a company to demarcate the border on the ground. Specifically:

• Article 1 explicitly confirms the Ta’if treaty and its annexes, including the previously demarcated border, and makes that border part of the permanent border between the two countries.
• Article 2 provides for the general definition of the border. It restates the Ta’if borders, from the border marker on the Red Sea to Jabal al-Tha’r, where the previously demarcated line ended. Annex #1 consists of extensive lists of geographic coordinates for that line. Article 2 then spells out the previously undemarcated border from Jabal al-Tha’r all the way to Latitude 19º North, Longitude 52º West, where the new line meets the Saudi-Omani and Yemeni-Omani border. Annex #2 defines 17 geographic coordinates between those two points. (The line runs generally eastward from Jabal al-Tha’r to the junction with the Omani border, except for a southward dip around the Saudi town of Wadi‘a. The line apparently stays to the south of existing Saudi roads and roughly follows the existing line of actual military control.
  The same article also refers to the maritime boundary in the Red Sea, which is spelled out in Annex #3.
• Article 3 provides that an international firm will carry out a field survey of the entire land and sea borders as specified in the agreements, and that firm must strictly abide by the “distances and directions” spelled out in the geographic coordinates in order to demarcate the border. The company will prepare detailed maps which will be approved by the two parties, and the two parties will cover the expenses of the company in demarcating the border.
• The two parties agree to evacuate any military position less than five kilometers from the borderline in the area already demarcated under the Ta’if Agreements, as those agreements required.
  Annex #4 sets down special relations in the newly demarcated zone:
• In the previously undemarcated part of the border, the two sides agree to refrain from massing armed forces within 20 kilometers of the border. Inside that buffer zone, only mobile security patrols with light weapons will be permitted.
• Shepherds in both countries will have the right to pasturage and water up to 20 kilometers beyond the border “according to prevailing tribal traditions”. However either side may set restrictions on the number of vehicles crossing the border with shepherds, the firearms shepherds may carry, and the like.
• “Natural wealth” subject to excavation or extraction (such as oil) found anywhere along the border line will lead to negotiations between the two sides on joint exploitation of that wealth.

Not Everyone is Happy

Although the treaty does define the border (although presumably there could later be disagreements with the international firm which will be chosen to do the demarcation on the ground), and it has been praised by Yemeni and Saudi officials with equal enthusiasm, not everyone is so happy. Shaykh Muhammad Bin Shaji‘ of the Wa’ila tribe in the Sa‘da area of Yemen reportedly said he would not recognize the border agreement because the Wa’ila have a 241-year-old agreement with the Yam tribe on the Saudi side of the border which spells out the tribal boundaries. And Saudi opposition groups have been saying for weeks that the Yam in the area of Najran in Saudi Arabia have been protesting Saudi policies, though that is not necessarily directly related to the border treaty.

In addition, some Yemenis apparently feel that Yemen settled without getting the economic assurances it had long demanded. It remains to be seen whether there are informal understandings, as Nayef seemed to hint, which will restore Yemen’s economic aid and permit Yemenis to work in the Kingdom. What is clear is that this is in no way specified in the treaty itself.

Gains for Each Side