It was not until Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir raised the banner of Arab unity in the mid-1950s that the issue of Yemeni unity achieved a salient position in local political discourse. Up to that time, Yemeni nationalism seemed to be the province of the despotic [Muhammad Hamid] al-Din Imams, who were the targets of North Yemeni reformers and despised by the South Yemeni activists. However, with the "progressive" 'Abd al-Nasir advocating unity of the entire Arab world, unity in the Yemeni context lost its reactionary connotation. Moreover, Egypt's cordial relationship with Imam Ahmad, extending in 1958 to Yemen's loose confederation with the United Arab Republic in the short-lived United Arab States, lent 'Abd al-Nasir's personal prestige to Ahmad's "Greater Yemen" claims. However, while Yemeni unity then became an active issue on both sides of the border, it was still not a priority goal. The various groups and personalities who advocated unity did so more as a slogan than as a considered policy stand and concentrated their intellectual and political efforts on more immediate problems. As in 1972, the 1979 fighting was followed by an agreement by the two states to unify. YAR President 'Ali 'Abdallah Salih met his PDRY counterpart, 'Abd al-Fattah Isma'il, in Kuwait in March 1979. [Aden], enjoying the military advantage, pressed for quick implementation of the Cairo and Tripoli accords and pushed for the inclusion of its NDF allies in a new San'a government.[32] Salih, faced with a deteriorating security situation, agreed to many of the Southern demands. He subsequently took a number of steps domestically and in foreign policy aimed at appeasing the South, including holding talks on a possible coalition government with the NDF. By mid-1980, however, Saudi and tribal pressure led Salih to abandon his flirtation with unity, as YAR forces and tribal irregulars organized into the "Islamic Front" began a two-year military campaign to dislodge the NDF from its strongholds in the North. The PDRY did not come to the aid of the NDF this time, in large measure because 'Abd al-Fattah Isma'il, the architect of the strategy of support for the NDF and pressure on the YAR, had been replaced in 1980 as President by '[Ali Nasir Muhammad]. 'Ali Nasir disapproved of Isma'il's confrontational strategy and proved open to Salih's overtures for more normal, cooperative relations between the states. Yemeni nationalism might best be thought of in a Gramscian context. The concept itself is an enduring one, but its particular manifestations are a reflection of and reaction to the dominant political forces in the Yemeni arena. The status of the unity debate, at least in intellectual terms, reflects at any given time the character of the politically hegemonic force in Yemen. During the dynastic period, unity was intimately connected with the ambitions of the Hamid al-Din rulers of North Yemen. In British-dominated South Yemen, the call for unity found little resonance. During the progressive period, Nasirism (and its ideological cousin, Ba'thism) dominated the political debate. Forces that took at least their initial inspiration from 'Abd al-Nasir's successful espousal of Arab unity (the Popular Socialist Party and the National Front) took over the leadership of the anti-colonial struggle in the South, and, from 1962 through 1967, Egyptian military and political support was the bulwark of the fledgling Yemen Arab Republic. The call for Yemeni unity was characterized by the strengths and weaknesses of 'Abd al-Nasir's call for greater Arab unity. By divorcing unity from dynastic ambitions and giving it a "progressive" veneer, his leadership made the idea of Yemeni unity attractive to a wide range of political activists in both Yemens. However, unity was adopted much more as a powerful and evocative slogan than as a practical political goal. When the British withdrew from South Yemen in 1967, and the field was apparently open for immediate unity, neither the intellectual nor the political ground had been prepared for the concrete steps necessary to implement unity.
