ABSTRACT
Change and variety notwithstanding, politics and social life in North Yemen in the twentieth century if not the whole of the past millennium were constrained by an environment of severe economic scarcity. Imams Yahya and Ahmad secured considerable independence for North Yemen at the price of nationwide deprivation, and even the lot of the ruling family, other great sayyid clans, and top qadi families was not all that enviable. Their image in the region and elsewhere was that of the distant country cousins of the richer Arabs, poor and backward, fit to be on the United Nations' list of least developed countries (LDCs). In January 1984, shortly before the strike at Alif-1, British Petroleum (BP) was granted an exploration concession covering an 8,500-square-mile strip of the Tihama coast from the Saudi border to just south of al-Hudayda.
