People of the Revolution and the USSR

South Yemen Communism 1937–1986 ✕ Shot dead

Vice president who twice remade the leadership, killed by a comrade's guards

On the morning before the meeting, he told Lebanese Communist leader George Hawi, "Today we intend to make specific proposals, and if Ali Nasir rejects them, I'll pull out my gun and shoot myself."

A guerrilla of the National Liberation Front who became a soldier and politician, serving as minister of defense and vice president of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. He reorganized the army along Soviet lines and led the 1978 ouster of Salim Rubai Ali and the 1980 removal of Abd al-Fattah Ismail, reaching the core of power. He later opposed Ali Nasir Muhammad's economic liberalization and became a center of the opposition until, shot dead by presidential guards at the Politburo meeting of January 13, 1986, his killing prompted the officer corps to desert the president and ignited the South Yemen civil war.

South Yemen Communism 1939–1986

Leader of South Yemen’s Socialist Party

Founder and chief ideologue of the Yemeni Socialist Party, he was South Yemen's de facto leader from 1978 to 1980 and died in the 1986 civil war.

A South Yemeni revolutionary leader central to the Yemeni Socialist Party’s formation in 1978. He left power in 1980 and stayed in the USSR, then returned and opposed Ali Nasir Muhammad. He died during the armed party conflict in 1986.

South Yemen Communism 1939–

South Yemeni policy conflict and the 1986 crisis

Before leaving he declared 'I have made too many concessions already. I will not make any more'; two months later the Aden civil war erupted.

After serving as South Yemen’s prime minister, he became party and state leader in 1980. He favored pragmatic adjustments in foreign relations and economic management, while conflict with Ismail’s faction intensified. He lost power after the 1986 Aden fighting and fled to North Yemen.

Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) Communism 1939–2026 ○ died in exile

The last leader of South Yemen

Sentenced to death by Ali Nasir Muhammad in the January 1986 clashes, he survived and rose to General Secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party.

A South Yemeni revolutionary who led the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen through its final years as General Secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party. An ally of Abdul Fattah Ismail, he survived the January 1986 fighting in Aden, and after Ali Nasir Muhammad's forces were defeated he took over the party and state. He became the first vice-president of unified Yemen in 1990, but resigned in 1993 and proclaimed the short-lived Democratic Republic of Yemen during the 1994 civil war; in exile he led the southern independence movement al-Hirak.

Yemen state institutions Marxism and communism 1939–

South Yemen's last head of state and the united republic's first prime minister

When the January 1986 gunfire broke out he was visiting India; he then negotiated a settlement in the USSR before returning to take the presidency.

A Hadhrami electrical engineer who rose through the National Liberation Front to become a minister and prime minister of South Yemen. After the January 1986 Aden fighting, he became president and steadied the state; as South Yemen's last head of state he led the 1990 unification and became the first prime minister of united Yemen. In the 1994 civil war he served as premier of the breakaway southern government, then went into exile.

Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) Communism 1942–2002 ✕ Assassinated in Sanaa in

Yemeni socialist politician and advocate of unity and pluralism

On 28 December 2002 he was shot dead in Sanaa minutes after addressing the Islah party's conference; he was deputy secretary-general of the Yemeni Socialist Party.

Born in 1942 in the village of Kuhal in Yemen's Ibb province, he studied Islamic law in Dhamar and Sanaa and took part in the defence of Sanaa during the seventy-day siege. He helped found the Yemeni Revolutionary Democratic Party in 1968, was imprisoned for three years after the events of August 1968 in Sanaa, moved to Aden in 1971 and was elected to the Politburo in 1972. A founder of the Yemeni Socialist Party in 1978, he served as minister of culture and tourism in unified Yemen and became a leading advocate of human rights, political pluralism and the opposition coalition.