Saudi Arabia–Yemen border

Taif, 1934

After the Ottomans left Yemen at the end of the First World War, the Yemeni imamate and the new Saudi state both claimed Najran, Jizan and Asir. Saudi Arabia won most of them in a border war in 1934, and the Treaty of Taif formalised the situation on the ground. It ran for 20 years, renewable for another 20 unless either side asked for change; in Yemen, according to the Sana’a Center, it was seen as an unjust settlement imposed by force.^[1]

Taif covered only the border with North Yemen. Farther east, where South Yemen had inherited a border from British rule, the line stayed undefined; the Sana’a Center says Saudi Arabia annexed the Al-Wadi’ah and Sharurah areas after a war with South Yemen in 1969.^[1] Neither side ever published where it thought the border lay: Yemen seemed to rely on lines proposed by the British in Aden, while Saudi maps suggested a line much farther south, in places along 17° N.^[2]

The Treaty of Jeddah

Border clashes went on after North and South Yemen united in 1990. After fighting in January 1995 in the east, Syrian mediation brought the two governments back to talks on the basis of the Taif treaty, and a memorandum signed in February 1995 set up a joint committee to settle the border.^[1]

The treaty covering the whole border was signed on 12 June 2000; Yemen’s parliament approved it on 24 June, and instruments of ratification were exchanged in Sanaa on 4 July. In the west it made the Taif line permanently binding, ending Yemeni arguments that the old treaty had lapsed. In the east, north of the Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen came off better: Yemeni newspapers spoke of 35,000 km² being incorporated, and a 5,000 km² triangle that neither side had claimed went to Yemen.^[2]

At sea the line runs west into the Red Sea and leaves the Farasan islands, once claimed by Yemen, on the Saudi side. The treaty gave coordinates for key points but not the lines between them, leaving that to survey teams.^[2]

“both sides appear to have won – but to have won somewhat different conflicts”^[2]

A border at war

Joint committees on patrols, watchtowers and building near the line worked until the Sa’ada wars between Yemen’s government and the Houthi movement, which began in 2004, made the work too difficult. Saudi Arabia saw the border as a route for smuggling arms, drugs and qat, and in 2009 was drawn into the fighting after Houthi incursions into its territory. It revived plans to fence the whole frontier in 2012 but made limited progress.^[1]

After the Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014, Saudi Arabia and its allies went to war to restore President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s government, shattering the links between communities that live on both sides of the border.^[1]