Abdul Fattah Ismail
President of South Yemen from 1969 to 1980
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Abdul Fattah was born on 28 July 1939 in the Al-Hujariah district of the Taiz Governorate in North Yemen. Though his father was a faqīh (Islamic jurist), he had a poor and rural upbringing. He subsequently followed his elder brother to Aden (which was then a British protectorate) where he was educated at the Ahliah School in Tawahi district. When he was approximately seventeen, Abdul Fattah enrolled in a British Petroleum workers’ training center and began working in an oil refinery from 1956 to 1959 as an apprentice. In this setting, Abdul Fattah began to develop a political consciousness centered around union organizing and labour advocacy. As a co-founder of the Arab Nationalist Movement in South Yemen, he contributed to the formation of a number of Movement cells before he was arrested by the British colonial authorities in Aden for political incitement of workers.
In 1961, he became a school teacher at Al-Haswah School in Aden, and at the same time continued his involvement in political activity.
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Political career
Early political involvement
He was a co-founder of the National Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (NLF). After the outbreak of the Aden Emergency where the NLF sought for the liberation of South Yemen from British colonial rule, Abdul Fattah became a full-time socialist revolutionary, whereby he undertook the leadership of the NLF underground military wing (fedayeen) in Aden, as well as political activity.
He was elected to the NLF executive in the first, second and third NLF congresses, 1965–67. After South Yemen gained independence in 1967 he was appointed Minister of Culture and Yemeni Unity. In the fourth NLF congress, he was instrumental in determining the progressive line of the revolution. But in March 1968, he was arrested by the right-wing faction of the NLF and went into exile, where he drafted the program for Accomplishing National Democratic Liberation, a leftist manifesto. He undertook a leading role in the consolidation of left wing of NLF which subsequently regained power in the 22 June 1969 Corrective Move.
Rule of South Yemen
After the Corrective Move, Abdul Fattah was elected Secretary General of the NLF Central Committee, thus making him the country's de facto leader. He was also elected a member of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Council. In 1970 he was elected Chairman of Presidium. He undertook a leading role in the dialogue between NLF and other left parties in south Yemen leading to the formation of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP). He was elected Secretary General of the YSP at the first party congress in October 1978. Ideologically, he is considered to have favored the Soviet model of socialist development (as opposed to Maoist alternatives). In October 1979, Abdul Fattah secured the 1979 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the USSR. Similar treaties with East Germany and Ethiopia followed in 1981, following Abdul Fattah's resignation from office.
In 1980, he resigned from all his posts for allegedly health reasons and was succeeded by Ali Nasir Muhammad. However, Abdul Fattah was appointed president of the party before he went to Moscow for medical treatment, until 1985, when he returned in the face of a mounting crisis between Muhammad and his opponents in the YSP.
In October 1985, he was elected to the YSP Politburo and as a Secretary of the Central Committee, but the crisis had erupted on 13 January 1986, into a violent struggle in Aden between Ali Nasir's supporters and Abdul Fattah's supporters (See South Yemen civil war). Fighting lasted for more than a month and resulted in thousands of casualties and Ali Nasir's ouster.
Death
During the crisis, Abdul Fattah disappeared. He was last seen being evacuated from the YSP office along with his deputy Ali Salem al-Beidh in a military armored vehicle. Unsubstantiated reports claim he was killed when naval forces loyal to Ali Nasir shelled his home in Aden, but his ultimate fate is unknown. His body was never found.