Friends of South Yemen
On Socotra the UAE has adopted a benevolent smokescreen to conceal its true expansionist objectives.
Inside Arabia reports.
4th December 2020
Socotra is an earthly paradise, with a vast variety of plants and wildlife. Endemics pop up at every turn, and odd shapped trees twist and turn out of the ground, looking like they might be more at home in a Dr Seuss book. The island is rich in history and mythology, believed to have been visited by the apostle Thomas and numerous pirates. There are abundant opportunities for birdwatching, hiking, snorkelling, caving or just relaxing on the beach. Great efforts have been made by the government and the people of Socotra to ensure that the unique ecosystem is preserved and respected.
The Socotran Archipelago is one of Yemen’s greatest treasures of biodiversity. Located about 400 km south of the mainland in the Indian Ocean, these arid islands play host to a stunning array of plant and animal life including the iconic Dragons Blood Tree. An estimated 30 percent of the island chain’s plant life is endemic, as are many of the birds found there. Socotra’s an ecotourists dream – not all the region’s animal species have been identified and the waters surrounding the archipelago are relatively unexplored.
The Friends of Socotra association (FOS) is a registered charity established to promote the sustainable use and conservation of the natural environment of the Soqotra Archipelago, and to support sustainable improvement in the standard of living of the people of the Soqotra Archipelago.
According to the legend of the island, Aristotle advised Alexander the Great to send a colony of Greeks from the philosopher’s home town to Socotra in the 4th century BC. The goal of the expedition was to take advantage of the abundance of aloe and other plants that grew freely on the island. After all the Indians who occupied the island before the Greeks had name it Dvipa Sukhadara – Sanskrit for ‘the Island of Bliss.’ When the Greeks landed on Socotra, they unseated the Indian colony and started their own reign of the island. The island’s newest inhabitants adapted the old Sanskrit name to the Greek language as ‘Dioscorida’. From this Sanskrit appellation as well, the island’s modern name Socotra was derived.
The Greeks formed a colony on Socotra and they may have influenced the indigenous and Indian populations on the island with their history of democracy. By the 1st century BC, Socotra had developed a reputation as a shining utopia. At that time, Diodorus of Sicily described Socotra as a thriving democracy and religious society whose warlike people elected its presidents annually and rode about the island on chariots.
Perhaps this is that Aristotle had in mind when picking out the families to form a colony on the island. In books VII and VIII of his Politics, Aristotle discusses the conditions of ‘the ideal or perfect state.’. In Aristotle’s perfect state, in which he allows himself to presuppose many purely imaginary conditions he envisions a type of electorate – with a population not too large, land connected to the sea and populated by a class of warriors. Perhaps the large island of Socotra provided the perfect arena for experimentation in democracy.
In any event Diodorus provides an interesting description of the island that is a bit absurd at times. His account must be treated cautiously – he had never visited the island and he was copying largely from a previous geographer who had not visited it either. That being said, he describes Socotra (using its Egyptian name of Panchaea) as an island on which is built a massive temple dedicated to Saturn containing large statues of gods, and he notes that Abd al-Kuri was a holy island in which the inhabitants refused to bury their dead. More common to today’s understanding of the island, he notes that Socotra is rich in frankincense and myrth filled with an abundance and great variety of wildlife – although his account includes a large number of elephants.
Elephants were not the only unlikely creature claimed to make their home on Socotra. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea notes the presence of crocodiles, large lizards and a white tortoise. More fancifully, the stories of Sindbad note the presence of the roe, a large mythological bird often described as being large enough to carry off an elephant. (Perhaps that’s where all of Diodorus’s animals went.) For the Phoenicians, Socotra was home to the legendary phoenix. Every 500 years, the sacred bird would burn upon a funeral pyre of incense and dragon’s blood tree twigs. A young worm would arise from the ashes that would eventually become the new phoenix: he would gather the ashes of his father and carry them to Helipolis in Egypt before returning to the island.
In the mid 1st century AD, the Apostle Thomas was shipwrecked on Socotra while enroute to India. Building the island’s first church from the wreckage, he converted the island’s inhabitants to Christianity. The legacy of the apostle and of those who followed shortly thereafter him would be a long one – for the next 1,500 years writers would note the strong presence of Christianity on the island. By the 4th century the Church on Socotra had grown so strongly that it was able to send missionaries to mainland Yemen. Emperor Constantine II is said to have sent Bishop Theophilus Indus to the Himyarite capital of Dhafar, where the bishop founded a church and helped to propagate Christianity as the official state religion for a brief period of time.
In addition to Christians, Socotra became famous as a haven for pirates between the 10th and 15th centuries. There is evidence to suggest that the island may have had a female ruler in the early 15th century. Female rulers are surprisingly prevalent in Yemen’s history – the Queen of Sheba ruled the Sabean Kingdom and Queen Arwa ruled much of Yemen in the 11th century – so the idea that Socotra had a female ruler is plausible.
In 1507 Socotra was occupied briefly by the Portuguese. In a bloody attack the Portuguese were able to overcome a fortress occupied by Mahri forces near the town of Souk. Four years later, the Mahri sultans sent forces to reclaim the island and by 1511 the Portuguese had withdrawn, but not before constructing a church at the fortress they had conquered. The Mahris destroyed both the church and the fort.
By the late 16th century the Christian elements of Socotra had rapidly deteriorated. There were no longer any priests on the island, and the islanders who did practice religion combined old rituals that they could no longer understand with aspects of ancestral worship. As the Mahri sultans regained control of Socotra, the islanders converted to Islam. Hardly any evidence of Christianity’s presence on the island remains today.
In 1835, the British occupied Socotra after the ruling Mahri Sultan refused to sell the land to the Empire. The British intended to use the island as a coaling station but scrapped the idea after they founded the colony of Aden in 1838. Socotra reverted to Mahri control. In 1886 the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra became the first sultanate in the area to sign a formal treaty with the British and become a British protectorate. By the mid 20th century the Manri sultans were living on Socotra and they declined to join the Federation of South Arabia in the 1960s. In 1967 Socotra became part of South Yemen.
Source: Yemen by Daniel McLaughlin, Bradt Travel Guides.
In the past Socotra was isolated from the outside world as the islands are essentially inaccessible for around four months a year during the monsoon season. Mainly thanks to international interest in its unique ecology, as well as decades of migration to the UAE, the islands’ 60,000 inhabitants are increasingly connected to the outside world. Socotri migration to the UAE in the past century has been an important factor – with most migrants going to Ajman, where they have become very wealthy relative to the situation at home. These close connections have enhanced Emirati influence on the islands.
The conflict in Socotra has become a microcosm of the broader war between the IRG and the UAE. Two administrations now compete for control of the islands: as the UAE has increased its military intervention and “development” projects there, Saudi Arabia has attempted to mediate the confrontation between Emirati and IRG forces, with some success. For example, in May 2018 – when then Yemeni prime minister Ahmed bin Dagher refused to leave Socotra unless Emirati forces withdrew from the islands – Saudi mediation facilitated the departure of some UAE troops. (Abu Dhabi later strengthened its presence there by sending in STC fighters.)
In October 2019, Saudi Arabia began a new mediation effort after the STC refused to hand over the headquarters of the Security Department to the head of security in the governorate recently appointed by Hadi. Earlier in the year, the IRG accused the Emiratis of training scores of independence fighters and sending them to Socotra. The UAE’s control over the islands is reflected in the fact that it continues to issue tourist visas to those travelling on direct flights to Socotra, an initiative that the Socotri and IRG authorities oppose. The STC’s strongman in Soqotra is Yahya Mubarak Saeed, who coordinated the Emirati recruitment initiatives and attempted to establish a Socotri Elite Forces akin to those in Hadhramaut and Shabwa. Saeed, with the help of Emirati officer Khalfan Mubarak Al-Mazrouei, continues to call for protests against IRG-backed governor Ramzy Mahrous. Issa Salem bin Yaqut, an Oman-based senior sheikh of Socotra, continues to campaign ferociously against the UAE’s presence, condemning it in testimony before the US Congress in October 2019. Bin Yaqut accused the UAE of allowing the Israelis onto the island amid rumours that they are seeking to establish a spy base. He also accused Riyadh and Abu Dhabi of “destroying the charming and rare environmental landmarks on Socotra and establishing military camps amid a terrible international silence.”
In brief, in early 2020, all Yemeni political parties and tendencies now have supporters in Socotra and loyalties on the islands are, therefore, divided between Yemeni factions, the UAE, and Socotra itself.
In June forces affiliated to the STC took control of Socotra in a move described by the Yemeni government as ‘a coup against legitimacy’. Early in September, two Yemeni lawmakers called on the government “to explain the UAE’s commencement of building two military camps in the two eastern and western edges of Socotra island, as well as a military base without informing the official authorities.” They described the move as an “infringement against the war-torn country’s sovereignty.”
Source: War and pieces: political divides in southern Yemen by Helen Lackner.