With Yemeni president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi still in Saudi Arabia , the return of prime minister Ahmad Obeid Bin Daghr to the port of Aden at the end of December underlined the interim capital’s importance.
Amid the carnage of the Yemeni civil war and with the former capital, Sana’a, under Al Houthi control, Aden is the only major city looking remotely open for international business.
President Hadi’s hometown was one of the few ports to be reopened at the end of last year.
Now Aden must work out how to recover from ruinous damage sustained during the 2015 offensive, in which Al Houthis came within a whisker of seizing the city.
A capital only in name
Parliament reconvened in Aden last August, and announced the county’s first budget since 2014 earlier this month - a step towards normality. But with an uneasy coalition in place, achieving stable governance remains very difficult, says independent journalist Mohammad Al Qalisi.
“Aden is controlled by many groups: Hadi’s forces, [separatist movement] the Southern Resistance’s forces , the Salafi militias. And the government still faces many other problems, like Al Qaida and Daesh.”
He says the character of this city of 1.7 million people, framed against the smoky backdrop of the extinct Shamsan volcano, has changed.
“It was a liberal city, with a mix of people - northerners, southerners, people of Indian origin. But the war turned everything upside-down. Now freedoms are being reduced, and it’s moved to being close-minded, which is one of the biggest problems the city, and the country, faces.”
Aden in numbers
839 - the number of damaged structures in the city, according to an August 2015 assessment .
3rd - Aden’s ranking in world ports during the British colonial period, after New York and Liverpool.
1989 - the last time Aden was a capital, prior to the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990.
19m - gallons of water once held in the abandoned Tawila cisterns on the volcano, which may have been built by a pre-Islamic civilisation.
45 - the number of months the French poet Arthur Rimbaud spent living in Aden while working as a trader there in the 1880s.
History in 100 words
Aden was possibly first referenced in print in Ezekiel 27:23 , its position at the mouth of the Red Sea making it an early terminus for the western Arabian spice caravans. As it passed through the hands of various Islamic caliphates, it became a bustling global trade centre, even attracting a Chinese delegation in 1421.
The collapse of Ottoman rule in the early 17th century had reduced it to a village of around 600 by the time the British snatched it from a local sultan in 1839. Topping up passing vessels heading to and from the Suez Canal with coal and water, this free port became vital to British empire logistics. The mid-1960s Aden Emergency made the building pressures of Arab nationalism abundantly clear, and it was ceded as the new capital of the republic of South Yemen on 30 November 1967.
What’s next for the city?
Prior to the war, there were hopes Aden’s maritime history and strategic location might make it a candidate for a Dubai-style development supernova. Now Djibouti, on the other side of the Gulf of Aden, is rapidly usurping that future. The Dubai operator DP World actually did manage Aden’s facilities between 2008 and 2012 before pulling out amid the worsening political climate and accusations of corruption.
The UAE, part of the coalition backing internationally-recognised Hadi, still retains strong interests in the country and has been pouring resources into Aden’s schools, healthcare and sewage infrastructure through its Emirates Red Crescent affiliate. But Al Qalisi says the city needs to be realistic about its future: “We need 50 years to be like Dubai. Now Yemenis need the basics, like electricity and water. Until we get them, then being like Dubai is a dream.”
