South Yemen New Thinking in a Marxist Land

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Here the Queen of Sheba once ruled. Here the Magi bought frankincense and myrrh. Here Arabian trade routes crisscrossed, bringing exotic spices, precious cloths and treasures from the East. Here too in 1967 devout Marxists won independence for their moonscape land at the mouth of the Red Sea. After 128 years of British colonial rule, they were determined to use the precepts of socialist orthodoxy to yank a remote Arab nation into the 20th century. The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, or simply South Yemen, set up a Moscow- style government and forged close ties with its mentor.

For most of South Yemen's 2.3 million Muslims, the 21-year experiment with strict Marxism was not a success. The country's zealously ideological rulers sketched a brief history of war and intrigue against three conservative Arabian peninsula neighbors and dissipated their power in vicious infighting among tribal and political factions at home. Between 1967 and 1986 the top party leadership changed five times, each regime more radical than the last. For its unflinching march down the socialist road, South Yemen won high ranking among the poorest nations on earth.

Today the orthodox P.D.R.Y. is embracing a modest version of perestroika. By local standards the reforms are radical: encouraging private farms, welcoming Western investment and reorganizing state-run industry. In the capital of Aden, the latest ruling Politburo has called the country's Central Committee into session to adopt such bold measures as more funding for private and cooperative farms and better pay to spur greater productivity among state farm workers.

The signal for change came in a hail of machine gunfire inside party headquarters in 1986, when one party chief rubbed out four of his leading Politburo opponents. For 15 days South Yemen blazed with a Communist Party civil war, even forcing most of the country's 5,000 Soviet advisers and their dependents to flee. When it was all over, 5,000 Yemenis lay dead, $500 million worth of Soviet military hardware had been destroyed, and some 65,000 men had fled to North Yemen.

Moscow chose as the new Secretary-General of the Yemen Socialist Party Ali Salem al Beedh, a Politburo member who was wounded in the abortive coup. He is pressing a drive initiated last year to improve South Yemen's long-troubled relations with its neighbors. He wants to end ruptures with Oman and Saudi Arabia, and especially to advance on-again off-again efforts to merge with North Yemen. Al Beedh is planning an early resumption of relations with the U.S., broken in 1969.

Another of South Yemen's leaders, President Haidar Abu Bakr al Attas, who ranks No. 3 in the leadership hierarchy, candidly admits his country's "mistakes in the past" of trying to export socialist revolution and says, "We are not exporters of our ideas. We are here for one purpose, to develop our country so that we can improve the lives of our people."

Not for a generation have such moderate noises emanated from Aden. For ten years South Yemen has topped the State Department's list of countries that support terrorism. Aden kept an open door to leftist revolutionaries, including terrorists such as Japan's Red Army and West Germany's Baader- Meinhof Gang, who were supported with camps and special training.