Somewhere Far South… Special State Interest
Stasi Cooperation with Its Partner Organisation in South Yemen
Copyright (c) 2025 Prantner Zoltán
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
East Germany has paid special attention to the state of South Yemen, which became independent in 1967, and in whose development it has played an active role from the very beginning. The East German Ministry of State Security played a central role in this extensive assistance, sending teams of advisors/experts and stationing them in Aden to support the development of the security apparatus in South Yemen and subsequently to improve its operational efficiency. The aim of this paper is to describe this process from the beginning until 1990, when each of the two divided countries merged into its sister state and ceased to exist, just over five months apart. The author will discuss the political background to the cooperation between the two states, the role of the Stasi in the creation of the state security apparatus in South Yemen, the various aspects of cooperation between the two partner organisations, particularly their role in supporting terrorism, and an assessment of the impact of the events in Yemen in 1986 on state security cooperation.
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