59 3.4. Yemeni Socialist Party(YSP) 3.4.1. General Context A. Party History The YSP was established on October 11, 1978 in the former PDRY (South Yemen) as a union of a number of parties, organisations and national fronts operating in both the PDRY and the YAR(North Yemen). These groups included the Ba’ath movement(a Pan-Arab Na­tionalist Movement) and the Marxist Party, each of them operated in both the North and South, and six other parties that were active only in the South. Following independence from Britain in 1967, the PDRY became a so­cialist state and served as a critical Soviet satellite in the Middle East. The PDRY was ruled until 1979 by a nationalist front that included left­ist parties such as the Yemeni Revolutionary Democratic Party, the Popular Pioneering Party, and the Labour Party. In the mid-seventies, these southern Marxist parties began negotiations with their counter­parts in North Yemen and formed the Yemeni Socialist Party(YSP). YSP became the sole political party of South Yemen and its counterpart (the People’s Unity Party), of course, was not equivalent to YSP in form and performance, was established in the North. The two parties officially merged together following the 1990 unification of Yemen. The people of the South mostly dominated it because they were in the party for a long time. However, Abdul-Fatah Ismail is considered to be the founding father of the YSP. He served as General Secretary from 1978 to 1981.During that period he left for Russia in order to facilitate a peaceful exchange of power and to avert a conflict within the party. He is widely consid­ered to be the principal ideologist behind the party and is still revered today. He was assassinated during the civil conflict of 1986, but his ideology, image, and charisma remain within YSP. A faction of the YSP has been named after him.