But he focused primarily on consolidating his power and creating a viable central government and appointed his sons to rule various provinces of the kingdom.

Yemen remained a semi-feudal state, where is every detail, no matter how insignificant or trivial, had to be approved by the imam, even for a government truck to move in Taiz or for mules to get fodder.

The new government declared Yemen a republic, abolished slavery,[9] a curfew was imposed and the Yemeni military police was formed.

[12] At the same time, Egypt began to support the Sallal's government, supplying them weapons, military advisers and even sending Egyptian forces to fight against royalists later.

As a result – this coup d'état marked the beginning of the North Yemen Civil War that pitted republican troops, assisted by the United Arab Republic (Egypt), against Badr's royalist forces, supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

In 1970 Saudi Arabia, the main ally of king Badr, which was a fundamental enemy of the republican regime, suddenly recognized the Yemen Arab Republic, and other countries, such as the United Kingdom, quickly followed its example.

For Badr, this was a complete surprise and humiliation, because no one consulted with him, and in fact, at this moment, after 8 years, the Republicans de-facto won a cruel war, which officially ended in December 1, and received recognition of their republic.

The country's already small infrastructure was badly damaged by fighting, bombing and shelling, the weak economy collapsed, and people became even poorer.

Apart from the devastated economy, there were other problems: the military took up to 50 percent of the national budget, amounting to only about £9 million in total, which was hopelessly inadequate in the circumstances.

Controlled by the government, the military's logistics system not only depended on Sana'a's trust in the loyalty of local commanders, but was also susceptible to bribery and corruption.

Although various leaders of the Yemen Arab Republic attempted to modernize the state, increase literacy, combat corruption, and rebuild and expand small infrastructure, this did not have the expected impact on the development of the country, which by 1990 remained very underdeveloped, poor, and mired in corruption, largely due to political instability and widespread nepotism.

In 1970, he reached a national peace accord with many supporters of the royal regime and established formal relations with Saudi Arabia, persuading it to recognize new republic.

He tried to unite the tribal country and eliminate inter-tribal conflicts that were active under the monarchy and during the civil war (but at the same time he disbanded MTA, considering it "an obstacle to economic and social development"), reorganized the army, initiated a grand infrastructure plan and sought to educate the population (he allocated 31% of the country's annual budget to education).

Following the assassination of al-Ghashmi on 24 June 1978, Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh was appointed a member of the four-member interim presidential council and deputy commander of the General Staff.

[19] On 17 July 1978, Saleh was elected by parliament as President of the Yemen Arab Republic, simultaneously serving as Chief of Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces,[20] in theory controlling all power in the country.

In 1978–1979, several military coups and assassination attempts followed, and a coalition of North Yemeni opposition groups, the National Democratic Front (NDF), launched a initially successful years-long rebellion against the central government, with support from Libya and South Yemen.

He managed to defeat his opponents, and after 4 years of rebellion, he was able to suppress the NDF forces in 1982 with the support of the United States and Taiwan.

[22] The New York Times Middle Eastern correspondent Robert F. Worth described Saleh as reaching an understanding with powerful feudal "big sheikhs" to become "part of a Mafia-style spoils system that substituted for governance".

[23] Robert Worth accused Saleh of exceeding the aggrandisement of other Middle Eastern strongmen by managing to "rake off tens of billions of dollars in public funds for himself and his family" despite the extreme poverty of his country.

[25] Saleh managed to reconcile most factions (though he, like the monarchy before him, exploited tribal conflicts and played off those who threatened his power), improved relations with Yemen's neighbors, and relaunched various programs of economic and political development and institutionalization.

However, citizens felt little benefit from his development programs, since it was mainly the top ranks of the government and the army (including Saleh himself) who got rich.

As in the south, Saleh had three titles that were invariably repeated after his first and last name were pronounced: the brother president of the republic, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and secretary of the General People’s Congress.

However, these plans were put on hold in 1979, as the PDRY funded Communist rebels in the YAR, and the war was only stopped by an Arab League intervention.

Successor of Abdul Fattah Ismail, Ali Nasir Muhammad, became the general secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party in 1980 and took a less interventionist stance toward both North Yemen and neighbouring Oman.

The weakening of the USSR, the main backer of the PDRY, and the reduction of its economic aid pushed South Yemen into new negotiations with the North.

The 1994 civil war between the central government and southern Yemeni separatists delayed the completion of the final merger.

North Yemen has received significant aid from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE, but is not a candidate for membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of six Arab oil producers on the peninsula established in May 1981.

Compared to South Yemen (which harbored revolutionary communists from all over the region), the North had better relations with many Arab countries.

It established particularly good relations with Ba'athist Iraq, supporting it from the beginning in the war with Iran and selling some of its Soviet equipment to the Iraqis.

In the republic, most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the elite or leaders of large tribes, and is not divided equally among the entire population.