Despite his old age, Abdu Salem, the former textile factory worker in the capital, Sana'a, who joined it in the early seventies of the last century, still frequents from time to time to a place that is only a few meters away from the gate of his factory, which all its departments ceased production 17 years ago.

The old man used to carefully look with great alertness at any movement that might appear from behind the walls, and raising one of his hands above his forehead, hoping that it would succeed in blocking as much sunlight as possible from his weak vision, whenever he was able to see the accumulated mirage of car exhausts and the glow of the sun as if it is smoke rising from the factory chimney, and soon he would return to his home, uncertain of anything but the fact that other co-workers are still at an age that allows them to distinguish a mirage from smoke without the need to put their hands on their foreheads, doing the same useless duties, without being assigned by anyone.

Within the walls of the factory, located the various closed departments and the ruins of buildings eroded by factors of erosion and destroyed by war, rusty chimneys, and machines, some of which went out of service for many reasons, and others returned to their static state after the failure of the last restart. However, there was no single movement that captures all that attention from Salem, who was met by Khuyut reporter while he was visiting the factory.

Whereas the unanswered question remains: What happened to the top national industrial production line in Yemen that made it stop working, and how did the castle of Yemeni industries turn into ruins bearing witness to the failure of the state and lingering memories in the minds of workers in the cotton division, and a bleeding wound in the pride of national dignity?

Reboot Challenges

During the eight years of the factory disturbance, the direct losses incurred by the state treasury amounted to 6 billion and 716 million riyals, according to a report issued by the Ministry of Finance in September 2013. However, the size of the indirect losses was very staggering, as the area of land cultivated with cotton in Tihama areas declined by more than 80% of what it was before the factory deactivation, which used to consume 12 tons of their cotton production, as the country’s production of the cotton crop in 2019 did not exceed 16 tons, according to the agricultural statistics data of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.

The breakdown of the factory greatly affected the process of producing white gold (cotton) in Yemen, whose revenues covered 36% of the state’s operational budget in the mid-1970s. Additionally, the sale of the Cotton Corporation in Hodeida - which is entrusted with providing aid to farmers in terms of seeds, loans and fuel before the start of the season in return for their commitment to pay it after the harvest, for the benefit of the Bank of Yemen and Kuwait – shut the window of hope in the face of Tihama farmers, and prompting them to move towards substituting tobacco cultivation as an alternative crop to cotton. 

As a result, that period was characterized by a decline in the presence of the factory's products in the market, with an increased manifestation of imported textiles of high quality and lower cost, so that the factory started to suffer to the extent that marketing its products was one of the most tough challenges facing it. 

Moreover, the factory paid a heavy cost by being located in the heart of the conflicting zone between the fighting parties in the capital Sana’a in 2011. Thus, the production experiments that the factory was conducting in the textile department were completely halted, and it was severely damaged as a result of shells and bullets falling on its premises and machines, some of which were damaged and the other was broke down, adding other burdens to it. However, the direct targeting by the KSA-led coalition jet fighters was the key reason for the factory to completely goes out of service due to the bombing which caused total destruction in the textile department, and 40 out of a total of 90 machines ended up destroyed. 

During the years that followed its cessation of operation, the factory witnessed several reboot attempts to operate it, the most persistent of which was the last attempt, which took place 15 years after its cessation.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the General Corporation for Spinning and Weaving Industry in Sana’a, Abd Al-Ellah Shaiban, said in a statement to “Khuyut” that: "The sewing department was operated in 2020, to meet the needs for masks and medical clothing to confront the spread of the Corona pandemic, and the factory departments were also rehabilitated to work within the framework of an initiative by the students of the (Mechatronics) Department at the College of Engineering - Sana'a University, and the cooperation of the factory's engineers and cadres who identified its needs, and accordingly the Corporation began importing those equipment for re-operation".

Shaiban added that the spinning department is currently capable of resuming work within a month, and starting a daily operation of nine tons per day. "Competencies in the department’s machines are available, and it is capable of producing certain types of yarn produced by countries such as India and others, while 75 machines damaged by the bombing have been fixed in the textile department, and it still needs further renovation to produce 14,000 yards a day".

The Corporation estimates the volume of funding needed for the rehabilitation at about $5 million, while its operation requires huge sums of money, according to which the factory can meet all the market's needs for textile.

Yemen has many encouraging potentials for the cotton industry, as "Yemeni cotton is one of the finest and purest types of cotton in the Middle East and the world, and many countries that import it re-process it and market it to the European Union, in addition to its unique geographical location, which provides many options for import and export."

Further, Shaiban believes that in order for Yemen to succeed in investing the advantages it possesses, it must enter into international partnerships, saying that: "The cotton industry will not really succeed without an international partnership," and indicates that China, which is on the throne of the global cotton industry, is the most qualified country for partnership. 

The General Corporation for Spinning and Weaving Industry in Sana'a confirms that it has developed a plan to modernize all sections of the factory within five years, but on the other hand it faces many challenges. The most important of which is to provide sufficient funding to execute the plan, which includes the rehabilitation of all sections of the factory and the provision of new machines and equipment, enabling it to keep pace with the advanced technology currently used in the world.

In the context, a feasibility study prepared by a specialized committee in the factory, reviewed by Khuyut, indicates that the cost of a full innovation process for the factory’s departments is estimated at more than $20 million, which is an amount equal to three times the amount provided in the loan, bearing in mind that the study was in 2001; That is, it did not include the damage caused to the factory as a result of cessation for years, as a result of the crisis of 2011, and the bombing of the coalition aircraft in July 2015.

Chinese Style and Funding

Based on a friendship agreement signed between Yemen and China in the late fifties, the latter completed the construction of the textile factory in 1967, as the first integrated industrial city for the spinning and weaving industry in the Arabian Peninsula. It includes a group of four factories that have been identified and described by sections, namely: spinning, weaving, dyeing, and printing.

In addition, the factory also includes an oil plant, a cotton ginning, three separate stations for generating electricity, steam, and water filtration, and many technical workshops and warehouses. Accordingly, it produces yarns and fabrics from 10 to 11 million yards annually, according to the official website of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

It shall be noted that all components of the factory were built in accordance with the Chinese pattern, except for selecting the site for the construction of the factory in the capital, Sana'a; It was a Yemeni decision at the time, according to many identical reports, and so the presence of Chinese cadres continued in the management and production sectors until the time when Salem had joined the factory.

Salem stated in his interview with "Khuyut" that: "The factory did not stop working even during the seventy-day siege," which is the period during which the remnants of the monarchy regime besieged Sana'a, the capital of the emerging republic, which lasted for seventy days (between November 28, 1967 - February 8, 1968). A period of great prosperity and momentum after former President Ibrahim Al-Hamdi took over the power, as the factory was renovated by providing it with a production line, with 115 Russian-made weaving looms, of which 95 looms have doubled capacity, which allowed the factory technically not to rely on pure cotton as a sole raw material, and enabled it to mix it with the polyester technology".

The Corporation was flooded with loans provided by government and private banks, raising its indebtedness to 8 billion riyals; as the Agricultural Credit Bank (CAC Bank) provided an amount of 300 million riyals, while its profits and interest rates doubled significantly and suspiciously, reaching about two billion riyals.

The policy adopted by the former president Al-Hamdi-led Correction Movement towards the spinning and weaving factory was based on the premise that workers in the field of cotton represent the core basis of the labor community in the country, and through the textile factory, Yemen was able be a member of the Arab, Asian and international labor Federations, and joined the various labor agreements, as it asserted by official information sources.

At that time, the state established two residential cities for cotton farmers; One in Hodeida, and the other was in Sana’a for the factory workers. However, their dream of settling in their new homes was shattered with the assassination of President Al-Hamdi, as a large part of their lands was confiscated in favor of influential powers, and what remained was restricted to the courts’ drawers, after a dispute occurred over it between the workers and the Corporation on the one hand, and the land authority and government real estate on the other hand. According to one of the workers who described the scene to Khuyut- with great despair - their situation after the seizure of their lands, by saying: "We slept rich, and woke up poor!"

Interruption factors

Throughout the 1980s, the factory’s production continued to fluctuate between faltering and progressing, stumbled by the changes imposed by competition in the market, in light of the open economy, and trying to catch up with the development of technology used in the cotton industry globally, by importing new machines and apparatuses from different countries, with efforts that were not based on a well-studied scientific vision, according to the Director of Technical Affairs at the Spinning and Weaving Factory, Khaled Al-Aghbari, in his statement to "Khuyut".

Al-Aghbari says, "It was significant to limit the modernization of the factory and its provision of up-to-date technology only from China, because it was the one that built it, and because successive Chinese governments continued to feel a moral obligation towards the factory, which expresses the symbol of friendship between the two countries."

With the achievement of Yemeni unity in 1990, the signs of collapse began to appear on the factory, for several causes, including: the conflicting visions witnessed at that stage about the fate of the institutions of the two unified parts, as visions disputed about the fate of the cotton and textile factories in Aden and Sana’a, between merging them into one institution or keeping them separated. However, after the summer war of 1994, this resulted in the dissolution of the textile factory in Aden, and the textile factory in Sana’a faltered, according to the consensus of all the reports of the specialists and those interested in the factory. 

One of the workers, who has a long history in the factory and works in the warehouse department, mentions that that period was characterized by a decline in the presence of the factory’s products in the market, with the manifestation of imported textiles of high quality and lower cost so that the factory began to struggle to the point that marketing its products was one of the most difficult concerns facing it. 

State's Abandonment 

As a result of not replacing old machines with modern technologies that keep pace with market developments, the factory’s production declined from four tons to less than two tons per day, in the period before the corporation officially declared that it was unable to provide its operating expenses in 2000. Thus, instead of the government taking the initiative to solve the problem, the security and military establishment, which used to consume 80% of the factory's products, turned to foreign imports in 2001, which made one of the workers hypothesize that the factory had been subjected to a conspiracy.

The Corporation was flooded with loans provided by government and private banks, raising its indebtedness to 8 billion riyals; as the Agricultural Credit Bank (CAC Bank) provided an amount of 300 million riyals, while its profits and interest rates doubled significantly and suspiciously, reaching about two billion riyals. In 2009, the government decided to form a committee to sell the northern land of the factory to the bank, in a move described by the Director of Legal Affairs of the National Corporation for Spinning and Weaving Industry, Ahmed Al-Qa'atabi, as "very unfair and the crushing blow to the Corporation."

Fading hope

Based on the recommendations of a committee formed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Corporation announced in July 2005 that it would grant its workers, who number more than 1,900 male and female workers, an open-ended leave until the upgrading process are completed with the loan obtained by the Corporation from the Chinese government, at a value of $7.5 million. 

It was expected that the modernization process to enable the factory to cover 30-40% of the needs of the local market would not exceed more than a year, according to the announcement, but what happened was completely different.

In fact, the modernization process which was limited to the spinning section only, continued until 2007, when the first single operational process of the section was carried out through producing twenty tons of the natural color of the thread, which is still in the factory’s warehouses until this moment as the factory management failed to market this quantity as a result of neglecting the modernization process of the coloring machines, according to what was revealed to the reporter by one of the technicians in the department.

Regarding the reason for not achieving the desired results from the upgrading that was carried out with the Chinese loan, the Director of Technical Affairs, Al-Aghbari, stated that "the loan, which came at the request of the Chinese government to the Yemeni side, was not sufficient to modernize all sections of the factory."

It became clear why the retired old worker, Abdo Salem, used to stare at the factory from time to time, waiting for the smoke to raise again from the factory chimney! It was not due to his desire to return to his position in the production line as he was in the past years, as much as it means to him that fifty years of his life were not in vain, after he spent thirty-seven years in service, and he left with a retirement pension of (33,000 riyals). Even this modest salary became infrequent during the war years, while the factory workers lived in dilapidated dwellings in the city of workers, in which there was nothing worthy of that name. Salem only hopes that the first industrial castle of Yemen will not remain a mere memory.