South Yemen: Comrade Against Comrade

In colonial times, British steamship passengers knew Aden, at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, as a free port on the edge of a vast desert. In late 1967, after four years of civil strife, the moonscape known as Aden and the Protectorate of South Arabia was granted its independence by the British government. In time it became known as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, or simply South Yemen, to distinguish it from the Yemen Arab Republic to the north. The only Arab country that explicitly calls itself Marxist, South Yemen (pop. 2 million) forged close ties with the Soviet Union and allowed the Soviets to establish a military base at Aden and a high-tech listening past on the island of Socotra, 300 miles offshore.

The country's short history is a bloody-minded chronicle of strife and intrigue against its neighbors, including North Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and of vicious infighting among its political and tribal factions at home. Last week, as battles broke out in Aden amid reports of a coup, assassinations and widespread killing, the fractious country seemed dangerously close to all-out civil war.

Exactly what was happening was difficult to tell. There were reports that President Ali Nasser Muhammad, 46, had been injured, that he had been killed, and that he had survived. There were rumors that four key plotters who tried to take over the government, including former President Abdul Fattah Ismail and Vice President Ali Ahmed Nasser Antar, had been executed. But the persistence of the fighting suggested otherwise. On an ideological basis, the struggle appeared to pit the pragmatic Marxist, President Muhammad, who has sought more amicable relations with his Arab neighbors and would welcome aid from such countries as Saudi Arabia, against the more zealously pro-Moscow Ismail and Antar. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat offered to mediate the dispute, and Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi declared his willingness to dispatch peace-keeping troops.

Before Aden's state-run radio went off the air early in the week, it announced that government forces had foiled the attempted coup and maintained, "the situation in the capital is calm." That, quite obviously, was not true. Though the fighting faltered occasionally, it continued throughout the week. Eyewitnesses spoke of "deafening blasts" and "sky-high balls of flame" in the port. On Thursday, a Western diplomat in San'a, the capital of neighboring North Yemen, reported that gunfire and rocket exchanges had continued in Aden through the day, adding that the combatants were using tanks, artillery and even jet fighters. Other reports told of the explosion of an ammunition dump and of air-force bombing runs on Aden's airport and harbor, as rebel troops advanced on the presidential palace. On Friday, the royal yacht Britannia interrupted a journey to New Zealand to help evacuate foreigners. Small boats transported about 300 people to the ship before fierce fighting halted the rescue operation.