ADEN: Truce in the Desert

• Share

After the British retreated from Suez, it looked as if they could not hold out much longer at Aden, their hot and ugly colonial outpost at the other end of the Red Sea. In his medieval stronghold to the north, the Imam of Yemen was leagued with Arab nationalism's Hero Nasser in the United Arab States and spreading lavish gifts of money and rifles to persuade the Arabs of the Aden hinterland to join in driving the British "invaders" right off the peninsula.

Last year, to make a better buffer around Aden, the British set up a new federation of the Arab states of Aden's Western Protectorate. But only half a dozen sheiks and emirs and sultans could be prodded or cajoled into joining. The former Sultan of Lahej, most considerable of the petty potentates, turned up in Cairo to make anti-British propaganda. Half his army of 300 men, dragging along their only field piece, had crossed over to Yemen. The rest of the chieftains obviously thought the British were a poor bet for the future.

But the news out of this remote corner is that it is not the British but the Imam of Yemen who is falling back. Early last year the old (68) tyrant had to go to Italy for medical treatment. While he was away, the heir apparent, Crown Prince Badr, unable to hold the warring Yemeni tribesmen in line, emptied the royal treasury in paying out great sums to keep their allegiance. When the Imam got back last August, he had to retrench. He sent home some 70 Egyptian technicians brought in by his son, stopped the costly flow of rifles to the south. The British Governor of Aden, Sir William Luce, an old adversary of the Imam, astutely decided the time was ripe to pay a visit to the British legation in Yemen. He was given all the courtesies by the Imam.

The effect in the desert was electrifying. On the Western Protectorate Federation's first anniversary this month, three more potentates joined up. The new Sultan of Lahej, picked to replace his predecessor in Cairo, cried: "Let us proceed farther with this glorious federation through which we can participate in achieving the great aim of Arab unity."

In the port of Aden itself, Arab nationalist ardor still runs high. A total of 1,800 oil workers are out on a strike called by the local Arab Trades Union Congress. Aden's port workers may still throb to Nasser's broadcasts, but it is the now quiescent Imam whom the British worry about. He is the chief threat to the garrison post from which they watch over their Persian Gulf oil interests. Reassured, the British are now preparing to create a second federation in Aden's even emptier Eastern Protectorate, where the British-run Iraq Petroleum Co. hopes to find oil.