Revolt Within a War

In mountainous Yemen on the southern shores of the Red Sea, war has become an established way of life. Monarchists backed by King Feisal of Saudi Arabia and militant republicans propped up by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser are locked in a no-win struggle that continues despite the signing of an armistice in 1965. Though he has lost some 5,000 Egyptian troops, Nasser vows to "stay in Yemen 20 years if necessary." Monarchist guerrillas, garrisoned in mountain caves, are not budging either. "We live here," says their military chieftain, Prince Hussein bin Ahmed. "We are prepared to fight for 50 years to keep Nasser out, just as we did the Ottoman Turks."

Because of Yemen, the Middle East last week resounded with the crash of terrorist bombs, the blows of murder and the rising wails of Arab leaders, who seemed to have completely abandoned their once-vaunted drive for unity. After a period of lull, the Yemen war has heated up again, but this time the bloodiest fighting is not between royalist and republican; it is among the republicans themselves, who control the southern third of the country (including the capital of San'a) with the help of Nasser's 47,000-man occupation army. Pro-republican tribesmen, who were originally glad of Nasser's help, have been angered by the arrogance and oppression of the Egyptians, are now in open revolt against Nasser's brutal puppet, Abdullah Sallal, who recently executed 15 of his former comrades in arms and jailed hundreds of others.

Lethal Vapor. Anti-Sallal republicans have made three assassination attempts on Sallal in recent months, sabotaged the Soviet-built port of Hodeida, and frequently cut the main roads linking the cities. They have gunned down dozens of Egyptians from ambush and blown their Jeeps to bits with mines. So strong is the anti-Egyptian feeling that emissaries sent with bundles of cash to buy the loyalty of dissident chieftains have been murdered and the money returned--the latter a most unusual occurrence in the Middle East.

Nasser, who brought all these woes upon himself as the chief instigator of the whole Yemen affair, must face the fact that the war's cost--about $500,000 a day at its peak--is a heavy burden to the Egyptian economy. For all his Russian-made tanks and Ilyushin light bombers, Nasser cannot promise a quick rout of either the anti-Sallal rebels or the sandal-clad royalist guerrillas in the hills. He has resumed air attacks not only on the royalist redoubts but also on border towns in Saudi Arabia, which he claims serve as supply depots for the guerrillas. His foes even charge him with a desperate poison-gas bombing raid in which more than 120 people in the northern village of Ketaf were'killed last month by a lethal vapor "smelling like oranges."

"Finished Forever." The sizzling Yemen war seems to have ended any hopes for a reconciliation within the Arab world. Last week King Feisal canceled the licenses of two Egyptian banks in Saudi Arabia--the Bank of Cairo and the Misr Bank--and Nasser retaliated by confiscating all of Feisal's Egyptian property, which is valued at about $47 million. In a setback for Nasser, Tunisia broke diplomatic relations with his puppet republican regime in Yemen, saying that the Sallal government no longer has power to govern the country.

Scheduled meetings of the Arab finance ministers and the Arab Defense Council, two proud pinnacles of "Arab summitry," have been postponed for at least a month, and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Tunisia plan to boycott the sessions. "As the situation now stands," said Nasser last week, "Arab summits are finished forever." In turn, the usually unexcitable Feisal strongly defended "our right to defend ourselves," and at week's end went into a strategy session on Yemen with visiting King Hussein of Jordan, whose overthrow the Egyptians are known to favor.

The bad blood among the Arab countries has sent scores of defectors criss crossing in the air lanes. Sallal's charge d'affaires at the Yemeni embassy in Czechoslovakia last week flew to Beirut and announced that he was on his way to offer his services to the royalists. A Jordanian army officer went over to the Egyptian side. And an Egyptian intelligence officer armed with a Sten gun forced the pilot of an Egyptian turboprop airliner bound for a Red Sea port to fly him to Jordan, where he took political asylum.

On to-Aden. Now that Yemen's republicans are at each other's throats, Nasser's job will be twice as hard. His reasons for sticking to it range far beyond the barren land of Yemen. In the 1965 armistice signed at Jeddah, Nasser pledged a gradual evacuation of his occupation army. But he apparently abandoned any intention of withdrawing from the area at just about the time the British announced that they would grant independence in 1968 to Yemen's neighbor, South Arabia. For Nasser, South Arabia, with its oil refineries in Aden, would be a prestige prize well worth waiting to collect when the British leave.

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