The Big Show

In the days when might was still right in the Middle East the British invented a technique for dealing with recalcitrant Arab tribesmen. The R.A.F. would drop leaflets on Arab villages demanding that they give up fugitive criminals or be bombed. Usually the trick worked, and the wanted man would be expelled from the threatened village, pursued through the desert, shot down or captured. On other occasions the population would flee the village, which the R.A.F. would then destroy. A fortnight ago in Britain's Aden Protectorate, which has been under desultory attack by the Imam of Yemen, the old technique was tried again.

Arab guerrillas who ambushed and killed two British soldiers were reported to be in the village of Danaba (pop. 120), a border hamlet of mud and stone huts. Danaba was warned by leaflet that it would be bombed. Promised the R.A.F. officer commanding the operation: "The fearsome sight will frighten the Arabs . . . a terrific explosion will echo up the hills. The tribesmen will be somewhere watching the show."

On Feb. 11 four Shackleton bombers dropped 93 500-lb. bombs on Danaba, and Venom fighter pilots followed up, pouring 72 rockets into the village; for best effect the operation was spaced over six hours. The demonstration left British observers cold. Said the London Times correspondent: "Curiously obsolete . . . and bound to provide the Yemen with handsome propaganda." But somewhere up in their hills the tribesmen had seen an air show unique in its time: a performance which cost the R.A.F. $85,000, but demolished only ten of Danaba's 15 houses.

The Imam of Yemen, who acts like a Borgia Pope, is known to have a minimum of five diseases in various stages of arrested development (rheumatism, heart trouble, bilharziasis, gastritis, syphilis), but this does not prevent him from greedily devouring huge meals consisting of nothing but Russian salad heavily splashed with mayonnaise. The Imam's greatest trouble is psychological: he is under the impression that the British are depriving him of huge oil royalties.

In 1839 the British annexed the adjoining deep-water port of Aden, which lies in the extreme southeast corner of the Arabian peninsula, and later staked out a 112,000-sq.-mi protectorate in the area around it. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Aden became (and will be again when the Suez Canal reopens) an important fueling port and naval station on the trade route to India, Southeast Asia, Australia and East Africa. The British are determined to keep it.

So far no oil has been produced in the Aden Protectorate, or in Yemen, but Egyptian visitors and Russian technicians (trickling into Yemen in twos and threes, ostensibly to service arms received under the 1956 Yemen-Soviet pact) have told the Imam how oil enriches Saudi Arabia. Claiming sovereignty over the neighboring protectorate, whose borders he has never formally recognized, the Imam has collected several thousand tribesmen, a dozen or more disaffected sheiks and sultans, a few embittered pretenders to the various petty thrones, and is waging a fugitive war on the British. The turbaned Yemeni guerrillas are a barefoot rabble carrying unoiled Mausers, curved knives, and wearing knee-length skirts of plaid material like kilts. The headquarters of the fighting is a picturesque medieval city called Ibb, with old walls, high towers and beautiful gates.

Yemen is the fairest part of Arabia. Its valleys grow grain and corn, and an abundance of fig trees, quince and pomegranates. In the spring the country is perfumed by roses and lilacs. Animal life, both wild and tamed, is profuse. There are abundant wild guinea fowl, gazelles and huge colonies of baboons in cliff dwellings. But, except for two hospitals, public-health services scarcely exist. Trachoma is rampant, malaria taken for granted, and the infant mortality rate is possibly 60% or 70%.

The Imam's rule is personal, autocratic and Koranic. Many young sons of ruling sheiks are kept as hostages for their parents' behavior. Prisoners wear heavy chains. There is no basic administration, no records are kept, and there is only one bank. The Austrian-minted Maria Theresa silver thaler, called in Yemen the riyal, serves for all transactions. A Swedish pilot or an Italian doctor, to get paid, backs his jeep into the local treasury and loads into sacks his 700 or 800 thalers.

The Yemeni are not happy in their medieval state. Every year thousands seek better-paid jobs and better living in the Aden Protectorate. Those who stay in Yemen are oppressed by heavy taxation and Imam feudal laws. Said a Western correspondent who returned from Yemen last week: "One can hardly imagine a more fertile field for Communist propaganda."

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