The Forgotten War

From the mountains of Yemen last week came news of a sharp turn in the fighting that greatly improves the prospects of Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser and dims the hopes of victory for the tenacious royalist tribesmen of Imam Mohamed el Badr. A brisk, twelve-week campaign has put Nasser's troops and tanks in control of most of the country.

The streak of success came none too soon for Egypt's ruler, who has poured vast quantities of men and money behind the republican regime that deposed the Imam in a palace coup two years ago. Since then, it has been touch and go for the 30,000 to 40,000 Egyptian soldiers who managed to cling to the towns and a few main roads. The royalist tribes, led by Imam Badr and princes of the royal family, controlled the mountains of the center and north.

Broken Blocks. The tide began to turn in May, when, under the personal command of the Imam, the royalists surrounded the northern towns of Hajja and Sada. Two Egyptian armored columns raced to the relief of the garrisons, broke through royalist roadblocks, and smashed the lines of the besieging tribesmen. As before, the royalists swiftly retreated to the mountains, fully expecting the Egyptians to remain in their hard-won positions. Instead, Nasser's troops plunged into the hills in hot pursuit, methodically cleaning out each tortuous ravine and occupying each ridge line before moving forward.

Nasser has also been making gains on the diplomatic front. At an Arab peace conference last January, he skillfully detached Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Feisal from the royalist side. Last month Hussein recognized the Yemen republic, and though Prince Feisal still supplies the Imam with money, he apparently has closed his borders to arms traffic.

Red Wolves. Nasser claims that the place of the Arab potentates has been filled by the British, long uneasy about Nasser's ambitions in oil-rich Arabia. Indeed, Anthony Boyle, who until last October was aide-de-camp to the British High Commissioner in Aden, recently turned up as an unofficial military adviser in the royalist mountains. Asked in Parliament who authorized Boyle's involvement in Yemen, Britain's Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home insisted that "both the present High Commissioner and his predecessor have assured my right honorable friend that they were not aware the person in question was involved in any way." It was hardly a blanket denial of British participation.

What bothers Britain most is Nasser's effort to stir up the tribes of the South Arabia Federation. Britain's claim to have exterminated South Arabia's chief rebels, colorfully called the Red Wolves of Radfan, was premature, to say the least. Since June, the Royal Air Force has flown 1,500 sorties against rebel tribesmen--devastating many of their villages as thoroughly as the Egyptians had done in Yemen. As much as anything, the British are challenging the claim of hegemony that Nasser hopes to carry to the conference table at the Arab summit meeting next month. Nasser wants the Saudi Arabs to join Jordan in official recognition of Yemen's republican regime, and he clearly thinks he can win such diplomatic assent if further success is achieved, not only in the South Arabia Federation but also among Yemen's disorganized chieftans.

For all his recent successes, clear victory for Nasser is highly improbable. In the sere heights of northern Yemen, a man with a gun cannot easily be dislodged. Declared the Imam last week: "Yemen has fought for decades against foreign intruders, and is today stronger than ever. We are ready to fight this war for another ten years."

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