Comrade Against Comrade

By William E. Smith

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.

Earlier, eleven yachtsmen, including seven Europeans, three Australians and a Canadian, had reached the port of Djibouti, a former French territory 130 miles across the Gulf of Aden, aboard a Soviet freighter that had rescued them from the fighting zone. Bruce Cameron, 65, a white-bearded Australian, told how the visitors had found themselves trapped in the port of Aden and had at first tried to remain on their boats. "The barraging got a lot worse at night," he recalled. "All you could do was lie flat on the floor, getting as far below the waterline as possible to try to get out of the line of fire." Like the others, Cameron said, he thought of making a run for the open sea but changed his mind after a British craft was set ablaze by gunfire as it attempted to escape. The four adults and one child aboard the British boat were reportedly rescued by a British freighter. After that,, Cameron headed for a Soviet vessel in a rubber dinghy. Said he: "It was the longest 150 yards of my life."

The scene for the current struggle was set more than a year ago, when former President Ismail returned from his self-imposed exile in Moscow and began to criticize the incumbent Muhammad for "monopolizing power." Both men were survivors of the fierce guerrilla war against the British in the mid-1960s and of the subsequent purge of moderate forces from the nationalist movement. Last week's fighting was reminiscent of the 1978 power struggle in which President Salim Robaya Ali, who had been marginally more pro-Western than his colleagues, was overthrown and executed. Next came Ismail, who signed a 20-year friendship treaty with the Soviets in 1979. He tried but failed to destabilize the government of North Yemen, resigned in 1980 because of "ill health" and left for Moscow. His successor, Muhammad, tilted slightly toward the West, first hi trade matters and later on political issues. He also sought closer ties with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, talked about unification with North Yemen and ended a border dispute with Oman. Such policies made sense for his impoverished country but led, perhaps inevitably, to last week's showdown. At week's end there were reports that Muhammad had fled to Marxist Ethiopia.

One big question is where the Soviet Union, which currently has an estimated 1,000 military advisers in South Yemen, stands in the struggle. Though many observers at first assumed that Moscow favored Ismail, the British government believes the Soviets viewed Muhammad's policies with less horror than did Ismail and may even regard Ismail's extremist positions as counterproductive to Soviet interests over the long term. In any event, the last thing the Soviets want to do is back a loser at so critical a juncture. On an official visit to Kuwait last week, the Soviet Union's Deputy Defense Minister, General Vladimir Govorov, quickly issued a statement asserting that his country was in no way involved with the Aden revolt. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Aileen Keating/Bahrain and Frank Melville/London

With reporting by Aileen Keating/Bahrain, Frank Melville/London