Fall of Yemen

(See map)

From Bagdad, Jerusalem, Damascus and Aden radios began to crackle last week: HODEIDA . . . HODEIDA . . . IMAM YAHYA OF YEMEN . . . WAHABI . . IBN SAUD . . . YEMEN . . . ABDUL AZIZ . . . YAHYA . . . YEMEN.

All this had nothing to do with Cab Calloway. It meant that the 33-year-old movement, to build a great Arab nation under a single ruler, had reached a crisis. Huge, gaunt Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, was about to capture Yemen, last important independent territory on the Peninsula. The Imam of Yemen was reported dead and Ibn Saud's men already in the streets of the seaport of Hodeida. Belching clouds of black smoke, British and Italian cruisers and destroyers raced to Yemen "to protect nationals."

When the Arab tribes were bribed to intensify their revolt against Turkey during the War, they were definitely promised a chance to develop either an Arab Confederation or a single Arab Kingdom of their own. Realists well knew that the Allies would not like the idea of a new nation, one third as big as all Europe, blocking the way to India and the East, but the Arabs believed the Wartime promise. So did the mysterious Colonel Lawrence until his disgust at the duplicity of politicians caused him to flee theatrically from the world.

In 1916 France and Britain had already split the swag in anticipation by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement. With the Armistice both powers took steps to be sure that no Arab state of real importance could arise by cutting off the richest territory as league of nations mandates. Mesopotamia with its rich Tigris-Euphrates valley went to Britain as Irak; France took Syria, also rich in oil. Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea, had been British since 1839.

There remained the vast desert heft of the rest of Arabia. To prevent even this from attaining true unity, it was divided into various territories: the Kingdom of the Hejaz, the principalities of Asir and Yemen, the British-controlled Hadramaut, Oman on the tip of the Persian gulf, and Nejd, the great central core. What they did not reckon on was the mettle of the man who had already won for himself part of this dusty district -- Ibn Saud, ruler of the Nejd. Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman Al Faisal Al Saud, Knight Grand Commander of the Indian Empire, better known as Ibn Saud, is a towering figure, 6 ft. 4 in. in his sandals. His simplest method of holding tribal loyalties is to marry the sheik's daughter. He has taken to wife over 100 of them in the past ten years, divorced most of them (no disgrace in Arabia). Because he has given up camels for fast bullet-proof motor cars in conducting desert warfare, his favorite wives follow the flag in a close-shuttered regulation police van or pie wagon, safe from prying eyes. Ever since the War Ibn Saud has been fighting to extend his realm. By 1925 he had completed conquest of the Hejaz which contains the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, winning at the same time his greatest source of income, a toll on Mohammedan pilgrims. In 1926 the principality of Asir accepted his suzerainty and the following year Britain signed a treaty recognizing the complete independence of Ibn Saud's domains. (From 1917 to 1923 Britain paid him a total of -L-542,000 in subsidies "that he be guided generally by the wishes of His Majesty's Government in regard to his foreign policy.") In 1932 Ibn Saud's conquests were sufficiently consolidated and stable to allow him to change the name of his realm from Kingdom of the Hejaz and Nejd and its Dependencies to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He continued to rule this new domain (nearly four times the size of Texas) from Riyadh, his birthplace 54 years ago and his old capital since 1901. But on the Red Sea there still remained Yemen.

Explorer Harry St. John Bridger Philby has described the greater part of Yemen as "the worst mapped region of the inhabited globe." Its mountainous valleys are perhaps the most fertile in southern Arabia. Its almost deserted seaport of Mocha has become a synonym for coffee the world around. Coffee is still grown on Yemen's mountains but what little is exported goes through the port of Hodeida.

Elderly Yahya, the Imam of Yemen, is as crafty and penny pinching as strapping Ibn Saud is brave and generous. Where the latter won sheiks' loyalties by marrying their daughters, Yahya the Imam kidnapped his sheiks' children and held them as hostages. The latest dispute over the unmapped boundary between Yemen and Asir has been going on for two years, complicated by the fact that last year the Idrissi of Asir, repenting his surrender to Ibn Saud, fled over the border to join Yahya the Imam.

Last year Ibn Saud sent a mission to Yemen to settle the boundary dispute peaceably. Yahya the Imam pleaded illness as an excuse for not seeing them, then clapped the delegation into jail and sent an armed force into Asir under the former Idrissi.

The Saudite troops equipped with modern rifles and armored cars last week swooped down from the north upon Hodeida under the command of not Ibn Saud himself but his eldest son, the Emir Saud. Death of foxy Yahya the Imam seemed exaggerated. From Sana, his walled capital 7,000 ft. up in the mountains, he cabled Cairo:

"We have withdrawn from the disputed territories. However we do not acknowledge full defeat until Ibn Saud returns to methods of justice and peace. We have begged King Fuad of Egypt to intervene."

Meanwhile muffled Bedouin riflemen, deserting the Imam's army, broke into the bazaars of Hodeida and looted lustily. About 300 foreigners were in the city, mostly British Indians. Before the Saudite troops entered, the greater portion had fled to the nearby island of Kamaran. With the victorious troops in Hodeida, the Emir Feisal, Ibn Saud's second son and Foreign Minister, assured the world that sacking was over and the city quite safe for foreigners. His potent father, he said, had already picked him as the next King of Yemen. Then the Saudite horsemen swept inland toward the thick, sloping walls of Sana.

Deplore foxy Yahya as she might, Britain was worried. If Yemen falls, only Oman on the Persian Gulf will remain independent territory, and the fame of hard-riding Ibn Saud will blaze high in the Moslem world, not only in British-controlled Aden, Irak and Palestine, but also in the Sudan across the Red Sea. Refueling at Aden, the cruiser Enterprise, one of the fastest in the British navy, tore on toward Hodeida. Word reached British authorities in Aden that among the Saudite loot in Hodeida were great quantities of Italian-made munitions. The Red Sea is only 100 miles wide at Hodeida, and on the other side lies only partially pacified Italian Eritrea. Blushing at having backed the wrong horse, Italy dispatched the destroyer Turbine. France, too, was on the defensive, fearful lest the exploits of Ibn Saud, keenest sword of Allah, put wayward ideas in the heads of her Mohammedan tribes.

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