Page 130 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Tribal Rebellion, Marxist Revolution 127

closing weeks of 1967 the nationalist revolution in South Arabia was com­
pleted. Now the socialist revolution was to follow, to bring about, as the ruling
National Front (‘Liberation’ had been dropped from its title with the end of
British rule) phrased it, ‘the destruction of the old structure of the slate and the
building of the proletarian state of the poor’. The ancient boundaries of the
former amirates, sultanates and shaikhdoms were abolished, and the country
was divided for administrative purposes into six governorates, of which the
Hadramaut was the fifth governorate and the Mahra territory the sixth. It was
in the Hadramaut that the more fanatical ideologues of the National Front first
set about implementing what the Front’s propaganda was pleased to call ‘the
state of workers, poor peasants, soldiers and revolutionary intellectuals exert­
ing their dictatorship over the feudalists, rich peasants and capitalists, local
and foreign’. The power of the sada and the other privileged classes - the
merchants, the tribal shaikhs and the sultanate officials - was destroyed in the
way that power has always been destroyed in South Arabia - by the sword.
Landholdings were expropriated and broken up, the palaces of the sultans and
sada taken over, commercial property and funds confiscated, and the former
owners reduced to penury , thrown into prison, executed or driven into exile. A
people’s militia was formed around the nucleus of the former NLF guerrilla
bands and organized into units with the grand old Hadrami names of the ‘Che
Guevara Brigade’ and the ‘First of May Brigade’. The militia’s function was
declared to be ‘the protection of the revolution by the destruction of its
enemies’, which meant in effect the pursuit of old feuds and new despoliations
under the mantle of political sanctity. Only the Hadrami Bedouin Legion,
whose discipline still held, despite the loss of its British officers, stood firm
against the tide and resisted attempts to turn it into a political gendarmerie.
The pace of the proletarian revolution in the Hadramaut quickly proved too
hectic for the South Yemeni president, Qahtan Muhammad al-Shaabi, and the
saner ministers of his government. It was too furious, also, for the senior
officers of the federal army, who demanded the disbandment of the ‘Red
Guards’ of Hadramaut and a cessation of their ‘communist and secessionist’
activities. Qahtan al-Shaabi ordered a slowing down of the rate of confiscations
and imprisonments until the fourth congress of the NF had met and decided
upon the course the republic was to take. When the congress met at Zinjibar in
the first week of March 1968 ideological battle was joined between the propo­
nents of‘Arab socialism’, led by Qahtan al-Shaabi and his cousin Faisal Abdul
Latif al-Shaabi, the minister of the economy, and the ‘Marxist socialists’ led by
the Yemeni, Abdul Fattah Ismail, the minister of culture and guidance, and
the Hadrami, Ali Salim al-Baid, the minister of defence. The latter faction
emerged from the fray victorious, and their victory was reflected in the
programme adopted by the congress for the future. ‘Scientific socialism’ was
declared to be the basis of the South Yemeni state and Marxism its guiding
principle. Political power was to be wrested from the hands of the petite