Page 32 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Abandonment of Aden 23

armed struggle, in accordance with the acknowledged canons of the anti­
colonialist movement. From a practical viewpoint, too, harassment of the
British was necessary to secure the continuance of Cairo’s support in money
and propaganda.
To some extent Asnaj and the PSP were driven to resort to greater violence
by their need to compete with the National Liberation Front for the allegiance
of the Aden ‘street’. The N LF had instituted a campaign of terrorism in Aden
in August 1964, and in the next twelve months it made considerable headway
in recruiting followers not only among the labourers and artisans of the trade
unions but also from the ranks of government servants, police, schoolteachers,
office clerks and skilled tradesmen. Much of the NLF’s appeal lay in its
espousal and propagation of socialist beliefs, its insistence that the nationalist
revolution to expel the British was only part of a wider social revolution which
would destroy the power of the traditional ruling and merchant classes and
pave the way for the emergence of the proletarian state. Whether the labourers
from the protectorates who composed the NLF’s principal constituency really
appreciated the dialectical subtleties being strewn before them is highly doubt­
ful; but they grasped only too well the opportunities for booty and blood­
letting being offered them, and this was enough to win their allegiance.
The strongly revolutionary content of the NLF’s propaganda in Aden was
evidence of a growing rift in its leadership, which in turn was a reflection of the
pressures being exerted upon it from several directions, not least from oppos­
ing factions within the Arab Nationalists’ Movement. As has already been
indicated, a conflict had been building up for some time within the movement
between those who wanted to keep it an elite group, philosophically wedded to
Nasserism, and those who, increasingly influenced by Marxist doctrines,
wanted to seek mass support so as to accomplish a sweeping social revolution as
well as the destruction of Israel and the elimination of Western influence from
the Middle East. At a full-scale conference of the ANM in Beirut in May 1964,
to which the N LF sent four delegates led by Qahtan al-Shaabi, the quarrel was
brought into the open. Qahtan al-Shaabi’s group sided with the Nasserist
faction led by Habash, Haddad and al-Hindi, against the Marxist faction led by
Muhsin Ibrahim and Hawatima, as much out of a concern to demonstrate their
adherence to Nasserism and Nasser, who was, after all, the source of arms and
funds for their struggle in South Arabia, as out of personal or political convic­
tion. The NLF cells active in Aden and the protectorates, however, inclined
the other way, towards the radical wing of the ANM, and the difference in
outlook was made apparent at the first congress of the NLF held at Taiz in the
Yemen in June 1965. Although the politburo set up by the congress to direct
the NLF’s campaign was dominated by Qahtan al-Shaabi and the Nasserite
group, the political manifesto that was adopted reflected the influence of the
NLF radicals. It declared, in the indigestible prose characteristic of such
crypto-Marxist pronunciamentos: