Page 39 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

32 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

War. Overnight the strategic circumstance which had dictated the pattern of
politics in South Arabia for nearly five years, viz. the Egyptian presence in the
Yemen, began to disintegrate. Here, if ever, was an opportunity for the British
government to arrest the slide into chaos, to repudiate its earlier abdication of
responsibility, and to restore the rule of law to South Arabia. An Egyptian
withdrawal from the Yemen was now unavoidable, and any doubts on this
score were removed at the Arab summit conferences at Khartum in August,
when Nasser himself volunteered to reactivate his agreement with Faisal of two
years earlier and to evacuate his troops from the Yemen without delay. He
knew very well the constraints under which he now had to act: Egypt was
defeated, bankrupt and shaken by internal unrest. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and
Libya had agreed to come to Nasser’s rescue financially, with Saudi Arabia
putting up the bulk of the money. Faisal had wanted the Egyptians out of the
Yemen ever since they had arrived there, and he had no hesitation in making
his financial aid to Nasser contingent upon a prompt Egyptian evacuation.
With the Egyptians gone, the NLF and FLOSY would have lost their
principal source of moral and material sustenance; for although the NLF had
ceased to receive Egyptian subsidies, it was still procuring arms and supplies
from the Egyptian army in the Yemen, paying for them with the proceeds of
robbery and extortion in Aden. A collapse of the NLF and FLOSY would not
automatically have followed an Egyptian withdrawal, especially as the NLF,
pursuing its Maoist strategy in the protectorates, would have been able to
continue guerrilla operations for some time to come. But at least a deferral of
the date for Britain’s departure from South Arabia, and a resolute statement of
intent to defeat the terrorists, would have put some heart into the federal
government and given it time in which to find and assert its authority.
As it was, the British government shied away from the chance it had been
offered, preferring to keep on with the usual medley of half-measures and weak
expedients. On 20 June the foreign secretary, George Brown, informed the
House of Commons that the date of independence had been fixed as 9 January
1968, to coincide with the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, in the current
Muslim year (AH 1387). Additional arms and military aircraft would be
supplied to the federal armed forces, and a British military mission would
remain after independence to help with training and advice. To protect the
country from external dangers during the first six months of its independence,
Britain would keep a naval force, including an aircraft carrier, in South
Arabian waters, and a force of Vulcan bombers at the RAF airfield on Masirah
Island, off the coast of Oman. The strength of the Wilson administration’s
determination to quit Aden, come what may, can be measured by their refusal
to allow the disaster to the Egyptian army in Sinai, and the Egyptian evacuation
of the Yemen which was to follow that disaster, to influence their course of
action. It can also be measured by the nature of the defensive obligations they
were prepared to undertake towards South Arabia after independence, which,