Page 47 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

40 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

Again, some weeks later, after the bulk of the South Arabian Army had
declared for the NLF and begun a purge of FLOS Y adherents in its ranks, its
commanders asked for RAF support against a FLOS Y force raiding across the
Yemen frontier. The British authorities obliged by ordering the RAF to strike
at it.
Away to the east, in the three sultanates that made up the Eastern Protec­
torate, the NLF was also gaining the upper hand with disconcerting ease.
None of the sultanates - the Qaiti and Kathiri sultanates of the Hadramaut and
the sultanate of Qishn and Socotra, which also nominally embraced the Mahra
country - had joined the Federation of South Arabia, either at its inception or
subsequently. In the case of the two Hadrami sultanates the reasons were
partly economic: their receipts from customs dues, a principal source of
revenue, would have been reduced by being brought into conformity with the
lower level of federal duties. Their hesitation, however, was also attributable to
the distinctive character of the Hadramaut, to its relative isolation from the
states of the Western Protectorate, and to its comparative immunity from
intimidation by the Yemen (which had been primarily responsible for persuad­
ing the western states to federate). As for the Mahra sultanate, its nominal
boundaries contained the wildest and most inaccessible region in southern
Arabia. Only in the town of Qishn and among the scattered settlements along
the coast was there any display of authority by the ruling sultan. Inland, among
the tribal nomads and cultivators, a kind of formalized anarchy reigned. To
have tried to bring this desolate, untamed land into the federation would have
been futile. Yet although the Hadrami and Mahra sultanates were not mem­
bers of the ill-fated federation, Britain still had residual obligations to them,
arising from the treaties of protection which were now on the verge of being
unilaterally abrogated. George Brown had recognized this in his statement on
South Arabia on 20 June when he said that Britain would continue to pay for
the upkeep of the Hadrami Bedouin Legion, which, together with the armed
retainers of the individual sultans, was responsible for the preservation of
security in the Hadramaut. The payment was to run for three years after
independence, and would be conditional upon the sultans’ agreeing to a system
of joint command of the Legion and to its close co-operation with the South
Arabian Army. In a forlorn attempt to induce the three sultans to join the
moribund federation, Brown further stipulated that any financial aid that
might be forthcoming from Britain would be channelled to them through the
federal government.
It was all too little, too late and too hastily contrived. A network of NLF cells
already existed throughout the Hadramaut and in the ranks of the Hadrami
Bedouin Legion, and between late August and the middle of October, by means
which are still obscure, the NLF’s supporters took control of the principal
towns along the coast and in the Wadi Hadramaut. The Qaiti and Kathiri
sultans, who were out of the country at the time, found when they tried to